In Washington, D.C., the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Policy Planning has released a new study that summarizes the actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), analyzes the ideological underpinnings of those actions and the vulnerabilities of the Chinese regime, and offers a blueprint for the U.S. response to the daunting challenge of China, with 10 recommendations for U.S. actions to address the challenge.
In the foreword to the study, The Elements of the China Challenge, it is written, “In the United States and around the world, there is a growing awareness that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has ushered in a new era of great power competition. Few, however, can discern the pattern of Chinese penetration in every region of the world, let alone the specific form of dominance that the CCP desires.” According to the paper, “The CCP aims not only to dominate the established world order – an order rooted in free and sovereign nation-states, derived from the universal principles on which the United States was founded and which advance U.S. national interests – but to fundamentally revise the world order, placing the People’s Republic of China at the center, serving Beijing’s authoritarian goals and the interests of the United States. hegemonic ambitions serve.” The report emphasizes that “in the face of China’s challenges, the United States must ensure freedom.”
The report states that China’s behavior makes it a challenge, and characterizes the Communist regime as “a great power governed by an authoritarian regime modeled after the Marxist-Leninist dictatorships of the 20th century.” The report writes, “The CCP ultimately pushed for rapid modernization and produced phenomenal economic growth – thanks in large part to the party’s decision to embrace free-market elements in the late 1970s, as well as to the United States and surrounding countries.” The report states, “Today, the Party wields its economic power to rally and coerce nations around the world; to bring nations to their knees socially and politically; to make foreign nations more responsive to CCP specifications; and to reshape international organizations to conform to Chinese style socialism. At the same time, the CCP is also developing a world-class military designed to rival and eventually surpass the U.S. military. These actions make the CCP’s quest – to push outward through the Indo-Pacific Ocean – compelling. Achieving ‘national rejuvenation’ through the transformation of the international order is the ultimate goal.”
The report consists of five parts
The report is said to consist of five parts: the challenges posed by China, China’s behavior, the ideological roots of China’s behavior, China’s vulnerability, and securing freedom. The report writes, “To address the challenges posed by China, the United States must return to its roots. The United States must develop strong, robust policies and ensure that its policies transcend bureaucracies, conflicts between branches of government, and short-term election cycles. America’s primary goal is to secure freedom.” Voice of America quotes a senior State Department official as saying, “This report was actually written a long time ago, but it needed to go through an internal process, and it’s just in time to be released at this point, not to set the tone for the next administration’s China policy, as some have suggested.” The official said, “These are just analyses, just a policy study, not a policy toward China.” He also mentioned that the report was only a study issued by the U.S. State Department’s Office of Policy Planning, and was not approved for publication by the Secretary of State.
The official noted that the focus of the report was to show that the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions are global and that the challenges it poses to the United States are serious. The report, he said, “is an effort to take what the State Department system has been able to gather on the behavior of the CCP around the world, lay it out, and then provide some background, knowledge, and some analysis of the ideological roots of China’s behavior. The report says that despite the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule over Chinese citizens and the threat it poses to freedoms around the world, China remains vulnerable under the Communist Party’s leadership.
The report argues, “First, there are the unique disadvantages of authoritarianism: restrictions on innovation, the difficulty of forming and maintaining coalitions, and the costs of internal repression. They also include China’s unique vulnerabilities: economic instability; demographic imbalance; environmental degradation; ongoing corruption; oppression of ethnic and religious minorities; the enormous expense of monitoring, censoring, and brainwashing China’s 1.4 billion people; the separation of the Party-controlled military from the people; and growing international anger over the Communist Party’s disdain for human life, disregard for the well-being of others, and disregard for international norms and obligations. The U.S. must accomplish this, especially in the wake of the new coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan that has brought disease, death, and social and economic devastation to the world.”
Ten Tasks the U.S. Must Accomplish
This report emphasizes that addressing China’s challenges requires a return to basics for the United States. In the report, the U.S. Department of State lists ten tasks that the United States must accomplish: “Safeguard domestic liberties by preserving constitutional government, promoting prosperity, and fostering a healthy civil society; maintain the world’s strongest, most flexible, and most technologically advanced military while strengthening security cooperation with allies and partners based on mutual interests and shared responsibilities; and reinforce a free, open, rules-based, and accountable military. international order; re-evaluate its system of alliances and various international organizations; and strengthen the system of alliances and create new international organizations to promote democracy and human rights.”
The report also recommends “advancing U.S. interests by seeking opportunities to work with Beijing on the principle of fairness and reciprocity; restraining and deterring China when circumstances warrant and supporting those who seek freedom in China; educating Americans about the scale of the challenge posed by China and its implications; training a new generation of public servants in the diplomatic, military, financial, economic, scientific, technological, and other fields; and Public policy experts who understand the language, culture, and history of China and other strategic competitors, friends, and potential friends of the United States; reforming the U.S. education system to help students understand the responsibilities of citizenship in a complex information age; and defending the principles of freedom through example, speech, public diplomacy, foreign aid and investment, and even sanctions and even military force.”
In the report, the U.S. State Department rejects accusations that Trump’s administration is pushing a policy of unilateralism and isolation, and stresses the importance of maintaining U.S. economic autonomy and strong military capabilities, according to Axios. A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Axios that “while the Xinguan epidemic has made the world aware of the challenges posed by China, the people of the United States and many other countries are still not aware of China’s determination to change the global situation.” In his analysis, Brooking Institution scholar Rush Doshi said, “A unique feature of this report is that it focuses on how China’s worldview affects its behavior, a perspective that has rarely been included in U.S. government documents in the past. I think U.S. foreign policy discussions should include more of that.”
However, the report does not examine other important issues, including alliance policy, cross-border information flows, and new technology alliances, according to DuRusson. He argues that economics and technology are at the heart of the current U.S.-China confrontation, but the report barely touches on these issues. The 74-page report contains more than 20 pages of footnotes, almost half of the body of the report. According to the U.S. official, the report “is an effort to take all the information that the State Department system has been able to gather on the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party around the world, list it out, and then provide some background, knowledge, and some analysis of the ideological roots of China’s behavior.
The official continued that the best way to get a full picture of the Trump administration’s China policy over the past four years is to look to Secretary of State Pompeo’s speeches on the subject, particularly his “Communist China and the Future of the Free World,” delivered at the Nixon Library on July 23 of this year, as well as his speech on China at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, last October. The purpose of the unclassified document, according to the report, is to provide “a soberly considered, long-term perspective on the China challenge facing the United States and to outline a framework for a tough policy that transcends bureaucratic squabbles and sectoral rivalries and transcends short-term election cycles.
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