Control of the Suez Canal also depends on control of entry and exit into the Red Sea. The Houthis control Bab al-Mandab Strait that provides the gateway towards the Suez Canal. Who therefore controls the Suez Canal is the question if we look at the reality before us.
China has not made much of the issue of the Suez Canal, as the BRI is an alternative route to Europe, all through friendly countries of Central Asia, thanks to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This has been the long- term plan of China to bypass both the Straits of Malacca and the Suez Canal. The USA can block the Isthmus of Kra project and China is unfazed.Russian oil going by pipelines to China is already in place, with Europe salivating for cheap Russian energy now gone forever. Iranian oil now also goes to China by rail paid for with Chinese investments in infrastructure and basically going towards barter trade, dispensing with the US$ for good. The development of the Gwadar Port by the China in co-operation with Pakistan will open up another link for Middle East oil just in case the Straits of Malacca is blockaded in times of conflict.
The Chinese port in Peru, Chancay Port, also opened up trade between South America and China, bypassing the Panama Canal, another choke point cultivated by the USA that is being dismantled. China is also exploring developing an alternative waterway in Nicaragua that will make the Panama Canal obsolete with water availability problems now killing its operation.
In all these developments, China can trade with Europe using the BRI and South America using Port of Chancay, with Pakistan playing another role in the Middle East energy movements. Those choke points can continue to choke ownself in time to come.
Anonymous
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I came across a video of an interview on the site 'Global Insight Hub' during which the guest was John Thornton, the former co-President of Goldman Sachs and Director of Global Leadership Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who gave an outstanding piece on Xi Jinping and why Xi is pursuing his present agenda and path for China. Xi had a very difficult time in childhood caught up in the Cultural Revolution of 1966, that coated his desire to lift the Chinese people out of poverty en masse. Xi's thinking is not a flash in the pan, but a long-term approach he harbored, working his way up the hierarchy in the Chinese Communist Party to became Chairman. His background is tempered by his experience during his early difficult years, which has been put into very humanistic terms for his vision for China.
The West never understood the Chinese Communist Party, using it mainly for demonization purposes without looking at the underlying agenda that resulted in the rise of China and how it came to dominate global manufacturing and innovation, that even Western industrialists are awed. The USA and the West never move beyond the thinking of the cold war period harping on Communism being a threat to Democracy, a stand that they never grow out of even today.
China is now telling Trump and Western leaders to grow up and move beyond the restricted and narrow mindset of containing and hampering China's and every country's growth, mainly because China's socialist system is now doing better than the highly touted democratic system. But with the propaganda machine working overtime, China's voice has never been heard or will be heard.
The USA refused to work with China, just obsessed with the mindset of wanting to put China down and out. The USA was even invited to join the BRI earlier, with Xi sounding out John Kerry if I am not mistaken, who returned home with the suggestion, but was shot down by the war hawks in Washington. Of course, how could the USA work with China when the BRI was the brainchild of Xi. It resulted in all the brickbats and demonization thrown against the BRI to sabotage the move. Co-incidentally, India also was invited but refused to join, a doggie following in the footstep of its master.
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