Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday outlined competing visions for the future of the international community: one centered around China’s increasingly aggressive and expansive authoritarian one-party state, and another anchored by President Joe Biden’s conception of a bulwark of allies and partners committed to democracy, human rights and the “international rules-based order.”
The Biden administration, Blinken said, has spent its first year in office working to ensure the latter. In an address at the George Washington University, he argued that Washington “has developed and implemented a comprehensive strategy” toward Beijing “to harness our national strengths and our unmatched network of allies and partners to realize the future that we seek.”
“China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,” Blinken said. “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”
Blinken’s assertion of an existential U.S.-China competition over the future of the international system resonated on Capitol Hill.
“We have to compete effectively with China because it’s become increasingly clear we have different visions — for whether the world should be safer for democracy or authoritarianism … and for whether the strong can bully the weak,’' Sen.Jeff Merkley(D-Ore.) told POLITICO. “We have no choice but to compete because the world of [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s vision would be unacceptable.”
“We don’t seek to block China from its role as a major power, nor to stop China — or any country, for that matter — from growing their economy or advancing the interests of their people,” Blinken said. “But we will defend and strengthen the international law, agreements, principles, and institutions that maintain peace and security, protect the rights of individuals and sovereign nations, and make it possible for all countries — including the United States and China — to coexist and cooperate.”
Despite their divergent outlooks, the United States and China will “have to deal with each other for the foreseeable future,” Blinken continued. “That’s why this is one of the most complex and consequential relationships of any we have in the world today.”
The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C.’s response to Blinken’s speech didn’t address its specific content, but echoed his assessment of challenges vexing the bilateral relationship.
“The China-US relationship is now at a critical crossroads,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told POLITICO in a statement. “We hope the US side will work with China to earnestly implement the common understanding reached by [Xi and Biden] to enhance communication, manage differences and focus on cooperation, so as to bring the bilateral relations back to the track of sound and steady development at an early date.”
Blinken highlighted the potential security risks to the U.S. and its allies posed by China’s alliance with Russia. “While Russia was clearly mobilizing to invade Ukraine, President Xi and President [Vladimir] Putin declared that the friendship between their countries was, and I quote, ‘without limits’ and this week as President Biden was in Japan, China and Russia conducted strategic bomber patrols together in the region,” Blinken said.
That mixture of rhetorical carrots and sticks confused some observers.
“I found the speech to contain many contradictions — on the one hand [Blinken] says there is no adversarial relationship or Cold War with China, but on the other hand he outlines steps for the U.S. to shape the environment around Beijing with an eye to advance U.S. strategic interests,” said Lina Benabdallah, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University.
Blinken’s speech sets the table for a call between Biden and Xi that national security adviser Jake Sullivan said may occur within weeks. The White House hasn’t issued an agenda for that call, but a senior administration official said Wednesday that they had been working to “push Beijing to work with us on crisis communications, on risk reduction and on strategic stability.” That echoes a list of bilateral cooperation priorities Sullivan outlined after Biden’s virtual meeting with Xi in November. Bilateral rancor since has stymied any measurable progress.
“[The administration] has got to signify some goodwill — right now the Chinese side believes that it doesn’t matter what they do, that if they moderate their policies … we won’t adjust our own stance from a more hostile competition to a more friendly competition,” said Susan Shirk, chair of the 21st Century China Center at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy.
The speech by Blinken on Thursday came days after Biden concluded his first trip to Asia as president, during which he reached an agreement with a dozen Indo-Pacific nations to participate in negotiations on his signature economic initiative in the region, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
Blinken spent more than two minutes of his speech reiterating U.S. support for Taiwan and decrying what he called China’s “provocative” military intimidation of the self-governing island.
“While our [Taiwan] policy has not changed, what has changed is Beijing’s growing coercion, like trying to cut off Taiwan’s relations with countries around the world and blocking it from participating in international organizations,” said Blinken. “These words and actions are deeply destabilizing; they risk miscalculation and threaten the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait.”
Beijing saw Blinken’s expression of support for Taiwan coming and fired a pre-speech rhetorical shot across the bow. A saber-rattling op-ed by Chinese ambassador to the U.S., Qin Gang, appeared in the South China Morning Post just hours prior to Blinken’s speech, warning of the perils of the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.
“U.S. actions will embolden [Taiwanese] separatists and turn the Taiwan Strait into a dangerous powder key … we will never compromise or back down,” he wrote.
“It’s important to lower the temperature if we can in our dealings with China relative to Taiwan,” said Ret. Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, professor of practice at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. “I think Secretary Blinken’s speech struck the right tone for that in terms of firmness at the same time trying to engage in a constructive relationship with China.”
The intense bout of Asia diplomacy, capped by Blinken’s speech on Thursday, underscored the administration’s ongoing efforts to refocus its foreign policy on the Indo-Pacific. Biden sought to prioritize the region upon taking office, but U.S. officials have been largely consumed since February by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Blinken referenced that conflict in his remarks, pledging that “even as President Putin’s war continues, we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order — and that’s posed by the People’s Republic of China.”
