The U.S. State Department’s new China strategy paper, released on Nov. 20, brings to mind an old line from British playwright Tom Stoppard: “It’s half as long as Das Kapital and only twice as funny.” The document is a slog. It is a mix of a bill of particulars about China’s aggressive tactics, often-strained explanations of Marxist-Leninist theory that recall a college political science paper, ideological jingoism, and, ultimately, 10 ideas for what the United States should do going forward—recommendations that are most notable for what they fail to address.
The topic of the paper is an urgent one. The world has, as the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy put it, reentered an age of “great power competition.” It is common to talk about relations with Russia and China in this regard, but while Russia’s destructive power—both its arsenal of nuclear weapons and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s penchant for invading neighbors and propping up autocrats—must be taken seriously, the country is a waning power. China is a waxing one, and its dynamic and growing economy and variegated assertions of influence beyond its borders, as well as its revisionist approach to the international order, make it the key actor in precipitating a new era of global competition. The behavior of China’s dictatorial regime and its intended medium-term trajectory are relatively clear. The response of the world’s democracies, and U.S. leadership within that response, is the central geopolitical question of our time.
