Dr. Jean Michel Valantin, Red (Team) Analysis, March 13, 2017

There are (more and more) missiles on the road.

What we call here “the great roads” are created as answers to the necessity for Russia and China to connect Asian countries with resources from and markets of Russia and Europe. After having seen the ways the Russian are militarizing their Northern Sea Route (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Militarizing the Great Resources Roads- Part 1 – Russia”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, February 20, 2017), we shall focus in this article on the militarization of some maritime segments of the Chinese New Silk Road and what it means for the economic and social development of the “Middle Kingdom”. We shall more particularly point out how sections of the maritime New Silk Road become therefore protected in the framework of a tense geopolitical environment brought about by climate change and resource depletion.

On 7 September 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping officially launched the “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative, also called the “New Silk Road” (NSR), in Astana, during a state visit in Kazakhstan.

This Chinese strategy is aimed at creating a planetary-wide “attraction system” from the outside to China. It is necessary to channel in the mineral, energy, and food resources needed by China in order to keep developing itself, while ensuring the social cohesion of its 1.400 billion strong population (Jean-Michel Valantin, “China and the New Silk Road, from oil wells to the Moon … and beyond!”, The Red Team Analysis Society, July 6, 2015).

In this first part, we shall see how the important segment of the maritime New Silk Road, which the South China Sea has also become, is militarized and what it means for business.

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The complete article is available on the Red (Team) Analysis website.