As the nation waits for the Biden administration to articulate its strategy for meeting the extraordinary challenges posed by Communist China, it calls to mind Andrew Carnegie’s remark that he paid “less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do” — and, to suggest a corollary, what they neglect to do.

While the world in 2021 continued battling the pandemic, China announced a nearly 7% increase in military spending and a five-year plan to focus on cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and biotechnology. It began to assemble its own space station and became the third nation to execute a soft landing on Mars.