How China’s Quest for Dominance Is an All-Encompassing Threat

Xi Jinping seeks geopolitical, military, and economic superiority.

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Years from now, we may look back at the first weeks of 2020 as a key juncture in the history of America’s “great power competition” with China. On Feb. 6, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) hosted the China Initiative Conference, during which America’s top law enforcement and counterintelligence officials made their case to the public. The U.S. government is attempting to marshal a countrywide defense against China’s spy war—a systemic initiative to undermine the American economy and national security.  

Over the course of nearly four hours at the CSIS headquarters in Washington, various speakers, including Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray, explained the myriad ways Chinese subterfuge is eroding America’s technological and military dominance. This isn’t the work of a few spies. Xi Jinping and his lieutenants are employing multiple stratagems, from buying off professors at American universities, to stealing the personal identifying information for nearly half of all Americans, to surreptitiously acquiring intellectual property and trade secrets. 

None of these are hypothetical threats. The Department of Justice (DoJ) and FBI are investigating dozens of cases. During the first weeks of 2020 alone, the feds arrested one of America’s top nanoscientists, added an alleged Chinese spy who studied at Boston University to America’s Most Wanted list, and charged four Chinese military spies with plundering the databases of Equifax, the consumer credit reporting agency. 

We will delve into some of these cases a bit more below. But first, I’d like to draw attention to the presentation given by William Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC). This is a man at the center of America’s response to China’s spy war. And his warnings should be heeded.

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  1. Avatar photo
    kate sprouls

    best piece yet (and the others were great)! this is a prime example of why i subscribed and what i hoped i would see. look forward to what comes next - no pressure there :)

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  2. Collin Saunders

    Very thorough piece! I do wonder what they had to say in terms of how China is using social media apps (not just phones) to monitor their people during this Coronavirus outbreak. WSJ did some reporting on this.

    Also, what does the U.S. Department of Justice think of Confucius Institutes at U.S. universities around the country? I can only imagine they’re being monitored as well.

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    Idontdocute

    The testing of our dependence on our supply chains needing Chinese products might be challenged soon with the spreading of the coronavirus. The only thing a believe out of the numbers released by China is that they are way under counted. The changes in production numbers and changes in amount of products shipped would be a more accurate gauge. We have started to make plans for if this gets really, really bad, yes?

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      Pat Riot

      There's no easy way to plan for a serious disruption, no. That's pretty unthinkable though. Even a small disruption would send our economy into a tailspin though.

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    Pat Riot

    Back in the Cold War era we told ourselves that, "East Minus West Equals Zero" (which is also the title of a book).

    We believed, at the time correctly, that totalitarianism could not lead to consistent technological innovation, which ultimately translated to military dominance. Insofar as the totalitarian regimes of Russia and China had technology, we surmised, was because they stole it from us.

    And they continue to steal it from us, which our open society facilitates.

    But what if this idea has run out of gas? What if China's model actually *works better* than our model in the long run? The last 30 years of world history has shown benefits to the totalitarian model, and social breakdown caused by freedom and free markets.

    To be clear, like all Americans I consider totalitarianism to a catastrophe for the human race and love our freedoms. But we had better figure this out.

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      Man-Eating Cow

      I think the problem is not that China has come up with a way to innovate better in a totalitarian regime. I think it is more likely that the problem is that we have gotten worse at innovating because we have become more totalitarian ourselves.

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    The Artful Curmudgeon

    Excellent piece. To create the awareness that Evanina suggests might require a "loose lips sink skips" campaign as in WWII. Since so much happens in the technical and academic fields, would the US call for a strategic halt to those visas for Chinese nationals? Will universities stop admitting them to study? They're paying full tuition and will cry discrimination, but how can universities distinguish between threats and non-threats?

    One potential positive--when Americans encounter a foreign threat they tend to get beyond their differences and find a unity of purpose. We should be reading about this frequently and widely.

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  6. Jeff

    I had a layover in Beijing last year and after sitting on the plane at the gate for nearly 3 hours our flight was cancelled. We were told it was due to severe storms, but everyone could see that it had only been raining lightly all day.

    We were re-booked on a later flight (fortunately, many from our original plane were delayed a day), and while waiting to board the aircraft I ended up speaking to our pilot. He told me that situations like this were not uncommon, because of two factors:

    1. The Chinese weather radar and associated analytic tools are so primitive that they really cannot tell how severe a storm is or will get. If it is raining they treat it like it could become a severe storm at any minute.

    2. The Chinese pilots (on the internal Chinese airlines) are so poorly trained that no one trusts them to take off or land in any sort of inclement weather. But rather than admit this, the Chinese declare a weather emergency and close the airport to all traffic, stranding planes from all over the world, by claiming it is too dangerous to take off.

    Stealing technology is one thing, understanding how it works and how to use it is another.

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    Butch Earl

    I'm definitely listening. Thank you for a great piece!

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