China’s Strategic Initiatives Face Headwinds in 2025

Workers take down a Belt and Road Forum panel outside the venue of the forum in Beijing on April 27, 2019. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

Communist China’s strategic goals pose challenges for the United States and its allies, but the United States is developing countermeasures.

Tanner Greer is the director of the Center for Strategic Translation, a research center that investigates and analyzes Chinese politics. He postulates that the overriding strategic goal of the Chinese Communist Party—and particularly Chinese leader Xi Jinping—is “to restore China to a position of glory and influence commensurate with its ancestral heritage.” A commensurate domestic objective that Beijing is no doubt seeking should be added to this goal: to maintain the authoritarian rule of the CCP in perpetuity, including the crushing of all dissension and threats to the Party.

Upon ascending to power in 2013, Xi periodically proclaimed various grandiose strategies and initiatives to achieve the required restoration with communist regime characteristics. These include various initiatives framed using a belt-road metaphor and others that contain the word “global” in their titles, which signify Beijing’s intentions to heavily influence (if not dominate) their focus areas.

Let us examine the purpose and intent behind each initiative and their outlook vis-à-vis ongoing efforts to counteract these communist schemes.

Belt and Road Initiative

This trillion-dollar spider’s web is the centerpiece of Xi’s strategy to remake the world in Beijing’s eyes. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as “One Belt, One Road,” initially consisted of two major components: the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21^st Century Maritime Silk Road.

A principal BRI objective is to develop a global manufacturing infrastructure controlled by communist China, with the various “roads” serving as spokes in a wheel that service the hub (mainland China). The infrastructure elements are primarily focused on the development of transportation assets, including roads, ports, railroads, bridges, etc., that Beijing exploits to transport the resources and raw materials needed to fuel Chinese industries, as well as support the exportation of finished Chinese goods to overseas markets around the world.

Countries are enticed to participate in BRI projects by proffered Chinese loans. These Chinese investments come with strings attached—referred to as “debt traps”—as they are not grants but loans that must be paid back. Countries often repay the loans by granting Beijing long-term exploitation rights for natural resources and/or long-term lease arrangements for ports, railroads, and other infrastructure developed using BRI loans, which amounts to a loss of sovereignty as the CCP gains control over local economies.

The CCP uses certain words to sell BRI projects to unwitting countries, including euphemisms such as “high-quality Belt and Road cooperation” and “closer partnerships for openness and inclusiveness.”

However, recipient countries are realizing that the advantages primarily benefit China. These include an influx of Chinese workers to carry out projects, debt service on loans from China that result in the transfer of control over resource development to Beijing, and the presence of Chinese military ships and personnel at bases and ports. As a result, these factors lead to growing resentment among local populations, who feel exploited.

The best U.S./allied countermeasures to BRI expansion include diplomatic efforts to expose the lessons learned from BRI investments to countries considering initiating new projects, encouraging China to forgive BRI-related loans, and implementing a comprehensive U.S. strategy and plan to counter the BRI.

These efforts will be fortified by the Build Responsible Infrastructure Development for the Global Economy (BRIDGE) Act, which was introduced in the U.S. Congress in 2023 to counter the BRI. If passed, the bill would “direct the Department of State, with other relevant government agencies, to develop a comprehensive, government-wide strategy on countering China’s BRI.”

The goal is to develop a strategic plan that is fundamentally linked to “broader U.S. national security priorities and objectives, including the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy.” This is becoming an increasing imperative as there is growing bipartisan recognition that the Chinese regime is the No. 1 security threat to the United States (and the world).

BRI Extensions

BRI has been extended by other initiatives that use the belt-road metaphor that Xi proclaimed in recent years, including the Arctic Silk Road, the Space Silk Road, the Health Silk Road, and the Digital Silk Road.

Proposed by China in 2017, the Arctic (Polar) Silk Road extends the original BRI planned network to the Arctic Ocean in partnership with Russia. This extension would expand resource extraction for hydrocarbons and minerals and sea transport in the Arctic region.

