ABSTRACT
Beginning with loan-financed infrastructure cooperation that creates strategically located assets with built-in dual use functionality, BRI next promoted cash-flow generating trade and investment agreements and contracts for Chinese enterprises. Now, it is being used by the PRC to build domestic and international security cooperation in ways described in this chapter. From the viewpoint of each BRI partner government, new security cooperation with the PRC safeguards shared development aims and interests. In addition, this country-by-country cooperation process moves Afro-Eurasian geopolitics and the global balance of power in favor of the PRC. If this process simply continues unaltered, the achievement of PRC geostrategic predominance is not unlikely. Thus, BRI provides an indispensable platform for geoeconomic and geopolitical successes needed to realize the Chinese Dream by 2049.
