Nicholas Burns:
I don’t think so. In some respects — you mentioned South China Sea. The Chinese have tried to intimidate the Filipinos over the past year, especially this past summer. The United States stood up to China.
We have a 1951 mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, and we told the Chinese time and again, if you use physical force, military force, which they did not do, against the Philippines, you’re going to draw us into that. And I think we deterred them. We have also built up the military capacity of Taiwan through arms transfers, and, as you said, Japan and the Philippines, much more focused on that problem as well.
And you have now seen the European countries begin to act strategically in opposition to what China is trying to do, because China, of course, has been the major ally of Russia in the Ukraine war. So I think the Chinese have miscalculated on some of this.
Have we resolved every problem with China? No. I spent three years trying to do that. But the suggestion that somehow the United States is going to be overtaken in power by China in the next 10 years, I don’t see it happening.
