With its “unprecedented military build up and predatory economics”, China poses the most significant, long-term strategic threat to the United States, top American Senators and commanders told a Senate panel.
They made the deposition on Tuesday while seeking a mechanism to address the challenge from the east Asian nation.
“China represents the greatest long-term strategic threat to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific and to the United States,” said US Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm Philips Davidson, while testifying before the Senate’s Armed Services Committee during a Congressional hearing.
“Through fear and economic pressure, Beijing is working to expand its form of Communist-Socialist ideology in order to bend, break, and replace the existing rules-based international order,” he alleged.
“In its place, Beijing seeks to create a new international order led by China and with Chinese characteristics—an outcome that displaces the stability and peace of the Indo-Pacific that has endured for over 70 years,” he told the Senators.
