WASHINGTON — China is waging a “quiet kind of cold war” against the UnitedStates, using all its resources to try to replace America as the leadingpower in the world, a top CIA expert on Asia said Friday.
Beijing doesn’t want to go to war, he said, but the current communistgovernment, under President Xi Jingping, is subtly working on multiplefronts to undermine the U.S. in ways that are different than the morewell-publicized activities being employed by Russia.
“I would argue … that what they’re waging against us is fundamentally acold war — a cold war not like we saw during THE Cold War (between the U.S.and the Soviet Union) but a cold war by definition,” Michael Collins,deputy assistant director of the CIA’s East Asia mission center, said atthe Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
Rising U.S.-China tension goes beyond the trade dispute playing out in atariff tit-for-tat between the two nations.
There is concern over China’s pervasive efforts to steal business secretsand details about high-tech research being conducted in the U.S. TheChinese military is expanding and being modernized and the U.S., as well asother nations, have complained about China’s construction of militaryoutposts on islands in the South China Sea.
“I would argue that it’s the Crimea of the East,” Collins said, referringto Russia’s brash annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which wascondemned throughout the West.
Collins’ comments track warnings about China’s rising influence issued byothers who spoke earlier this week at the security conference. The alarmbells come at a time when Washington needs China’s help in ending itsnuclear standoff with North Korea.
On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said China, from acounterintelligence perspective, represents the broadest and mostsignificant threat America faces. He said the FBI has economic espionageinvestigations in all 50 states that can be traced back to China.
“The volume of it. The pervasiveness of it. The significance of it issomething that I think this country cannot underestimate,” Wray said.
National Intelligence Director Dan Coats also warned of rising Chineseaggression. In particular, he said, the U.S. must stand strong againstChina’s effort to steal business secrets and academic research.
Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian andPacific affairs, said increasing the public’s awareness about theactivities of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students or groups atU.S. universities could be one way to help mitigate potential damage.
“China is not just a footnote to what we’re dealing with with Russia,”Thornton said.