if you look at a map the most important
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geopolitical geographical geo-economic
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fact about China is that it has no California no California right the
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United States is a superpower that has chosen as it were a really advantageous
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geography to the north is Canada to the south is Mexico to the east fish and to
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the west fish again that's a very easy environment to be in and the west coast
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of the United States opens up into what we call the Pacific Rim it couldn't be more advantageous it is a very
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significant military buffer the Pacific Ocean and at the same time it's a
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highway of for commerce to an extremely rich dynamic region where all the people
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live so it couldn't be better China however has a very different geography they have land and sea borders
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with 20 countries that's the most of any country in the world today so they and
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they have a lot of disputes territorial disputes with many of their neighbors because the Chinese are ambitious and
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because it passed settlements of geographical disputes weren't always
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accepted they were imposed but the main thing about China is if you move to the
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west what you find that is with your internal China and you're moving to the west of the country what you find is
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gigantic desert and that desert is expanding for ecological reasons right
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the Chinese if if every person in China drinks one or two extra glasses of water a day over the next ten years that does
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it'll hit Beijing that's how fast that desert is moving so they have ecological
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challenge in the Western regions it's not propitious geography and then they also have kind of ethnic
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political challenges there because that's where their Muslim population still lives and that's where Tibet is
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and the regions that are bordering shinjang new province is the translation
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of Xinjiang Western China as well as the Tibetan Plateau now of course many Han Chinese are
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moving in as migrants but nonetheless there is continued unrest there that's political problems so that's their
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California desert and unrest and so what the Chinese are doing is they're
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building a California through Pakistan and Burma that is to say they're gaining
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access to the ocean the Indian Ocean by building infrastructure railroads
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pipelines and through Pakistan and Burma and then building ports on the sea in
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Pakistan and Burma this gives them an outlet this gives them a California of
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course it's much more difficult to build a California through Pakistan and Burma which are not actually stable places
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than it is to build a California through California which everything you can say
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about California it's nonetheless integral part of the the same country
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the United States right and so to the Chinese right if they want to expand
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their influence and power globally land is one way there's greater Eurasia
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through the one belt one road but a big part of that is the sea and the sea it
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is blocked from them in the West and so Pakistan and Burma are their main outlets this is why Pakistan and Burma
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are central to China's geopolitical ambitions and of course the United
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States has a fraught relation with Pakistan but refuses to abandon Pakistan entirely even though we suspect and more
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than suspected Pakistan is supporting the Taliban for example in Afghanistan who are killing American soldiers
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and also we don't want to abandon Burma
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or Myanmar there now they've expelled as you know several hundred thousand Muslim
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Rohingya from Burma from Myanmar nonetheless if we abandon them entirely
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or we criticize them to the point where they abandon us this plays into Chinese
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hands so this is why in part not wholly no not alone but in part that we cannot
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really quote give up not really take to harder line on Pakistan and Burma
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because of their strategic significance as China's potential California anyway
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so this is the number one point the the big geographical point you can see that it's really fraught it's not a neutral
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concept it's got its value Laden it's politics laden and its competitive rival
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risks in a great power sense and all of this is going to be true going forward right Russia considers itself an ancient
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civilization Iran an ancient civilization Turkey an ottoman empire an
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ancient civilization and China an ancient civilization they all have claims that compete with each other's
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claims that are rooted in a sense of grand history very grand history now
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they can cooperate to a certain extent