Peter Tozzi
China is at war. While annexing Taiwan is China’s immediate objective, defeating America is its ultimate goal. General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly stated his intent to “reunify” Taiwan with China. A successful takeover of Taiwan would grant China a power projection platform into the Pacific, threatening America’s allies and partners. It would also challenge the United States in the long-term, threatening to displace the U.S.-led rules-based international order.
To achieve these ambitions, China wages political warfare against Taiwan and the United States. Political warfare is “the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of [a major kinetic] war, to achieve its national objectives” (i.e., from using economic coercion to employing propaganda campaigns), and it is inextricably linked with information warfare. On the information battlefield, China spreads propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation; sows discord within democratic societies; and exerts transnational repression.
China’s political warfare poses an existential threat. It is designed to defeat both countries without fighting a major kinetic war—specifically, without Taiwan and America fighting back. China’s victory ultimately means destruction of democratic governance, freedoms, and sovereignty of both Taiwan and the United States.
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