Blinken made clear that a key foundation of the administration’s China strategy is to create and reinforce allies and partnerships in Asia and beyond to offset China’s growing influence. But observers question whether China’s international partnership development is outgunning that of the U.S. They point to the fact that the Quad is an informal geostrategic grouping and that the IPEF lacks trade access incentives.
“Look at [Chinese Foreign Minister] Wang Yi’s travels throughout the Pacific to create a regional security pact — there’s a big difference in the partnerships that Beijing is developing which are formal, strategic signed agreements that endure,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the nonprofit Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Summitry that doesn’t lead to a signed deal is not a strategy and this administration seems to not really understand that.”
Anthony Albanese rebuked China on Tuesday for imposing hefty tariffs on Australian exports two years ago ...
Byron Kaye & Renju Jose
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Reuters May 24, 2022 16:30 pm +08
Anthony Albanese
SYDNEY (May 24): New Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rebuked China on Tuesday for imposing hefty tariffs on Australian exports two years ago, in remarks made while attending a regional security conference in Tokyo a day after being sworn in.
Albanese confirmed that he had received a letter of congratulations from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang after winning an election on Saturday, but said he had still to reply to the leader of Australia's biggest trading partner.
"We will respond appropriately in time, when I return to Australia," Albanese told journalists in Tokyo, where he was attending a summit of the Quad group along with US President Joe Biden and the prime ministers of Japan and India.
Albanese said he was more concerned about wide-ranging tariffs on Australian goods from coal to lobster, imposed by China just a few years after the two countries implemented a free trade agreement.
"It's not Australia that has changed, it's China," Albanese said.
"It's China that has applied sanctions on Australia. There is no justification for doing that. And that's why they should be removed."
There had been speculation in Australian media that the congratulatory message from Xi might signal a diplomatic thaw.
Relations have been at their lowest ebb for the past couple of years following clashes over issues ranging from trade to the origins of Covid-19, and accusations of China using the internet to meddle with Australia's democracy.
National security, specifically in relation to China, was among the main election issues in Australia, and only weeks before polling day the Solomon Islands and China announced a security pact, sparking fears of a Chinese military build-up less than 2,000 kilometres away.
The stance Australia's new premier adopts at the Quad summit could be closely watched by China, which regards the informal security grouping as an attempt to counter its influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
With votes still being counted, Albanese's Labor Party is leading on 75 seats — one short of the 76 required for a majority in the 151-seat lower house. Some analysts predict Labor will get enough seats to govern on its own.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China is trying to navigate its biggest coronavirus outbreak without a tool it could have adopted many months ago, the kind of vaccines that have proven to offer the best protection against the worst outcomes from COVID-19.
As early as the spring of 2020 a Chinese pharmaceutical company, Fosun Pharma, reached an agreement to distribute — and eventually manufacture — the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech. It still has not been cleared in mainland China, despite being authorized for use by separate authorities in Hong Kong and Macao.
Now health experts say that delay — a result of putting politics and national pride above public health — could lead to avoidable coronavirus deaths and deeper economic losses because whole cities would be locked down to insulate the country’s unprotected population.
“The biggest issue is about the delay of the reopening,” said Xi Chen, a health economist at Yale University’s School of Public Health. “The consequences will be huge, the supply chain disruption, the disruption to all kinds of service sectors.”
Studies have consistently shown that vaccination with mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna offer the best protection against hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Chinese vaccines made with older technology proved fairly effective against the original strain of the virus, but much less so against more recent variants.
As this evidence became clearer, even countries that initially used Chinese vaccines and some other less effective Western-made vaccines have turned to mRNA vaccines for booster shots and new vaccinations.
Not China. Regulators have not publicly said why they have not acted — the mRNA vaccines are authorized in much of the world and have proven safe and effective in hundreds of millions of people. But a Chinese health official and another person directly involved in the negotiations told The Associated Press that authorities have held back because they want to master the technology in China and not depend on foreign suppliers. Both spoke on condition of anonymity, given the sensitive nature of the issue.
For more than a year, the approach seemed defensible. The country was able to keep the virus at bay better than any other large nation with its strict “zero COVID” approach that isolates infected people and locks down communities when infections pop up.
But now, the highly transmissible omicron variant is testing that strategy, requiring ever wider and longer lockdowns that are taking a greater economic and human toll. While other countries are able to operate close to normal because their people are protected by vaccination or previous infection, China is left with only its lockdown strategy to avoid huge numbers of hospitalizations and deaths.
China may be changing its mind. The Communist Party-owned Global Times newspaper reported last month that Fosun Pharma is still working with health authorities on its approval and Shanghai authorities recently issued new policies that could allow the import of COVID-19 vaccines. Fosun, based in Shanghai, did not respond to questions about the announcement.
China’s National Health Commission directed questions to the country’s drug regulator, the National Medical Products Administration. That agency did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
In the meantime, hopes for a Chinese-developed mRNA vaccine center on Abogen Biosciences, a startup founded in 2019 by Bo Ying, an American-trained scientist who once worked for Moderna.
