The Washington Examiner, in concert with leading think tanks, will run more than three dozen articles this week, all focused on the need for America to confront China. More specifically, our series will wrestle with how the United States should meet the profound challenge that China poses to our economy, security, and the post-1945 democratic international order.
Our rationale for the Confronting China series is simple: Unless the U.S. is more effective in resisting China’s imperial agenda, the freedom and prosperity of this country and of free peoples everywhere will hemorrhage under Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s whims. The writers we are fortunate to feature are among the very best analysts and scholars on China’s challenge. They have bold ideas and present hard truths worth your keen attention.
<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"0000017c-2d27-d823-a5ff-aff793af0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1670253026941,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-1a81-d968-a5ef-9aad33d20000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1670253026941,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-1a81-d968-a5ef-9aad33d20000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_69932167", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1198465"} }); ","theme.0000017c-2d32-d5c4-af7f-7d77b7920000.:core:enhancement:Enhancement.hbs.enhancementAlignment":null,"theme.0000017c-2d32-d5c4-af7f-7d77b7920000.:core:enhancement:Enhancement.hbs._template":null,"_id":"00000184-e2d6-d2c9-a9e6-f2de967d0000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedTo begin with, the risk of a military confrontation over Taiwan is a growing threat. Numerous government and military observers now believe that Xi may launch an attack on Taiwan sometime between 2023 and 2027. If he were to do so, and to succeed in destroying Taiwan’s democracy, the Pacific realm would become a Chinese Communist dominion. Whatever the transitory sanctions imposed on China in response to its attack, few Pacific nations would look at Xi’s conquest of Taiwan and remain courageous enough to withstand his future demands.
Having pledged to support Taiwan, America’s credibility would suffer a massive global hit. Taiwan’s unmatched semiconductor chip manufacturing industry, on which our military and technology industry relies, would also enter the service of Beijing. The assurance of Xi’s domestic power and the ingredients for a new Chinese-led international order would be laid.
Yet, as many of our outside contributors will explain, neither Taiwan nor the U.S. military is capable of effectively defending against such an attack. China has an abundance of aircraft, troops, ships, and missiles to throw at Taiwan. The People’s Liberation Army is ideologically driven and equipped with a range of highly capable weapons. China’s close geographic proximity to Taiwan would also allow it to sustain relentless strikes. The U.S. military, largely dependent on aircraft carriers vulnerable to Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles and stealth fighters (which lack the munitions loads to deal with overwhelming PLA forces), would face a grave challenge.
The U.S. and Taiwan face a very real prospect of defeat in any war with China. Our contributing writers will explain how this readiness deficit can be fixed.
Our guest writers will also cover a range of other grave Chinese Communist challenges that require American confrontation. These concerns include Xi’s massive intellectual property theft, his cyberwarfare campaigns, his rush to build new nuclear weapons, and his use of fentanyl, a lethal drug, to subvert American society. The urgency of addressing these concerns is real.
Recently consecrated by the 20th Communist Party Congress as the de facto heir to Mao Zedong, Xi stands all-powerful. That is a problem for those of us who care about freedom. Because if anyone had any doubts about Xi’s disregard for basic human rights, one need only look at the Chinese president’s treatment of his own people.
China is now a land in which Uyghur Muslims are subjected to reeducation, forced into slave labor, and made the victims of a genocide. China is a land in which Beijing shamelessly ignores its treaty obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, so as to turn Hong Kong into just another Chinese Communist outpost. A land in which satirists disappear simply for calling Xi a clown. A land in which Communist elites gleefully break COVID-19 rules with lavish parties, while impoverished residents burn to death locked in their homes in service of Xi’s COVID-shutdown fetish. The images and testimony of locked-down Chinese citizens begging for sanitary products, food, medicine, and other relief are damning. Yet, as shown by recent and stunning protests against him, Xi now fears the rising courage of an imprisoned people.
Of course, Xi’s designer dystopia raises the obvious question: If this is how the Chinese Communist Party treats its own citizens, how do we expect a hegemonic China to treat the rest of us?
This notion of a Chinese imperium is not hyperbole. Using its vast economy as a means of extraordinary political leverage, Beijing seeks to fray the democratic international order. China’s strategic gambit involves offering massive trade in return for geopolitical loyalty or subjugated silence. It’s a gambit to shape a new feudal-mercantile international order led by Beijing. And it’s a gambit that works. As shown by the deference of European powers such as France and Germany, China’s economic might goes a long way. As the U.S. tries to restrain China’s worst impulses, Paris and Berlin echo Xi’s anti-American talking points and go to Beijing begging for new trade.
Unfortunately, this sellout by our allies of our common security is remarkable but far from unique. Take the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Pakistan, for example — nations that are supposedly governed by Islamic law but give cover to China despite its genocide of the Uyghurs.
Whether you’re a policymaker or a patriotic American, we hope you’ll come away with two conclusions as you read the Confronting China series this week: first, that China’s threat is far greater and more diverse than is commonly understood, and second, that the U.S. government, private industry, and our civil society need to act boldly and quickly. Act, that is, to ensure America and its freedom-based international order can withstand China’s threat to shape the course of the 21st century.
