The White House described highlights of the competition for economic power between the United States and China in the Indo-Pacific and the world.

On this, it highlighted the following conditions in its National Security Strategy.

1. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the only competitor to the United States that has the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so.
2. Beijing has ambitions to create a greater sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and become the world’s leading power.
3. The PRC uses its technological capabilities and its growing influence in international institutions to create more permissive conditions for its own authoritarian model, and to shape the use of technology and global norms to privilege its interests and values.
4. Beijing often uses its economic power to coerce countries.
5. The PRC benefits from the opening of the international economy while limiting access to its domestic market, and seeks to make the world more dependent on the PRC while reducing its own dependence on the world.
6. Also, the PRC is investing in a rapidly modernizing, increasingly capable military in the Indo-Pacific, and growing in strength and reach globally, all while seeking to erode U.S. alliances in the region and around the world.
7. At the same time, the People’s Republic of China is central to the global economy and has a significant impact on shared challenges, particularly climate change and global public health.
8. It is possible for the United States and the PRC to coexist peacefully, and to share and contribute together to human progress.

Economic power

Now, the U.S. strategy vis-à-vis the PRC is threefold:

• Invest in the fundamentals of its strength at home-its competitiveness, its innovation, its resilience, its democracy.
• Align efforts with the U.S. network of allies and partners, acting with common purpose and common cause.
• Compete responsibly with the PRC to defend its interests and build its vision for the future.

In competing with the PRC, as in other areas, it is clear that the next ten years will be the decisive decade.

In the end, the White House indicates that while the United States has deep differences with the Chinese Communist Party and government, those differences are between governments and systems, not between their peoples.