The company has partnered with more established companies in the country such as Walvax, a private company founded in 2001, and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, the military’s medical research facility. Abogen has raised more than $1.7 billion since 2020.
The company’s vaccine candidate succeeded in eliciting an immune response in a small, preliminary test in humans designed to evaluate safety, according to a study published in the journal Lancet Microbe.
The results were “promising,” said Dr. Vineeta Bal, who studies immune systems at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune, India, although she said that a direct comparison of the immune response the shot triggered with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would have helped scientists better evaluate its performance.
But large studies that are needed to show whether the shot works to prevent infections or symptoms have not been completed. Abogen did not respond to requests for an interview.
Even if the studies can be completed and the vaccine proves effective, manufacturing the millions of doses required will be a challenge, experts say. Abogen built a manufacturing facility in December 2020 with a projected capacity of up to 120 million doses a year.
Manufacturing that vaccine and ensuring quality at scale will be a difficult hurdle to clear because mRNA is still a new technology, said Scott Wheelwright, chief operating officer at BioInno Bioscience, a Chinese biopharmaceutical contract manufacturer who has held conversations with Abogen.
In the meantime, Chen, the Yale health policy expert, said the Chinese government should better protect its elderly population by both approving the Pfizer vaccine and encouraging booster shots.
Using a Chinese phrase that means “giving up completely,” Chen said the change from “zero COVID” does not have to be all or nothing. “It doesn’t have to be tang ping or sticking to zero COVID,” Chen said. “I don’t think there are only two solutions, and we can stick to a middle ground.”
Today the Atlantic Council publishes an extraordinary new strategy paper that offers one of the most insightful and rigorous examinations to date of Chinese ...
27 Jan 2021 — The perspectives set forth in this paper deserve the full attention of elected leaders in the United States and the leaders of its democratic ...
4 Mar 2021 — “The Longer Telegram” suggests that the only thing that might stop the Chinese Communists from reconciling themselves to a liberal order is ...
24 Feb 2021 — “The Longer Telegram” released in late January proposed how the new U.S. administration should deal with a rising China by laying out a detailed ...
6 Feb 2021 — The Atlantic Council think tank called The Longer Telegram “an extraordinary new strategy paper that offers one of the most insightful and ...
17 Mar 2021 — Taking its name from the Long Telegram, George Kennan's 1946 telegram from Moscow that analyzed the structural weaknesses of the Soviet Union ...
28 Jan 2021 — Today the Atlantic Council publishes an extraordinary new strategy paper that offers one of the most insightful and rigorous examinations to ...
6 Feb 2021 — Now in 2021, the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council released "The Longer Telegram" to suggest a "new American China strategy" ...
28 Jan 2021 — ... to Washington—since dubbed the “Long Telegram”—laying out the ... has published with the Atlantic Council a bold and ambitious new U.S. ...
1 Feb 2021 — ... replicate Kennan's feat by publishing anonymously (via the Atlantic Council) “The Longer Telegram: Toward a New American China Strategy.
5 Feb 2021 — The Longer Telegram asserts that the United States has no real long-term strategy for dealing with an ever more assertive China. It claims that ...
30 Jan 2021 — Now 75 years later, a "Longer Telegram" was released by the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council that aims to give suggestions for the ...
25 Apr 2022 — ... as the Atlantic Council's “The Longer Telegram” have called for the United ... So long as these facts remain true, Beijing will continue ...
28 Jan 2021 — Atlantic Council. China's Xi Jinping “presents a serious challenge to the whole of the democratic world,” according to an important new ...
14 Jan 2022 — out-china/. 21 See Anonymous, “The Longer Telegram: Toward a New American China Strategy,” Atlantic Council, 2021, https://www.atlanticcouncil ...
1 Apr 2021 — After centuries of Euro-Atlantic supremacy, the balance of power — not only military and economic, but ideological, technological, teleological, ...
Screenshot of Atlantic Council's policy proposal titled "The Longer Telegram: Toward a new American China strategy". The influential Atlantic Council think ...
publishes: The Longer Telegram: Toward a new American China Strategy. An extraordinary new paper that offers one of the most rigorous examinations to date ...
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THE LONGER TELEGRAM
Toward a new American China strategy
by Anonymous
Key points
The single most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping. China has long had an integrated, operational strategy for dealing with the United States. The United States has so far had no such strategy with regard to China. This is a dereliction of national responsibility.
US strategy and policy toward China must be laser-focused on the fault lines among Xi and his inner circle–aimed at changing their objectives and behavior and thus their strategic course. Communist Party elites are much more divided about Xi’s leadership and vast ambitions than is widely appreciated.
The foremost goal of US strategy should be to cause China’s ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order rather than building a rival order, and that it is in the Chinese Communist Party’s best interests to not attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores.
Today the Atlantic Council publishes an extraordinary new strategy paper that offers one of the most insightful and rigorous examinations to date of Chinese geopolitical strategy and how an informed American strategy would address the challenges of China’s own strategic ambitions.
