President Richard Nixon paved the way for a new relationship with China in the 1970s, but it came at a time as Beijing’s influence was growing globally.
“I think China’s rise is inevitable. It’s not rising. It’s already risen. But the question is how China would behave,” said former People’s Liberation Army Senior Colonel Zhou Bo.
Zhou is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University. He began his service with the PLA in 1979, a time when China’s military was experiencing rapid changes.
“I think the United States military is definitely the strongest in the world,” Zhou said. “When China celebrates its centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, that is the goal for us to become world-class military by 2049. That means we believe we can only catch up with the United States militarily by that time.”
Throughout Chairman Mao Zedong’s leadership, China’s military grew in troop size to as many as 6.5 million. As Deng Xiaoping became China’s paramount leader, he put an emphasis on quality over quantity and began reducing troop numbers while pushing to advance technology.
Over the next several decades, China would build up its naval forces, nuclear warhead stockpile and missile arsenal to rival the U.S.
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“I would say between the two countries there is an element of competition,” said Zhou. “I believe even in the military field, China’s strength is growing. And is closing with that of the United States.”
The military threat has paved the way for the new space race and U.S. questions over the close relationship between China’s space program and its military.
“I think the Chinese position is very easy to understand. We have so many troubles on Earth, and why should we even have weapons in the space to strike on our own homeland? It sounds so, so silly, right?” Zhou said. “So far, no country has claimed that they have placed weapons in space. But I think it is not a secret that this is another domain for space superiority.”
In 2007 the PLA destroyed a defunct weather satellite in low Earth orbit using a ground-based anti-satellite missile.
“We definitely have this kind of capability, called ASAT capability, of launching missiles to target on the satellites,” Zhou said. “In space, the question is, it’s very difficult to say what is a weapon and what is not.”
The Defense Intelligence Agency determined the PLA may have ASAT capability against even higher orbits and are working to develop a range of counterspace capabilities.
“We’re not talking about strategic rivalry anymore, we talk about strategic stability and China and the U.S. should achieve strategic stability not only for the benefit of both countries but for the world,” said Henry Wang, founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization.
When it comes to technology, President Donald Trump is pushing to keep the U.S. ahead of China.
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“We’re leading China,” President Trump said on Special Report during his trip to Beijing. “We’re leading China by a lot.”
This week President Trump signed an executive order on Artificial Intelligence that could allow the federal government to review advanced systems before they are publicly released. He had postponed a similar policy less than two weeks earlier over concerns it would hurt U.S. firms in the A.I. race with China.
“The U.S. has a system that really works well in the U.S., but China has a system that works well in China, but doesn’t mean the two systems cannot parallel develop,” Wang said.
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China sees its efforts to track and monitor citizens as a benefit to training A.I. models.
“You have 1.4 billion people, 1.4 billion smartphone users. And also, a large application scene. So, I think in terms of data generating, China probably is the richest,” Wang said. “We do have some advantages. But of course, the U.S. has also a lot of innovation, several of the largest A.I. companies are based in the U.S.”
Experts inside China also believe the U.S. should work with other countries on regulating A.I. development.
“That’s the uncharted territory and right now we don’t have anything to regulate,” Wang said.
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Zhou agrees, saying the U.S. and China need to find consensus at the top level. Voters in the U.S. are split on the issue. According to a recent Fox News Poll, 51% of registered voters preferred coordination with other countries, while 49% wanted the U.S. to act independently.
“It’s a little hard to say, ‘oh gee, let’s put on – we’re competing with each other and we’re gonna put guard rails.’ It really doesn’t work that way too much,” President Trump said on Special Report in Beijing. “But A.I., if you look at medicine, some of the things that are coming up with medicine, some of cures they’re coming up with that people would have never gotten there. It’s gonna be mostly a good thing.”
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