The surest way to lose a war is to refuse to recognize that you’re in one. The United States at the moment is doing exactly that, ignoring reality. The People’s Republic of China is at war with an oblivious, unprepared America.
Beijing is not trying to hide how it characterizes Sino-U.S. relations. In May 2019, People’s Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, carried a landmark editorial that declared a “people’s war” on America.
In 2023, PLA Daily, the official website of the Chinese military, defined that term, an important one for China’s ruling organization: “A people’s war is a total war, and its strategy and tactics require the overall mobilization of political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, military, and other power resources, the integrated use of multiple forms of struggle and combat methods.”
By now it’s clear: The Communist Party, with its strident anti-Americanism, is establishing a justification for its war on America. As James Lilley, Washington’s ambassador to China at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, said, “The Chinese always telegraph their punches.” Among other things, this means Chinese “propaganda” has consequences.
The Party has always viewed the United States as an existential threat not because of anything Americans say or do but because of who they are. As Miles Yu has pointed out, an insecure ruling organization in Beijing is afraid of the inspirational impact of America’s ideals and form of governance on the Chinese people. Charles Burton of the Sinopsis think tank put it this way in February: “The Chinese regime reviles the United States because it is a beacon to the world affirming the universal entitlement to individual human rights of citizens everywhere and the power of the noble principle of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
This means, try as Americans might, the U.S. will never have amicable relations with China as long as the Communist Party rules.
China’s definition of war is different from America’s. Although Beijing has denied that Unrestricted Warfare, the 1999 book by two Chinese air force colonels, is official doctrine, Chinese actions mimic the book’s arguments. China’s regime is employing, in its across-the-board assault on American society, nontraditional tactics.
Take fentanyl, one of dozens of opioids Chinese technicians design and make in laboratories in China. The near-total Chinese surveillance state knows and therefore approves of the activities of the drug gangs and, of course, state-owned fentanyl producers, and the Chinese central government and Communist Party provide diplomatic, material, and banking assistance. Even China’s nominally private social media sites, like ByteDance’s TikTok, promote illicit drug use in the United States.
Yes, China is in a war as it expansively defines the term. Warfare also explains, among other things, the Communist Party’s theft of hundreds of billions of dollars of American intellectual property each year; its repeated intrusions into American military bases; its millions of cyberattacks every day against U.S. networks; its relentless infiltration of American schools, media outlets, and political parties; its maintenance of secret police stations on American soil; and its malicious tarring of the U.S. all the time by its propaganda organs.
China’s regime is escalating its war on America. The signs are unmistakable. For one thing, Xi Jinping can’t stop talking about his intentions. His now-favorite slogan is “Dare to fight.” Xi’s message has quickly filtered down through the ranks. The Chinese military tells us it is “ready to fight.”
China’s leader is doing more than just talking, however. He is implementing the largest and fastest military buildup since the Second World War, he is trying to sanctions-proof his regime, he is stockpiling grain and other commodities, he is firing military officers opposed to going to war, he is surveying the U.S. for nuclear weapons strikes—that’s what the Chinese balloon that floated over America two years ago was doing—he is converting civilian factory lines for war production, he is calling up reservists, and he is mobilizing China’s civilians for battle.
No American president in a half century, however, has been able to call the Chinese regime an “enemy.”
America acts as if it is at peace, which is the surest way to lose an ongoing war.
