Ian Easton has a lot to say about China that is worth listening to. Mr. Easton boasts an impressive curriculum vitae which marks him as among the foremost Western experts on the region. He has written a fascinating and well-documented, if somewhat chilling, book called “The Final Struggle,” in which he outlines, convincingly, the nature of China’s ambitions. It would be easy, and considerably more comfortable, to write it all off as merely theoretical, one man’s interpretations of events after binge-reading Tom Clancy novels, if not for the fact that peppered liberally throughout the book are extensive quotes and writings of Xi Jinping himself and the Chinese Communist Party he commands.

That the PRC has ambitious military goals is no secret, no longer even trying to be hid by the Communist Party leaders. The latest news out of China is last weekend’s announcement by the CCP of a downgrading of their expected economic growth target by about 5%. That’s not especially shocking in and of itself. But juxtapose that with the fact China concurrently announced that it will grow its defense budget by 7.2% and you get an idea of where the People’s Republic’s priorities lie.

China has been rapidly growing a military that is in the power-projection business. The Pentagon warned last year that the People’s Liberation Army’s Air Force is rapidly catching up technologically to the West’s. The PLA Navy is the largest in the world, based on number of ships – yes, the total includes a number of “fishing trawlers,” but those of us old enough to remember the Cold War will recall the Soviet “fishing trawlers” that had the unusual tendency to fish close to wherever a U.S. aircraft carrier happened to be cruising, part of the Soviet’s program of converting the ocean-going trawlers to electronic-warfare-and-intelligence gathering vessels. “Fishing trawlers” also happened to be the first vessels to show up at the islands in the South China Sea that the PRC militarized.

But is not merely sheer numbers of conventional or, even more worrisome, nuclear forces; the greatest advantage the PRC has is it’s ability to ramp up military production quickly. U.S. Navy secretary Carlos Del Toro is reported as saying “They have 13 shipyards, in some cases… one shipyard has more capacity than all of our shipyards combined.” China’s centrally planned economy received a bit of a reprieve in the 1990s with the regime’s – turns out temporary – flirtation with capitalism and open markets under Deng Xiaoping. That gave the PRC economy a jump-start for when Xi Jinping re-tightened the ideological screws. Today, there is little distinction left between state and private enterprises, the latter being subject to appropriation by the former at a moment’s notice. While the United States has been steadily dispersing and outsourcing its despised boogie-man “military-industrial complex,” China has been nationalizing it as a People’s Revolutionary priority.

China is also busy hedging its bets by forming its own alliances, the most ominous being the tightening of relations with Russia. China, unsurprisingly, revealed it was “considering” supplying arms to Russia to feed their war in Ukraine. China has a two-fold reason for wanting the war to drag on, and for Russia to prevail. First, it has been an economic boon for China, as Western sanctions have forced Russia to look to China not only as a source of consumer goods, but as a market for its oil and other natural resources, which China is hungry for. There is also a more philosophical side, if you will. Russia, it’s true, doesn’t seem to have an ideology anymore, beyond naked anti-Western ambition. But in the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” world of revolutionary politics, that is enough – and strategically useful — for China.

So what is China’s actual aim in all this? Easton writes: “Under Xi Jinping’s rule, the CCP has cast off Deng’s policy of hiding its true nature while building China into a superpower, Authoritative PLA texts explain that China has become more ‘active’ (assertive and aggressive) since Xi Jinping rose to power. China is no longer cautiously camouflaging its ambitions, because that is what the situation demands, and, according to Xi’s reading of global opinion, that is what the people of the world ultimately want.”

The Marxist stripes never quite fade.

America still enjoys the advantage, still holds the preponderance of military and economic power and influence in the world, Easton assures us. But it comes with a warning: we are contending with a nation ruled by a regime who’s iron grip on its society twists it to a singular objective, a country whose leadership “sees literature, sports, and art as political instruments, not things with intrinsic value.” How do we contend with that? With an adequate defense budget, yes, but first with a national strategy and foreign policy that is equal to the task; because before we answer the question “can we win?” we have to answer the question “do we want to?”

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.