How is CHINA challenging the AMERICAN EMPIRE? - VisualPolitik EN

[Music] we had the roman empire the spanish empire the british empire now we live in the age of the american empire [Music] no other country has had such a military presence in so many places even in remote places like guam in the middle of the pacific america has a military base and that's actually pretty useful the fact that you can buy a mobile phone made in south korea with just one click that's the outcome of global capitalism but also global capitalism would not be possible if trade wasn't safe those american bases they're there to protect those ships that move goods from one place to another and this is really the reason why the us invests so much in having a strong army which has kind of been unchallenged until now so you might be wondering or you might not be who is challenging this empire because of course it's china and well how is china doing it well that's what we're going to see in this video [Applause] [Music] this is the million dollar question why does america have such a big army you might argue that it doesn't really need one in fact just by looking at a map you can see that america has a big advantage it's secured by two fairly sizable oceans making it almost impossible to attack or invade [Music] nonetheless america has the biggest army on the planet it has more than a million active military personnel and almost 800 military bases located in 70 different countries territories all over the globe britain france and russia by contrast have about 30 foreign bases combined just have a look at this map america is all over the place and there is no country that can challenge them well hold on a second because maybe there is yes dear viewers today we're talking all about china here on visualpolitik we've talked thousands of times about china's economic progress it's the world's factory and many chinese companies are starting to become big competition for the technological bear moths but now we're talking about their military more specifically their military presence in the south china sea and believe me this is no joke [Music] china's south china sea play the end of beijing's peaceful rise the definition string of pearls was first used in 2005 in an international report given by the department of defense of the united states in this report it was predicted that china will try to expand its naval presence throughout the indian ocean region in this context the pearls are a metaphor for each of the military bases that china wants to build making a string that goes all the way down to africa and the middle east where china imports most of its natural resources and as you can imagine these military expansions they scared the whole world especially america and it got even more scary when the former chinese president hu jintao said this in 2009 [Music] the road of peaceful development is a strategic choice made by the chinese government and people in the line of the nation's peace-loving traditional culture the trend of our times and the fundamental interests of china hu jintal yeah so for some reason this quote that was intended to chill out the americans basically had the opposite effect it pretty much sounded like china was saying the opposite of what is actually the truth but okay i know what you're probably thinking right now i mean so what what's the problem with china trying to increase their military after all it's just another country everyone has an army and wants to be safe right i mean why should we care about china having military bases do they really want to surpass the united states can they even well today we're going to answer all of those questions but before we do as we always do let's take a look back at the history [Music] lessons from the pain yeah we said america is almost impossible to invade but there was an exception and that was in the year 1941 when japan bombed pearl harbor in hawaii [Music] a year later the japanese invaded the aleutian islands in alaska that was the moment when america learned an important lesson nobody is 100 safe it was also the time that they figured they should probably care about protecting the oceans in fact during world war ii the us had to fight among lots of small islands in the pacific this was the case during the battle of midway after the attack on pearl harbor the japanese tried to eliminate the us as a strategic power in the pacific and they hoped to succeed by demoralizing the american forces with another surprise attack american cryptographers though they managed to decipher the date and the location of japan's attack and prepared a surprise counter-attack needless to say the u.s inflicted irreparable damage to the japanese fleet world war ii ended the americans won and they remembered their lesson we can't let this happen again so well what did they do well they covered the pacific ocean with military bases basically they kept soldiers on those small islands where they had fought and now you might be wondering why is it so important to have soldiers on a small island that no one really cares about i mean is it really that bad if someone wants to invade an atoll like midway i mean really and also moving soldiers to the other side of the planet and keeping them there is not exactly cheap [Music] a warship is basically a floating city with big guns on it and it's a city that can travel 500 to 1000 kilometers in one day so moving one of those from los angeles to shanghai would take more than 10 days [Applause] but if you already have ships and soldiers in guam you can be to shanghai in almost three days this is designed to deter potential conflicts in fact most of those ships would never have to fire a single weapon being so powerful honestly no one would probably dare to attack them but not only that many of these ships are not meant to combat other armies but rather than meant to combat pirates for example the uss independence is a warship created for the main purpose of combating piracy and this is just one of many ships in fact the uss naval force is getting bigger and bigger all the time and this means that so far no one has been able to match it [Music] u.s navy to add 46 ships in five years but 355 ships won't come for a long time of course this gives america a huge amount of power and this can be worrying to some people but so far it's created a safe environment where everybody can trade untroubled whenever some country or some pirates want to block a trade route they have to face all those american ships this is one reason why southeast asian nations have become exporting powerhouses and of course it's benefited china too [Music] the truth is that there are many countries that would happily block china's trade routes but is china comfortable in this position does it like depending so much on america's army well let's have a look a new hegemon so what defines a territory well a territory is an area of land under the jurisdiction of a ruler or a state not all territories are born equal some have abundant natural resources like gems gas and oil while others basically have no resources the availability of some resources gives the country they belong to some pretty big advantages in trade the most obvious example of this is oil and how much its trade has defined saudi arabia's economy what about the others those who have little or few resources they need to import everything for their industries they