Fears & doubts

‘No safe harbors’: China plots to block US military from key ports, Pentagon warns

China aims to thwart the U.S. military from using strategically significant ports around the world, U.S. officials and analysts said yesterday. China hopes to do this by investing aggressively in overseas infrastructure projects, the experts said.

“Their single aspiration is to elevate their own status and capacity on a global scale,” said Chad Sbragia, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, during a Thursday House Transportation subcommittee hearing. “What it does mean is that they will have the global military where the U.S. essentially may have no safe harbors.”

Sbragia aired that warning amid the worry that China can use its economic leverage to lock out the U.S. Navy from forward ports. His testimony underscored fears that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative is designed to give leverage to the Chinese military if the United States tries to deploy forces into the Indo-Pacific region in a crisis.