But ultimately China’s desire to become Asia’s biggest power player is forcing its smaller neighbours to boost their own defence capabilities, spend more on their military budgets and expand security and economic partnerships with each other.

This is just like standard abuser language right? “I’m not doing this for my own reasons, it’s because you’re making me do this. I feel so threatened by you being influential against my global empire! My proxies just have to spend more money on military and defense. You’re scaring me. I’m literally shaking right now from your Belt and Road Initiative, it’s scaring the 1000+ military bases I have across the world.”