China’s Threat to Neighbors
Observers note that China’s neighbors, including Japan, feel it most directly and urgently as far as the Chinese threat is concerned. Over the past 20 years, China has made increasingly frequent incursions into the waters around the Senkaku Islands (known in China as the Diaoyu Islands), which are under Japanese rule, by sending fishing and maritime police vessels and aircraft.
Chinese maritime police vessels have repeatedly intruded into the waters around the Senkaku Islands after China implemented a new maritime police law on Feb. 1 that authorizes the Chinese maritime police to use lethal force against foreign vessels in waters over which China claims sovereignty. This move by the Chinese authorities has drawn strong criticism and concern from The Japanese and U.S. governments.
Although an article in the People’s Daily, the central organ of the Chinese Communist Party, dated January 8, 1953, stated that the Senkaku Islands belonged to Japan, the Chinese Communist authorities have claimed since the 1970s that the Senkaku Islands/Diaoyu Islands have belonged to China since ancient times. Over the past 20 years, the Chinese Communist authorities have been deploying fishing boats, maritime surveillance vessels, and aircraft there with increasing frequency to demonstrate their presence and force.
On February 25, Business Insider, a U.S. business news publication, published a story headlined “China’s Maritime Police Ships Grow Larger and More Aggressive as Japan Struggles to Cope. The report said, “China’s large maritime police force and a newly implemented law expanding its mandate are worrying its neighbors, especially Japan. Japan is boosting its maritime police force and relying on its alliance with the United States to maintain its dominant position in maritime disputes with Beijing.”
In addition to the ongoing actions against Japan that have caused protests and concerns in Japan, China has also taken a saber-rattling stance with its neighbors such as Vietnam and India. Chinese maritime police vessels have been involved in confrontational clashes with Vietnam in its exclusive economic zone in recent years, even ramming and sinking Vietnamese vessels. China has also engaged in sometimes deadly clashes with India over the past year near the Line of Actual Control in the disputed Sino-Indian border region.
In addition to the obvious military and territorial integrity threats to its neighbors, China’s aggressive spying and political influence-seeking activities against many democracies have raised alarms in those countries, observers say.
Democracies are sounding the alarm
In mid-February, the U.S. online news magazine Axios published a report headlined “More Countries Warn of Chinese Spying. In the past week, the Netherlands, Finland and Canada have expressed deep concern about Chinese espionage and political influence in democratic countries,” the report said.
“When the strong warnings against China were issued three years ago, the United States was alone among the nations of the world. Now democracies on every continent are expressing the same concerns as the United States. Last week, the Dutch Intelligence and Security Directorate (AIVD) released a report on threats to Dutch national security interests, which was outspoken in its criticism of China, saying that Beijing’s cyber espionage poses an ‘imminent threat’ to the Dutch economy in the areas of banking, energy and infrastructure. “
A press release issued by the Dutch intelligence service in early February on the issue of risks to the security interests of the Netherlands said, “China is primarily focused on espionage operations, which operate with the goal of acquiring high-quality knowledge and technology for use in China’s economic development and armed forces development. As a result, leading Dutch industries, the Dutch defense industry, and scientific knowledge institutions are at high risk of Chinese digital espionage.”
In addition, Finland’s Director General of Security and Intelligence, Pertari, said of China and Russia, “Some authoritarian countries are trying to take control of Finland’s vital infrastructure.” He argued that China’s huawei should not be allowed to build Finland’s 5G network.
David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, issued a rare blunt warning about the threat from China on Feb. 10. He said China “is pursuing a strategy of geopolitical advantage on all fronts – economic, technological, political and military – and is using all elements of national power to execute its operations, posing a direct threat to Canada’s national security and sovereignty.”
Vigneault said Canada’s biopharmaceutical and medical, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, marine technology and space technology sectors are at greatest risk of theft by state-sponsored hacking. In addition, Chinese authorities have threatened opposition figures in Canada under the guise of so-called fox hunting operations to pursue fugitive corrupt officials, thereby infringing on Canada’s democratic institutions.
The all-encompassing threat of spy infiltration
Xie Tian, a professor at the University of South Carolina’s Aiken School of Business, told VOA that the scale of the Chinese Communist regime’s all-encompassing infiltration, espionage and theft from Western countries is unprecedented in human history.
The Chinese Communist Party’s spying on the West is truly all-encompassing and unprecedented in history,” he said. I have never seen a country spying on the West, on other countries, on the United States, on U.S. allies on such a large scale on all fronts, politically, economically, militarily, culturally, even in agriculture and even in all kinds of areas.”
According to Xie Tian, this approach by the Chinese Communist authorities constitutes a stark contrast to the behavior of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For example, during the Cold War, the former Soviet Union did a lot of espionage against the United States, but it was mostly focused on military technology and national strategy and nuclear weapons, not much economic espionage or other espionage, so one doesn’t see much of the former Soviet Union subverting the U.S. political system or stealing U.S. agricultural technology.
