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The following is adapted from remarks given on Sept. 13, 2022, at the National Conservatism Conference.
China is the biggest challenge that the United States has faced in its entire history. Unfortunately, it is not the type of challenge we are used to.
To start with, the gross domestic product of China, measured as the rival GDP of a great power compared to the United States, is at a whopping 77 percent, up from 13 percent in 2001 compared to any systemic rival America has faced previously, including Imperial Germany (35 percent), Nazi Germany (26 percent), Imperial Japan (13 percent) and the Soviet Union (roughly around 40 percent).
America wasn’t dependent on her former great-power rivals for trade or manufacturing. If tomorrow the dollar isn’t the reserve currency of the world anymore, China will choke us by aligning with the European Union, just like we’re choking Russia now with sanctions. Wars, need not be fought.
According to Statista, in 2017, China had 4.7 million new science, math, and engineering graduates, while India had 2.6 million. The United States had 568,000 and Russia 561,000. There are now three new Chinese universities in the top 20, compared to one European, with the rest, Anglo-American.
China, the world’s second-largest military spender, allocated around $300 billion to its military in 2021, an increase of 4.7 percent compared with 2020, with spending that grew for 27 consecutive years. Chinese shipbuilding is currently outpacing the Anglo-German naval race.
Chinese carrier groups are concentrated in Asia, and American warships are placed in places such as Bahrain and the Baltics, where there are no hegemonic threats present in the near future, and where local powers are capable of balancing any adversaries on their own if they so choose. But they do not, because they know America is there to break the glass during a fire.
China is stockpiling food rapidly. By the end of this year China, with 20 percent of the world’s population, will have 65 percent of the world’s corn and 53 percent of the world’s wheat.
A study found around 160 incidents of Chinese espionage, with nearly a quarter of those between 2000 to 2009 and another three-quarters between 2010 to 2021. The study reports, “42% of actors were Chinese military or government employees. 32% private Chinese citizens. 26% were non-Chinese actors (Americans recruited by Chinese), 34% of incidents sought to acquire military technology, 51% of incidents sought to acquire commercial technologies, 16% of incidents sought to acquire information on US civilian agencies or politicians, 41% of incidents involved cyber espionage.”
A recent National Association of Scholars report stated, that, of the 104 Confucius Institutes that have closed or are in the process of closing, at least 28 have replaced it with a similar program, and at least 58 have maintained close relationships with their former partners.
Socially, China is doing the exact opposite of what they are preaching abroad, often on social media. China’s government banned feminine men on TV and told broadcasters to “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal aesthetics.” China’s Education Ministry published plans to “cultivate masculinity” in boys from kindergarten through high school with more effort on physical education. A crackdown was ordered on any feminist activism or movements like “Me Too.
