A Better U.S. Strategy For East Asia

When considering Chinese ambitions, the authors correctly note that “Beijing has not behaved as a wholesale revisionist power seeking to upend existing institutions.” Like other major powers, China seeks to use existing international institutions to its advantage, but it is not interested in trying to bring the current institutional order crashing down. Along the same lines, China has not been trying to export its political system. While Mike Pompeo has tried to cast China in the role of a revolutionary adversary bent on spreading its ideology abroad, the truth is that the Chinese government prefers to advance its interests and increase its influence in much the same way that other great powers have done for centuries.