Written by a former senior government official with deep expertise and experience dealing with China, the strategy sets out a comprehensive approach, and details the ways to execute it, in terms that will invite comparison with George Kennan’s historic 1946 “long telegram” on Soviet grand strategy. We have maintained the author’s preferred title for the work, “The Longer Telegram,” given the author’s aspiration to provide a similarly durable and actionable approach to China.
The focus of the paper is China’s leader and his behavior. “The single most important challenge facing the United States in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian China under President and General Secretary Xi Jinping,” it says. “US strategy must remain laser focused on Xi, his inner circle, and the Chinese political context in which they rule. Changing their decision-making will require understanding, operating within, and changing their political and strategic paradigm. All US policy aimed at altering China’s behavior should revolve around this fact, or it is likely to prove ineffectual.”
The author of this work has requested to remain anonymous, and the Atlantic Council has honored this for reasons we consider legitimate but that will remain confidential. The Council has not taken such a measure before, but it made the decision to do so given the extraordinary significance of the author’s insights and recommendations as the United States confronts the signature geopolitical challenge of the era. The Council will not be confirming the author’s identity unless and until the author decides to take that step.
The Atlantic Council as an organization does not adopt or advocate positions on particular matters. The Council’s publications always represent the views of the author(s) rather than those of the institution, and this paper is no different from any other in that sense.
Nonetheless, we stand by the importance and gravity of the issues that this paper raises and view it as one of the most important the Council has ever published. The Council is proud to serve as a platform for bold ideas, insights, and strategies as we advance our mission of shaping the global future together for a more free, prosperous, and secure world. As China rapidly increases its political and economic clout during this period of historic geopolitical crisis, this moment calls for a thorough understanding of its strategy and power structure. The perspectives set forth in this paper deserve the full attention of elected leaders in the United States and the leaders of its democratic partners and allies.
The single most important challenge facing the United States in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian China under President and General Secretary Xi Jinping. China’s rise, because of the scale of its economy and its military, the speed of its technological advancement, and its radically different worldview than that of the United States, now profoundly impacts every major US national interest. This is a structural challenge that, to some extent, has been gradually emerging over the last two decades. The rise to power of Xi has greatly accentuated this challenge, and accelerated its timetable.
At home, Xi has returned China to classical Marxism-Leninism and fostered a quasi-Maoist personality cult, pursuing the systematic elimination of his political opponents. China’s market reforms have stalled and its private sector is now under direct forms of party control. Unapologetically nationalist, Xi has used ethnonationalism to unite his country against any challenges to his authority, internal or external. His treatment of recalcitrant ethnic minorities within China borders on genocide. Xi’s China increasingly resembles a new form of totalitarian police state. In what is a fundamental departure from his risk-averse post-Mao predecessors, Xi has demonstrated that he intends to project China’s authoritarian system, coercive foreign policy, and military presence well beyond his country’s own borders to the world at large. China under Xi, unlike under Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, is no longer a status quo power. It has become a revisionist power. For the United States, its allies, and the US-led liberal international order, this represents a fundamental shift in the strategic environment. Ignoring this profound change courts peril. Xi is no longer just a problem for US primacy. He now presents a serious problem for the whole of the democratic world.
The single most important challenge facing the United States in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian China under President and General Secretary Xi Jinping.
The fundamental strategic question for the United States, under a Republican or Democratic administration, is what to do about this challenge. It is now a matter of urgency that this country develop an integrated, operational, and bipartisan national strategy to guide the content and implementation of US policy toward Xi’s China for the next three decades. Some will argue that the United States already has a China strategy, pointing to the Trump administration’s declaration of “strategic competition” as the “central challenge” of US foreign and national-security policy, as enshrined in the 2017 US National Security Strategy. However, while the Trump administration did well to sound the alarm on China and its annunciation of strategic competition with Beijing was important, its episodic efforts at implementation were chaotic and at times contradictory. At root, the issue is that “strategic competition” is a declaration of doctrinal attitude, not a comprehensive strategy to be operationalized.
The uncomfortable truth is that China has long had an integrated internal strategy for handling the United States, and so far this strategy has been implemented with reasonable, although not unqualified, success. By contrast, the United States, which once operationalized a unified strategy to deal with the challenge of the Soviet Union, in the form of George Kennan’s containment, so far has none in relation to China. This has been a dereliction of national responsibility.
Washington’s difficulty in developing an effective China strategy has been accentuated by the absence of a clearly understood strategic objective. At present, articulated objectives range from inducing Chinese economic reform through a limited trade war to full-blown regime change. Kennan’s famous 1946 “long telegram” from Moscow was primarily an analysis of the inherent structural weaknesses within the Soviet model itself, anchored by its analytical conclusion that the USSR would ultimately collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. The entire doctrine of containment was based on this critical underlying assumption. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), however, has been much more dexterous in survival than its Soviet counterpart, aided by the fact that China has studied carefully, over more than a decade, “what went wrong” in the Soviet Union. It would therefore be extremely hazardous for US strategists to accept that an effective future US China strategy should rest on an assumption that the Chinese system is destined to inevitably collapse from within—much less to make the “overthrow of the Communist Party” the nation’s declared objective. In fact, indulgence in politically appealing calls for the overthrow of the ninety-one-million-member CCP as a whole is strategically self-defeating. Such an approach only strengthens Xi’s hand as it enables him to circle elite political and popular nationalist wagons in defense of both party and country. The present challenge will require a qualitatively different and more granular policy response to China than the blunt instrument of “containment with Chinese characteristics” and a dream of CCP collapse.
