Trump to label China as a strategic ‘competitor’ - Financial Times

17/12/2017

Trump to label China as a strategic ‘competitor’

Beijing accused of pursuing policies of economic aggression to weaken US

Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

President Donald Trump will describe China as a strategic “competitor” on Monday when he releases a national security strategy that accuses Beijing of maintaining a “repressive vision” and pursuing policies of economic aggression aimed at weakening the US.

While the national security strategy outlines a range of threats, most of the criticism is reserved for China and Russia, which are described as “revisionist” powers that are trying to “shape a world antithetical to US values and interests”.

“China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity,” the NSS warns.

Chinese analysts and state media have reacted angrily to reports of Mr Trump’s intended statement, with the Global Times, a nationalist tabloid published by the Chinese Communist party, calling it an “irrational” and “reckless” move that would damage bilateral relations. 

“Washington is using its massive strength to recklessly define the behaviour of and relations with other countries,” the publication said. “It is the US that has recently become the biggest saboteur of international rules and challenger of free trade.”

The designation of Beijing as a strategic competitor comes a month after Mr Trump visited Beijing and warned his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, that the two countries’ economic relationship had not been “very fair for the US” and was badly “out of kilter”.

Every US president since Ronald Reagan has produced one or more national security strategy reports, as required by law. But Mr Trump’s NSS focuses more heavily on economic issues and also adopts a tougher stance on China.

One senior US official said the report referred to China as a “strategic competitor” because Beijing “competes effectively across the political, economic and military and information domains in ways probably not duplicated by our other competitors”.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson declined to comment ahead of the Trump administration’s official announcement on Monday, but stressed that Beijing and Washington had long enjoyed a “mutually beneficial” economic relationship.

Mr Trump’s NSS marks a return to the anti-China rhetoric he employed on the campaign trail. It follows a period of restraint as he pushed Mr Xi to help Washington deal with the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. It also underscores the growing influence of economic nationalists such as Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative, at the expense of a more globally minded group of White House aides, whose ranks are led by Gary Cohn, head of the White House National Economic Council.

“Donald Trump’s election in November 2016 stands as a complete rejection of the American elites’ complicity in the nation’s decline,” said Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist. “Now, President Trump has rejected Gary Cohn and the West Wing globalist accommodation of the regime in Beijing. Trump promised to get tough on China and with his strategic plan he is well on his way.”

The security strategy says US policy in recent decades has been based on the premise that China would liberalise as it developed and integrated into the postwar international order. But “contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others in the region”, it says.

The NSS argues that countries that did not share US values had “distorted and undermined” global economic institutions without undertaking economic reform at home. It says the US would “no longer turn a blind eye to violations, cheating, or economic aggression”. While it does not explicitly name China in this context, the overwhelming majority of the economic charges in the document are aimed at Beijing.

The report also takes aim at Chinese activities outside of Asia and the US. It says China is “gaining a strategic foothold in Europe” through unfair trade practices and by “investing in key industries, sensitive technologies and infrastructure”.

It says China is also expanding its military and economic presence in Africa, and permitting practices that undermine development by “corrupting elites” and locking countries into debt commitments that are not sustainable. It also says China is trying to pull Latin America “into its orbit” though state-led financing and arms sales across the region.

The NSS also takes aim at Russia for a range of military and non-military activities that it says are aimed at destabilising Europe. While Mr Trump has never entirely accepted that Moscow interfered in the US election — as his intelligence agencies said — the report says Russia “interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries around the world,” without naming the US.

The strategy is divided into four elements: protecting the American people, promoting US prosperity, strengthening the military, and advancing US influence. It says the US must reverse the complacency that emerged after the Cold War. It also labels North Korea and Iran as “rogue” regimes and warns about the continuing threat from terrorists and transnational criminal groups.

Additional reporting by Tom Mitchell, Archie Zhang and Xinning Liu in Beijing