In Beijing in November 2019, Henry Kissinger was asked a provocative question: “Are we in a new Cold War, this time with China?” The late statesman replied: “We are in the foothills of a cold war.” The following year, he amended his quip, changing “foothills” to “mountain passes.”
If Kissinger’s warning was accurate, as it has every appearance of being, then Tom Cotton is one of America’s leading geopolitical Sherpas—whose deep knowledge and shrewd judgment can bring us safely through this treacherous terrain. In Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, the junior senator from Arkansas highlights the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and the dire threat it poses to the United States and the freedom of the world.
In his accessible and engaging book, Cotton posits that there are unspeakable facts about China today that are frequently squelched in the public realm but that desperately need to be heard and acted upon. For years, the inconvenient truth about the People’s Republic has been concealed by a conspiracy of silence that emanates from Beijing but envelopes the West through legions of CCP apologists and propagandists. Keenly aware that this corrosive censorship has helped shift the balance of power in China’s favor, Cotton intends his unblinking guide to serve as a means of breaking the spell.
Seven Things You Can’t Say About China is a clarion call to defend the world from a mounting danger. As it has grown prosperous, China has become an enormously ambitious great power. The overweening desires of the PRC are married to real economic power and military might. China’s economy is 10 times larger than Russia’s, and Beijing’s military budget is quadruple the size of Moscow’s. This has given China a wide array of coercive tools with which to press its advantage globally, making it the most serious challenge to America’s superpower status in the post–Cold War era. “As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee,” Cotton writes, “I’m often asked if the threat from China is as bad as it seems. My answer is no—it’s worse than you can imagine.”
In a time of illiberal nationalism, it is refreshing to note that there is not a scintilla of chauvinism to be found in these pages. Its author castigates the lethargic and unfocused foreign policy that has allowed the unhindered rise of China and failed to deter its aggression, but he forswears any demagoguery about a “yellow peril.” Instead, Cotton offers a bracing and trenchant appeal for Americans to rearm, physically and intellectually, against the new red menace without losing sight of the salient fact that the Chinese people are “the first and worst victims of Chinese communism.” This cogent approach promises an overdue return to American moral leadership on the world stage.
The first thing that Cotton maintains cannot be said about China today is that it is an evil empire. The application of this Cold War analogy to the world’s largest totalitarian state is not at all out of place. Since it was founded in Shanghai in 1921, the CCP has brutalized the Chinese people and sought domination far beyond its realm. After coming to power in 1949, the party orchestrated a bloody period of consolidation in which it largely kept to itself. As it has matured, however, it has proven that it is not remotely a normal regime with understandable grievances. It has constructed an Orwellian police state to control its subjects, persecute its ethnic and religious minorities, and subjugate what Cotton aptly calls the “once-free city of Hong Kong.” The regime in Beijing has become precisely what Ronald Reagan once deemed the Soviet Union: the focus of evil in the modern world.
The next unutterable fact about the Chinese regime is inextricably bound up with the first: It is preparing for war. Since Xi Jinping’s reign began in 2012, Chinese defense spending has more than doubled. It now possesses the largest military on earth and is rapidly expanding both its conventional and nuclear arsenals. In addition to claiming hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean, it has built and garrisoned a bevy of artificial islands to project hard power. The old compliant demeanor that once marked Chinese statecraft has given way to a new bellicosity. There is little doubt that its massive military buildup will soon be directed against Taiwan in a bid to reunify that democratic country with the Chinese mainland.
The elucidation of China’s growing military strength is the most compelling portion of the book. After conceding the “benign passivity” that appeared to characterize Chinese foreign policy in past decades, Cotton reminds readers that Beijing has always coveted Taiwan, regarding the island as a breakaway province rather than a free and independent polity. The Communist rulers also believe that without conquering Taiwan, China cannot lay claim to regional hegemony. In other words, China’s tenacious irredentism suggests that it was going to accept the status quo only as long as it had to, and not a moment longer.
Unremitting Chinese military exercises in and around the Taiwan Strait indicate that Beijing is preparing for a blockade—or a more ambiguous “quarantine”—of Taiwan at some point in the coming years. This makes the island, as Cotton explains, the “most dangerous flashpoint in the world.” Taiwan, about 100 miles off the Chinese coast, sits between the East and South China Seas and belongs to the “first island chain,” along with Japan and the Philippines. It is the “linchpin” in the chain and crucial to America’s strategic position in the Far East. The failure to protect Taiwan, writes Cotton, would effectively end with “the sunsetting on American power and influence.” The passage of time has not diminished the truth of Douglas MacArthur’s observation that “the domination of [Taiwan] by an unfriendly power would be a disaster of utmost importance to the United States.”
