Understanding the China threat requires analysts to see through the deception that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) advances to disguise its ambitions. In this, they have been remarkably successful, as Deng Xiaoping intended when he devised his “hide and bide” strategy of minimizing China’s power and tremendous achievements to international audiences while growing stronger. China’s power grew from a fraction of the global economy to about 20 percent today. Its military grew from a small, unprofessional force to one that competes with the U.S. military, from space to cyber warfare and from advanced missile technology to blue-water naval competition.
Remarkably, as this occurred, there was no balancing against China’s rise. Year by year, China grew more powerful and no state sought to arrest it, not even the United States. Indeed, just the opposite happened: The West supported China’s growth, providing investment and trade, welcoming it into the World Trade Organization, permitting it to raise capital on Wall Street, and transferring technology by legal and illegal means — all of which turned China into the powerhouse it is today. There are many in the engagement school of thought who still seek to aid China’s rise or to characterize China as not an existential threat to the U.S. But those who think this way are not perceiving the reality of the CCP; they are threat-deflating. This only benefits the world’s most powerful and most odious dictatorship.
The Chinese Communist Party is not a defensive power or a tolerant “live and let live” wallflower of a state, innocently seeking to make its way against the gale-force headwinds of a hostile world arrayed against it. The CCP portrays itself as the victim, never the perpetrator. But in reality it is determined to make China the world’s dominant state. That is a heady ambition, and Beijing’s effort to realize it promises to provide considerable shocks to the U.S., its allies, and world politics as it has been defined for the last generation.
The struggle is here and now. Consequently, the dispositive question of our time is: Can the United States and its allies sustain freedom in the 21st century, or will China replace it and impose its totalitarianism on the world?
The CCP is a threat for two reasons. First, China under the control of the CCP is a one-party dictatorship based on communist ideology of democidal violence and terror to achieve its goal. The CCP seeks to perpetuate its rule against any domestic or international critics, who are always perceived as existential threats to the Party and to China’s world hegemonic ambition, which is anchored in the belief of the superiority of communism and inevitable death of capitalism.
The Party’s ideology and leadership explain why the CCP perceives the U.S. as the major obstacle to its goals. Chinese leader Xi Jinping advances what Lianchao Han and I have termed the “Xi Doctrine” — a new China-centered world order based on socialism with Chinese characteristics. The term of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is simply Sinicized Communism. This defines Xi’s malevolent objectives within China, and their extension to international politics.
China will fight the United States because it perceives the U.S. as the single major impediment to its strategic objectives. If the U.S. were removed, there would be no single power, or alliance of powers such as Japan and India, that could stop China from achieving its strategic goals.
Xi has boldly — and openly — advanced those aims in his conception of a hegemonic China by 2049. It’s the final, grand strategic objective of the Xi Doctrine. Of course, he intends to realize this ambition long before 2049. In fact, today would not be soon enough. The CCP’s ideology and ruler make China uniquely dangerous, as demonstrated by its past democidal actions against the Chinese people and its current genocidal behavior against Muslims in Xinjiang.
Since Xi came to power in 2012, he has not concealed this global ambition. He has talked about returning to the CCP’s original mission, and China’s official media have been propagandizing that Xi is “showing the way” for the world in all areas — global development and governance, international relations, world finance, the United Nations, and even in fighting pandemics. Xi has aggressively expanded China’s influence through his Belt and Road Initiative, securing global strategic resources, building military bases, and attempting to control the South China Sea. He has said China will seize Taiwan by force, if necessary.
Xi has accused the U.S. of being China’s arch enemy. He recently blamed Washington for “containment, encirclement and suppression” of China. These are not strategic balancing by any standard; they’re acts of hegemony.
If China were to supplant the United States, the rest of the world would have to adapt to China’s ideology and the norms, principles and values that the CCP advances. Were this to occur, all of the stakeholders in the present order would be greatly challenged to advance fundamental Western concepts of free trade, individual liberty and human rights, the importance of developing cultures of anti-discrimination in support of the rights of women and minorities, and the prohibition of genocide.
Most Western cultural, economic, and political elites have yet to consider fully what will be lost if China were to become the world’s dominant state and just how different the world would be. For the good of the world’s population, we cannot allow China to realize its aims. The CCP’s presence in Asia, Africa or Latin America is defined by the ruthless exploitation of people and the environment.
The ultimate reason the U.S. must fight the “war” the CCP has started is that freedom is superior to totalitarianism — but freedom must be defended. The West’s leaders must see through the CCP’s deception and abandon their own self-deception regarding the scope and depth of its threat.
Bradley A. Thayer is director of China policy at the Center for Security Policy, and the co-author with Lianchao Han of “Understanding the China Threat.”