La Cina e' vicina (almeno nel Mediterraneo)

The current Chinese power projection has taken four directions: at first Central Asia, where China wants to manage the internal balance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (which can be considered the "NATO of the East" and, more precisely, the European Union of the terrestrial Asian heartland) and where it also intends to control the Kashmir strategic region namely the axis of the Indian power and the geopolitical continuum between Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was witnessed during the military exercises of September 2010. Secondly, the Chinese power projection regards the link between its Eastern borders and the Persian Gulf, with a view to controlling its oil supply routes from Iran - and today Iraq - and, thanks to this continuum, reaching the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and the Mediterranean. China is looking to this system as a whole: its geopolitical tradition alien to the "cold war" - the "paper tiger" which had enchanted the Soviets - enables China not to see the faults and twists that the cold war heritage has left in the Middle East. China intends lo control the axis between the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Suez, and is waiting for the regional tensions between the Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to ease out with a view to penetrating the region, by following the same procedures with which it is gaining geoeconomic power in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of` Congo and South Africa. This axis is the continuation - under current conditions -- of the Silk Way strategy. Thirdly, it is vitally important for China to create a wide area of` contact between the European Union and its areas of influence. Chinese recent infrastructure and port acquisitions in Greece, the substantial increase of bilateral trade between China and Turkey, the expansion of railway and real estate projects in Libya which has recently more than doubled its oil exports to China – the agribusiness investment in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, as well as the acquisition of financial assets in the European Union are all factors of an economic struggle for Europe which is different from the 'struggle for Europe' that the Warsaw Pact planned during the 'cold war'. China regards the two shores of the Mediterranean as a single strategic whole and, in the foreseeable future, it plans to reach the Atlantic from the Mediterranean, with a view to communicating and controlling the United States from these two global seas. From the strictly geoeconomic viewpoint, China will use its presence in the Mediterranean to acquire advanced technology, control the management of the oil and non-oil raw materials it is acquiring in Africa and the South-Mediterranean region, as well as to penetrate the EU markets with its products and its capital, in particular. It will be fundamental for China to enhance the flexibility and volume of its own reserves and, obviously, increasingly balance the euro/dollar ratio in its FX so as to become less linked to the volume of its own monetary reserves and allow a non-inflationary growth of domestic consumption and social security, instead of depending on foreign and domestic exports and investment, as China has so far decided to do........