Daniel R. Green
The threat to the United States from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is multifaceted, long-term, and aggressive. Whether it’s from military modernization to economic coercion, cyber warfare to space competition, the PRC’s national security challenge is global, and it targets U.S. interests, values, security, and standing in the world.
While much of the focus of U.S. policymakers has been on the military threat from China, the communist country 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.
Their 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 U.S. domestically, they seek to undermine the U.S. regionally and globally, while sowing doubt in the minds of U.S. allies.
In short, in many respects, the U.S. 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 are 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 also distributes government-funded newspapers within the U.S., 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 also seeks to shape American culture through supporting select movies, such as the 2019 movie Midway, 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 of 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.
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