Gone are the sweeping declarations about China being “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge,” as articulated by the Biden administration. Nor does it include much of the stronger language in the NSS of President Donald Trump’s first term, describing China in 2017 as challenging “American power, influence and interests.”
Instead, this latest document, one that every president submits to Congress outlining their foreign policy vision, emphasized the US-China economic rivalry above all – barely mentioning the concerns of authoritarianism or human rights abuses that had consistently peppered previous administrations’ reports.
