Communist China has been labeled as the “most consequential” challenge to the United States, as President Joe Biden released his National Security Strategy on Oct. 12, nearly 22 months into his presidency.
The document is to provide the overarching framework within which the administration will seek to safeguard the nation and pursue its interests within an increasingly contested international order.
Notably, the strategy explicitly calls out China’s communist regime as the single greatest danger facing the nation.
“Although the Indo-Pacific is where its outcomes will be most acutely shaped, there are significant global dimensions to this challenge.”
Moreover, the strategy underscores that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules the country as a single-party state, is currently engaged in a campaign to undermine the liberal international order and remake the world in its own, authoritarian image.
“We will leverage all elements of our national power to outcompete our strategic competitors; tackle shared challenges; and shape the rules of the road.”
The strategy outlines three key tactics and areas of focus for the United States in its pursuit of a safer, more free world: investing in the sources of American influence and power, building coalitions of strong and likeminded nations, and modernizing the U.S. military for a new era of strategic competition.
The strategy refers to both China and Russia as autocratic regimes seeking to remake the world according to their own desires, but adds that communist China is the more serious and lasting of the two threats.
“In their own ways, they [China and Russia] now seek to remake the international order to create a world conducive to their highly personalized and repressive type of autocracy,” the document says.
To that end, the strategy says that the “critical difference” between the United States and communist China is that the United States is dedicated to preserving the rights of less powerful states, while the CCP is intent on forcing them to become vassals of its own regime.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a press call that the coming years would present a “decisive decade” between democracy and autocracy, and that the United States’ commitment to the principles of a free and open society will make the difference.
“This decisive decade is critical both for defining the terms of competition, particularly with the PRC, and for getting ahead of massive challenges that if we lose the time in this decade, we will not be able to keep pace with most notably the climate crisis, but other challenges as well.”
