Editor’s note: The following article contains excerpts from Lost decade: The US turn to Asia and the rise of China (Oxford University Press, 2024) with permission of the publisher.
From Washington’s farewell address to Biden’s national security strategy, the core U.S. national interest has, unsurprisingly, not changed: ensuring the basic security of the homeland and its people in freedom. As Alexander Hamilton put it, “Self-preservation is the first duty of a nation.” Vital U.S. interests are all increasingly threatened by China and can be defined as follows:
1) Preventing and reducing the threat posed by nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, as well as catastrophic conventional terrorist attacks or cyberattacks against the United States, its foreign forces, or its allies.
China’s growing intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and nuclear weapons capability poses a threat to the American homeland and its forces abroad. China plans to increase its stockpile of strategic nuclear warheads from an estimated 500 in 2022 to 1,500 by 2035. This increase will coincide with an increased buildout of infrastructure to produce and separate plutonium. Beijing is reportedly building 300 new missile silos in the country’s western desert—a tenfold increase in the number that will be operational in 2022—in addition to its arsenal of an estimated one hundred road-mobile ICBM launchers.
2) To halt the spread of nuclear weapons, secure nuclear weapons and nuclear materials, and contain the further proliferation of medium- and long-range nuclear weapon delivery systems.
Beijing continues to allow state-owned companies and individuals to violate the Missile Technology Control Regime (MCTR) and “proliferate technology that Iran has used to improve the accuracy, range, and lethality of its ballistic missiles.” At the same time, Beijing is undermining sanctions against Tehran by dramatically increasing its economic support to the Islamic Republic. China has historically been the Islamic Republic’s most important trading partner, and trade between the two countries exceeds $15 billion annually. If Iran eventually acquires a nuclear weapon, Beijing will bear significant responsibility for it through its economic and technical support.
Beijing has also looked the other way when its citizens and companies violate the MTCR with North Korea, despite China’s stated goal of finding a peaceful solution to Pyongyang’s nuclear program. A January 2023 report by the Congressional Research Service states that “Chinese financial firms are setting up paper companies to act as agents for North Korean financial institutions and evade sanctions to finance the proliferation of the North’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programs.”
3) Maintain a global and regional balance of power that promotes peace, stability and freedom through domestic strength, international power projection and influence, and the strength of alliance systems.
Beijing has launched a comprehensive assault on the military, economic and diplomatic balance of power in Asia and on America’s alliance system in the region. The foundation for this rapid change has been laid by the modernization of China’s military, made possible by unprecedented increases in defense spending. The modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) includes a new command and control structure, improved equipment in the navy, air force and army, expanded and improved training for cadets, and the creation of the Strategic Support Force to centralize new combat capabilities. In addition to expanding its nuclear arsenal, Beijing now has the world’s largest navy and the largest inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles.
Economically, China is pursuing two strategies to undermine US power in the Indo-Pacific. First, Beijing is threatening and coercing America’s partners in Asia to pursue policies that promote China’s regional dominance. Second, the People’s Republic of China has created and now promotes international economic organizations and initiatives that exclude the US, favor China’s position, and undermine global rules and standards.
China also sought to expand its leadership role in international government institutions and weaken the influence of the United States. Beijing became more assertive and active, particularly at the United Nations (UN), and attacked democratic norms such as the rule of law, human rights, transparency and accountability.
4) To prevent the emergence of hostile powers or failed states in the Western Hemisphere.
Beijing has successfully sought to deepen its strategic engagement in Latin American countries, increasingly at the expense of the United States.
China is now South America’s top trading partner and the second-largest for Latin America as a whole, after the United States. That’s a significant leap for a country that accounted for less than two percent of Latin American exports in 2000. China has built ports, railways and dams, installed 5G networks across Latin America and lent $138 billion to the region’s countries.
In particular, China has made concerted attempts to engage Latin America and the Caribbean in the security field. Beijing’s 2008 and 2016 strategy papers for the region outline Chinese commitments to increase “military exchanges and cooperation,” support “army building in Latin American and Caribbean countries,” and strengthen “arms trade and military technology cooperation.” Between 2002 and 2019, senior PLA leaders visited the region 215 times, with more than half of those visits to Chile, Cuba, Brazil, and Argentina.
5) Ensuring the functioning and stability of key international systems (trade, financial markets, public health, energy, cyberspace, environment, freedom of the seas and outer space).
Over the past fifteen years, China has sought to weaken virtually all of these major global systems.
Through its repeated violations of international trade practices, Beijing has disrupted the stability of world markets. It uses hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies and deliberate overproduction to flood global markets with artificially low-priced Chinese goods and services. Beijing also restricts market access for foreign companies and imposes arbitrary non-tariff barriers.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, China delayed the transmission of important data for weeks and continues to resist any serious investigation into the origins of the virus.Furthermore, China’s role in the fentanyl epidemic poses a direct threat to the American people. China has created a sprawling and immensely powerful cyber operations command that it uses to influence other countries and repress its own population. It uses cyberattacks and cyberespionage as elements of influence campaigns in the United States to try to shape public perceptions of China, suppress criticism, and mislead American voters. It has penetrated U.S. infrastructure and critical facilities and continues to steal data from hundreds of millions of Americans.
China consistently hampers global efforts to slow climate change and mitigate its impacts. It emits more greenhouse gases than any other country and is building new fossil fuel infrastructure around the world as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. In addition, it is subjecting its own air, soil and waterways to enormous pollution.
China claims sovereignty over the South China Sea and declares the area its “inalienable territory,” which contradicts the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Beijing’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea challenges established norms in the maritime domain, such as geographical boundaries, the rights of countries to control natural resources within their demarcated zones, and international dispute settlement mechanisms.
In pursuit of Xi’s “eternal dream” of making China a “space power,” Beijing has also made concerted efforts to rapidly expand its private and state-owned industries. The PLA draws an explicit link between space and conflict; its 2020 Science of Military Strategy document describes “space dominance as inextricably linked to the outcome of war.”
This list vividly illustrates China’s comprehensive policy to undermine each of America’s five vital national interests that protect and enhance the survival and well-being of Americans in a free and secure country and strengthen the international order. As US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated in late 2022, “The PRC is the only country with the will and, increasingly, the power to reshape its region and the international order according to its authoritarian preferences.”
By weakening these five vital U.S. interests through the threat of nuclear annihilation, Beijing could deter the U.S. from acting in a crisis. In its attempt to dominate Asia, China could encourage nuclear proliferation throughout the region, starting with South Korea or even Japan, as countries seek a nuclear deterrent capability as a last resort. A China-dominated Asia could fatally fragment the U.S. Asian alliance system, as one U.S. ally after another kowtows to Beijing. The People’s Republic of China could undermine U.S. relations with Mexico and other Latin American countries to distract the U.S. from pursuing its national interests in Asia and elsewhere. A China dominating Asia would alter global values, rules, and practices to the U.S.’s detriment.
Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, summed up the Chinese president’s ambitions as follows: “Xi Jinping,” he said, “is not trying to outdo America in the existing liberal, US-dominated international order. His long-term goal is to transform the world order into a Sinocentric order.”
Robert D. Blackwill is Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Richard Fontaine is the CEO of the Center for a New American Security. Follow him on LinkedIn and X @RHFontaine.