The American Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic Shelf may hold approximately 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.

Beijing’s goal is to transport goods through the Arctic from China to Europe, reducing the distances by up to 20 to 30 percent and saving time, fuel, and human resources.

The problem for China is that Beijing has no continuous land presence in the Arctic region and thus is not a member of the Arctic Five nations (Norway, Russia, Canada, Denmark, and the United States) nor the group of three nations proximate to the Arctic Circle (Iceland, Finland, and Sweden). The Russians are doubtless concerned about “Chinese encirclement,” at least to some extent, while the Arctic Five are all U.S. allies and not interested in ceding anything in the Arctic to the Chinese.

A solid allied response is the best antidote to CCP meddling in the Arctic. The European Union’s economic sanctions against Moscow have significantly slowed China’s Arctic aspirations along Russia’s periphery. President Donald Trump’s recent emphasis on Greenland as a strategic U.S. asset is a direct response to China’s Polar Silk Road intentions.

The Space Silk Road was proposed to extend the BRI into a new domain. Introduced in 2014 by the China-based International Alliance of Satellite Application Services, the Space Silk Road aims to create an entire range of indigenous Chinese space capabilities, including satellites, launch services, and ground infrastructure, to support industries and service providers.

A centerpiece is the development of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), which is a direct competitor to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS). These systems provide geo-spatial positioning of ships, submarines, and aircraft and support position, navigation, and tracking for civil and military purposes.

BDS is intended to provide the backbone for these services for countries within the BRI and compete with the United States for future Global Navigation Satellite Systems market share, including smartphones, vehicle-borne terminals, and wearable devices.

The U.S. government has an ongoing multi-billion dollar GPS modernization program intended to improve GPS capabilities, harden the system against Chinese cyber attacks, and incorporate advanced technologies.

While the original intention of the BRI was to promote Chinese mercantilism, authoritarian capitalism, and trade practices outside international norms, the objectives of the Health (2015) and Digital (2015) Silk Roads are more insidious. They each serve as a mechanism for promoting the CCP’s vision of “universal rules and standards” around the world as a replacement for the Western-dominated international order, standards, and practices and are a direct assault on international standards in a struggle to control the future. Controlling the standards leads to controlling the emerging technologies that drive the future economy.

The Health Silk Road aims to showcase China’s leadership potential in global health care and increase the world’s dependence on Chinese global health care solutions. In this case, China seeks to export medicines, vaccines, personal protective equipment, and various medical technologies. More importantly, China seeks to control the production of the world’s supply of pharmaceutical drugs and their precursors, as well as gain control of the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote, if not mandate, the regime’s health care products and Beijing’s overseas development assistance for health programs.

Perhaps the best countermeasure to the Health Silk Road is the constant reminder of the CCP’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which included a refusal to share critical information on Chinese patients and casualties, China’s takeover of the WHO to conceal CCP culpability, and extensive efforts by Beijing to make money on the misfortunes of others by selling ineffective Chinese vaccines and PPE. The CCP’s flat-out refusal to share medical data during the pandemic is a warning to the world that its Health Silk Road platitudes cannot be trusted.

Another countermeasure implemented on Jan. 20 by Trump was the signing of an executive order withdrawing the United States from membership in the WHO. A key aspect of the order was to halt negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations. These efforts have been significantly influenced by China and are seen as attempts to undermine U.S. public health authorities for the benefit of Beijing. Other nations, including Argentina, are likely to follow this course of action.

The Digital Silk Road aims to create a spatial information system for the geographic regions covered by the BRI by promoting the seamless integration of telecommunications networks, AI capabilities, cloud computing, e-commerce and mobile payment systems, surveillance technology, smart cities, and other high-tech areas among participating countries under China’s technical leadership.

