only to control its own population but also to collect data on persons across the globe and to build a world-class military. The CCP has pursued extravagant claims in, and militarization of, the South China Sea in brazen defiance of international law while crushing freedom in Hong Kong and threatening to do the same in Taiwan. The CCP has undertaken major infrastructure and investment projects, debt-trap diplomacy, and other predatory economic practices in every region of the world, the better to induce or compel sovereign nation-states, particularly their governing and business elites, to aid and abet China in the reshaping of world order. And the CCP has leveraged its integration into international organizations to infuse them with norms and standards rooted in the party’s authoritarianism.
China’s conduct reflects the CCP’s short-term priorities and long-term ambitions, the party’s assessment of China’s current stage of development, and its understanding of the geopolitical environment in which China operates. “In this long period of cooperation and conflict, socialism must learn from the boons that capitalism has brought to civilization,” Xi proclaimed in 2013. “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.”12 Examination of the CCP’s conduct in light of its communist and hyper-nationalist ideas demonstrates that by achieving “the initiative” and attaining “the dominant position,” Xi means displacing the United States as the world’s foremost power and restructuring world order to conform to the CCP’s distinctive way of empire.
The purpose of this unclassified Policy Planning Staff paper is to step back and take a long-term view, elaborate the elements of the China challenge, and sketch a framework for the fashioning of sturdy policies that stand above bureaucratic squabbles and interagency turf battles and transcend short-term election cycles. The United States’ overarching aim should be to secure freedom.
