CIA sees China waging a ‘quiet kind of cold war’

Aspen (US), July 21: China is waging a “quiet kind of cold war” against the United States, using all its resources to try to replace America as the leading power in the world, a top CIA expert on Asia has said.

Beijing doesn’t want to go to war, he said, but the current Communist government, under President Xi Jingping, is subtly working on multiple fronts to undermine the US in ways that are different than the more wellpublicised activities being employed by Russia.

“I would argue ... that what they’re waging against us is fundamentally a cold war a cold war not like we saw during THE Cold War (between the US and the Soviet Union) but a cold war by definition,” Michael Collins, deputy assistant director of the CIA’s East Asia mission centre, said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Friday.

Rising US-China tension goes beyond the trade dispute playing out in a tariff tit-for-tat between the nations. There is concern over China’s pervasive efforts to steal business secrets and details about high-tech research being conducted in the US. The Chinese military is expanding and being modernised and the US, as well as other nations, have complained about China’s construction of military outposts. “I would argue that it’s the Crimea of the East,” Collins said, referring to Russia’s brash annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which was condemned throughout the West.

Collins’ comments track warnings about China’s rising influence issued by others who spoke earlier this week at the security conference. The alarm bells come at a time when the US needs China’s help in ending its nuclear standoff with North Korea. On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said China, from a counterintelligence perspective, represents the broadest and most significant threat America faces.

— AP