United States military power may continue to predominate, but American soft power is in grave danger of losing its primacy to China’s. The Chinese influence campaign doesn’t have the American boldness and brashness of the spread of McDonald’s or Cold War-era cultural hegemony. Rather, it’s marked by a covert, subtle advancement, working behind the scenes as American actors, businesses, and universities find that Beijing looms increasingly large in their calculations.

Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding III (Air Force, retired) calls the Chinese Communist Party’s influence brokering a “stealth war.” Reporter Reuben Johnson labeled it the “70-year itch.” In On China, Henry Kissinger likens Chinese gamesmanship to a method of encirclement aimed to achieve “strategic flexibility.”