The US for decades has fallen prey to "strategic misinformation" that China is not a "threat" which led the Communist giant to start "bullying activities", a top White House official has said.
"I think China has used strategic misinformation for a long time," said Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to the President at the White House.
"I found this very early in my career," said Gorka, who is a national security professional specialising in irregular warfare, including counter insurgency and counterterrorism during an interaction at the Heritage Foundation, a top American think-tank. Gorka said that this "misinformation campaign" has reached the top American leadership.
"It has reached the highest levels of US government, successive administrations have said various things, China is not a threat, and then when they became more and more of a threat, when they started bullying activities, military activities that were troubling then the narrative changed a little bit to do we want a strong China?" he told the audience.
"Trying to do everything in way to play down the fact that they pose a threat to the United States Security; and so it's one of the key things that we have to counter-act," he said, adding that for a number of years through his writing and reporting he is trying to show the threat from China.
"It is a real threat and we need to understand it but it's been counteracted by a narrative that says if we trade with China that this will lead to a reform of China and that hasn't worked," he said.
"They are exporting a version of an anti-democratic system; and so that's why I think it's really important that we focus more on understanding the nature of that threat," Gorka said.
His comments came days after US President Donald Trump took a U-turn and supported the One-China policy. China is involved in a widening dispute with several Southeast Asian countries over islands in the South China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the islands.
