Book Description
The CCP has employed the united-front approaches it honed during its early years in its encounters with the United States from the 1930s and ’40s to the present. These approaches are so foreign to American ways of operating that they have hardly been understood, a gap this report has sought to fill. The CCP’s current goals and behavior come into focus through study of the modern history of Sino-American relations from the party’s perspective: what the Communists were trying to do, when, and with what means. Applying lessons from past U.S.–CCP interactions should help the United States shape future interactions favorably while avoiding negative surprises. The United States risks letting united-front techniques compromise its understanding of the character of the CCP threat. By failing to protect Americans against this distortion and not mobilizing defenses, Washington abets the CCP Dream. If the U.S. government instead rouses itself to help expose and confront the truth about the CCP, its techniques, and its ambition, the country will be able to counter Beijing’s unfolding twenty-first century united-front offensive. This would entail educating the U.S. (and the broader Western) population, ceasing to enable the PRC’s economic rise and technomilitary build up, and securing critical infrastructure and supply chains against CCP interference.
