China’s growing military power is making America’s defense establishment nervous, with warnings that recent developments show the communist nation poses a direct to the United States around the world.
Among the concerns are the the threats to Taiwan’s sovereignty, recent hypersonic missile tests, an expanding nuclear arsenal, and advances in space and cyber technology, the Hill reported Monday.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley summarized the magnitude of the threat.
“We’re witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geo-strategic power the world has witnessed,” he said Wednesday.
“They are clearly challenging us regionally and their aspiration is to challenge the United States globally.”
Outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. John Hyten warned last week that China’s military power is growing at a “stunning” pace an will surpass the U.S. “if we don’t do something to change it.”
Meanwhile, satellite images show China has built mock-ups of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and destroyer in its northwestern desert, the Associated Press reported Monday, noting the site possibly is being used “for practice for a future naval clash as tensions rise between the nations.”
In Glasgow, Scotland, on Tuesday, President Biden was asked during a news conference if he was worried about the possibility of armed conflict with China.
“No, I’m not,” he said.
“I’m not looking for, I don’t anticipate, there will be a need for … physical conflict.”
Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state under President Trump, said Monday that when Chinese President Xi Jinping hears that, “he hears American weakness.”
The Biden administration speaks of China as a “competitor” rather than an adversary, he noted in an interview with Fox News.
“Deterrence matters,” Pompeo said. “The way you avoid the very conflict that President Biden spoke of is to demonstrate resolve and capacity.”
‘A country that is becoming extraordinarily powerful’
Milley on Wednesday called the test August of a hypersonic weapon that partially orbited Earth then reentered the atmospher and moved toward its target “very close” to being a “Sputnik moment,” referring to launch of the Soviet space satellite in 1957 that shocked the world.
Milley said Wednesday that China “has capabilities in space and cyber, land, sea, air, undersea, and they are clearly challenging us regionally.”
“So we have a case here of a country that is becoming extraordinarily powerful, that wants to revise the international order to their advantage,” he said. “That’s going to be a real challenge over the coming years. In the next 10, 20 years. That’s going to be really significant for the United States.”
The Hill cited the Pentagon’s 200-page report on China’s military power, released Wednesday, which says that despite “challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing continued its efforts to advance its overall development including steadying its economic growth, strengthening its armed forces, and taking a more assertive role in global affairs.”
Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, an author of an FAS report on China released Tuesday, is concerned about Beijing’s advances in conventional warfare as well as its nuclear capability.
He warned that a conventional war could erupt regarding Taiwan — over which Beijing claims sovereignty — as well as the territorial disputes with the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea.
The U.S. long has operated under a policy of “strategic ambiguity” with Taiwan, not declaring support for its independence while engaging in unofficial relations and providing defensive arms. Biden diverged from that policy on Oct. 21, saying the U.S. had a “commitment” to protect Taiwan, but the White House immediately backtracked, insisting U.S. policy was not changing.
‘Kicking the can down the road’
Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member James Inhofe. R-Okla., said in a news conference Tuesday he believes the United States is in “the most endangered position our country has ever been in terms of what China is demonstrating, clearly, what they have the capability of doing.”
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, criticized the Biden administration’s response to China, saying the report shows “what has been self-evident for some time – that China poses a real and imminent threat.”
“Kicking the can down the road for our own military modernization is no longer an option,” he said.
President Biden’s son currently is the target of an FBI investigation that apparently is focused on foreign business deals, including with Communist Party-tied entities in China.
Hunter Biden’s former business partner in a deal with the Chinese energy firm CEFC, Tony Bobulinski, has said he believes Joe Biden is compromised with Beijing.
Bobulinski claimed in an October 2020 interview he met Joe Biden twice in person “to discuss what I was doing with his family’s name and the Chinese CEFC.” An email found at the time on Hunter Biden’s laptop indicated 10% of the CEFC deal was reserved for “the big guy,” which Bobulinksi identified as Joe Biden.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson asked Bobulinski how the deal might “constrain” Joe Biden’s ability to deal with China if he were elected.
“So I think Joe Biden and the Biden family are compromised,” the businessman replied in October 2020.
Bobulinski said he has held a Q-clearance, which involves a briefing on avoiding compromise: “I just don’t see, given the history here and the facts, how Joe can’t be influenced in some manner based on the history that they have with CEFC.”
Previously, in 2013, Hunter Biden struck a deal with a Chinese investment firm worth more than $1 billion during a trip in which he accompanied his vice president father to Beijing on Air Force II.
In November 2020, weeks after the presidential election, a prominent Chinese university professor tied to the communist regime cited the Biden family’s business deals as he explained in a lecture captured on video why a Biden administration will restore Beijing’s influence on its “old friends” on Wall Street and inside the Beltway after it was throttled by President Trump.
“Trump waged a trade war with us. Why couldn’t we handle him? Why is it that between 1992 and 2016 we always resolved issues with US? Did you guys know?’ Di Dongsheng asked in his 18-minute presentation.
“Now, I’m going to drop a bomb: Because we had people up there inside America’s core circle of power, we had our old friends,” said Di, the university’s vice dean of the School of International Relations.
In October 2020, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said that are many lawmakers and business people who refuse, for economic reasons, to acknowledge that China is America’s biggest threat
But “the intelligence doesn’t lie,” he said.
“No other country has the capability of essentially taking away the American dream, and a specific plan to do so, and the intelligence is clear.”
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