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China’s Belt and Road Initiative is getting a new, longer look in Australia. The Wall Street Journal reports that the country’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has launched a review of a lease to operate the Darwin Port that was granted in 2015 to a unit of China’s Landbridge Group.
The commercial cargo operations at Darwin are within sight of a military installation used by the U.S. Marines, and the U.S. and Australia are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade defense infrastructure there.
That makes Darwin a key example of a port where commercial and defense operations effectively overlap, creating what some Australian and U.S. officials say is a significant security concern. Landbridge’s Australian executives scoff at the criticism.
One former policy official says Australia should simply develop another port, given that Darwin is hemmed in and can’t accommodate the biggest dry-bulk ships.
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