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.
