The Free Press published an opinion piece today by former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley which argues that China isn’t a future adversary of the US but a present one.
Mention China to a typical foreign-policy “expert” on the left or right, and they’ll describe it as a formidable adversary with a chance to challenge the U.S. But that conventional wisdom is way out-of-date: Communist China’s war on the U.S. has already begun. The trick is that Beijing is trying to make sure Americans never realize they’re under attack.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is working to undermine the U.S. across economic, technological, informational, diplomatic, and gray-zone military domains. Especially since Xi Jinping’s rise, Chinese leaders have committed to diminish American superpower without triggering a U.S. military response. The Chinese don’t want a shooting war today, or ever, if they can help it. Instead, they’ve chosen to erode the foundations of American power by coercing U.S. allies, commandeering global supply chains, and bending international institutions toward Chinese interests. Beijing wants to do all this while keeping the U.S. reactive, fragmented, and unsure about how seriously to take the threat…
China is also waging the most expansive espionage and intellectual-property theft campaign in history. Thousands of U.S. companies, universities, and laboratories have been infiltrated or targeted. These are not isolated incidents but a systemic effort to accelerate Communist China’s technological rise by stealing the fruits of American innovation. The CCP understands that whoever controls the commanding heights of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, next-generation semiconductors, and advanced materials will dominate the global balance of power…
China’s information warfare is even more pervasive. Through censorship, cyber operations, propaganda, the TikTok algorithm, and manipulation of Chinese nationals overseas, Beijing seeks to shape American public debate, weaken confidence in U.S. institutions, divide the electorate, and delegitimize democratic alliances. The CCP views information dominance as essential to national power—more fundamental than missiles or tanks.
After reading this story I left it open in my browser for a while, wondering if it was essentially accurate or a bit overstated. And then I came across an exclusive story at the Wall Street Journal involving the Panama Canal.
President Trump’s push to loosen China’s influence in the Panama Canal has hit a wall now that Beijing is demanding that China’s largest shipping company get a controlling stake in a deal to sell dozens of ports to a BlackRock BLK -1.30%decrease; red down pointing triangle-led group.
The proposed sale includes two ports at the Panama Canal and more than 40 others around the world, all controlled by Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison. BlackRock and containership operator Mediterranean Shipping Co. reached a $22.8 billion agreement in March to buy them after Trump raised security concerns about Hutchison’s—and the ports’—connection to China.
That deal angered Beijing and, after initially pushing for China’s Cosco to be brought in as an equal partner, it has now upped its demands, according to people familiar with the talks. China is threatening to block the deal unless Cosco gets a majority stake, they say.
BlackRock and MSC had been open to offering Cosco an equal stake, but the demand for majority control and veto rights in running the ports is unacceptable, those people say. The White House signaled Monday that it, too, wouldn’t accept such conditions.
Control of the Panama Canal is something that President Trump has said was an issue for him. This deal was supposed to resolve that issue, but now it looks like China wants to play hardball and scuttle the deal.
But before I could even dig up some of the backstory on that one, I came across another breaking news story:
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., is being sued by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for tens of billions of dollars in damages for a lawsuit he filed against the country during his time as Missouri’s attorney general.
Schmitt is being sued by the People’s Government of Wuhan Municipality, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for roughly $50 billion, several years after the lawmaker sued the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawsuit, first obtained by Fox News Digital, accused Schmitt, FBI co-deputy director Andrew Bailey, and the state of Missouri of damaging the reputations of China, Wuhan and the associated research facilities through “malicious vexatious litigation, fabricating enormous disinformation, and spreading stigmatizing and discriminating slanders.”
Sen. Schmitt said he wasn’t worried about whatever came from a Chinese court. He told Fox News, “This is their way of distracting from what the world already knows, China has blood on its hands.”
So, what do you think? Did Nikki Haley overstate it or is China being extremely belligerent and aggressive regarding the United States? I think she is pretty clearly on to something. China under Xi Jinping is a bully on the world stage and what they don’t like about America is that they can’t bully us…yet.
But they also have reasons to act tough right now, because their miracle economy is drifting back to earth.
Investment for housing, public infrastructure and manufacturing fell 2.6 percent from January through November, marking another month of sharp decline in so-called fixed-asset investment, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced on Monday. The research firm Capital Economics estimated that investment fell 11.1 percent in November from a year earlier, a second straight month of double-digit declines over 2024.
The November drop puts China on the brink of a historic slowdown in investment. As China’s economy grew by leaps and bounds, investment in buildings, public works and factories had increased every year since the late 1980s.
The pullback, which began in the second half of this year, signals growing caution about the Chinese economy.
But the longer term forecast is even worse as China’s population is headed for a steep decline over the rest of this century.
China will shrink dramatically, falling from 1.4 billion people to 662 million — the steepest decline of any nation in recorded demographic history, according to an Axios review of population data.
China wants to become bigger but it’s already on its way to becoming much smaller. That’s a trend the US should do its best to accelerate unless and until the Chinese get rid of their communist police state.
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