must compete with international bidders to secure stable supplies of resources which basically means their industrial cost of production is also going to be higher and this this dear viewer is essentially china's situation yes china's got a lot of industry but almost no resources oil steel uranium most of the things it needs to make those mobile phones cars or tvs it's got to come from other parts of the world and this appetite for raw materials is increasing every single day but this still isn't the end of our story once those resources are required china needs to transport them to its territory safely and for as little money as possible the south china sea is the busiest collection of shipping lanes in the world it's the lifeblood of east asia carrying most of its trade and oil it's obvious then that china would very much like to keep these lines of trade open and preferably to control them [Music] china also doesn't have a big consumer market like the us does so it wants to export a lot of what it makes in order to make money and these routes can be blocked at any time by one of their neighboring countries which would stop all of that from happening the communist party the governing force in china also has a lot of mouths to feed so control over this region is essential if the party wants to stay in power alright so i can probably guess what you're thinking right now you're probably thinking well china isn't the only one many other countries have no natural resources either and they don't complain of course but there is a big problem here being so dependent on imports and exports china only needs one country to block its roots to collapse it in a matter of months and as we mentioned before there are many countries who would very happily do that especially one in particular and that's india you see this string of islands on the indian ocean well these belong to india and the indian army could block chinese boats there [Music] and this would mean that china couldn't buy most of the oil that they currently consume most of the oil tankers that go from the middle east to china pass through the strait of malacca right where singapore is we're talking about almost 20 million barrels of oil a day and many other goods in addition but if india blocked the roots among those small islands good luck trying to get that oil in fact there is such an existential threat to china that their former president hujin tao used to call this the malacca dilemma and we're not just talking about india in fact america isn't going through their best time when it comes to loving the chinese either and again the american navy it has the capability to block the oil supply to china by sea this would be far more devastating than any trade war so well what's the solution the belt and road initiative and its maritime counterpart the string of pearls the belton road initiative was initiated by president xi jinping in 2013 with the aim of rebuilding infrastructure and accelerating chinese economic growth essentially this is a brand new silk road and the string of pearls well that's its maritime brother in 2017 mr xi pledged an additional 124 billion dollars towards his 900 billion belt and road initiative china is promoting this global trade infrastructure as a long-term win-win campaign for the 65 nations that have signed up to it most western leaders however they stayed away from the chinese summit announcing the ambitious project but the 28 heads of state present at what mr xi called a gathering of great minds included president putin of russia and president ergodan of turkey [Music] this is indeed a gathering of great minds in the coming two days i hope that by engaging in a full exchange of views we will contribute to pursuing the belt and road initiative a project of the century so that it will benefit people across the world xi jinping with china consolidating its power in relationships with countries all over the south china sea region it might become really difficult for the united states to keep being the big boss in charge of the region if china was to surpass the u.s the united states would lose all of its deterrence power in this key region of the globe and this would completely change the rules of international trade americans well they're pretty worried about this and earlier this year the cia went so far as to state that the u.s has two major problems right now russia and china and their effort to undermine the us's influence in key regions like africa and the south china sea [Music] we are not naive and we are taking significant steps on the counterintelligence side so that we have all the defenses that we need u.s africa command's general thomas waldhauser all right so i know what you're thinking you probably think in america it's an empire all over the world and we're just talking about one small region the south china sea and yeah that's absolutely right in fact china is only threatening us dominance in the south china sea not the whole world but this region it really is the most important when it comes to international trade and this is why the struggle is quite so intense but the show it still goes on [Music] in fact china knows that if it goes too far with building military bases the u.s will call on its allies in the region to do the same this would mean scaling up military spending and look china and the u.s they might not be the best couple on the planet but they kind of tolerate each other and also the us's allies in the region well they really do have a problem with china we've got india which we mentioned previously there's also japan among others and china does not want those guys to increase their military presence this is why so far china is playing a very patient game it's a very long term challenge and long term in chinese that means really long term we might be talking about decades here but despite the slow path you'd better remember the term string of pearls because it's going to appear a lot more in the newspapers this is going to be so important at the beginning of next year on visualpolitik we're going to continue telling you more about it in another series of videos that we've got coming up so if you don't want to miss those please do not forget to subscribe to this channel and hit that bell button so you won't miss any posts but now the question is do you think that the string of pearls is really such a threat to international stability where does the u.s go from here is this the beginning of the end for the american empire well please leave your answer in the comment section below and of course don't forget to visit our friends from reconsider media.com they're the podcasts that provided the vocals in this episode that were not mine also if you like this video give it a like and as always i'll see you next time and if you want to learn more about politics and hear even more of my lovely voice you can join us at reconsider media we have a podcast at reconsider media.com podcast see you there

Channel: VisualPolitik EN

Views: 916,886

Keywords: VISUALPOLITIK, ENGLISH, String of Pearls, Belt and Road Iniciative, Maritime Belt and Road, American Imperialism, American Empire, Xi Jimping, American Military Bases, Military Bases in the Pacific, Security policy, Indian Ocean, Strait of Malacca, Simon Whistler

Id: RDYw3m0IAEY

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 26 2018

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