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posted by takyon on Monday April 20 2015, @06:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the group-of-two dept.

China intends to invest $46 billion in infrastructure links to Pakistan:

The focus of spending is on building a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) - a network of roads, railway and pipelines between the long-time allies. They will run some 3,000km (1,865 miles) from Gwadar in Pakistan to China's western Xinjiang region.

The projects will give China direct access to the Indian Ocean and beyond. This marks a major advance in China's plans to boost its economic influence in Central and South Asia, correspondents say, and far exceeds US spending in Pakistan.

[...] Some $15.5bn worth of coal, wind, solar and hydro energy projects will come online by 2017 and add 10,400 megawatts of energy to Pakistan's national grid, according to officials. A $44m optical fibre cable between the two countries is also due to be built.

The Great Game lives. Different players, same game. Equally large implications. Diplomacy game geeks, awake! Who are the players, and what's the play?

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by zeigerpuppy on Monday April 20 2015, @09:48PM

    by zeigerpuppy (1298) on Monday April 20 2015, @09:48PM (#173297)

    The funny thing is that the US still thinks it's a player.
    The game is lost, get used to it.
    The new superpowers have a few things going for them that the US doesn't: they are internally cohesive, don't spend half their budget on "homeland" policing and have innovated technologically on a grand scale (as opposed to sucking at the teet of private contractors).
    It doesn't mean their policies and plans are correct and just in any abstract moral sense, then again neither were America's policies noble when it was in its "might is right" phase. To weather the future however, America and her allies need to stop beating their increasingly empty chests and realize that all empires have their time in the sun.

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  • (Score: 2) by Covalent on Monday April 20 2015, @11:38PM

    by Covalent (43) on Monday April 20 2015, @11:38PM (#173326) Journal

    Bah. We've got plenty of muscle left...we're just using it poorly right now. Best thing to do would be to stop spending so much money on "big military". How many bombers do we need when bombs don't help much?

    Spend the money on R&D, space, and massive payoffs, er, I mean diplomacy, to everyone around China, especially India.

    Out tech and out spend....just like wiping out the USSR, only quicker thanks to better tech to spread your propaganda, er, I mean "message of freedom".

    --
    You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:27AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:27AM (#173400) Journal

    I don't know whom you're thinking of when you describe "new superpowers" as being internally cohesive, because they certainly can't be China or Pakistan or India. The latter two have religious massacres on a regular basis, each of which individually has a death toll larger than the sum total of all that has happened between the Israelis and Palestinians. It's just that they don't have the lobby and media presence in the United States that pro-Israel forces have. As for China, they have so many social fault lines that rive their society it's not even funny--you could take your pick, countryside vs. city, Beijing vs. provinces, north vs. south, Han Chinese vs. Mongols, Uighurs, Tibetans, and everyone else, and on and on. The really fun thing about China is that Beijing has been so good at suppressing the formation of civil society that there is no buffer when Beijing loses control.

    It's de rigeur here in the United States at the moment to think that social division and incipient revolution are an exclusively American thing, and that everyone else in the world is doing great, but they're not. Yes, we are on the cusp of a sea change in this country, but it's not just this country. It's a global phenomenon.

    Hold your loved ones close. Enjoy the moments you have, now. The next 20 years are going to be rough.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.