Out competing China will be key to nat’l security in decades ahead

Out competing China will be key to America's national security in the decades ahead, President Joe Biden's pick to lead the CIA has told lawmakers, stressing that Beijing is the "biggest geopolitical test" that the US will face.

Willian Burns, 64, a former diplomat who served in Russia and the Middle East, shared the assessment with members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday for the post of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director.

"Out competing China will be key to our national security in the decades ahead. That will require a longterm clear eyed bipartisan strategy underpinned by domestic renewal and solid intelligence," Burns said.

"There will be areas in which it will be in our mutual self-interest to work with China from climate change to nonproliferation. And I am very mindful that (President) Xi Jinping's China is not without problems and frailties of its own," he said.

"The challenge posed by Xi Jinping's China, by an adversarial China, it is hard for me to see a more significant threat or challenge for the United States as far out as I can see into the 21st century than that one. It is the biggest geopolitical test that we face," Burns said.

The relations between the US and China are at an alltime low. The two countries are currently engaged in a bitter confrontation over various issues, including trade, the origins of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the communist giant's aggressive military moves in the disputed South China Sea and human rights.

"There are, however, a growing number of areas in which Xi's China is a formidable authoritarian adversary, methodically strengthening its capabilities to steal intellectual property, repress its own people, bully its neighbours, expand its global reach, and build influence in American society," Burns said.