As President Trump pushes Beijing on trade and cyber espionage, the United States and China are on a collision course. The U.S. urgently needs a new strategy to avoid the traditional fate of rising and status quo powers: catastrophic war.

WASHINGTON:  As China forges ahead trying to grab the head of the technology table by throwing money, policy and people at quantum computing and artificial intelligence, the US should carefully watch what companies China invests in or tries to buy. Those were the conclusions of three of the top China and technology experts in Washington… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: President Trump was pretty excited when he announced that the central Chinese bank ordered the cessation of all financial business with North Korea. Dean Cheng, the Heritage Foundation’s expert on China and its military, is much less excited. Cheng’s much more skeptical that this latest Chinese move will make any long-term difference in the… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Adds Excellent CSIS Study On International Support For Chinese Claims WASHINGTON: What are China’s intentions in the South China Sea? It’s a question intelligence analysts, diplomats and the senior leadership of the United States and its Pacific allies are all asking in the wake of a range of increasingly belligerent and threatening comments and… Keep reading →

SINGAPORE: In a clear message to the Obama Administration, our Pacific partners and to China, Sen. John McCain says the US military is not doing enough to challenge Chinese claims in the strategic South China Sea. Nor is the US doing enough to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, a vital economic objective in the… Keep reading →

Concerned over increasingly reckless Chinese and Russian intercepts of US aircraft, Pacific Command says it urgently needs cameras on its planes to provide irrefutable proof of their misbehavior. The problem: reconnaissance planes like the propeller-driven P-3 Orion and the new jet-powered P-8 Poseidon are designed to take photos of the land and sea far below, not of… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: One word from Defense Secretary Ash Carter yesterday opened the door to US arms sales to Vietnam, a former enemy turned potential ally against a rising China. The administration has tiptoed towards easing the ban on lethal weapons sales ever since Vietnamese president Truong Tan Sang met with Obama in 2013, but Carter’s statement… Keep reading →

UPDATED with Sen. McCain & Dean Cheng comments WASHINGTON: If China builds an artificial island on the disputed Scarborough Shoal, Sen. Dan Sullivan warned today, it will complete a “strategic triangle” of bases that can dominate the South China Sea. At this morning’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sullivan displayed a map (above) of the region… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Leading Republicans hastened today to denounce China’s deployment of anti-aircraft missiles to the South China Sea. But what can the US actually do about it? The arrival of the sophisticated HQ-9 missiles in the Paracel islands — claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan but occupied by China — is just the latest step in Beijing’s steady extension… Keep reading →

Those of us who cover the US military in detail, those in the military and those who spend lots of time around the military tend to be at least mildly obsessed with Star Trek and Star Wars. As his opening make clear, Dean Cheng is truly one of the tribe. But his topic, freedom of… Keep reading →