The United States is currently embroiled in a Cold War with China according to expert Michael Sobolik, who recently told Fox News Digital that the only path towards victory involves going on offense in two key areas.
Sobolik, a Senior Fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, released his new book ‘Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance’ on Tuesday, where he outlines several ways that the United States must take the fight to China in its evolving cold war.
Chapter six of my book is one of the most important portions of the book from a competitive perspective because it zeroes in not on how to compete against Beijing around the world, but how to exploit the CCP’s weaknesses inside of China just as the CCP has infiltrated America in so many ways,’ Sobolik told Fox News Digital.
‘We need to take the competition to them on their home court, and there are at least two different ways we can do this.’
The first step that should be taken, Sobolik explains, is cracking down on Chinese trade routes running through the western region of Xinjiang where an alleged genocide is being committed against the Uyghur population.
The Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide in its own country in part because they want complete and total control of that geographic region for the purpose of making sure trade along those Belt and Road corridors flows reliably and securely,’ Sobolik explained. ‘If you have to commit genocide for your foreign policy to function properly, that is a weakness. That is not a sign of strength. That is a sign of weakness and fear and this implicates American policy because a lot of the trade that is running through Xinjiang and is leaving China and going to many other countries in the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia and Europe.’
‘A lot of that trade is being conducted in US dollar transactions. After September 11th, 2001, the United States recognized it wasn’t just enough to go after the terrorists themselves,’ Sobolik continued. ‘You also had to go after the financial networks behind the terrorist cells and we have really strong laws on the books that allow the US government to shut off terrorists from the global financial system.
‘One of the big policy proponents in my book is if any nation is committing genocide for the act, either principally or partially to benefit economically from committing genocide, and if that economic benefit comes from US dollars, then the United States needs to cut those actors off from the global financial system,’ he added.
Sobolik told Fox News Digital that the United States can give China two choices by allowing it to use the U.S. dollar or commit genocide ‘but you can’t do both.’
‘If the United States were to implement a policy like that, we would effectively cut off half of the Belt and Road trade routes in Eurasia,’ Sobolik said. ‘It would be an enormous strategic move for the United States and it would be the most punitive response from Washington to China for committing genocide ever and I think it is something that policymakers need to consider carefully and seriously.‘
The second ‘competitive step’ the United States can take to go on the offense with China, according to Sobolik, is in the ‘realm of information’ especially when it comes to the coronavirus.
The reason COVID became a pandemic in the first place is because the Chinese Communist Party cared more about stopping information about the virus than they cared about stopping the virus itself and then Americans died,’ Sobolik said. ‘The Chinese Communist Party tried to cover up the existence of COVID again, because they are an authoritarian regime and authoritarian regimes are afraid of the truth and transparency. Free speech inside of China, transparency within China is not just a human rights issue, it’s also a national security issue because Americans died, countless Americans died from COVID.’
In his book, Sobolik writes extensively about how it is ‘high time’ to push back on China’s ‘Great Firewall’ of censoring free speech and information and told Fox News Digital that the U.S. government is not doing enough on that front.
This hesitancy to go after one of the biggest weaknesses the CCP has is endemic yet again of this misunderstanding of the world we live in,’ Sobolik argued. ‘This is not a positive sum world where we can cooperate and compete with China, at the same time, the Chinese Communist Party is waging a Cold War that they intend to win. If we want to win it, we must identify the biggest weaknesses that our adversary has and their fear of transparency is one of their biggest.‘
If they demand total control of discourse inside of a massive country as big as China, let’s make it harder for them to accomplish that. Let’s make it more expensive for them. To accomplish that, we need to put them on their back heels and force them to react to us.’
Sobolik told Fox News Digital that one of the reasons he wrote Countering China’s Great Game in the first place was because American policymakers ‘need to go on the offensive and create problems’ for China and ‘seize the initiative’ rather than simply playing defense.
‘Good defense might win NBA basketball championships, but good defense is the bare minimum,’ Sobolik said. ‘It’s good housekeeping. You don’t get a gold star for taking care of your own homeland. You get a gold star for going out and opposing authoritarian regimes. Cold wars are won by seizing the initiative and going on the offensive.’