The new art of war : China's deep strategy inside the United States

Half a world away, Australians are engaged in a highly emotional debate about China’s influence in their lives. A book by Clive Hamilton entitled, Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, describes how the Beijing government and Communist Party are systematically attempting to influence Australian policies and cultural life. Hamilton calls it “rot at the heart of the Australian democracy.” The Australians may now understand what China is attempting to do in their country. But the Chinese government is pursuing a similar strategy in the United States and the vast majority of Americans don’t understand it. If anything, the party-state’s campaign in the United States is even deeper because it involves obtaining access to cutting-edge technologies, hacking massive amounts of personal information, undermining our institutions and trying to shape American perception of and policies toward China. Even in the face of President Trump’s so-called trade war with China, the Chinese appear to be accelerating their efforts to penetrate American institutions and opinion-shaping bodies. This is far deeper—and systematic—than Russian efforts to polarize America through the use of social media. William Holstein has been writing about the emergence of China for four decades. He started as a UPI correspondent to Hong Kong in January 1979. He won an Overseas Press Club (OPC) award for best economic coverage from abroad for his coverage of China’s efforts to achieve Deng Xiaoping’s economic modernization vision. The world did not know whether the Chinese could overcome the bitter ideological strife that had crippled them. Bill was the first journalist to describe how China was going to be successful in a new strategy of “getting rich,” as Deng put it. As a result, Bill was promoted to become Beijing bureau chief in 1981-1982, where he studied Mandarin. He has returned many times over the years as world editor at Business Week, as a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, and in other capacities. There are few journalists today who possess the breadth of knowledge and historical perspective that Bill does in understanding America’s engagement with China.