Comments on The Belmont Club,"Thinking it over"

Xinhua is very interested in this. China has effectively bought Australia's future. Rudd sold not just the product but the capital stock when he let China buy the mines. Now China can plan a move South, through the South China Sea and Indonesia. In effect they are repeating what Imperial Japan attempted 70 years ago, only the Chinese are proving more effective. My expectation is that Taiwan will be expected to submit quietly to the new order and Tibet will be scrubbed clean. China's long term plan is to control access to the resources of the Gulf both through a land route across Afghanistan and with a new Navy based in the Arabian Sea. Russia is not opposing this, they are coordinating with China through the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. The alternative for Putin would be a Chinese Strike North. The two wild cards are India and Japan.

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twobyfour,
Mark Steyn has not been refuted about demographics.
The surprise for me is that Russia does not get more exercised about the prospect of a Chinese presence in the 'Stans. While China can use Tibet to stare down at India it can't ship the resources by that route. The Pamirs are just to knotty. The route should be through the Dzungarian Gates and then South and West. Has Putin made a grand bargain in which he gets Eurasia, EU Nato with the Caspian oil and Arctic, and the Chinese get East, South, Central and South-West Asia? Maybe Turkey needs to be added to the list of countries that should have an opinion about this.