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Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines told the Senate on March 8 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the U.S. intelligence community’s “unparalleled priority” as Beijing draws rising pushback over its aggression towards Taiwan and its relationship with Russia.
“The CCP represents both the leading and most consequential threat to U.S. national security and leadership globally in its intelligence-specific ambitions and capabilities, making it for us our most serious and consequential intelligence rival,” Haines said.
Haines made the remarks at a Wednesday Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats, and as the agency released the unclassified version of its annual threat assessment report (pdf).Expansion At US Expense
Haines warned that China’s aggressiveness, particularly toward Taiwan and its Western allies, is accelerating as the communist regime seeks to maintain its ascendancy on the world stage.
“[China], which is increasingly challenging the United States, economically, technologically, politically and militarily around the world, remains our unparalleled priority,” Haines said in her opening testimony.
However, she warned that the CCP is still seeking to expand its influence and is “increasingly convinced that they can only do so at the expense of U.S. power and influence and by using coordinated whole-of-government tools to demonstrate strength and compel neighbors to acquiesce to its preferences.” She cited China’s ongoing territorial disputes with nations like India, Japan, and its ongoing aggression towards Taiwan, the self-ruled island the CCP claims as its own.
Haines listed a litany of China’s overarching policy goals: the continued expansion of its military and nuclear capacity, research and development of counter-space weapons to challenge burgeoning U.S. control of the upper atmosphere, and others that seek to unseat the United States from the top of the world stage.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s primary foreign policy goal is “to reshape global governance in line with its preferences and governance standards that support its monopoly of power within China,” she said.
