What the new US national security strategy means for China

The newly released US National Security Strategy can be summarised in two words regarding Washington’s China strategy: excluding China. But excluding China is not the same as being anti-China. “Anti-China” is ideological; the current US administration does not prioritise value-based alliances or seek to launch colour revolutions or overthrow governments. “Excluding China”, by contrast, is rooted in US self-interest and aims to compress and push out China’s global influence.

The strategy report was originally expected in August or September but was delayed until December — reportedly because Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sought to soften its language towards China to facilitate trade talks. This led many to expect a less confrontational document. That proved wrong. The report avoids inflammatory rhetoric, yet its overall tone reflects the hawkish consensus within the US strategic community.

In recent years, Washington used ambiguous terms such as “competition”, “de-risking” and “risk management”, attempting to balance rivalry and limited cooperation. The new strategy abandons ambiguity. For the first time, it outlines — almost with textbook clarity — the core of America’s China strategy for the next decade: not competition but exclusion; not risk management but reshaping the global order to restore US dominance and structurally limit China’s presence. The reference to the “Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” illustrates this shift.

At the start of Trump’s first term, his interest in the Panama Canal, Greenland, and even Canada led some to believe he might revive a classical Monroe Doctrine focused solely on the western hemisphere. But the “Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” in this report is not retrenchment. It rejects America as global policeman and demands more burden-sharing from allies, but its essence is not withdrawal — it is redeployment towards key regions and sectors to confront China more directly.

In one sentence, this doctrine means: secure the rear, advance the front and exclude China everywhere. The rear refers to the western hemisphere — America’s strategic homeland — where China must not be allowed to take root. The front refers to the Indo-Pacific and crucial economic and technological sectors, with the first island chain as the focal point. Washington intends both to engage China in full-spectrum competition — especially economically — and to exclude, push back and compress China’s presence in these strategic domains.

The report’s most striking feature is its elevation of “reducing China’s influence in the western hemisphere” to a national security priority — even though China is not named. Historically, Washington assumed the hemisphere was naturally its sphere of influence and did not consider China a regional competitor. That assumption is now discarded.

The US acknowledges China’s expanding footprint in Latin America, the Caribbean and even North American supply chains, viewing it as a “structural threat”. Washington is preparing a systematic rollback of China’s presence across ports, telecommunications, energy, minerals, infrastructure and political influence.

Unlike Cold War-era symmetric containment, the US approach to China is a one-directional strategy of geoeconomic erasure — removing China from regions Washington believes never belonged to China and restoring what it considers hemispheric stability.

In the Indo-Pacific, the report is even clearer and more confrontational. It re-emphasises the first island chain as the foundation of US primacy in Asia and calls for a deterrence framework that explicitly incorporates Taiwan. This goes beyond “maintaining the status quo”. It is an architectural design: the first island chain must remain open and unbroken; China must not break through; Taiwan must remain geopolitically insulated; and the US will strengthen Taiwan’s security through political and military means. The South China Sea must remain open to US naval operations to ensure rapid intervention.

The report mentions Taiwan eight times — more than any previous strategy. It states that the US will build forces capable of preventing aggression anywhere in the first island chain and of denying attempts to seize Taiwan or shift the regional balance. This signals — if not explicitly declares — that the US would intervene militarily if China used force.

Equally notable is what the report omits. Since the State Department removed the phrase “the United States does not support Taiwan independence”, it has disappeared from all official language. Although the report says it opposes unilateral changes to the status quo by either side, Washington overwhelmingly views Beijing — not Taipei — as challenging the status quo. Thus, preventing China from changing the status quo is now treated as a strategic objective. The clarity of this shift approaches treaty-like language even without formal guarantees.

Taken together, the new strategy marks another fundamental shift in the US’s China policy. Earlier strategy documents avoided explicit “geostrategic blockade” language to prevent signalling overly confrontational intent. This time, Washington states it plainly. The reason is simple: US strategists believe China’s power is nearing a “near-peer” threshold. If the US does not erect a new geopolitical barrier in the coming decade, it may be too late to constrain China’s regional expansion. The first island chain is thus recast from a geographic description into a strategic wall, with Taiwan as the central pillar.

Yet despite intensified military planning, the core axis of US strategy is economic and technological. The report devotes extensive space to semiconductors, AI, advanced computing, algorithms, strategic minerals and supply chain security, portraying China’s progress as a decisive challenge to US national power. Washington seeks not only to maintain its lead but to prevent China from achieving technological autonomy. 

Export controls, investment screening, supply chain restructuring, alliance coordination, data governance and technology standards now form an integrated global regime designed to keep China out of critical technological ecosystems and, in some cases, key national markets.

In effect, the US is attempting to construct a global economic and technological exclusion regime targeting China.

Beijing will not passively accept this. The clearer Washington becomes, the faster and more decisively China will respond. The strategy forces Beijing to reassess the timeline of US-China rivalry and accelerate efforts in supply chain localisation, technological self-reliance, diplomatic outreach and military preparedness.

Beijing once hoped to maintain a flexible “competition-cooperation” structure; this document signals that such space no longer exists. The US has chosen structural exclusion; China will respond with structural countermeasures. Once both sides enter acceleration mode, confrontation becomes a self-reinforcing structural outcome.

The report will also reshape Taiwan’s political psychology. By embedding Taiwan within the first island chain defence architecture and elevating its strategic value, Washington sends a strong signal that may be interpreted as an upgraded commitment. Taiwan’s political discourse already reflects this shift. This perception is dangerous. It may encourage Taiwan to act more boldly in diplomacy, identity narratives and security policy just as China’s tolerance declines.

A new risk dynamic emerges: the more Washington emphasises Taiwan’s importance, the more assertive Taiwan may become, the less China will tolerate such moves, and the less willing the US becomes to show weakness. None of the three actors is willing — or able — to press the brake. This raises the probability of conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

From a global perspective, the new strategy is not a defensive document but a blueprint for reshaping the world order. It seeks to rebuild the institutional and geopolitical foundations of continued US primacy. It outlines a dual-layer world: an inner sphere of the US and its allies sharing a common technological and economic ecosystem, and an outer sphere of China and non-allied countries restricted from entering it; an inner rule-making system led by the US, and an outer tier of competitors — above all China — kept outside key technologies and strategic resources; an inner security architecture regarded as legitimate, and an outer rising power, again primarily China, that must be constrained. As noted above, Washington is effectively attempting to build a “China-exclusion global order”.

Some may question whether a Trump administration could fully implement such a vision. That is not the central issue. This strategy reflects a bipartisan consensus and a long-term structural direction. Once such a framework solidifies, US-China relations lose flexibility, and the Taiwan Strait becomes the likeliest flashpoint. This report marks not the end of an old era but the beginning of a new one — an era of structural rivalry where even a small retreat by either side could be interpreted as strategic defeat.

That is the true meaning of this report — and the greatest risk for the future of US–China relations and the Taiwan Strait.

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