THE threat to the United States from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is multi-faceted, long-term and aggressive. Whether it’s from military modernisation to economic coercion, cyber warfare to space competition, the PRC’s security challenge is global, and it targets US interests, values, security, and standing in the world.
While much of the focus of US policymakers has been on the military threat from China, the communist regime has also implemented a multi-pronged approach to weaken the United States economically, politically, culturally and diplomatically. It is enlisting a whole-of-government strategy blending civil and military approaches with tactics short of war to expand its influence and improve its geopolitical position.
The determined plan uses economics, media, education, politics, culture, diplomacy and information among many other approaches in a highly integrated and orchestrated fashion. Its actions take place within the US domestically, they seek to undermine the US regionally and globally, while sowing doubt in the minds of US allies.
In short, in many respects, the US is involved in a Cold War with China, and it urgently needs to do more to stop their aggressive actions.
A central component of the Cold War with China is the efforts of its government to influence American public opinion and culture. The Chinese Government has a veritable army of anonymous social media accounts which it uses to not only present its views but to foment division among our people while silencing critics of its regime. It distributes government-funded newspapers within the US, little more than propaganda broadsheets, and invests in key media infrastructure to not only support its views but to also mute criticisms of its policies.
Additionally, through massive state support, it seeks to shape American culture through supporting select films, such as Midway (2019), to create division between the alliance of the United States and Japan, as well as prompting the temporary removal of the flag of Taiwan from the jacket of the actor Tom Cruise in the 2022 movie Top Gun: Maverick. Much like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, China uses all its resources to challenge, coerce, silence and divide opinions about its policies and actions. It uses cultural influence as much as any other capability at its disposal.
There is no better example of this than what China has done to expand its capabilities in space. Through robust state-funded support, economic espionage, theft and coercion, China has aggressively grown its constellation of satellites and other capabilities, giving its military and intelligence services as well as its state-run industries significant advantages. To this end, it has tried to replicate Elon Musk’s reusable rocket concept Starship, as well as the Mechazilla catching tower.
These are just the latest examples of Chinese economic espionage which has been going on for decades and done great harm to our commercial space companies. Even as they have advocated peaceful uses of space, China has aggressively militarised space to create advantages that could be used in a future conflict. The US needs to do a better job at confronting this sustained threat.
The Chinese government has sought to systematically expand its power and take over international institutions affiliated with the United Nations and other global and regional organisations. These efforts are made not only to expand its control but to also mute international criticism of the PRC’s actions and to create diplomatic and other complications for the US and its allies.
Consider China’s involvement with United Nations environmental organisations and how it has been able to silence criticism and prevent investigations of the activities of its maritime militia. China pillages fish stocks around the globe and often destroys reefs and harasses other national fishing fleets. It has also done much to downplay the PRC’s significant contributions to air pollution and how its development projects worldwide, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, destroy the environment. Finally, it consistently seeks to reduce Taiwan’s role on the world stage and delegitimise its political system and exclude it from international forums.
While the leaders of the People’s Republic of China publicly call for peaceful relations with the United States, they are relentlessly pursuing a campaign to challenge the US in virtually every economic, political, diplomatic and military sphere of activities. It consistently seeks advantages using a sustained long-term campaign of relentlessly expanding its influence using all of the resources of its government.
In many respects, our country is involved in a new Cold War with China requiring a similarly enduring approach that enlists not just the resources of the US Government but our own civil society, allies and partners, and freedom-loving people across the world. We must do a better job of making America first and China last.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense on May 19, 2025, and is republished by kind permission.
