Стратегия «жемчужной нити» как мера для реализации инициативы китайского морского шелкового пути

Beijing insists that all these investments were economically motivated and part of the MSR [Kleven, 2015]. By 2017, about US $ 46.6 billion of investments were announced or completed in China, including 40 port projects, the largest of which are:

Tanzania (Bagamoyo – US $10 billion);
Sri Lanka (Colombo and Habamtota - US $ 3 billion);
Burma [Myanmar] (Sittwe port in Maday Island - US $ 2.5 billion);
Australia (Darwin, Newcastle, and Melbourne -US $ 2.2 billion);
Israel (Ashdod and Haifa - US $ 2.9 billion) [Kuo, 2017].

Level of ownership and volume of investments in the port vary. Taken together, Chinese port operators China Merchants Port Holdings, China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO Group) and China Shipping Terminal Development, all mainland companies, easily compete with the two largest container flow companies in the world - PSA International of Singapore and Hutchison Ports Holdings from Hong Kong [Kuo, 2017].

The “String of Pearls” Strategy as a Military Initiative

In fact, the “String of Pearls” concept is often viewed a military initiative, with the aim of providing China’s navy `access` to a series of ports stretching from the South China Sea to the Arabian Sea and oil-rich ME [Harutyunyan, 2017a, P. 95-102]. It begins at the Yulin Naval Base on the territory of the PRC itself, on Hainan Island - the largest naval base in Asia, capable of receiving and servicing ships of all classes. In the underground shelter of the Naval Base there can be up to 20 submarines, including a nuclear submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and a nuclear submarine. Although in the Pacific Ocean, outside the territorial waters of the China, there were no PLA naval bases, but there were two auxiliary facilities - a satellite weather station on the island of Karakira (Solomon Islands) and a post of equipment for monitoring the surface situation on the island of Tuamotu (French Polynesia). The latter is interesting because the PRC intelligence object is, in fact, located on the territory of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member country. In addition, the PLA Navy can be used to refuel Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea) [Храмчихин, 2017].

Actually, China was adopting a “Dual-Use Logistics Facility” approach, involving ports that would ostensibly serve both commercial and logistics purposes rather than full-scale military operations [Dorsey, 2019, P. 210]. Here are some of the dual-use Chinese logistics facilities:

• Hong Kong (China): strong central base;
• Sanya (China): submarine base;
• Paracel Islands: base area for resupply; an upgraded airstrip on Woody Island, located in the Paracel archipelago about 300 nautical miles east of Vietnam;
• Spratly Islands: submarine locations and resupply;
• Sihanoukville (Cambodia): naval `access` base;
• Isthmus of Kra (southern Thailand): strategic protected corridor for `access` from South China Sea to Gulf of Thailand to Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean;
• Smith Island (Myanmar): naval base with electronic intelligence;
• Sittwe (Myanmar): Strategic location as resupply point, a deep-water port under construction;
• Chittagong (Bangladesh): amphibious naval installation, a container shipping facility;
• Hambantota (Sri Lanka): military base utilized for protection;
• Marao (Maldives): military base utilized for protection and marine expeditions;
• Gwadar (Pakistan): strategic, protected location for China as a naval base and intelligence installation;
• Port Sudan (Sudan): strategic location for resupply and resources, upgraded facilities which provide vital `access` to the Suez Canal and the Horn of Africa;
• Al- Ahdab (Iraq): oil and petroleum location, troop support location;
• Lamu (Kenya): strategic port location for African resources [Sterioti, 2017, P. 3-4];
• Hainan Island (China): upgraded military facilities;
• The South China Sea: oil-drilling platforms and ocean survey ships;
• Great Coco Island (Myanmar) near the Strait of Malacca: intelligence-gathering facilities;
• Irrawaddy transportation corridor: it would `link` China’s Yunnan province to the Bay of Bengal through Burma;
• The Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline: a potential extension of the IPI through Islamabad and over the Karakoram Highway to Kashgar in Xinjiang province, intended to transport fuel into China [Lin, 2011, P. 11].