Cotton rigorously exposes a series of other alarming facts about Communist China, from its aggressive economic warfare to its growing infiltration of American society and government. By weaponizing its own captive population of 1.5 billion people, it has managed to ex-tort Hollywood directors, sports stars, media moguls, and corporate executives to conform to Chinese standards. Ask yourself: When was the last time you saw a Hollywood film featuring a Chinese villain?
Another disruptive element of China’s behavior has been its dominance in the realm of smartphones. By means of platforms like TikTok, it spreads Communist propaganda and censors negative content. (During the pandemic, for instance, it banned the term “China Virus.”) In an age when one-third of young Americans get their news from the Chinese app, this is an astonishing degree of hostile foreign influence over how American youth perceive and interpret the world. Cotton wisely calls for the “spy app” to be banned without further delay.
What makes China a uniquely potent rival is the combination of its malign intentions with its abundant capabilities. Cotton is not one to indulge in hyperbole, which makes his fear that China could prevail in its contest for global mastery particularly distressing. Given China’s comprehensive power and America’s abiding complacency, this outcome is hardly inconceivable.
The Chinese drive to hegemony begins with “the conquest of the strategic keystone of Taiwan,” but it won’t end there. Unless it is effectively opposed, it will swell across the Indo-Pacific, reorienting a range of global firms and institutions—in finance, technology, and media—toward the interests of the CCP. More than half of the world’s countries already trade more with China than with the United States; this trend would accelerate if China supplanted the United States as Eurasia’s dominant power.
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It wasn’t so long ago that Chinese policy adhered to Deng Xiaoping’s axiom to “hide your strength and bide your time,” while the conventional wisdom in Washington held that China was a strategic partner. But as frictions over Trump’s tariffs become acute during his first term, the period of peaceful coexistence between the United States and the People’s Republic already seems like a distant memory. The reemergence of great power geopolitical rivalry is now in plain sight, marked by a worsening relationship between the world’s two largest powers.
Cotton argues persuasively that America must not hesitate to revoke China’s preferential trade status, rebuild our military and defense industrial base, and push back hard against Chinese influence in American cultural life. And if China decides to launch an amphibious invasion of Taiwan, he believes that America must stand ready to repulse it with overwhelming force. The best way to prevent that grim outcome is by restoring American strength and deterrence now.
This competition will almost certainly be the defining struggle of our era. That will be the case not despite China’s many challenges but in some measure because of them. It has been said that the greatest geopolitical catastrophes occur at the intersection of ambition and desperation, and Xi’s China has ample supplies of each. The rise of China has given it an outsize desire to rewrite the rules of global order in Asia and beyond. But it would not be the first great power in history to be triggered to rash action by a slowing economy and a creeping sense of encirclement and decline.
It is not at all clear how the Trump administration will comport itself as we enter the most crucial phase of competition with China. Trump’s main determination is to pare back America’s overseas commitments while avoiding a third world war. But he has never seemed to grasp the contradiction in these goals, and how weakness might be provocative. In his memoir, John Bolton, who served as Trump’s third national security adviser, describes how the president consistently adopted an accommodationist posture toward the CCP. He was unwilling to press China on issues such as its crackdown on Hong Kong pro-democracy protests (“I don’t want to get involved. We have human-rights problems, too”) and China’s repression and large-scale imprisonment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang (which Trump explicitly approved of during a conversation with Xi).
“One of Trump’s favorite comparisons,” Bolton recalls, “was to point to the tip of one of his Sharpies and say, ‘This is Taiwan,’ then point to the Resolute desk [in the Oval Office] and say, ‘This is China.’” Lest there be any doubt about his meaning, Trump insisted that “if they invade, there isn’t a f—ing thing we can do about it.”
Time is short, but Americans—including their commander in chief—must come to grips with the unparalleled threat posed by Chinese supremacy and rally to prevent it. The plan outlined in the Seven Things You Can’t Say About China promises to do so at a reasonable level of cost and risk for Americans. The alternative will extract a much greater cost in blood and treasure—from Americans and our allies. Having risen to perilous mountain passes, our best way out now is through.
Photo: AP Photo/Andy Wong
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