The wisdom in Kennan’s analysis was his profound appraisal of how the Soviet Union functioned internally and the development of a US strategy that worked along the grain of that complex reality. The same needs to be done with China. The political reality is that the CCP is significantly divided on Xi’s leadership and his vast ambitions. Senior party members have been greatly troubled by Xi’s policy direction and angered by his endless demands for absolute loyalty. They fear for their own lives and the future livelihoods of their families. Of particular political toxicity in this mix are the reports unearthed by international media of the wealth amassed by Xi’s family and members of his political inner circle, despite the vigor with which Xi has conducted the anti-corruption campaign. It is simply unsophisticated strategy to treat the entire Communist Party as a single target when such internal fault lines should be clear to the analyst’s eye—and in the intelligent policy maker’s penning. A campaign to overthrow the party also ignores the fact that China, under all five of its post-Mao leaders prior to Xi, was able to work with the United States. Under them, China aimed to join the existing international order, not to remake it in China’s own image. Now, however, the mission for US China strategy should be to see China return to its pre-2013 path—i.e., the pre-Xi strategic status quo. There were, of course, many challenges to US interests during Hu’s second term, but they were manageable and did not represent a serious violation of the US-led international order. All US political and policy responses to China therefore should be focused through the principal lens of Xi himself.
Of all the elements commonly missing from discussions of US strategy toward China so far, this is the most critical. While US leaders often differentiate between China’s Communist Party government and the Chinese people, Washington must achieve the sophistication necessary to go even further. US leaders also must differentiate between the government and the party elite, as well as between the party elite and Xi. Given the reality that today’s China is a state in which Xi has centralized nearly all decision-making power in his own hands, and used that power to substantially alter China’s political, economic, and foreign-policy trajectory, US strategy must remain laser focused on Xi, his inner circle, and the Chinese political context in which they rule. Changing their decision-making will require understanding, operating within, and changing their political and strategic paradigm. All US policy aimed at altering China’s behavior should revolve around this fact, or it is likely to prove ineffectual. This strategy must also be long term—able to function at the timescale that a Chinese leader like Xi sees himself ruling and influencing—as well as fully operationalized, transcending the rhetorical buzzwords that have too often substituted for genuine US strategy toward Beijing. Defending our democracies from the challenge posed by China will require no less.
Implementing such a strategy would require a firm understanding of Xi’s strategic objectives, which include the following:
The Chinese Communist Party keenly understands Sun Tzu’s maxim that “what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy,” and the US should as well. Any US approach must seek to frustrate Xi’s ambitions. That means first clarifying which US national interests are to be protected, together with those of principal partners and allies. This includes the following:
Given China’s significant and growing “comprehensive national power,” some may question how this can realistically be achieved. 1 The overriding political objective should be to cause China’s elite leadership to collectively conclude that it is in the country’s best interests to continue to operate within the existing US-led liberal international order rather than build a rival order, and that it is in the party’s best interests, if it wishes to remain in power at home, not to attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores. In other words, China can become a different type of global great power than that envisaged by Xi. The primary way in which the United States can seek to achieve these ends (while also protecting its own core advantages) is to change China’s objectives and behavior. A detailed, operationalized strategy should comprise seven integrated components:
These seven components should be implemented through a fully coordinated interagency and interallied effort, under the central direction of the national security advisor, underpinned by a presidential directive with the bipartisan political support to endure across multiple administrations.
This US strategy should be developed on the basis of ten core organizing principles:
First, US strategy must be based on the four fundamental pillars of American power: the power of the nation’s military; the status of the US dollar as the global reserve currency and mainstay of the international financial system; global technological leadership, given that technology has become the major determinant of future national power; and the values of individual freedom, fairness, and the rule of law for which the nation continues to stand, despite its recent political divisions and difficulties.
Second, US strategy must begin by attending to domestic economic and institutional weaknesses. The success of China’s rise has been predicated on a meticulous strategy, executed over thirty-five years, of identifying and addressing China’s structural economic weaknesses in manufacturing, trade, finance, human capital, and now technology. The United States must now do the same.
Third, the United States’ China strategy must be anchored in both national values and national interests. This is what has long distinguished the nation from China in the eyes of the world. The defense of universal liberal values and the liberal international order, as well as the maintenance of US global power, must be the twin pillars of America’s global call to arms.
Fourth, US strategy must be fully coordinated with major allies so that action is taken in unity in response to China. This has nothing to do with making allies feel good or better than they have. It’s because the United States now needs them to win. As noted previously, China ultimately places great weight on its calculation of the evolving balance of comprehensive power between the United States and itself. The reality is that, as the gap between Chinese and US power closes during the 2020s, the most credible factor that can alter that trajectory is if US power is augmented by that of its principal allies.
