China has 'closing window of opportunity' to reach its geopolitical goals: Gordon Chang


Chinese President Xi Jinping faces a “closing window of opportunity” to acheive his geopolitical objectives, author and China expert Gordon Chang told “The Story” Thursday. 

“He [Xi] realizes that he’s got a problem with his economy,” Chang explained to host Martha MacCallum. “But more important, he’s got a problem with demography.

“China right now is more than four times more populous than the United States,” Chang went on. “By the end of this century, it’s probably going to be less populous than the U.S. That’s the most dramatic collapse in demography in history, absent war or disease. And if Beijing doesn’t achieve its objectives in the next, let’s say five years, it has no hope of catching up and surpassing us.”

Despite the challenges facing Beijing, Chang emphasized that “China is our main adversary and countries like Russia, Iran, North Korea, they are only able to challenge the international system because China gives them strength.”

“This is a China issue,” he continued. “It’s not an Iran issue or a Russia issue. It’s basically one that’s centered in Beijing, because China is extremely hostile to the United States, inherently hostile in the nature of that regime.”

However, President Biden is clinging to what Chang described as the “decades-old” view that “the United States can get along with China, that it’s actually in our interests to help the Communist Party strengthen itself.”


“Biden has a view that is just not consistent with what China is doing today,” the author went on. “They’re committing atrocities, and that hasn’t really penetrated the president.”

The United States, Chang added, “can’t really have a collaborative relationship with a country that has declared a quote-unquote, ‘People’s War’ on us, and that’s China. They did that in May of 2019. So while it sounds nice, it just doesn’t work in practice.”