If I try to connect the facts presented in this article, I don't get to quite the same conclusions. Let me walk through the article: The article presents a cha

If I try to connect the facts presented in this article, I don't get to quite the same conclusions. Let me walk through the article: The article presents a chart of top investments. The top 3 are all in Malaysia, costing from $8.4B to $14.1B. OK, China is spending a lot of money in this Belt & Road thing. The article details how the China-Myanmar gas and oil pipelines (a $2.5B investment) are under-utilized. Now we see that some of that money could have been spent more wisely. The article points out that the majority of China's trade with Europe is by sea and the Malacca Strait is a choking point. The article doesn't say, but it seems to validate that the both investments above are good ideas: * This validates that the vast investment in Malaysia is a really good idea. By having Malaysia's economy integrated with, or even reliant on China's economy, China secures the trade route by sea. * This also validates that the China-Myanmar pipelines may also be a good idea, even if they are under-utilized now. It hedges the risk of the Malaysia investment, and gives China more leverage when it comes to issues in the Malacca Strait. Even at peace time, Malaysia, Indonesia, or the US could threaten to deny Chinese ships passage of the Strait and apply a lot of leverage to China. That leverage is gone with the Myanmar pipelines. It is under-utilized now and will probably remain under-utilized because it's a strategic tool. The article then shows how the Soviet economy went down due to investments in Siberia. I strongly feel it is the wrong comparison: not only because Malaysia and Myanmar are very different places from Siberia, but also because Siberia is part of Russia while Malaysia and Myanmar are not part of China. I am not implying that foreign investments are automatically better than domestic investments, but the analogy is a poor one here. The article also shows how China's domestic investment is shifting from the east coast to the west inland areas, apparently trying to draw a better analogy with Russia's decline. That looks like a more valid point to me, but why the sudden shift to domestic investments near the end? Probably it is because the author wants to conclude the article with the following sentence: > China’s rise this century was driven by its embrace of world trade and the coastal provinces most exposed to it. In this retreat inland, it’s sowing the seeds of decline. But if the reader still remembers the earlier parts of the article, they should see that China is doing several things: * Foreign investments along the traditional maritime trade routes -- most notably Malaysia * Foreign investments along the new land trade routes -- I understand this to hedge the risk of maritime trade routes being blockaded * Domestic investments to less-developed areas This is hardly a "retreat inland", it is diversification of investments. Sounds good to me.