Sheeda noted that technology theft or forcible acquisition has been a Chinese state policy or national strategy for decades, a strategy that is posing or has posed an existential threat to the West. Originally, the West expected me to give you a little bit of technology, you give me the market, and I can make money,” he said. But they soon found out that the Chinese Communist Party kicked the West out as soon as they got the technology …… After getting these technologies the CCP used the price advantage to in turn cannibalize or whale out the markets of Western companies.”
Critics say it is common for Chinese individuals or small and medium-sized companies to steal technology or patented designs from other countries, but it is also common for Chinese national companies to steal and copy technology or patented designs from other countries, with particularly impressive examples including China stealing technology designs and copying advanced Russian fighter jets in the name of joint production, stealing Japanese high-speed rail technology, and kicking out Russian and Japanese partners kicked out.
Xie Tian, a professor at the Aiken School of Business at the University of South Carolina, said that in the case of the West, the main reason for the frequent success of the Chinese side in stealing technology is certainly that China has made theft a national policy and is pursuing it with state power, but the short-sightedness of Western companies that seek short-term profits and interests is also an important reason.
Americans Chinese take the blame outside
Teng Biao, a legal scholar and adjunct professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, said that in terms of external threats, the Chinese Communist regime has become increasingly visible over the years as a threat to human rights, democracy and freedom, and it is not just the United States that has been openly wary of China. In the last four or five years, places like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and of course Taiwan, which are very wary of Chinese infiltration and threats, have had many policies in place. There is also a lot of discussion in the academic community. More and more countries are now recognizing the problem, and they are taking steps to counteract Chinese political infiltration and to curb Chinese human rights abuses overseas.
However, in the face of opposition from all sides, the Chinese Communist authorities have not only failed to curb or stop foreign threats, but have instead normalized, legalized, and globalized them.
Teng Biao said, “Legally speaking, Article 38 of the Hong Kong National Security Law (which came into force on July 1 last year) extends the black hand (of the Communist Party’s dictatorship) to everyone. Anyone who criticizes the Chinese government’s Hong Kong policy or advocates for Hong Kong independence or advocates for Hong Kong, whether they are in Hong Kong or not, can be arrested under this article.”
A report issued by the U.S. news publication Axios following the implementation of Hong Kong’s national security law said, “Chinese authorities have long sought to suppress organized dissent abroad through immovable threats and coercion, and now the authorities have legalized the practice, thus forcing people and companies in countries around the world to make a choice between speaking freely and never going to Hong Kong again. “
Teng Biao said the Chinese Communist regime has done bad things at Home and abroad, from mass imprisonment and cultural genocide against the Uighurs in Xinjiang to infiltration, espionage, and technology theft overseas, and that these evil acts by the regime have hurt Chinese people overseas as well.
He said, “It was these officials of the Chinese Communist Party who did the bad things, but the Chinese people (at home and abroad) as a whole are badly judged for it. That’s one aspect of the CCP’s evil. Of course, we have to theoretically separate the Chinese government from the Chinese people, and we want people to see clearly that it is the Chinese Communist Party that is doing the bad things, not the Chinese people. But it is difficult for us to expect all people to understand this.”
What Teng Biao means here by people can hardly expect people in other countries to understand the difference between the CCP regime and Chinese people is that the CCP imposes an authoritarian dictatorship by harsh means and forbids Chinese people to express dissent, and even if they are abroad they must be careful in what they say and do to avoid saying no to the CCP regime, a situation that leads many foreigners to believe that Chinese people and Chinese from China are intentionally or unintentionally supporting or acquiescing to the CCP regime’s The United States
U.S. Plotting to Counter the Chinese Threat
The United States is considered the only power in the world today that can stand up to China, and its response to the threat from China has received worldwide attention. Trump and Biden, despite their divergent and even opposing political views on many fronts, have similar views on the China threat.
Since taking office, President Biden has signed a series of executive orders overturning a range of Trump’s domestic and foreign policies, but still largely maintaining the Trump Administration‘s posture of resistance to China on trade, technology, military, economics, politics, supply chains, espionage, cybersecurity, and values.
To many observers, it has become a consensus in the U.S. political establishment to be wary of and respond to China’s threat to the United States and other democracies, as well as to the rules-based world order; the Chinese Communist Party authorities, led by Xi Jinping, are clearly aware of this and have taken countermeasures, one manifestation of which is a more aggressive domestic and foreign policy.
On Feb. 1, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof published an article titled “Biden’s Nightmare Could Be China. In the article, Kristof said that while the United States and China may not be at war right now, “some Chinese and Americans are worried that Chinese President Xi Jinping may invade one of the islands (under Taiwan’s control) to put pressure on Taiwan.
“Or Xi could send a submarine to cut Taiwan’s undersea cables to the Internet, or block Taiwan’s oil imports, or order a Cyber Attack to disrupt Taiwan’s banking system.
