'China Wants to Get Rid of the US': Beijing Spending Hundreds of Billions to Undermine America

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil and NAIROBI, Kenya – China is aggressively expanding its global influence, specifically through control of key shipping ports. 

It's part of Beijing's ongoing agenda to use economic, military, and infrastructure projects as leverage to overtake the United States as the world's leading superpower. CBN News traveled to Brazil and Kenya for a closer look at China's growing influence around the world.

What is clear from experts though is that China wants to dominate the high seas, and so far, it's succeeding. Seven of the world's largest shipping ports are in China, with the Port of Shanghai topping the list

It's the ports outside of the country's borders, though, that retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery tells CBN News concerns Washington and its allies the most.

"China's primary goal is access," said Montgomery. "Access for resource extraction, access to displace the United States position, access for future operations, but that access acts as the long-term goal of China displacing the United States as the economic partner of choice globally."

China's growing network of ports now spans every ocean and continent. 

Chinese companies – most owned by the Communist government – have spent billions building 129 ports in more than 50 countries, many along vital and strategic shipping lanes.

"Most of the stuff you buy crosses the world by sea. But shipping containers don't just hold goods, they hold something else too: power. And China is all in," wrote Germany's public broadcaster DW in a recent article.

Peru's Chancay Port is Beijing's latest mega-port project, inaugurated in November by China's President Xi Jinping.

"This is a significant development, a significant win frankly for the Chinese Communist Party in Latin America, in our American neighborhood," said Brad Bowman with the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

At a cost of nearly four billion dollars, Chinese state-owned Cosco Shipping controls 60 percent of the port and states it will reduce shipping time between China and South America by 10 days. 

"It's going to become the shipping hub between China and South America. Long term I think there will be a railway link to Brazil that goes along with this for the extraction of Brazilian resources to China," Montgomery told CBN News.

"This is absolutely crucial for China because China's only hope right now to rescue its grim situation at home on the economy is to export more," said Gordon Chang with the Gatestone Institute. "They realize that they've been shut out of developed markets like the U.S., Canada as well as European Union, so they need what they call the 'Global South' and South America is a really important part of that portion of the world."

Today, China is South America's largest trading partner and here in Brazil, the most populous and largest in the region, trade with Beijing surpasses the United States by a ratio of 2-to-1.

Bowman, who is the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at F.D.D., says America is dangerously losing influence in its own backyard with countries that were historically aligned with Washington.

"I think in many respects we are just getting out-hustled by the Chinese Communist Party," warned Bowman. "We are taking our position for granted and my read of history tells me that if you take what you have for granted and you don't compete and you don't defend it, that you are going to lose it."

Military experts express concerns that China's aggressive ownership of these international ports, might allow it to gain military leverage, such as eventually hosting Chinese naval assets.

"So, is a port a dual use? Of course it is, right? Because this massive new port in Peru that Xi Jinping was so excited to inaugurate might be serving large container ships today, but it can service PLA Navy vessels tomorrow," warned Bowman.

Montgomery says many ports operated by Cosco Shipping use a digital management software system called Logink to monitor ship and cargo movements. 

That system is also government-owned.

"If the Chinese run your integrated management system for your ports, they're going to have undue influence during a crisis or casualty when you are trying to move military supplies or parts and the Chinese have the ability rapidly disrupt your port operating systems," said Montgomery. "They really have incredible insight into world trade, insight into military and security movements and potentially the opportunity to disrupt them."

In 2013, President Xi launched China's Belt and Road Initiative, also known as the New Silk Road. 

Stretching from East Asia to Europe, Africa, and South America, China has spent more than a trillion dollars building roads, railways, power grids, ports, and more—all to gain influential international partnerships.

"It's expanded from about 65 countries originally, all more or less neighbors of China, to encompass most of the developing world," said Tom Miller, author of China's Asia Dream. 

As part of its Belt and Road Initiative, China has also been spending a lot of money on the African continent. 

For example, in 2022, it built a major highway connecting the international airport with downtown Nairobi.

"In Africa, between 2013 and 2023 China made over 800 billion dollars' worth of Belt and Road Initiative investments in Africa," said Montgomery. "That's a staggering sum that dwarfs any American or international non-humanitarian goods assistance programs. As a result, we've been rapidly displaced as the economic security partner of choice."

Whether in Africa, South America, or Asia, experts say it's clear China is on a mission to become the world's leading superpower.

"China sees the United States as an existential threat and it sees us as an existential threat not because of anything we say or do but because of who we are," Chang told CBN News. "You have an insecure regime in Beijing that's worried about the inspirational impact of America's values in form of governance over the Chinese people so China wants to get rid of the United States because it believes that it will never be safe and secure as long as the American republic exists."

Bowman says China's leaders want to accomplish this dominance without firing a shot.

"They understand that a war with the United States would be very costly for them. So as Sun Tzu said more than two and half millennia ago, 'the acme of skills is to win without fighting'; by fighting he meant bombs, bullets, and guns," said Bowman. "So, China is trying to defeat us without having to fire a kinetic shot, but they are firing shots already in the information, economic and cyber domain. The problem is Americans don't realize it and predators like nothing better than slumbering prey."