The China Challenge | Polaris National Security

The CCP is the greatest danger to America since the Soviet Union. It aims to overtake the U.S.-led liberal international order and replace it with authoritarianism that uses military coercion to advance China’s interests. China threatens our military superiority, economic and technological security, and social fabric. But rather than meeting this challenge, the Biden-Harris Administration has preached the importance of cooperation with China and prioritized maintaining good relations. Inadequate action has been taken to enhance our defense posture, confront the CCP’s manipulative trade practices, block its espionage tactics, and deliver accountability to woke companies kowtowing to Beijing.

The Biden-Harris China strategy is predicated on misguided reasoning with one overriding priority: avoid conflict. It seeks to manage competition with the CCP using accommodation rather than win it with deterrence. And it denies the obvious: that we are already in a Cold War with China. National security conservatives want to keep the peace. But we also understand that policies aimed at avoiding conflict often guarantee the conditions for conflict. The Biden foreign policy signals conciliation to Beijing and that America would rather achieve a temporary thaw in relations than constrain the CCP’s malign behaviors. A strategy that chases amicable ties and elusive climate change goals over defending American interests is doomed to fail.

Taiwan’s Future and America’s Role in Defending It

China’s growing authoritarian role in the world runs directly counter to U.S. interests and our security. Beijing’s dangerous ambition to rule the world as it sees fit is a direct threat to U.S. security and global freedom. Taking over Taiwan would be a crucial first step in the CCP’s long-term plan and endanger the United States immensely.
Taiwan produces 63 percent of semiconductors used in America, a critical component in almost every electronic device, and particularly important amidst a worldwide shortage. Should the CCP gain control of Taiwan, it would control 40 percent of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity and become the world’s technology leader.
As result, Taiwan represents an important symbol of America’s commitment to a rules-based international order but is also key enabler of U.S. economic security. China controlling the global chips industry would give the CCP unacceptable leverage.
The best way to protect Taiwan is to make sure there’s never a war in the first place via a successful deterrence strategy. We should support the Taiwanese military with crucial training, elite military equipment, and missile defense systems.
Taiwan is not only our first line of defense against China. It is a friend to America and a strong democracy. We should always stand with our allies. America needs to ensure that China does not take Taiwan. First, we should send Taiwan plenty of defensive weapons so it can do to China what Ukraine is doing to Russia.
America successfully maintains regional power in Southeast Asia, along with our allies, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. Together, the alliance helps deters China’s authoritarian claims over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
But American taxpayers shouldn’t foot the whole bill. We need to encourage Taiwan to spend more on their defense now, and to buy the right weapons from us. And we should ask our allies in Japan, South Korea, and Australia to share the burden with us.

The Emerging Crisis at the Second Thomas Shoal

China is threatening to seize control of part of the Philippines, a U.S. defense treaty ally. The Second Thomas Shoal is to the Asia-Pacific what Crimea was to Europe: a canary in the coal mine. If we don’t stand up here, Beijing will act more aggressively later.

What is the Second Thomas Shoal?

The Second Thomas Shoal is a submerged reef in the Spratly Islands, an archipelago belonging to the Philippines according to an international Arbitral Tribunal, but illegally claimed by China.
The Philippines grounded a military ship, the Sierra Madre, on the Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 to reinforce their sovereignty claims over the area. The Philippines maintains marines on the ship to demonstrate it is an active military site. President Biden has declared the ship falls under the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, signed in 1951.
Since 1999, the Philippines has conducted scheduled “rotation and resupply” missions to transport provisions and rotate military personnel to and from the makeshift outpost.
Starting in 2013, China has positioned a coast guard patrol to provoke the Philippine missions as they resupply the ship, and frequently prevents the Philippines from resupplying marines.
In 2014, China embarked in a full-scale blockade of the Sierra Madre for three weeks, forcing the Philippines to airdrop supplies.
Starting in 2022, Chinese coast guard and militia vessels ramped up efforts to impede resupply missions, frequently gathering around the shoal in larger formations and resorting to more assertive measures to obstruct ships from reaching the Sierra Madre.
China defends these actions by alleging that the Philippines is transporting construction materials, suggesting their intention to either fortify the Sierra Madre into a permanent structure or establish a new outpost altogether on Second Thomas Shoal.

