New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

by David E. Sanger

China’s investment in the South Pacific was long in the making. Back in 2013, when Xi announced his signature development and trade undertaking, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese said the loosely centralized program was a source of “win/win cooperation.” Recipient states would get quick and easy funding for new, often sorely needed infrastructure projects—bridges, hospitals, roads, ports—without having to comply with the onerous requirements that Western-led institutions often demanded. Yet when American diplomats saw the deals, they winced at how efficiently Beijing was leveraging its coffers to gain profit and influence. The funding might have been easy, but it was structured in a way that saddled countries with debt they would struggle to pay back: Interest rates from Chinese creditors were often four times higher than the Western equivalents, researchers found, and had to be repaid in a third of the time,