The Council is proud to serve as a platform for bold ideas, insights, and strategies as we advance our mission of shaping the global future together for a more free, prosperous, and secure world. Nonetheless, we stand by the importance and gravity of the issues that this paper raises and view it as one of the most important the Council has ever published. The Council’s publications always represent the views of the author(s) rather than those of the institution, and this paper is no different from any other in that sense. The Atlantic Council as an organization does not adopt or advocate positions on particular matters. The Council will not be confirming the author’s identity unless and until the author decides to take that step. The Council has not taken such a measure before, but it made the decision to do so given the extraordinary significance of the author’s insights and recommendations as the United States confronts the signature geopolitical challenge of the era. The author of this work has requested to remain anonymous, and the Atlantic Council has honored this for reasons we consider legitimate but that will remain confidential. All US policy aimed at altering China’s behavior should revolve around this fact, or it is likely to prove ineffectual.” Changing their decision-making will require understanding, operating within, and changing their political and strategic paradigm. “US strategy must remain laser focused on Xi, his inner circle, and the Chinese political context in which they rule. “The single most important challenge facing the United States in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian China under President and General Secretary Xi Jinping,” it says. The focus of the paper is China’s leader and his behavior. We have maintained the author’s preferred title for the work, “The Longer Telegram,” given the author’s aspiration to provide a similarly durable and actionable approach to China. Written by a former senior government official with deep expertise and experience dealing with China, the strategy sets out a comprehensive approach, and details the ways to execute it, in terms that will invite comparison with George Kennan’s historic 1946 “long telegram” on Soviet grand strategy. Today the Atlantic Council publishes an extraordinary new strategy paper that offers one of the most insightful and rigorous examinations to date of Chinese geopolitical strategy and how an informed American strategy would address the challenges of China’s own strategic ambitions.

National measures to rebuild American economic and military strengthĭeterring and preventing China from crossing US red linesĪnd may the best side win in the global battle for ideas PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: THE CONTENT OF AN EFFECTIVE US CHINA STRATEGY US response: Political inertia or strategic visionĬhina’s evolving strategy toward the United StatesĮstablishing a long-term US national China strategy The foremost goal of US strategy should be to cause China’s ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order rather than building a rival order, and that it is in the Chinese Communist Party’s best interests to not attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores.Communist Party elites are much more divided about Xi’s leadership and vast ambitions than is widely appreciated. US strategy and policy toward China must be laser-focused on the fault lines among Xi and his inner circle–aimed at changing their objectives and behavior and thus their strategic course.This is a dereliction of national responsibility. The United States has so far had no such strategy with regard to China. China has long had an integrated, operational strategy for dealing with the United States. The single most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping.

The longer telegram