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LONDON – China leads a "cold war" against the United States to become the world's first power, a CIA expert Beijing does not want not go to war against the United States, but is trying to undermine Washington's global position by using all avenues available, said Michael Collins, deputy director of the CIA's East Asia mission center. 19659004] "I would say … what they lead against us is fundamentally a cold war – a cold war not as we saw it during the Cold War [between the U.S. and the Soviet Union] but a cold war by definition" , he told Aspen Security. Collins
"The Chinese are fundamentally seeking to replace the United States as the dominant power in the world," said Collins
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While the United States remains the dominant military and economic power, China is the second bi-world Relations between the two powers have worsened in recent months, with the United States and China imposing tariffs on billions of dollars of goods from each other in a growing trade war .
President Donald Trump threatened to exacerbate tensions on Friday by telling the CNBC that he would be willing to impose tariffs on all Chinese goods imported to the United States if needed
but the diplomatic tensions go beyond the escalation of the trade war. 19659004] Washington has repeatedly criticized Beijing for what it says is a deeply rooted theft of US intellectual property and has forced the transfer of technology from US companies to Chinese competitors, accusations that Chinese authorities deny. He also criticized China for asserting its dominance in the disputed South China Sea.
"I would say that it is East Crimea," Collins said, referring to the brutal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Collins
Collins is not the only one in the intelligence community to worry about China's growing influence.
Earlier this week, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the security forum that China is the largest, most difficult, and most important. "For them, it's a state effort, it's economic espionage as well as traditional espionage," Wray told the forum on security this week, adding that the Chinese threat could not be underestimated.
Collins is in agreement. "The Chinese are defining more and more a conflict with the United States and what we consider a systemic conflict," he said, explaining that they were pushing their own form of socialism
"That creates a competition with us. "
Susan Thornton, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, agreed with Collins that China posed a China has a different challenge to the US than Russia. "China is not just a footnote to what we are dealing with Russia," said Thornton.
Marcel Letter , former Under Secretary of Defense Intelligence, Collins and Thornton agreed that China was using a myriad of
He noted that China has the second largest defense budget in the world and the largest standing army of forces but said that it was also pursuing in the cyber espionage, artificial intelligence and hyper-sonic.
Warnings came at a time when Washington needs China's support in its negotiations with North Korea to denuclearize the peninsula.
It also happens that Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Africa on Saturday on four nations.
China is Africa's largest trading partner and the country opened its first military base on the continent last year in the East African nation of Djibouti. [19] 659004] In comparison, Trump has shown little interest in the second most populous continent in the world.
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