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UNDERSTANDING CHINA’S STRATEGY
CHINA’S NATIONAL STRATEGY
- The PRC’s national strategy is to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049. The strategy is a determined pursuit of political, social, and military modernity to expand the PRC’s national power, perfect its governance, and revise the international order in support of the PRC’s system of governance and national interests. The PRC views the United States as deploying a whole-of-government effort meant to contain the PRC’s rise, which presents obstacles to its national strategy.
- The PRC characterizes its view of strategic competition in terms of a rivalry among powerful nation states, as well as a clash of opposing ideological systems. PRC leaders believe that structural changes in the international system and a confrontational United States are the root causes of intensifying strategic competition between the PRC and the United States.
- — In March 2023, Xi Jinping told delegates to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference that “Western countries led by the United States have implemented comprehensive containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development.”
- The PRC’s strategy entails deliberate and determined efforts to amass, improve, and harness the internal and external elements of national power that will place the PRC in a “leading position” in an enduring competition between systems.
- In the 20th Party Congress Political Work Report, the CCP expanded on its calls to prepare for an increasingly turbulent international climate, while reporting it had “enhanced” the PRC’s security on all fronts and “withstood political, economic, ideological, and natural risks, challenges, and trials.”
FOREIGN POLICY
- The PRC’s foreign policy seeks to build a “community of common destiny” that supports its strategy to realize “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” The PRC’s ambition to
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OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Annual Report to Congress. Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China