Important Elements of Strategy Against China’s Threat

Important Elements of Strategy against China’s Threat

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Midterm Essay (JA-5510)

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The world is staring at a conflict that will pit two superpower titans in a power competition, a rising power and the dominant power. For several decades now, the Chinese communist government has been consistently engaging in concerted efforts to achieve parity or even leapfrog the U.S. on particular fundamental fronts. These fundamental aspects include economic, military, and foreign dominance, among others. Since China has almost gained parity with America, the latter feels threatened and constrained to react, which means the world is at the most dangerous stage (Mastro 2018, 661). This means that when push comes to shove, the two rivals could lock horns. What the world does not know is whether, when they ultimately do so, the conflict will have any legitimacy, as Williams and Caldwell (2006, 2) argue. To achieve dominance, which is one of China’s consuming and clear-cut objectives, the Chinese authoritarian government pursues underhand tactics, programs, and policies, which the American government feels could undermine its autonomy, security, and democracy. This has effectively given rise to a fierce and deep-seated rivalry between the two superpowers, and the resultant ramifications are far-reaching and quite telling. In essence, the overriding preoccupation on the U.S military side is what strategies to use to stem China’s growing threat. The U.S. military needs to devise and implement responses that will decisively and comprehensively counter the challenges posed by China. The threats include economic espionage, clandestine efforts, threats to academia, malign foreign, and weapons of mass destruction. That being the case, several elements of strategy, including deterrence, the American way of war, the Clausewitz theory, and hybrid warfare and gray zone aggression, remain important in addressing the threat posed by China.

One of the most prominent and troubling challenges that China poses in its pursuit of gaining more superiority and surpassing America is economic espionage. China recognizes that achieving the same requires making great strides in cutting-edge technology. However, instead of engaging in innovation, it elects to steal intellectual property from America and use it to compete against the very companies it stole from. The Chinese government is targeting research on all aspects of life, including military and industrial equipment. To achieve this, it entices scientists, through such programs as the Thousand Talents Program, to discreetly and fraudulently infiltrate American innovation and technology back to China (Wray 2020, par. 15). It encourages the scientists to employ all means at their disposal, including stealing proprietary information and violating export control and conflict-of-interest rules. A classic example is that of a scientist called Hongjin Tan, who applied to the Thousand’s Talent Program and stole more than one billion dollars (Wray 2020, par. 16). He also wrongfully acquired trade secrets from his employer, an Oklahoma-based petroleum company. One of the most annoying aspects of the scheme is that the conspirators patent in China the manufacturing processes they steal before offering a joint venture to the American companies they stole the technology from. Chinese economic espionage has escalated profoundly over the past decade, and statistics indicate that it has risen by approximately 1,300 percent (Wray 2020, par. 20). By all standards, this is a significant increment, and the potential harm to American business is unfathomable. If the trend is left unmitigated, many American businesses will be constrained to go down after falling victim to Chinese espionage.

Further, the Chinese administration embraces clandestine efforts, which is yet another threat to the United States of America. In the recent past, China has been liberally using military and non-state hackers to steal American corporate and personal data. For instance, in 2017, the Chinese military conspiratorially hacked Equifax, making away with the sensitive personal information of more than 150 million Americans (Wray 2020, par.6). This and many other fraudulent cases generates the question of why China is extremely preoccupied with the theft of data. The answer to this perplexing conundrum lies in the fact that the country has prioritized becoming a world leader in artificial intelligence. As such, the stolen data feeds right into the development of China’s artificial intelligence tools. What compounds the threat further is that China is using social media platforms to identify individuals with access to America’s government’s sensitive information. Upon