Trump withdraws the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council

I've often wondered this myself. But in truth Panama is too close to the US for the Chinese to be able to do anything. I think the explanation is they're still buying time, trying to avoid a war with the US while they continue to build productive forces and consolidate for the next stage of socialist development. Even in a world say 5 years from now where China has a much more mature navy the task of fighting the US in Panama would be incredibly painful for them. I do think they'll need to draw a line when it comes to countries not behind the US island chain curtain of steel, for example in Asia. But it's a big question I've often asked. Which is what really is to stop the US from just continuing to destabilize west Asia (middle east) to prevent the B&R through there then in concert with that doing a kind of naval blockade using island chains to enforce strangling sanctions on China's economy and I'm not sure there is anything really.

China is just hoping they don't have to resort to war because well the US is deranged, has used nukes in anger before, and on the back foot, just bad combinations. They hope things get bad enough that the US is forced to retreat, that BRICS rises enough the US can't bully them effectively without hurting themselves, and that will be the path forward.

But it's a big question mark. The century will likely be decided by the attempts of the west to disrupt and destroy the BRI over the next 5-10 years and how effective they are. At the very least to the Chinese response and that of the rest of BRICS and how long they are willing to keep taking punches before daring to throw one back out.

2 things: 1. coming "to the defense" would be crossing a line on that country's own sovereignty, or its own development/buildup of sovereignty. (China's not interested in the soviet model, and I think this has merit because we saw how areas propped up by soviets fell as the ussr waned and then collapsed.) building infrastructure doesnt mean unilateral alliance, it's a business transaction, albeit one that meaningfully materially strengthens the beneficiary country's ability towards economic development and sovereignty.

2/ someone come correct me if I've got my understanding of how bonds work/macroeconomics/monetary policy/forex backwards but China owns a lot of US debt, and is actively shedding it. Used to be #1 foreign holder of US treasuries, now it's #2 (#1 currently Japan). In the past China bought US bonds using its trade surplus in dollars, which would basically recycle $ to continue to develop its own manufacturing and towards growing its own middle class+its own domestic market. Now that China's developed a pretty robust domestic market (eg doesnt need to rely on US to consume those produced goods and fuel economy), China doesn't need to put dollars back into that machine, but it still has a trade surplus in dollars. So financing other projects like those on BRI or among BRICS with those dollars is a solution to that problem (holding onto that surplus isn't economically sound..), and bonus points for building material foundations for dedollarization.

someone else's analysis that's similar to my second point, and probably has a better understanding of that economics stuff: How China recycles its huge trade surplus with EU, US into BRICS infrastructure projects, risk-free