Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China

by Hal Brands

Xi Jinping had consolidated power and made himself the world’s mightiest dictator since Joseph Stalin, while America’s politics continued to be a tribal, polarized mess—and America’s attention was diverted by other crises and conflicts around the globe. Never before had the People’s Republic of China (PRC) possessed such military strength and economic influence vis-à-vis its rivals. By outward appearances, Xi’s “Chinese Dream”—his ambition to make China dominant in Asia and around the globe—was on the verge of becoming a reality. But Xi was tormented by the nightmare of Chinese decline. For years, the pressures on the CCP regime had been mounting. Once-torrid economic growth had slowed to a crawl. The legacy of the One-Child policy was demographic disaster—an impending loss of nearly 200 million working-age individuals in China by mid-century. The regime had become more repressive as it grew ever more petrified of dissent. And in response to Chinese belligerence during the COVID-19 pandemic and for years thereafter, the democratic world had gradually been closing ranks to check Beijing’s rise. Taiwan was finally starting to shore up its inadequate military defenses, as its population rejected any suggestion of reunification with China. The United States—a country with a unique talent for slaying autocratic rivals—was waging a tech and tariff war against China’s economy while retooling its military to take on the PLA. On the eve of war, the world still saw China as a rising...