China influencing operations around the world is to replace US as the world's leading superpower, says top CIA official
Xi Jinping (left) with Donald Trump. Pic/AFP
China is waging a "quiet kind of cold war" against the United States, using all its resources to try to replace America as the leading power in the world, a top CIA expert on Asia has said. Beijing doesn't want to go to war, he said, but the current Communist government, under President Xi Jingping, is subtly working on multiple fronts to undermine the US in ways that are different than the more well-publicised activities being employed by Russia.
ADVERTISEMENT
"I would argue... that what they're waging against us is fundamentally a cold war — a cold war not like we saw during THE Cold War [between the US and the Soviet Union] but a cold war by definition," Michael Collins, deputy assistant director of the CIA's East Asia mission centre, said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
Rising US-China tension goes beyond the trade dispute playing out in a tariff tit-for-tat between the two nations. There is concern over China's pervasive efforts to steal business secrets and details about high-tech research being conducted in the US. "I would argue that it's the Crimea of the East," Collins said, referring to Russia's brash annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. The alarm bells come at a time when Washington needs China's help in ending its nuclear standoff with North Korea.
US to give $200 mn to Ukraine in military aid
The US Defence Department said it would give $200 million to Ukraine to help the war-torn nation bolster its military's defensive capabilities. The amount is part of a series of Pentagon payments now totalling more than $1 billion to Ukraine since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. All of the military aid, which comes from the Pentagon's security cooperation funds, will be non-lethal in nature.
China, EU currency manipulators: Trump
Donald Trump launched a fresh attack on US trading partners, saying the EU and China were manipulating their currencies, and he threatened to hit all imports from China with high tariffs. The outbursts were another crosswind for Wall Street, which struggled to find direction and finished the day a hair's breadth in negative territory.
Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates
This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
