The above is the topic of an insightful tour d'horizon dated 6 July, 2015 of China's ambitions to reclaim the Middle Kingdom's historical centrality in power, influence and prestige by The Red (Team) Analysis Society, a UK-based non-profit global strategic foresight weekly.
In particular, the analysis highlights the global economic linkages China is developing by agreeing to build a Pakistan-Iran railway, partnering with Israel in exploiting water and urban sustainability technologies, investing in Greenland for rare earth and forming closer ties with other Scandanavian countries including Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland through her Permanent Observer status in the Arctic Council.
The latter is anticipation of a future relatively ice-free Arctic, which would open up not only a cornucopia of submerged energy and other resources but also much shorter shipping routes between the Atlantic and the Pacific through the Northern Passage in Canada, the Bering Strait and Russia's northern sea route. (This was heralded in my article The Green Swans of Climate Change in October 2009 in a business magazine "China Ethos").
Along with her One Belt, One Road initiative, China's space exploration program is part and parcel of China's overall strategy for national Renaissance. Nevertheless, it is a little far-fetched to link the two directly as the former is focused on global infrastructural connectivity.
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