It is well known that China has the world’s largest navy and coast guard — the result of a tenfold increase in military spending since 1995 — which it uses to advance its pugnacious revisionism.
But there are also numerous lesser-known — indeed, highly opaque — policies, projects and activities that are supporting Chinese expansionism and placing the entire world at risk.
China has a long record of expanding its strategic footprint through stealthy maneuvers that it brazenly denies. For example, in 2017, it established its first overseas military base in Djibouti — a tiny country on the Horn of Africa, which also happens to be deeply in debt to China — while insisting that it had no such plan.