Wikipedia:en:Policy Planning Staff

“ The difference of opinion about the reform of world order between the United States and China is stark. For the United States — and for fellow liberal democracies — the aim is to preserve the freedom and sovereignty of nation-states by fortifying the established order, which is grounded in respect for human rights and in fidelity to the rule of law, understood as the impartial application of publicly disclosed, settled, and binding rules. ”

“ Grounded in the nation’s founding principles and constitutional traditions; invigorated by a bustling economy; undergirded by the world’s best-trained and best-equipped military; served by government officials who understand the American people and the American political system, recognize the diversity and common humanity of the peoples and nations of the world, and appreciate the complex interplay of ideas and interests in foreign affairs; and fortified by an informed and engaged citizenry — this multi-pronged approach will enable the United States to secure freedom. ”

“ Tenth, the United States must champion the principles of freedom — principles that are at once universal and at the heart of the American national spirit — through example; speeches; educational initiatives; public diplomacy; foreign assistance and investment; sanctions in more difficult circumstances as well as other forms of non-military pressure; and, where the nation’s vital interests are at stake and all else has failed, military force. ”

“ Ninth, the United States must reform American education to enable students to shoulder the enduring responsibilities of citizenship in a free and democratic society and to meet the special demands of a complex, globalized, information-age economy. Sinister efforts from abroad seek to sow discord in the United States. And America’s grade schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges and universities have to a dismaying degree abandoned well-rounded presentations of America’s founding ideas and constitutional traditions in favor of propaganda aimed at vilifying the nation. ”

“ In the face of these polarizing forces, the United States must reclaim its own legacy of liberty. That begins with renewing appreciation of the enduring principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that all are endowed with unalienable rights, that the principal purpose of government is to secure those rights, and that all legitimate political power springs from the consent of the governed. ”

“ The harsh reality is that to advance vital U.S. interests and defend cherished American principles, the United States must maintain cooperative relations with a great power whose economy represents a hefty component of world commerce but whose systematic conduct deprives its own people of freedom and threatens the freedom of nations around the world. The China challenge, so understood, is likely to dominate American foreign policy across many administrations. ”

“ In the modern era, the emergence of two opposed economic and political systems dividing the world heightens the contradiction. On one side, according to the Marxist view, stands capitalism, with its fraudulent commitment to a political and economic freedom that inherently exploits the individual. On the other side, Marxism teaches, stands communism, based on central planning and the conscription of the people in service to the party, and devoted to what communism believes to be true human emancipation.141
Xi embraces this Manichean view of world affairs. ”

“ The communism that the CCP professes is more than a mode of authoritarian domestic governance. It is also a theory of a globe-spanning universal society, the ultimate goal of which is to bring about a socialist international order. At the same time, the CCP proclaims hyper-nationalist aspirations with roots in Chinese cultural and political traditions — however much twisted and deformed by the party — that require the PRC to occupy the commanding position in world affairs. ”

“ I. The China Challenge
For a fairly long time yet, socialism in its primary stage will exist alongside a more productive and developed capitalist system. In this long period of cooperation and conflict, socialism must learn from the boons that capitalism has brought to civilization. We must face the reality that people will use the strengths of developed, Western countries to denounce our country’s socialist development. Here we must have a great strategic determination, resolutely rejecting all false arguments that we should abandon socialism. ”

“ Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the emergence of a post-Cold War international order that welcomed fledgling Eastern European democracies, the CCP — though governing the world’s most populous country — saw China as greatly outnumbered in a perilous geopolitical environment.145 Since then, the accumulation of economic clout and military power have fortified the CCP’s belief that China is socialism’s savior and herald of an alternative world order. ”

“ Today, thanks in part to globalization and to the CCP’s rapid modernization over the last forty years, the known world for China has expanded to encompass the globe. The CCP has adapted the old approach to China’s new circumstances. All major economies are vulnerable to the CCP’s economic co-optation and coercion because of their extensive commercial ties with the PRC and their desire to maintain access to China’s low-cost labor force and enormous consumer markets. ”

“ Yet many people lack a proper understanding of the character and scope of the China challenge.
Home to an extraordinary culture and to moral and political traditions stretching back thousands of years, China today is a great power governed by an authoritarian regime modeled on 20th-century Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. Prodigious economic growth has enriched China. Major military modernization has emboldened it. And nations around the world have enabled the CCP by engaging, and welcoming commerce with, Beijing. ”

“ Viewed as a whole, the major components of China’s conduct — preservation of a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship; leveraging of the country’s wealth to produce economic dependence and political subordination abroad and to reorient international organizations from within around CCP criteria and goals; and development of a world-class military — reveal a great power that sees the transformation of international order as critical to its plans to dominate world affairs. The PRC’s interests and ambitions have not developed accidentally, nor do they simply reflect China’s geopolitical circumstances. ”

