China: Meeting a major geopolitical threat
If I could impress one thing on the American public as the outgoing Director of National Intelligence, it’d be this, said John Ratcliffe in The
Wall Street Journal: “The People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II.” Beijing’s goal is nothing less than “to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily, and technologically” and “to reshape the world” in its own authoritarian image. Untroubled by “ethical boundaries,” the Chinese are on a mission to steal our “research-and-development secrets,” our defense technology, and our companies’ intellectual property. Addressing this existential threat requires “a shift in thinking” for intelligence officials focused on Russia and counterterrorism. All of Washington must “work across partisan divides to understand the threat, speak about it openly, and take action to address it.”
It’s not clear that President-elect Joe Biden grasps this, said the Washington Examiner in an editorial. Biden seems “reluctant even to identify China for what it is”: a predatory communist dictatorship that aims “to supplant America as the global superpower.” He and his national security team offer only a vague “pledge for more-effective competition.” His eagerness to play nicely isn’t lost on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime, which is licking its chops. Actually, Biden is more likely to contain China than President Trump was, said Thomas Colson in BusinessInsider.com. Biden has called Xi “a thug,” and with his “commitment to multilateralism and traditional alliances,” he can enlist European and Asian allies in presenting a united front that would achieve far more than “Trump’s go-it-alone approach.”
Is China really that strong? asked David Von Drehle in The Washington Post. Its “remarkable economic progress” has obscured signs “that this long-troubled nation” is “losing its momentum.” A confident government wouldn’t lock up and brainwash ethnic Muslims, “throttle the intellectual vibrancy of Hong Kong,” or subject its entire population to Orwellian surveillance. Such repression marks a government “afraid of its own people”—a fatal flaw in a modern world “where human capital is the indispensable resource.” In our commitment to economic freedom and human rights, “the West holds a winning hand.” Still, meeting the Chinese challenge is the work of “a generation or more.”