Fifth, the United States’ China strategy also must address the wider political and economic needs of its principal allies and partners rather than assuming that they will choose to adopt a common, coordinated strategic position on China out of the goodness of their hearts. Unless the United States also deals with the fact that China has become the principal trading partner for most, if not all, of its major allies, this underlying economic reality alone will have growing influence over the willingness of traditional allies to challenge China’s increasingly assertive international behavior.
Sixth, the United States must rebalance its relationship with Russia whether it likes it or not. Effectively reinforcing US alliances is critical. Dividing Russia from China in the future is equally so. Allowing Russia to drift fully into China’s strategic embrace over the last decade will go down as the single greatest geostrategic error of successive US administrations.
Seventh, the central focus of an effective US and allied China strategy must be directed at the internal fault lines of domestic Chinese politics in general and concerning Xi’s leadership in particular. A fundamental error of US strategy has been to attack China as a whole, thereby enabling Xi’s leadership to circle the wagons within Chinese politics around the emotional pull of Chinese nationalism and civilizational pride. Just as significant an error has been to crudely attack the Chinese Communist Party itself. However, the political reality is that the party is divided on Xi’s leadership where he threatens the lives, careers, and deeply held policy positions of many within its senior political echelons.
Eighth, US strategy must never forget the innately realist nature of the Chinese strategy that it is seeking to defeat. Chinese leaders respect strength and are contemptuous of weakness. They respect consistency and are contemptuous of vacillation. China does not believe in strategic vacuums.
Ninth, US strategy must understand that China remains for the time being highly anxious about military conflict with the United States, but that this attitude will change as the military balance shifts over the next decade. If military conflict were to erupt between China and the United States, and China failed to win decisively, then—given the party’s domestic propaganda offensive over many years proclaiming China’s inevitable rise—Xi would probably fall and the regime’s overall political legitimacy would collapse.
Tenth, for Xi, too, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Short of defeat in any future military action, the single greatest factor that could contribute to Xi’s fall is economic failure. That would mean large-scale unemployment and falling living standards for China’s population. Full employment and rising living standards are the essential components of the unspoken social contract between the Chinese people and the CCP since the tumult of the Cultural Revolution.
The list of core domestic tasks which the United States must address as part of any effective strategy for dealing with Xi’s China is familiar. They are all structural, long term, and with dividends that will only be yielded over a decade or more. They include, but are not be limited to, the following:
Deterring and preventing China from crossing US red lines
The United States’ list of red lines should be short, focused, and enforceable. China’s tactic for many years has been to blur the red lines that might otherwise lead to open confrontation with the United States too early for Beijing’s liking. The United States must be very clear about which Chinese actions it will seek to deter and, should deterrence fail, will prompt direct US intervention. These should be unambiguously communicated to Beijing through high-level diplomatic channels so that China is placed on notice. This list of red lines should include these elements:
any Chinese military attack against Taiwan or its offshore islands, including an economic blockade or major cyberattack against Taiwanese public infrastructure and institutions 2
any Chinese attack against Japanese forces in their defense of Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands and their surrounding exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the East China Sea
any major Chinese hostile action in the South China Sea to further reclaim and militarize islands, to deploy force against other claimant states, or to prevent full freedom of navigation operations by the United States and allied maritime forces 3
any Chinese attack against the sovereign territory or military assets of US treaty allies
Areas of major national concern
There is a further category of major national security concerns for the United States which also will warrant a US response, but not necessarily of a military nature. These are national security interests of a nonvital, but nonetheless highly significant nature. There are multiple tools in the US tool kit that can be deployed for these purposes that will not only send a message to the senior echelons of the Chinese leadership that a line has been crossed, but also administer real and measurable pain. Once again, these concerns should be communicated in advance through high-level private diplomacy. This list should include:
Deterring certain Chinese strategic behaviors, particularly in the security domain, is one thing. Punishing other behaviors where other major US national security interests are at stake is another. Allowing for a wider form of strategic competition, particularly in the diplomatic and economic domains, however, also is an important part of a fully calibrated strategy. Having all three categories within a single strategic framework is possible. The rationale for including “strategic competition” is to address those areas where the two countries have clearly conflicting policy agendas but where it is judged that these conflicts can be resolved by means other than the threat or use of force, or by other coercive or significantly punitive measures. It infers that while the interests at stake are important, they are neither existential nor critical in nature. These interests may still involve areas of policy activity that are preparatory to the eventual use of force, such as areas related to long-term military and economic preparedness. Or they may include areas which, by their nature, will never involve the use of lethal means. Nonetheless, the common characteristic for all of these areas of strategic competition must be confidence that the United States can and will prevail, with US underlying strengths and values still providing the stronger hand to play in what remains an open, competitive, international environment. These areas of strategic competition against China should include the following:
sustaining current US force levels in the Indo-Pacific region (because to do otherwise would cause China to conclude that the United States has begun to retreat from its alliance commitments), while also modernizing military doctrine, platforms, and capabilities to ensure robust regionwide deterrence
stabilizing relations with Russia and encouraging the same between Russia and Japan
concluding a fully operationalized Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) with India, Japan, and Australia by inducing India to abandon its final political and strategic reservations against such an arrangement
