reuters | An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of
hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip
relations with the United States into confrontation, people familiar
with the paper told Reuters.
The report, presented early last month by the Ministry of State
Security to top Beijing leaders including President Xi Jinping,
concluded that global anti-China sentiment is at its highest since the
1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the sources said.
As a result,
Beijing faces a wave of anti-China sentiment led by the United States in
the aftermath of the pandemic and needs to be prepared in a worst-case
scenario for armed confrontation between the two global powers,
according to people familiar with the report’s content, who declined to
be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.
The report was
drawn up by the China Institutes of Contemporary International
Relations (CICIR), a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of State
Security, China’s top intelligence body.
Reuters has not seen the briefing paper, but it was described by people who had direct knowledge of its findings.
The report described to Reuters warned that anti-China sentiment
sparked by the coronavirus could fuel resistance to China’s Belt and
Road infrastructure investment projects, and that Washington could step
up financial and military support for regional allies, making the
security situation in Asia more volatile.
Three decades ago, in
the aftermath of Tiananmen, the United States and many Western
governments imposed sanctions against China including banning or
restricting arms sales and technology transfers.
One of those with knowledge of the report said it was regarded by
some in the Chinese intelligence community as China’s version of the
“Novikov Telegram”, a 1946 dispatch by the Soviet ambassador to
Washington, Nikolai Novikov, that stressed the dangers of U.S. economic
and military ambition in the wake of World War Two.
Novikov’s
missive was a response to U.S. diplomat George Kennan’s “Long Telegram”
from Moscow that said the Soviet Union did not see the possibility for
peaceful coexistence with the West, and that containment was the best
long-term strategy.
The two documents helped set the stage for the strategic thinking that defined both sides of the Cold War.
