The Functional difference...

...between these two fleets (one a representation of a Dutch East India Company fleet, the other a modern carrier group) is zero. This is why the following article regarding Chinese investments in jurisdictions THEY LACK THE MEANS OF SECURING will end badly for them. That this activity is occurring in the Western Hemisphere only adds to the advantage for the United States. There are no concepts of order without enforceability (either actual or coerced via implication of actual force). It is clear that China believes their Treasury holdings gurantee our complicity, but this only goes so far, and they are treading into waters they have little experience in fishing.

As Clausewitz said: "War is the continuation of politics by other means", to which I would add "politics is the continuation of economics by other means".

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- When Tele Norte Leste Participacoes SA, Brazil’s biggest land-line company, was shopping for network equipment last year, Huawei Technologies Co.’s offer had an edge: access to China Development Bank’s $30 billion credit line.
A two-year grace period on payments and an interest rate of 2 percentage points over the London interbank offered rate created an unbeatable deal, Tele Norte Chief Financial Officer Alex Zornig, 52, says.
“The Chinese are filling the space left empty by Americans and Europeans,” Zornig said in an interview. “They are very aggressive and they have a lot of money.”
China Development Bank’s support for Huawei and other Chinese companies is the cornerstone of the country’s “going out” policy, meant to nurture companies in telecommunications, alternative energy and oil. The bank’s low-interest loans dwarf those offered by U.S. and European development agencies, helping Shenzhen-based Huawei and crosstown rival ZTE Corp. increase market share.
“Our support for Huawei, ZTE and other high-technology companies has opened up the overseas market,” China Development Bank Chairman Chen Yuan, 66, wrote in the January issue of China Reform magazine. “We have become the principal source of finance of our country’s overseas investments.”