“Most experts don’t believe such an attack would happen (a full-scale invasion of Taiwan is even less likely), but the odds of it happening are the greatest in more than a decade. And a war that starts in the Dongsha Islands or Kinmen Island will not end there: The United States could well be embroiled in the most dangerous confrontation with another nuclear power since the Cuban missile crisis… The stakes are highest in the coming years since I began covering U.S.-China relations in the 1980s, in part because Xi is an overconfident, risk-taking bully who believes the United States is in decline.”
The biggest challenge facing President Biden, according to Guido, is how to effectively address the Xi regime’s threat to the United States and Western democracies while avoiding war with China, relative to the Republican Party, which has sought to continually obstruct his legislative and policy goals. He quoted David Shambaugh, a scholar at George Washington University, who said, “We learned from the Soviet Union how to keep the Cold War cold.”
However, in the view of Michael Oslin, a fellow in the Department of Contemporary Asian Studies at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, today’s de facto Cold War between the United States and China may not stay cold. on February 22, Oslin published an article in the historic British magazine The Observer titled “The US-China War of 2025 “.
The article looks back at 2025 through the eyes of a historian in 2030 – Xi Jinping, who consolidated absolute power through the 22nd National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November 2022, is bent on pursuing his dream of becoming a great power and has repeatedly called on the military to “prepare for war. “. The article predicts that in 2025, Chinese troops under Xi’s command will clash with the Philippines, which is asserting its maritime rights in the South China Sea, and the Philippines will immediately seek military assistance from its ally, the United States, and President Harris will provide assistance in fulfillment of the obligations of the U.S. defense treaty with the Philippines, resulting in a coastal war between the U.S. and China that will end in a bitter victory for both sides and a cold peace of stalemate; only by luck, the U.S. and China did not enter into a full-scale war.
Washington’s Position Becoming Clearer
Oslin, a longtime researcher on security issues in East Asia, predicted with a Time-traveling brush that a local war between the United States and China was inevitable. His prediction has increasingly become a concern for U.S. political and administrative authorities in recent years as the Xi Jinping administration has stepped up its foreign force display and implementation.
Some observers believe that it is out of this concern that the U.S. administration has explicitly adjusted its foreign policy toward East Asia, and in doing so has sent a clear signal to the Chinese authorities not to misjudge the situation. On the Taiwan issue, the U.S. Congress and the Trump administration have changed their previous approach and openly resumed official contacts with Taiwan, the Republic of China.
After the inauguration of the new Biden Administration, the U.S. continued to maintain official relations with Taiwan. Following the lead of the Trump administration, the Biden administration has made clear its condemnation of Beijing’s threat of force against Taiwan, as demonstrated by frequent intrusions by military aircraft, and has gone beyond its previous practice of maintaining strategic ambiguity on Taiwan to clearly affirm the U.S. position of assisting Taiwan in its self-defense. The new U.S. administration’s Secretary of Defense Austin said he would “ensure that the United States fulfills its commitment to support Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.”
As the aggressive approach of the Beijing authorities escalates in the dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands/Diaoyu Islands, the U.S. government’s position in support of Japan on this issue is becoming clearer.
In April 2013, then-Defense Secretary Hagel of the Obama administration stated that he did not take a position on sovereignty, but acknowledged that the Diaoyu Islands were under Japanese jurisdiction and fell under the scope of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.
On Feb. 24 of this year, with the implementation of the Marine Police Law, which authorizes the use of lethal force by Chinese maritime police vessels, and repeated incursions by Chinese maritime police vessels into the waters around the Senkaku Islands/Diaoyu Islands under Japanese jurisdiction, U.S. Department of Defense spokesman Kirby said, “We urge the Chinese side to avoid actions by maritime police vessels that could lead to miscalculation and physical harm. “
At a time when the United States has made it clear that it will take the Chinese threat seriously, a growing number of other democracies have also made their opposition to the multifaceted threat from China increasingly clear. This situation has evolved into an ironic and humorous segment among Chinese netizens who are critical of the Chinese Communist authorities, namely, that all countries opposing China is basically the same as no country opposing China.
The segment is based on a statement made by Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a newspaper owned by the People’s Daily, the central organ of the Chinese Communist Party. Commenting on other countries’ measures to help their nationals suffering from the New Coronavirus Epidemic, Hu said earlier that “some countries give money to everyone, but that is part of coaxing everyone, and giving money to all is basically the same as not giving money to all.”
At the same time, many observers believe that it is still unclear whether the initiatives taken by the United States and other countries to address the Chinese threat will be effective and whether Xi Jinping’s administration will temper its aggressive foreign posture.
The Chinese government has often claimed in recent years that the “China threat theory” is an outdated and untrue Cold War mindset of certain individuals and forces in the West. However, analysts have pointed out that China’s threat to the international community, especially to liberal democratic institutions and values and to regional peace, is becoming an increasingly obvious international consensus. At the same time, Western countries, including the United States, are becoming more vigilant and counteractive toward China. But how to counteract the Chinese threat more effectively remains a difficult problem for the West.
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