US says challenges posed by China exceed those of Cold War
By Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The challenges to the U.S. posed by China exceed those of the Cold War, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said on Wednesday, charging that Beijing's support for Russia's defense industry came directly from China's leadership.
President Joe Biden's administration has been explicit that it is not seeking a cold war with China, but increasingly analysts and members of the U.S. Congress have said escalating global competition between the two superpowers resembled a different but new style of cold war.
Campbell told a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that Washington needed to maintain a bipartisan focus on China and step up the speed of U.S. naval shipbuilding and the capacity of the U.S. defense manufacturing base.
"Frankly, the Cold War pales in comparison to the multifaceted challenges that China presents. It's not just the military challenges. It's across the board. It's in the Global South. It is in technology," Campbell said.
Foreign crises, including Russia's war in Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza conflict, have created distractions for Biden's efforts to focus on China and the Indo-Pacific region. Biden vowed early in his administration to not let China surpass the United States as global leader.
China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin, the leaders of the United States' two most powerful rivals, in May pledged a "new era" of partnership, and cast Washington as an aggressive Cold War hegemon.
Campbell, the State Department's No. 2 diplomat, said increasing the speed of U.S. warship output should be of the highest priority over the next decade.
"This is a naval time," Campbell said, calling increasing the speed with which U.S. Navy ships are designed and built "the most important thing that we need to do over the course of the next 10 years."
"The Navy has to step up. We have to step up with them," he said.
Campbell, who met with NATO and EU officials earlier this month to provide allies with details of China's "substantial support" to Russia's military industrial base, has said Russia was in return supporting Beijing with submarine and missile technology.
"The most worrisome thing is that it comes from the very top," Campbell said, referring to senior Chinese leaders' support for Moscow. He added that China has been supporting Russia's drone activity in Ukraine.
The Republican chair of the committee, Michael McCaul, was critical of the extent of the so-called excluded technologies list for the AUKUS defense project with Australia and Britain that is part of efforts to stand up to China, including restrictions covering unmanned underwater vehicles.
Campbell called relaxing U.S. curbs on technology sharing vital for AUKUS, but said the list did not ban sharing particular technologies, just that each case would have to be reviewed.
At the same time, he said, "we need to make this usable for defense planners and others that are making billion-dollar investments."
Campbell said a summit of the Quad countries - Australia, India, Japan and the United - that Biden will host on Saturday would include "big announcements" showing substantial progress to help Pacific and Southeast Asian nations track illegal fishing fleets, most of which were Chinese.
He also mentioned plans for discussions on stepped-up security cooperation in the Indian Ocean involving India and other countries. He said U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo had been asked to help "fuse together our national military approach, security approach" there."This is the new frontier, working more closely with a partner like India in the Indian Ocean," he said.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Michael Martina; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)
