Condoleezza Rice, the former Secretary of State and White House National Security Adviser under former President George W. Bush of United States and now works at the Hoover Institution, a think tank. She wrote the article “The Dangers of Isolationism. The world needs United States, and United States still needs the world” in the magazine “Foreign Affairs”.
She noted that discussions on Washington’s side involve how to deter China from invading Taiwan, “but Beijing could block the island, or seize small uninhabited islands around Taiwan, cut submarine cables, or launch a massive cyber attack.”
In an interview hosted by fellow Hoover Institution fellow Hoover Institution fellow Peter Robinson, Rice focused on China’s possible invasion of Taiwan, in addition to discussing the complex threats posed by powers such as China, Russia and Iran.
Rice said that she has been worried about one thing, and she and her colleagues at the Hoover Institution are trying to do something about it, that is, the United States Department of Defense and Washington have a very “rigid” idea that China will invade Taiwan in the form of an amphibious landing, and the United States military sees this as a larger World War II “D-Day” operation.
However, she argues that China has many other options against Taiwan, because Beijing “doesn’t have to occupy Taiwan, they just need to change Taiwan politics until Taiwan looks like Hong Kong.”
Rice took Hong Kong as an example when he talked about Hong Kong’s return from United Kingdom to China, but now it has become one country, one system. Therefore, she believes that China’s actions against Taiwan are “trying to exert very much pressure on Taiwan to have a very pro-China government, and then slowly but substantially eroding Taiwan’s independence.”
Rice pointed out that although the Soviet Union during the Cold War was a military giant, it was an economic and technological dwarf. However, China is a country that is gradually on par with United States in economy, science and technology, and even military, and has even integrated into the international economy, and the United States now faces very different levels of opponents.
She pointed out that China now has the largest fleet in the world, and its nuclear weapons are growing at an alarming level, and that the current backdrop is that the United States and China are engaged in a full-scale technological arms race in artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, synthetic biology, robotics, etc., United States but she is worried that all import supply chains, from pharmaceuticals to rare earths, have to go through China.
Rice believes that United States’ attempt to integrate China, which has a completely different political and economic system from the West, into the international community in an attempt to change the other side is itself a risky gamble.
She said that Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up allowed China to integrate into the international economy, and that Made in China has indeed benefited the world and United States, but China’s current Xi Jinping regime is different from past leaders and more strongman. Now United States investments in China’s technology sector will strengthen the PLA under China’s civil-military integration approach, and then force United States out of the Indo-Pacific.
