When the Trump administration announced its new National Security Strategy (NSS) last week, many experts noticed a major shift in how we talk about China, or more importantly, how we don’t talk about China.
Gone is the broad declaration that China is “America’s most significant geopolitical challenge,” as the Biden administration has articulated. It also does not include much of the stronger language found in President Donald Trump’s first term NSS, which described China as challenging “American power, influence and interests” in 2017.
Instead, this latest document, the document every president sends to Congress outlining their foreign policy vision, emphasizes economic competition between the United States and China above all else, making little mention of the concerns about authoritarianism and human rights abuses that were peppered throughout the previous administration’s reports.
“There’s not a single mention of great power competition with China. China is seen more as an economic competitor,” said David Sachs, a fellow in Asian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Wen Tison, a non-resident researcher at the Atlantic Council think tank’s Global China Hub, described the document as a “realignment between interests and values.”
Rather than the United States portraying itself as a “shining city on a hill” (President Ronald Reagan’s model of a nation serving as a beacon of freedom for the world), President Trump’s new NSS is “first about America, focused on the development of America itself, and almost first and foremost about trade,” Wen added.
Another clue as to how President Trump views China on his list of security priorities is how little mention of it there is — it’s mentioned for the first time on page 19 of the 33-page document, and occupies only one section in the report, which also covers Europe, Africa, the Middle East and other regions. By comparison, the 2022 Biden NSS repeatedly discusses China over 48 pages.
This change in tone and narrow economic focus appears to be popular in Beijing. Asked about the NSS at a press conference on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun emphasized the benefits of “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation.”
“China is ready to work with the United States to promote the continued stable development of China-US relations, while firmly safeguarding China’s sovereignty, security and development interests,” he said.
Although Guo reiterated China’s positions on sensitive topics such as Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that Beijing claims as its own territory, his statements were otherwise cautious and neutral, lacking the vitriol that often characterizes China’s responses to U.S. policy.
“It was received quite positively,” Sachs said, pointing to the fact that President Trump is scheduled to visit Beijing next spring for a long-awaited summit.
“I think the Chinese side has also said that the door to economic cooperation is open and that they want to make efforts toward a summit meeting between the two leaders in April.”
But some in China interpreted President Trump’s NSS with more caution, warning that the change in language was not necessarily a setback.
The state-run tabloid Global Times quoted experts warning that the new US strategy “reiterates the need to eliminate external competitors and threats to US interests,” reflecting the ongoing competition between the two countries.
Meng Weizhang, a researcher at the Fudan Institute for Advanced Study of Social Sciences, issued a similar warning. “The change in language does not mean the United States no longer views China as a competitor,” he wrote in the article, adding that President Trump may be switching tactics to “pursue a more advantageous position.”
From the outset, the NSS made its focus clear, declaring that the economy was the “ultimate gamble.” The book details the trade relationship between the two countries, including the imbalance in China’s exports to the United States.
“Going forward, we will rebalance the economic relationship between the United States and China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore America’s economic independence.”
Sachs said this is markedly different from President Trump’s 2017 NSS, which “described China as a revisionist power.” “This document says nothing about China’s strategic ambitions…and whether they are compatible with U.S. interests.”
Particularly striking is the complete absence of any ideological contrasts or references to human rights issues that were included in the previous two NSS documents.
The Biden administration has highlighted China’s role in alleged genocide in Xinjiang, human rights abuses in Tibet, and the dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedom and autonomy. President Trump’s first term papers in 2017 criticized China for its authoritarianism, mass surveillance and push for a new world order alongside Russia.
“There’s nothing like that in this document,” Sachs said, adding that the Chinese government “is probably pretty satisfied…because[the NSS]is not in an existential competition with[China].”
There may be several reasons behind this change. Sachs speculated that the Trump administration may be playing it safe ahead of its meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April, hoping not to jeopardize any deals or negotiations.
It may also reflect a change in the Trump administration, whose first term had more “traditional Republican national security thinkers” than the current term, Sachs said. Or perhaps the recent trade war was unexpectedly humiliating for the United States and changed the White House’s view of China.
“I think there were a lot of people who believed that the U.S. had the escalation advantage,” Sachs said. However, “in recent months, we have seen the interdependence between the United States and China reach a certain level, and the two countries have the potential to cause significant damage to each other in the economic field,” he said.
Experts say the new NSS will focus less on sensitive geopolitical flashpoints. For example, the Biden NSS mentioned several ongoing regional conflicts, including the military coup in Myanmar and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. In contrast, North Korea is never mentioned in this version.
The only geopolitical issue the United States is grappling with is Taiwan, a thorny subject that the U.S. government has long walked on a fine line.
China’s ruling Communist Party has vowed to eventually take control of the island by force if necessary, and sees the issue as one of China’s strongest red lines.
The U.S. government maintains close unofficial relations with Taiwan and is legally required to sell arms to Taiwan for self-defense, even though it recognizes the People’s Republic as China’s sole legitimate government and recognizes Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China.
But while the United States has never accepted the Chinese Communist Party’s sovereignty claims over the island, Washington remains largely vague about whether it would intervene in the event of a Chinese attack, a policy known as “strategic ambiguity.”
In the latest NSS, Trump devotes multiple paragraphs about Taiwan to emphasize its growing importance to his agenda, compared to previous versions that only briefly mentioned Taiwan, Sachs said.
“Naturally, much attention has been focused on Taiwan, in part because of Taiwan’s semiconductor production advantages, but primarily because Taiwan provides direct access to the second island chain, dividing Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia into two distinct regions,” the new NSS said.
“Given that one-third of the world’s shipping transits through the South China Sea each year, this has significant implications for the U.S. economy. Therefore, deterring conflict over Taiwan, ideally by maintaining military superiority, is a priority,” the report said, adding that the United States and its allies need to increase defense spending to prevent “a potentially hostile power from imposing a toll regime on one of the world’s most important trade routes.”
Sachs said this would send a strong message of deterrence to Beijing and could be good news for Taiwan. But the document softened the language elsewhere, saying the United States “does not support changing the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” instead of the previous phrase that it “opposes” changing the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
This could be welcomed by the Chinese government, Sachs added, adding that the Taiwan section of the NSS has become a confusing mess with mixed messages.
China’s Foreign Ministry’s response on Monday was similarly muted, with spokesperson Guo urging the United States to “handle the Taiwan issue with utmost care.”
Wen, the Atlantic Council fellow, said Taiwanese people are likely in “wait-and-see” mode, perhaps feeling vague or uncertain about their position under the new NSS.
He added: “I think Taiwan will be watching the U.S. government to see whether this demonstration of goodwill and responsibility will ultimately lead to further strengthening of the U.S.’s firm support for Taiwan and greater predictability.”
