That may be the case but they certainly have a longer term vision than many other nations. For example, China is the primary source of rare earth elements (REE) in the world, they dominate the market and basically set the prices.
What they have been doing over the last three or so decades is buying REE supplies from other countries and selling them while leaving many of their own deposits untapped. This exhausts the resources from other nations while leaving their own resources largely unused, leaving them in the dominant supplier position ensuring they continue to make big bucks.
I'm not saying this makes the Chinese government better at military planning or projection, just that they do tend to think in terms of decades rather than the three or four years that many Western governments think in (i.e. the time until the next election). That may not be patience, but it does demand some forethought.
|