What Should the United States Do Next?

America has a longstanding Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines, and we are bound to protect their territory from CCP aggression. We should publicly and privately reaffirm our commitment, as both the Trump and Biden Administrations have done.
We shouldn’t be cowed by CCP threats. Instead, we should consider joint resupply operations with Manila and explore ways to replace the ship with a permanent outpost.
The U.S. military should work to rebuild a military presence in the Philippines, especially at four new sites recently outlined in a joint defense cooperation agreement.
President Biden and our national security leaders must demonstrate—through actions as well as words—that we will not let China violate the Philippines’ territorial sovereignty.
There must be no public caveats about “minor incursions”, nor desperate offers of concessions and pleading for dialogue and phone calls. Biden already failed to deter Russia from invading Europe – he must learn from the lessons of that invasion and stand strong against China here. The PRC expects weakness: we must show strength.

Resisting China’s Military Buildup

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is conducting a buildup at a pace far exceeding initial U.S. intelligence and Pentagon predictions. While the Biden Administration recognizes this threat, it has not developed a deterrence-capable military.
Two decades ago, the PLA was a low-tech, ground-centric force that operated below the U.S. military across every metric, following former CCP Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s directive to prioritize economic and agricultural modernization first. Since then, the CCP has leveraged access to our military technology to transform the PLA to a high-tech force capable of synchronizing air, naval, ground, and high-tech cyber forces.
Now, the PLA excels in missile technology and has shaped its force structure to counter specific U.S. advantages, particularly our advanced air and maritime capabilities. In 2021, the Pentagon revealed that China is equal to or exceeds the United States in shipbuilding, land-based ballistic missiles, and integrated air defense systems.
The PLA’s first priority is maintaining domestic CCP control and regime survival. After that, its focus is the forced capture of Taiwan and the prevention of U.S. intervention through Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2/AD). A2/AD is a military strategy used to prevent your adversary from operating in a specific area with defensive weapons and measures, frustrating their ability to project military power or carry out offensive operations.
Chinese calculations are carefully formed by watching U.S responses to other global crises. Under President Biden, the Taliban overtook Afghanistan and Russia invaded Ukraine with limp U.S. responses in both disasters. The United States needs to dramatically increase its posture in the Asia-Pacific to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

Genocide in Xinjiang

Since 1949, the CCP have been responsible for the deaths of dozens of millions of people through Maoism-induced famines of the Great Leap Forward. The CCP has returned to its savage roots and weaponized a twenty-first century security state in 2014 by placing over one million Muslims of the Uyghur minority group in forced detention camps, where they are subject to brutal torture, forced labor, and brainwashing. This is a massive human rights abuse at a staggering scale.
In January 2021, Secretary Pompeo formally declared that the CCP was conducting a genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang.
The Uyghur [pronounced WE-gur] people are Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang [pronounced SEEN-gee-aang] region of China who vary ethnically from the Han culture that dominates the majority of China. The CCP has violently pursued Uyghurs’ assimilation and dissolution into the rest of Han culture. They use sadistic techniques including sterilizations, forced abortions, and torture to destroy all Uyghur cultural influences.
The CCP exports Communist Party workers to Xinjiang that move in and live with Uyghur families. Excruciating reports have come out detailing the rapes of Uyghur women, beatings of men, and communist brainwashing of young children.
The CCP often summons Uyghur citizens to ‘routine’ meetings, only to never be seen again. Many cases involve Uyghurs practicing basic aspects of their faith. Many Uyghurs visiting in China find themselves spending months under inhumane conditions for no reason.
Despite the ongoing genocide, many American businesses retain deep ties with Xinjiang, which aids the CCP’s persecution. Congress should continue to pass legislation enacting stiff penalties for those who enable the CCP’s genocide and banning products produced through forced labor in Xinjiang.

