Former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger said at a March 10 seminar on U.S.-China relations that the Chinese government is not acting as a “confident government” but out of “fear” of its own people. “A potential “flashpoint” for a future U.S.-China confrontation would be China’s own behavior and institutional weaknesses. Bomen also pointed to the Biden administration’s upcoming “quadripartite talks” with Asian allies as a powerful countermeasure to China.
At a seminar on U.S.-China rivalry at the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center, Bomen accused China of using the open platforms of democracies such as the United States to engage in “information warfare,” including spreading disinformation, using political propaganda to fuel divisions in Western societies and suspicion of democratic institutions, and gathering intelligence and personal information about citizens to conduct “influence operations. “He also criticized China’s recent efforts in Xinjiang. He also criticized China’s approach to Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the new Epidemic in recent years, saying it could be a potential “flashpoint” for a U.S.-China confrontation.
These are not the actions of a confident government,” Bomen said. These are the actions of an extremely paranoid government. This government fears its own people far more than it fears the United States. It fears its own people first and foremost. If you look at the money that China spends on internal surveillance and internal security. It far exceeds the amount of money they spend on the military. And China’s military is sometimes called in to participate in the repression of civilians at Home. We saw that in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of students. So I think the inherent weakness of the Chinese system is itself a potential flashpoint.”
According to Bomen, the Biden Administration has somewhat continued the Trump administration’s strategy toward China, citing in particular the Biden administration’s breakthrough in promoting the U.S.-Japan-India-Australia “Quadrilateral Security Dialogue” (Quad).
The Trump Administration, for which Bomen works, has actively promoted the concept of the Quadripartite Security Dialogue and facilitated the first Quadripartite Cabinet-level talks as well as a series of sub-Cabinet-level talks. Now, the Biden administration has taken the Quadripartite Security Dialogue to a new level. President Biden will meet online with the leaders of Japan, India and Australia on Friday (March 12). This is the first Time that the four countries have met at the leadership level.
Bomen noted that the Quadripartite Security Dialogue is a counterweight to China’s Asia-Pacific strategy.
China’s strategy is to create a hierarchical, in some ways almost imperial, China-centric sphere of influence in Asia,” he said. So the Quadripartite Security Dialogue can help counteract and prevent an outcome where the sovereignty and independence of China’s neighbors is weakened and ultimately prosperity and security is compromised.”
On the issue of strategy toward China, Bomen does not agree with the recommendations made in a strategy paper toward China called the Longer Telegraph in January of this year. The paper, written by anonymous “former senior U.S. government officials,” recommended that the primary goal of the strategy toward China be to get China’s ruling elite to continue to operate within a liberal international order led by the United States rather than a hostile one. The document also recommends that the U.S. target its China efforts at replacing Communist Party leader Xi Jinping rather than overthrowing the Communist Party and the Communist regime.
According to Bomen, the goals set out in the China strategy paper “defy the laws of nature” and are “like trying to train a great white shark to become a broad-snouted dolphin.
Convincing the Communist Party of China to support a liberal international order led by the United States without creating an authoritarian alternative is an unrealistic goal,” he said. That’s what we’ve tried to achieve in the past, and we’ve adopted 30 years of failed policies toward China to do so. It’s like telling the Communist Party to end the Leninist one-party dictatorship. Beijing interprets this proposal as some form of regime change.”
Booming also argues that it is also unrealistic to cut off Communist Party leader Xi Jinping from the Communist Party as a whole. He notes that Xi represents the CCP’s long-standing grand strategy and vision, and that he has simply utilized some of the harsher measures to accelerate their implementation. According to Booming, the critique should still be directed at the CCP as a whole.
My view is that there should be a price to pay for being a member of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. If you’re part of that party, that means you’re partly responsible for the shame of the Chinese nation, like the genocide that’s happening. I don’t think these acts represent the Chinese people, and they don’t represent the Chinese nation, but they do represent the Chinese Communist Party. So I don’t think we should be timid about criticizing the CCP or its ideology and the terrible atrocities that it has committed.”
Bomen noted that countering China’s aggressive behavior has a high level of bipartisan consensus in Washington. After reading the Biden administration’s interim strategic guidance on China, he believes it continues the hard-line style and is consistent with the bipartisan consensus. He noted that this is a “new geostrategic reality” that all sides must face.
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