facilitating the normalization of Japan-South Korea relations to prevent Korea from continuing to drift strategically in China’s direction
prioritizing trade, investment, development, diplomatic, and security relations between the United States and each of the Southeast Asian states, particularly with US allies Thailand and the Philippines, to prevent further strategic drift by Southeast Asia toward China
protecting the global reserve currency status of the US dollar
protecting critical new technologies, both US and allied, from Chinese acquisition
integrating, to the greatest extent possible, the US, Canadian, and Mexican economies into a seamless market of five-hundred million in order to underpin long-term economic strength relative to China
renegotiating the transpacific partnership agreement and then acceding to it
negotiating a transatlantic trade and investment partnership with the European Union and acceding to it, along with other potential agreements on technology or other issues
enforcing China’s pledges on trade and investment liberalization, state subsidies, dumping, and intellectual-property protection, in partnership with friends and allies, through a reformed multilateral trade dispute-resolution mechanism
reforming and reviving the World Trade Organization (WTO), its dispute-resolution machinery, and the integrity of international trade law rather than allowing further incremental drift toward global protectionism
investing at scale, alongside US allies, in the World Bank and the regional development banks, in order to provide emerging economies with an effective means of funding the development of their national infrastructure, thus encouraging use of the World Bank (including its transparent governance standards) as a credible alternative to the BRI
revitalizing the UN and other multilateral and international institutions as the cornerstones of global political governance
rebuilding the State Department including its operational budgets and staffing levels to be able to diplomatically compete with China globally
increasing US overseas development aid through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and established United Nations (UN) humanitarian agencies in order to, together with US allies, sustain donor dominance over China through coordinated global aid delivery
strengthening, consistent with existing international treaties, multilateral human rights institutional arrangements to maintain multilateral pressure on both China’s domestic human rights practices as well as the Communist Party’s international political legitimacy
Areas of continued strategic cooperation
There is a further set of policy challenges where it is in US interests, together with those of allies, to continue to engage in bilateral or multilateral strategic cooperation with China. This is not to make Americans feel better or to be nice to the Chinese. It is because in these areas US interests are best advanced by working with Beijing rather than against it. Under current circumstances, areas for strategic cooperation with China would include the following:
negotiating a nuclear arms control agreement with China to bring China within the global arms control regime for the first time and to prevent a new nuclear arms race
collaborating on the actual denuclearization of North Korea
negotiating bilateral agreements on cyber warfare and cyber espionage
negotiating bilateral agreements on the peaceful use of space
negotiating protocols on future limitations on AI-controlled autonomous weapons systems
cooperating in the Group of Twenty (G20) on global macroeconomic and financial stability to prevent future global crises and recessions
cooperating multilaterally though the G20 and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, bilaterally on global greenhouse gas reductions, and trilaterally with India, the world’s third-largest emitter
collaborating on a global research project on breakthrough climate technologies including long-term solar-energy storage, as part of a global research consortium
cooperating on future AI-based medical and pharmaceutical research to develop new responses to major disease categories affecting both countries including cancer
cooperating on the development of effective future global pandemic notification and management, as well as vaccine development
And may the best side win in the global battle for ideas
Ideas still matter in politics and international relations. It is not just a question of the balance of power, critical though that is. How a people think about themselves, the types of societies being built, the economies under development, and the polities that evolve to resolve differences all profoundly shape world views. This contest of ideas will continue. Xi has already thrown down the ideological challenge to the United States and the West with his concept of an authoritarian-capitalist model and his so-called community with a shared future for mankind. For North Americans, Europeans, and others who believe in open economies, just societies, and competitive political systems, the challenge is to have continuing confidence in the inherent efficacy of the ideas upon which they rest.
Implementation: The critical role of allies
This seven-part strategy must be implemented nationally, bilaterally, regionally, multilaterally, and globally. This has been China’s approach for decades. Again, this is where allies are no longer optional but crucial, given that they can often achieve what the United States cannot, whether in particular countries, regions, or institutions. The United States should always bear in mind that China has no allies other than North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia, placing Beijing at a considerable strategic disadvantage globally relative to the United States. Allies are a great advantage. Such an approach will require an unprecedented level of US national and international policy coordination. It will require the rebuilding of the US Foreign Service and USAID. It will require the complete integration of the efforts of the Departments of State, Defense, Treasury, and Commerce, the Office of the US Trade Representative, USAID, and the intelligence community. This will mean that future national security advisors (augmented with the best and brightest high-level support staff) will need to be individually responsible for full coordination and final execution of the United States’ long-term China strategy.
Conclusion
There is no reason to believe it impossible, if such a strategy is successfully followed, that Xi will in time be replaced by the more traditional form of Communist Party leadership. Xi, as noted previously, is already provoking significant reactions against himself and his current strategic course. Over the longer term the Chinese people themselves may well come to question and challenge the party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future. The latter, however, is ultimately a matter for the Chinese people themselves, rather than US strategy. Instead, the ambition of US strategy for the decades ahead should be to cause China’s Communist Party leadership to change strategic course—with or without Xi at the helm.