Technological and Social Threats

CCP agents have infused themselves into every facet of American society and seek to leverage their influence to benefit China at our expense. Few forces have been more pernicious than TikTok, a platform that gave Beijing access to troves of data via its parent company, ByteDance, posing a critical threat to our national security. While Congress has finally acted to force its divestiture, it has already spread significant anti- American propaganda and endangered the privacy of millions of American users.
China has stolen over $600 billion per year in intellectual property through forced technology transfer & intellectual property theft, academic espionage, and forcing cultural appeasement. At one point, the FBI had over 1,000 open investigations into Chinese IP theft; over 1,200 IP theft lawsuits have been brought by U.S. companies against Chinese entities in either the United States or China.
The Trump Administration took China to task for its deceptive economic practices and launched a whole-of-government response. Unfortunately, President Biden has stalled on some of these important initiatives, even shutting down government-wide investigations.
Many American officials have wrongly assumed that by opening to the world, China would be incentivized to play by international rules, engage in free trade, and democratize. Instead, the CCP used their newfound economic power to increase their authoritarian chokehold in China and expand it abroad.

China and COVID-19

China continues to stonewall international efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19, resulting in unconvincing and inconclusive reports. Many experts theorize that COVID-19 originated through accidental leakage in a state-run bio- agent laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which was only a quarter mile from where the first known case of COVID-19 was discovered. The Intelligence Community remains divided on the origins of COVID-19, but significant circumstantial evidence points to the lab-leak theory.

The CCP withheld critical information on COVID-19 from the beginning, arrested scientists and doctors, burned scores of documents, and downplayed the pandemic’s severity. These actions hampered the global response, including in the United States.
Whether you think we should use our withdraw or presence to push for WHO reforms, the status quo is not acceptable. The United States should absolutely use funding pressure and other mechanisms to influence WHO actions.
The Biden Administration has done little to hold the CCP accountable for its willful negligence on COVID-19. Instead, the White House has rejoined the WHO without reforms in place and continued to herald Dr. Fauci despite his deceit on the perils of gain-of-function research and the NIH’s collaboration with the WIV.
In late 2019, Chinese doctors in Wuhan discovered a dangerous coronavirus pathogen with pneumonia-like symptoms and rapid communal spread. Coincidentally, the WIV is one of the world’s only coronavirus research centers. The CCP refused to acknowledge the existence of COVID-19; Western media sourced the doctors directly in reports.
By January 2020, Chinese doctors tried to alert the public to the rapidly spreading virus. The CCP question the doctors and forced them to sign a statement denouncing the warning as an unfounded and illegal rumor. Tragically, some of these doctors went missing and still have not been seen. When thousands of patients with COVID-19 symptoms overwhelmed Wuhan hospitals, the CCP only acknowledged 548 cases.
With the deadly pathogen spreading rapidly, the CCP imposed a strict lockdown on the Hubei province while keeping international travel wide open. The CCP, with WHO agreement, urged domestic airline carriers to continue flying international routes through February 2020.

Policy Memorandums

Chinese Military Build-Up

The rapid Chinese military build-up has outpaced U.S. intelligence and Pentagon predictions. Instead of preparing the U.S. military to deter the rising Chinese threat, Biden calls for decreasing military spending to levels members of his own political party refuse to propose.

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THE RED 10: The Ten Worst Corporate Appeasers of Communist China

The list of the CCP’s aggressive acts grows monthly – from supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to flying a spy balloon over the continental United States. Such actions merit a robust response – not just from the U.S. government from every segment of society. The monumental task of preventing the CCP from carrying out its goals of domination cannot be achieved without the cooperation of the American business community.

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Why Defending Taiwan Matters

China’s growing authoritarian role in the world runs directly counter to U.S. interests and our security— their dangerous ambition to rule the world as they see fit is a direct threat to U.S. security, our interests, and the interest of freedom in the world. Taking over Taiwan would be a crucial first step in the CCP’s long-term plan and endanger the United States immensely.

Find Out More →

The CCP's Genocide in Xinjiang

Since 2014, the CCP has placed over one million Muslims of the Uyghur minority group in forced detention camps. This is a human rights abuse at a scale not observed since Hitler’s concentration camps during the Holocaust. In January 2021, the Trump Administration formally recognized that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing genocide against the Uyghur People.

Find Out More →

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The Emerging Crisis at the Second Thomas Shoal

Newsroom | China

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The Emerging Crisis at the Second Thomas Shoal

The Second Thomas Shoal arguably poses the greatest immediate risk of escalation between the U.S. and Chinese militaries as we have declared our obligation to respond if China were to attack the Philippines. President …

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