WASHINGTON —
China’s growing pessimism about U.S.-China relations is preparing Beijing for a war it does not want to fight, according to assessments by top U.S. intelligence officials.
Doug Wade, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) China task force, warned on Tuesday (March 14) that the United States and China risked entering a “period of increasing confrontation” in which Beijing would increasingly Willing to show strength in a variety of ways.
“It’s going to manifest itself in a pretty comprehensive way — in every diplomatic, informational, economic, Every domain at the commercial level.”
Wade added that Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top officials in the Chinese Communist Party believe that the United States “doesn’t want China to take its rightful place as a world leader,” and cautioned that Beijing’s The South China Sea and what it does with Taiwan will be telling.
“China doesn’t want to fight us over Taiwan,” he said. He added: “If they had to fight, they would … they didn’t rule it out.”
China’s ambitions
Days before Wade’s comments, top US intelligence officials told lawmakers to beware of the Chinese government’s ambitions on the world stage.
“I will never underestimate the ambitions of the current Chinese leadership
A day before that, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence , said Xi and other leaders, while concluding that “preventing rising tensions and maintaining a stable relationship with the United States, served their best interests”, but they are still willing to risk conflict.
“The CCP is increasingly convinced that it can only achieve its goals at the expense of U.S. power and influence,” she added.
Low Threshold
DIA’s Wade said Tuesday that some of the first signs of an impending military conflict in Taiwan are “likely to be well below the threshold of conflict.”
“This could include a wide range of activities, starting with activities such as cyber, including activities such as blocking or increasing violations of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and Taiwan’s airspace area and naval violations,” he said. There is also the possibility that the Chinese military will try to prevent the United States from entering Taiwan
. The military provides critical support like it did to Ukraine.
“China’s ability to develop what you might call ‘anti-access’ or ‘area denial,’ and its ability to pressure the United States and its allies to stay out of combat, is something that worries me very much,” Wade said.
China The military may also seek to challenge the United States in space.
New Space Race
“China sees space as a potential U.S. vulnerability,” Wade said. He called Beijing’s space program “second only to the United States.”
“China has various space and counterspace assets or capabilities that concern us very much,” he added. “Whether you’re talking about ground-based interceptors, or orbiting equipment, electronic warfare.” “
They accept the fact that we use space quite effectively in our military operations and military capabilities, and China wants to be able to dominate this domain, as They’re trying to dominate just about every other domain of military warfare.”
Another top DIA official warned on Friday (March 10) that China is already a world leader in the development of hypersonic missiles.
Paul Freisthler, chief scientist for science and technology at the Defense Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers: “While both China and Russia have conducted several successful hypersonic weapons tests and may have deployed combat systems, China is ahead of Russia in both the supporting infrastructure and the number of systems.”
Unlike ballistic missiles, which travel at hypersonic speeds but follow a defined trajectory, hypersonic weapons, despite traveling at Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound), still High mobility.
The U.S. has been developing a range of hypersonic weapons, all of which U.S. officials say are still in testing or development.
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