The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - China Tries to Build Sand Bases, Again || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

China is out building sand castles again in the South China Sea, and I bet you can guess how it's going to end.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4ekeF5W

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Hey all, Peter Zine here coming to you from Colorado. Some of you have written into the Patreon page asking about China's new base building thing in the South China Sea. For those of you who haven't been following, South China Sea is a disputed waterway that is east of Vietnam, west of the Philippines, and south of China. Lots of different countries claim it. China has a particularly insane claim where they claim all of it, even though there's no historical geographic basis for that, but, you know, bygones. Anyway, in bits and pieces over the last 30-odd years,

years, the Chinese have been building artificial islands in this zone and stationing military equipment on them. So they stopped several years ago. I think it's been seven years since the last one. And now, as of this week, they're starting on a newer, larger island in the parasels. So should we care? Short version is yes, but usually out of entertainment on this topic. So a few things to keep in mind. South China Sea is not particularly deep. It's a sandy bottom. And so what the Chinese do is they bring dred ships in and pump the sand and the coral break it up and then pump it into a pile. And that pile becomes an artificial island and they build infrastructure on it.

And I don't know if any of you ever played with sand as a kid, but this stuff isn't all that stable. And so what happened within 48 months, most cases within 12, is all of these structures that they built started to settle. And so after a couple of years, after five years for sure, all the runways they built, were useless. Plains couldn't land on them. And the reinforced hangars they built just started to crack open. And so about seven years ago, they stopped. So what's changed? Well, seven years ago is where Chairman G got rid of his last real advisors. And so the advisors who were willing to tell him that, hey, boss, this is a really stupid plan that is wasting a lot of money. And anyone who knows anything about military tech is laughing at us and hoping we do more of it. So maybe we shouldn't.

and they stopped. But seven years ago, that last person who was willing to speak truth to Xi was let go. And in the last seven years, Xi has been imbibing nothing but his own rancid propaganda. Does this sound like anyone you know?

Anyway, so we're back at it again. And the Chinese seem to think that, well, if a small island made out of sand was going to sink and crack and be useless, I bet a big one will work, and yes, it will work differently. It'll sink bigger, it'll crack bigger. It'll be even a bigger disaster. And I really hope that they make some midterm military plans based on this

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