Chapter 07 One Belt One Road And Aborted Projects (1)

As soon as Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, he was ambitious enough to begin to unleash his “dream of greatness” (under the name “China Dream”) on the international community. He proposed the “One Belt, One Road” unprecedented international leap forward plan. With the wealth and foreign exchange reserves accumulated during the reform and opening up of the Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras, Xi has been trying to achieve the ambition of world domination that Mao Zedong failed to achieve. Xi Jinping’s transnational economic belt covers China’s historical Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road, including the whole of Asia, the Indian Ocean coast, the Mediterranean coast, Africa, South America, and countries in the Atlantic region. In addition to the U.S. and Western countries in Europe, Xi Jinping’s ambition is to implement his “international grand strategy” through the Belt and Road, to manipulate countries economically and politically so that he can establish a “community of human destiny” under his control. “This is to separate himself from the U.S. He creates another so-called “Chinese model”.

As of March 2021, China has signed 200 “Belt and Road” cooperation documents with 141 countries and 31 international organizations. China’s investment capital is estimated at more than $500 billion. Most of the “Belt and Road” projects lack economic efficiency and are caught in a “debt trap”. There is no benefit for the Chinese people and there is a lot of resentment in the country for the “big money spreading”. According to statistics, of the 1,674 projects invested in 66 countries, it is obvious that there are troubles and so 234 projects are in bad shape. The whole “Belt and Road” project is recognized as a huge failure in terms of performance from both domestic and international evaluation angles.

In May 2014, anti-Chinese demonstrations in Vietnam protested against China’s unilateral oil drilling in the South China Sea. The riot caused the deaths of six Chinese employees and over a hundred were injured. Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road madness has caused a sharp rise in the number of conflicts between the locals and the Chinese. Chinese embassies abroad handled 60,000 cases of Chinese requesting protection and assistance in 2014 alone, involving 73,000 Chinese people.

In June 2015, overseas reported that China’s investment in a casino, hotel and entertainment resort complex in the Atlantic Bahamas had collapsed with the $3.5 billion investment going down the drain. 3,000 employees were hired for these projects and they were just laid off.

In May 2016, overseas reported that China had invested $7.5 billion in Venezuela to build 468 kilometers of railroad tracks and that construction had been halted and rotted for years leaving the site in ruins.

Sri Lanka’s Chinese-invested Hambantota port (Hambantota) has poor economic performance and is not operating as expected. It owes a huge debt to China which cannot be repaid, forcing it to cede its territorial sovereignty, with China acquiring the right to use the port and the surrounding 15,000 acres of land for a 99-year lease. The Chinese Communist Party has always opposed imperialist aggression to establish leases and now it is Xi Jinping’s Red Empire’s turn to establish leases in foreign countries. Tens of thousands of Sri Lankan protesters demonstrated in the capital city Colombo on Sept. 5, 2018. They opposed the government’s participation in China’s Belt and Road project. Back in January 2017, already there were anti-Communist demonstrations in Sri Lanka.

Djibouti, a small African country, was forced to cede the port of Doraleh due to its inability to repay Chinese loans and the Chinese Communist Party then militarized the civilian port establishing a naval base. China stationed additional warships and military personnel in the port, making it the first overseas military base of Xi Jinping’s Red Empire.