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It was! But it's left a lot of nations with huge debt for projects that often haven't really helped their economies. Even when things are working mind of ok, r
by jauntywundrkind 3y ago
It was! But it's left a lot of nations with huge debt for projects that often haven't really helped their economies.
Even when things are working mind of ok, rather than build alliances and friends (build soft power), China too often acts entitled after coming in to a place & blows the political gains they should have been making. Even when coming with a carrot to the world, China's demands-of-ego get in their own way.
China does have an incredibly fast growing navy. Their military is cranking out enormous amounts of everything, at a dizzying unimaginable pace. And perhaps the Belt & Road will help that nation project power some, will serve as ports and bases. But I'm not sure. I'm not sure why they are so aggressively building their military.
- maxglute 3y agoPLA spending is ~2% of GDP, what US wants NATO to spend. It's just 2% of 20T economy with huge industrial capacity and relatively efficient procurement buys a lot. And since most of the hardware is new and not replacing deprecated equipment, the number naturally increase until level will production and replacement demands balances out. Ultimately PRC is ~25% larger than US by PPP, domestic MIC is largely indigenous on operate on domestic pricing, it would be weird if they don't have comparable or larger sized fleet. Much of it is also reorganization/rebalancing away from army to navy/airforce, net personel is down, but capital equipement up. It's easier for satellites/media to report 100s of more ships and planes, but not 250,000 less soldiers.