Beijing is subsidizing the deployment of inexpensive, high-quality technology to build wireless phone networks and broadband internet coverage in Third World countries. Accepting those Chinese subsidies comes with strings because adopting Chinese technology means risking cyber espionage, surveillance, and monitoring while potentially fracturing the global internet by forcing the adoption of incompatible Chinese technology standards. This is particularly important as the telecommunications systems shift to 5G networks.

Many countries—including the United States, Japan, and Australia—have banned Chinese tech firms from their 5G infrastructures to minimize Chinese cyber espionage and preclude China from setting 5G standards that would promote cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Made in China 2025

Announced by Xi in 2015 to address the manufacturing hub component of the BRI, the purpose of the Made in China 2025 initiative was to implement modern Chinese-developed technology and networks to reduce dependence on foreign technology and to promote Chinese technological manufacturers and exports throughout the world. A key goal is to build out a complete industrial supply chain intended to make whatever China needs with minimal foreign dependencies.

The initiative focused on 10 priority sectors: new-generation information technology; advanced numerical control machine tools and robotics; aerospace technology, including aircraft engines and airborne equipment; biopharmaceuticals; high-performance medical equipment; electrical equipment; farming machines; railway equipment; energy-saving and new energy vehicles, and ocean engineering.

Incorporating advanced technologies from these sectors into Chinese manufacturing processes would put China on a par with other countries in terms of quality and cost and lead to an explosion of exports, with an eventual goal of making China the leading manufacturing hub of the world.

Emily de La Bruyère, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, testified about Made in China 2025 before the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission on Feb. 6. She said that “China uses its industrial capacity to project power … for strategic ends, to tie foreign incentives to China’s own — and, ultimately, to shape global markets, politics, information, technology, in a self-reinforcing fashion.”

She further noted that if China achieves the goals of Made in China 2025, “the U.S. industrial and defense industrial bases will find themselves entirely dependent on China.”

This threat to the United States cannot be left unchallenged.

There are a number of countermeasures being implemented by the United States and other countries that address the trade deficits that have developed, as China has become the top exporting country in the world in 2024. These countermeasures include:

• Revocation of China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status.
• Reestablishment of the infrastructure necessary for U.S. domestic industry growth, especially a permissive regulatory environment.
• Implementation of tariffs to shelter and grow domestic industries.
• Reduction of foreign direct investment to China.
• Relocation of factories to other countries.
• Trump’s newly announced “Fair and Reciprocal Plan” to rebalance trade with all countries.
• Increased efforts to shut down and prosecute Chinese industrial espionage and theft of intellectual property.
• Exploration and mining of rare earth elements aimed at breaking the Chinese stranglehold on these strategic materials.
• Coordinated diplomatic pressure on Beijing in response to Chinese mercantilism that violates WTO principles.

China Standards 2035

The China Standards 2035 initiative aims to take control of the international standards certification process by establishing a Chinese standards convention that would replace the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This new framework would focus on key technologies developed by leading Chinese companies such as Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, and others. By controlling the standards, China intends to influence future technology development, integration, deployment, and usage.

These are some of the technologies that China seeks to dominate, if not control outright: 5G, AI, mobile payment systems, blockchain/digital currency, search engines (Baidou), social e-commerce, and many others that will define the new digital economy around the world.

A key U.S. and allied countermeasure to the adoption of Chinese technology standards involves educating potential adopters about the potential for Chinese cyber espionage, the loss of data privacy, and the sabotage of critical infrastructure.

These concerns have led to U.S. bans on the use of key Chinese technologies provided by, for example, Huawei and ZTE, in critical infrastructure systems. Another countermeasure is the continued acceptance and modernization of the ISO standards used by most of the industrial world.

China’s long-term intentions are clear: to elevate Beijing to global leadership by leaping ahead of the U.S. economy through any and all possible means, including industrial espionage and mercantilism. U.S. and allied countermeasures are underway, but are they enough to thwart the CCP’s goals?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.