In the final analysis, the major problem facing the United States in confronting Xi’s China is not one of military, economic, or technological capabilities. It is one of self-belief. There is a subtle yet corrosive force that has been at work in the United States’ national psychology for some time now, raising doubt about the nation’s future and encouraging a sense that, as a country, America’s best days may now be in the past. Adversaries and allies sense this as well. Objectively, there is no basis for any such despair. The United States, as a country, is young, and the capacity for innovation is unsurpassed. The values for which it stands have stood the test of time. This is where the nation’s leadership must once again step up to the challenge—not just to provide the nation with vision, mission, and purpose; not just to frame the strategy and give it effect; but to cause the American people to once again believe in the nation and its capacity to provide effective global leadership for the century ahead. In doing so, the nation must also lead its friends and allies to once again believe in the United States as well.
“The Longer Telegram” released in late January laid out a detailed proposal for how the new U.S. administration should deal with a rising China under its Communist Party government.
The anonymous author is a “former senior U.S. government official,” according to the D.C.-based think tank Atlantic Council that published the lengthy paper.
So far in Beijing, major Chinese state media have not discussed the paper much, while the foreign ministry said such comments against the ruling Communist Party were “a collection of rumors and conspiracy theories”
BEIJING — A recent U.S. strategy paper on China that’s widely read in Washington, D.C., has drawn only a passing response in Beijing where limited public discussion has focused on one point: The author got China wrong.
An effective U.S. approach on China requires the “same disciplined approach it applied to the defeat of the Soviet Union,” the paper said. “US strategy must remain laser focused on Xi, his inner circle, and the Chinese political context in which they rule.”
The anonymous author is a “former senior U.S. government official,” according to the D.C.-based think tank Atlantic Council that published the lengthy paper.
The piece attempts to echo a historic document that shaped Washington’s policy on the Soviet Union — named the “The Long Telegram,” it was sent from Moscow in February 1946 at the dawn of the Cold War.
So far in Beijing, major state media have not discussed the paper much, except for the vociferous state-backed tabloid Global Times, and even then, almost entirely in English. ″‘Longer Telegram’ a late-stage hegemonic farce,” read the title of one op-ed.
US strategy must remain laser focused on Xi, his inner circle, and the Chinese political context in which they rule
anonymous
THE LONGER TELEGRAM
China’s foreign ministry — in response to a question from a Global Times reporter — criticized “The Longer Telegram” for its call to contain China.
The ministry said, according to an official translation, that such comments against the ruling Communist Party were “a collection of rumors and conspiracy theories” and attempts to drive U.S.-China relations toward conflict would result in “total failure.”
The sparse state-level comments come as tensions brew between the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies and run by vastly different government systems.
“The Longer Telegram” generated much controversy in the U.S. foreign policy world, with critics saying the paper mischaracterizes China and puts too much emphasis on the role of Xi. But many agree with the paper’s call for a more thought-out U.S. policy on China.
That growing cohesion around a tougher U.S. stance on China is a source of concern in Beijing.
“The Longer Telegram” doesn’t represent China’s reality and isn’t a good starting point for dialogue, said Shen Yamei, deputy director and associate research fellow at state-backed think tank China Institute of International Studies’ U.S. department.
According to Shen, the mistake the paper makes is that it isn’t applicable in this situation, since China didn’t say it wanted to replace the U.S. She added that it’s the U.S. that cares about whether it will lose its central position in the world.
Critics say China’s state-dominated system benefited from being allowed to join the World Trade Organization in 2001 without rapidly incorporating the sort of free-market and rules-based system that countries like the U.S. have advocated.
A history of the long telegram
To counter these developments, “The Longer Telegram” says the U.S. should set clear red lines and points of national security for Beijing that, if crossed, would induce a firm U.S. response.
Some of these red lines include a Chinese military attack or economic blockade on Taiwan, according to the report, which also said the U.S. should push back more firmly on any Chinese threats to U.S. global communications systems.
In his paper, Kennan held that the Russians were set on expanding the Soviet system worldwide and against coexistence with the West. He believed that rather than appeasement, the U.S. should use pressure to achieve cooperation with the Soviet government, or potentially even its internal collapse.
For more than 70 years — including the Soviet Union’s disintegration in 1991 — the U.S. led a so-called liberal world order in which international institutions set rules for a global system.
That’s begun to shift in the last decade or so, with China’s growing economic and technological clout, alongside former U.S. President Donald Trump’s single-handed approach to foreign policy.
The online response
It’s not yet clear what action President Joe Biden will take, but he is sticking to a tough stance on China, albeit with a calmer tone than the previous administration.
Biden held his first phone call as president with Xi earlier this month. The U.S. president and first lady also issued a video greeting for the Lunar New Year, which was shared widely on Chinese social media.
Scattered online commentary about “The Longer Telegram” have remained dismissive.
