A U.S. strategy paper on China draws a tepid response in Beijing

A recent U.S. strategy paper on China that’s widely read in Washington, D.C., has drawn only a passing response in Beijing where limited public discussion has focused on one point: The author got China wrong.

“The Longer Telegram” released in late January proposed how the new U.S. administration should deal with a rising China by laying out a detailed critique of the Communist Party government under President Xi Jinping.

An effective U.S. approach on China requires the “same disciplined approach it applied to the defeat of the Soviet Union,” the paper said. “US strategy must remain laser focused on Xi, his inner circle, and the Chinese political context in which they rule.”

The anonymous author is a “former senior U.S. government official,” according to the D.C.-based think tank Atlantic Council that published the lengthy paper.

The piece attempts to echo a historic document that shaped Washington’s policy on the Soviet Union — named the “The Long Telegram,” it was sent from Moscow in February 1946 at the dawn of the Cold War.

So far in Beijing, major state media have not discussed the paper much, except for the vociferous state-backed tabloid Global Times, and even then, almost entirely in English. ″‘Longer Telegram’ a late-stage hegemonic farce,” read the title of one op-ed.

On the official news website of China’s People’s Liberation Army, an article in Chinese portrayed the strategy piece as holding an outdated mentality, and contrasted its view of the country with a recent state media report about a Chinese woman’s ability to rise from poverty.