Matrix Report
President Joe Biden’s singular China focus is out in full contours with the new China Mission Center. In April this year, the entire intelligence community had singled out China as the “single biggest” concern for the United States. This assessment certainly colored President Joseph Biden April 28 speech in which he referred to China as the “first, foremost ascendant challenge.”
Now, CIA Director William Burns announced (Oct 7) the formation of a China Mission Center (CMC) “to address the global challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China that cuts across all of the Agency’s mission areas,” the CIA said in a statement.
The China Mission Center will bring together case officers to recruit and train spies, intelligence analysts, including more Mandarin speakers and technology experts and other specialists in a single unit, reported the Wall Street Journal.
The CIA said the CMC will focus solely on China and the national security challenges it poses, calling it the most important threat the United States faces. “CMC will further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government,” Burns said, according to an official statement released to the media.
The Center will, it seems, serve as the core of all China-focused intelligence and strategic communication activities, and lays bare the Biden administration’s plans on China with an equal emphasis on Russia.
It coincides with a sustained assault on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through various platforms. A recent report by the US-based research lab AidData researchers which identified at least $385bn that 165 countries owe to China for projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, according to the British daily The Guardian. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/30/42-nations-owe-china-hidden-debts-exceeding-10-of-gdp-says-report)
