Its pathway to power is building new networks rather than disrupting old ones. Their power arises not from their relatively small nuclear arsenal or their expanding stockpile of conventional weapons. It comes from the undersea cables they are spooling around the world so that those networks run on Chinese-owned circuits. Ultimately, it will come from how they use those networks to make other nations dependent on Chinese technology. Its attempts to strangle Huawei, China’s national champion in telecommunications, and wrest control of social media apps like TikTok, ended up as a disorganized effort that often involved threatening, and angering, allies who were thinking of buying Chinese technology.

Source: International New York Times March 20, 2021 09:00 UTC