The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is intentionally disrupting and undermining the international system that made it a global power, according to Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. The United States and its allies, she said, were prepared to compete vigorously to counter the effort, and to heavily sanction it for support of Russia.
“We have also been clear that we are committed to managing this competition between our countries so that competition does not veer into conflict.”
To that end, Sherman said that the United States would cooperate with China where it was in its interest to do so, and contest the CCP when its actions ran counter to American and allied interests or otherwise undermined the rules-based international order.
Sherman said that the international order as such was the largest driving factor in China’s rise, and that the Chinese CCP was “one of the biggest beneficiaries of that rules-based international order over the last half-century.”
“Today, however, Beijing is seeking to undermine the very system that they benefited from, to return instead to a system where might makes right, and big nations can coerce smaller countries into acting against their own interests,” Sherman said.
This, despite the fact that China previously signed a “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation” with Ukraine, in which it vowed to provide unspecified security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of the threat of a nuclear attack.
Ukraine was not being considered for NATO membership and, even if it were, would be denied on the grounds that it does not maintain territorial integrity in Crimea.
“I could give dozens of examples of [China’s] actions that seek to undermine nations’ political autonomy, to coerce businesses’ decision-making, and more, to literally steal intellectual property and trade secrets, to hunt down and silence human rights defenders and members of ethnic and religious minorities who have left [China], to bend the rules of the international system to suit their interests at the expense of the rest of the world,” Sherman said.
Sherman said that the continued competition between the West and China went beyond support for Russia or mere anti-Americanism, however, and represented a contest over the very character of the future world order. It was a struggle, she said, between the values of representative government and pure authoritarianism.
“Here’s the bottom line,” Sherman said. “The question all of us face in the United States, in Europe, and in nations around the world, is a simple one. What do we want the world to look like? What do we want our future to be?”
“Do we want to have societies where people are free to speak their minds, to call a war by its name and to peacefully protest, or societies where governments are free to crack down harshly on anyone who contradicts the party line?”
“Do we want to have governments that are transparent and accountable to their people, or governments that exist to consolidate their own power and control their people in turn?”