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发帖数: 2555 | 1 ASPEN, Colo. -- China is waging a "quiet kind of cold war" against the
United States, using all its resources to try to replace America as the
leading power in the world, a top CIA expert on Asia said Friday. Beijing
doesn't want to go to war, he said, but the current communist government,
under President Xi Jingping, is subtly working on multiple fronts to
undermine the U.S. in ways that are different than the more well-publicized
activities being employed by Russia.
"I would argue ... that what they're waging against us is fundamentally a
cold war -- a cold war not like we saw during THE Cold War (between the U.S.
and the Soviet Union) but a cold war by definition," Michael Collins,
deputy assistant director of the CIA's East Asia mission center, said at the
Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
Rising U.S.-China tension goes beyond the trade dispute playing out in a
tariff tit-for-tat between the two nations.
There is concern over China's pervasive efforts to steal business secrets
and details about high-tech research being conducted in the U.S. The Chinese
military is expanding and being modernized and the U.S., as well as other
nations, have complained about China's construction of military outposts on
islands in the South China Sea.
"I would argue that it's the Crimea of the East," Collins said, referring to
Russia's brash annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which was
condemned throughout the West.
Collins' comments track warnings about China's rising influence issued by
others who spoke earlier this week at the security conference. The alarm
bells come at a time when Washington needs China's help in ending its
nuclear standoff with North Korea.
On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said China, from a
counterintelligence perspective, represents the broadest and most
significant threat America faces. He said the FBI has economic espionage
investigations in all 50 states that can be traced back to China.
"The volume of it. The pervasiveness of it. The significance of it is
something that I think this country cannot underestimate," Wray said.
National Intelligence Director Dan Coats also warned of rising Chinese
aggression. In particular, he said, the U.S. must stand strong against China
's effort to steal business secrets and academic research.
Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and
Pacific affairs, said increasing the public's awareness about the activities
of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students or groups at U.S.
universities could be one way to help mitigate potential damage.
"China is not just a footnote to what we're dealing with with Russia,"
Thornton said. |
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