(End of the American Dream)—The Chinese have made enormous mountains of money by exporting cheap goods to the rest of the world, and this has given them a tremendous amount of economic power. Now they are attempting to extend their economic domination by constructing hundreds of very large self-sustaining “special economic zones” in other countries. These “special economic zones” are established in key strategic locations, and they are often exempt from many of the laws and regulations of the host nation.
The most famous “special economic zone” in the world is the Chinese city of Shenzhen.
Back in the 1970s, Shenzhen was just a very small fishing village. Today, it is help up as a shining example of China’s economic miracle…
The most successful SEZ in China was Shenzhen, one of the original pilot zones created by Deng Xiaoping. Shenzhen went from a population of 314,000 to 12.5 million over the span of 40 years. By 1992, within 12 years of its designation as a SEZ, Shenzhen attracted $4.3 billion USD in FDI annually, or 14% of China’s total FDI. Now Shenzhen is known as the Silicon Valley of hardware, because it is home to the world’s largest electronics factories.
China is now home to more than 2,500 SEZs. They range from small business parks to full fledged cities with populations in the millions. The World Bank estimates that China’s SEZs contribute 22% GDP, 45% of its FDI, and 60% of its exports.
After having so much success with special economic zones domestically, the Chinese started implementing this concept elsewhere.
A little over a decade ago, China unveiled the global Belt and Road Initiative. The goal was to create a worldwide network of special economic zones that would be connected by “highways, fiber optic cables, railroads, oil pipelines, ports, and airports”…
In 2013, the Chinese government announced the creation of the global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This plan would revive the silk road by financing the creation of connective infrastructure throughout Eurasia and Africa. The connective infrastructure to be built includes highways, fiber optic cables, railroads, oil pipelines, ports, and airports. This infrastructure would be connected by hubs made up of Chinese SEZs. The Chinese government expects to spend $2 trillion USD by 2030 developing the program.
Today, there are approximately 500 Chinese special economic zones outside of the nation of China, and some of them are the size of “full fledged new cities”…
There are now roughly 500 Chinese funded SEZs outside of China, mostly created as part of the BRI. As hubs of connective infrastructure, SEZs play a critical role in the success of the BRI.
BRI SEZs differ immensely from one another. Most are industrial parks, but some are full fledged new cities. Many are designed from the ground up by Chinese companies, while others are initiated by their home countries and later funded by Chinese interests. Some have budgets in the tens of millions, while others have budgets in the tens of billions.
CBS News recently visited one of these special economic zones in Cambodia.
When the CBS News team arrived, there was “no mistake about who’s in charge”…
JD’s manually curated links for God-fearing MAGA patriots
A convoy of semi-trucks passed by as our CBS News team drove about two hours south of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. Moments later we were greeted by an enormous arch with signage in two languages — the local Khmer and, beneath it, Chinese.
There could be no mistake about who’s in charge of the “Special Economic Zone” rising from the dirt. We approached a furniture factory, where the Chinese manager invited us in to shoot some video.
Right now, a lot of Chinese companies are moving into that particular special economic zone in an attempt to avoid the tariffs that President Trump has imposed on China.
So the next time you go to Walmart or Target you may see that a lot more products now say that they are made in Cambodia.
Interestingly, CBS News is telling us that construction at that particular special economic zone “goes on for miles”…
We asked the manager about his neighbors in the economic zone and he said most of the companies moving in are Chinese. A driving incentive behind the relocation of those manufacturing operations is avoiding U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, and there are a lot of companies choosing to make the investment.
The scale of the industrial park growing in the south of Cambodia is hard to fathom. Construction goes on for miles.
Pakistan is another nation that has really embraced Chinese special economic zones.
In fact, one that was recently announced is expected to create more than 100,000 jobs…
The provincial administration of Sindh on Saturday announced the establishment of a special economic zone after the signing of a memorandum of understanding supported by Chinese authorities, projecting the initiative to transform Pakistan’s economy by attracting $3 billion in investment and creating over 100,000 jobs.
The announcement is part of the second phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which aims to enhance industrial development by setting up such economic zones. The first CPEC phase focused on infrastructure and energy projects, while the second phase emphasizes industrial collaboration between the two countries.
An even larger “special economic zone” is planned for Saudi Arabia.
It is being reported that it will be located “at the King Salman International Airport in Riyadh” and will be home to thousands of companies…
The KSA-Sino Logistics Zone will be located at the King Salman International Airport in Riyadh, which is expected to be one of the largest airports in the world when completed by 2030.
The project is expected to attract more than 3,000 wholesalers and retailers and about 200 light industrial manufacturers from China and Asia.
The new development aims to improve logistical connections between China and Saudi Arabia and help establish the kingdom as a base for air cargo movement in the region.
I was quite surprised to learn that the Chinese are moving so rapidly in the Middle East.
But they have been even more active in Africa.
There are 15 Chinese special economic zones in the nation of Kenya, and some of them are absolutely huge. Here is just one example…
The project will be undertaken in three phases and is expected to be one of Africa’s tech hub offering employment and propelling economic growth and development of Uasin Gishu County and the country at large.
In the first phase of AEZ Pearl River project, the Chinese firm will supervise the construction of an industrial park that will cover 700 acres.
It will consist of various industries in agro-processing, energy, machinery, engineering, construction, electronic, ICT, chemical and pharmaceutical sectors.
The second phase will consist of a science and technology hub on an 86-acre piece of land.
And a Chinese special economic zone in Ethiopia is being constructed right in the heart of Addis Ababa…
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Wednesday launched the construction of Chinese-contracted “Addis Tomorrow Special Economic Zone” at the heart of Addis Ababa, the country’s capital.
The launching ceremony came a year after the Addis Ababa City Administration and China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) inked a deal to build the economic zone, with a planned area of 35 hectares, at an estimated cost of 700 million U.S. dollars.
Speaking at the event, Abiy said the economic zone is part of the government’s commitment to transforming Addis Ababa into one of the most beautiful cities in the world by building smart communities with various facilities, including residential houses, shopping malls, hotels, and recreational centers.
Constructing a vast network of major trade hubs all over the globe could help China become the number one economic superpower in the years ahead.
But is there another motive for what they are doing?
These special economic zones are allowing the Chinese to have a presence in key strategic locations throughout the world.
And once they are there, it will be nearly impossible to remove them.
It appears that the Chinese have been playing chess while we have been playing checkers.
Hopefully we will wake up while we still can.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.