“ While the fortunes of particular Chinese dynastic empires wax and wane, China remains at the center and deserving of exalted status.
Third, traditional Chinese thinking is marked by a long view of military strategy and tactics. Military power should be accumulated, stored, and showcased publicly but only to the extent necessary to dissuade adversaries from compelling China to use it. Tactics revolve around the slow, incremental acquisition of positions so that opponents only grasp after it’s too late that they are surrounded and face overwhelming power with no reasonable choice but to submit. ”

“ Awareness has been growing in the United States — and in nations around the world — that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has triggered a new era of great-power competition. Yet few discern the pattern in China’s inroads within every region of the world, much less the specific form of dominance to which the party aspires. ”

“ Most importantly, we must concentrate our efforts on bettering our own affairs, continually broadening our comprehensive national power, improving the lives of our people, building a socialism that is superior to capitalism, and laying the foundation for a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position. ”

“ It is not enough to acquire a passing familiarity with critical languages or even a working knowledge. The pressing and intricate problems of world politics require the U.S. government to recruit and cultivate officials who have mastered critical languages — that it, who are capable of reading documents, giving talks, and conducting the affairs of state in the languages spoken by strategic rivals as well as by friends and partners. ”

“ Even as the United States seeks cooperation and welcomes rules-based competition, responsible American statecraft depends on grasping the mounting challenge that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) poses to free and sovereign nation-states and to the free, open, and rules-based international order that is essential to their security, stability, and prosperity. The CCP’s recklessness in allowing the novel coronavirus born in Wuhan to develop into a global pandemic coupled with the concerted disinformation campaign that Beijing undertook to conceal China’s culpability should put doubts to rest. ”

“ As China reaped the benefits of modernization and accelerated economic development, the CCP set its sights on dominating the global economy by leading in the cutting-edge sciences and the high-tech revolution. On its way to building the world’s second largest economy after the United States, the party developed various initiatives and programs integral to Beijing’s long-term strategy of using a “whole-of-nation” approach to achieve — including by deceptive, corrupt, and illicit means — decisive advantage over the United States and other advanced industrial nations. ”

“ Some of China’s vulnerabilities derive from the nature of autocracy.174 For want of freedom, autocracies tend to struggle to maintain economies that over the long term can adapt, innovate, and grow. Because of their imperial ambitions and disdain for international norms and standards, autocracies make poor friends and are prone to estranging allies and partners. And because of the need to repress their own citizens, autocracies typically must divert resources from military affairs abroad to the preservation of order at home. ”

“ Xi said in a 2012 speech. “One can do well only when one’s country and nation do well. Achieving the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is both a glorious and an arduous mission that requires the dedicated efforts of the Chinese people one generation after another. ”

“ Many misunderstand the shape and significance of China’s conduct because they disregard the Chinese Communist Party’s ideas about communism, about China, and about the world. In the United States, this neglect of ideas is sometimes rooted in the supposition that all governments want the freedom for their people in which the United States was conceived and to which it remains dedicated. ”

“ The conventional wisdom long supposed that China is best understood in accordance with ideas of reasonable state behavior. For decades, influential observers in and out of government viewed China’s rise as an opportunity to enlarge the world market and thereby benefit all nations through increased global commerce. ”

“ Rather than yielding political liberalization, China’s outsized economic development and acquisition of international influence have given new life among the party’s faithful to the objective of forging a socialist world order with Chinese characteristics. ”

“ Strategic competition with China requires delicate balancing: The United States must engage with Beijing cautiously and creatively while countering its economic imperialism and military adventurism and firmly opposing the brazen violations of the rule of law and the gross human rights abuses that seem to be inseparable from CCP rule. ”

“ To those ends, the United States must not only share responsibility for peace and security but also must work with friends and partners to reconfigure supply chains to eliminate dependence on China for critical materials and goods ”

“ And whereas communism envisages the eventual withering away of the state, the CCP has made a paramount national priority of rectifying the indignities and injustices that it believes China has suffered at the hands of the West — starting with the recovery of what the party asserts as the Chinese nation’s rightful rule over Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea. ”

“ All five Chinese Communist paramount leaders — Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping — have affirmed the fundamental tenets of Marxism-Leninism while adhering to an extreme interpretation of Chinese nationalism. A beneficiary of the massive modernization campaign launched by Deng and stewarded by Jiang and Hu, Xi has spoken most forcefully and openly about the union of communism and Chinese nationalism in service to the CCP’s ambitions for global preeminence. ”

“ Over the long run, the CCP views international organizations as an opportunity — to shield its abusive development practices and egregious human rights record from criticism, and to gradually adjust global norms, standards, and institutions to socialism’s tenets. ”