Former U.S. State Department official Alex Wong is set to become the Deputy National Security Advisor and Assistant to the President in the upcoming Trump administration. Wong previously served as the Deputy Special Representative for North Korea and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for North Korea issues during Trump’s first term, as well as representing the official visit to Taiwan. He has also chaired the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). Currently, he is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank and also serves as Vice President of the Global Taiwan Institute.
Trump’s selection of Wong as Deputy National Security Advisor is expected to enhance trust in the tense Indo-Pacific region, particularly in Taiwan. As stated by a spokesperson for Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen during her campaign, Trump’s personnel choices will reassure allies in the Pacific region that the U.S. will continue to support them in resisting Beijing’s coercion and intimidation.
In 2023, Wong published an article titled “Competition with China: Debating the Endgame” on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute website, outlining his thoughts on the direction of U.S.-China competition.
Wong wrote, “The Chinese Communist Party’s strategic choices have already determined the endgame. Regardless of whether the U.S. seeks to ease relations with China or Beijing promotes democracy domestically, the CCP will face increasingly legitimacy challenges.”
He suggested that a clear indicator of the effectiveness of U.S. strategy would be if the CCP falls into deeper legitimacy crises in the economic, security, and international political arenas, as the CCP initially chose to establish its legitimacy on weakening U.S. interests.
The term “endgame” originates from chess. Theories of chess divide the game into “opening,” “middlegame,” and “endgame.” The endgame is the final stage where the outcome of victory, defeat, or draw becomes clear.
In the article, Wong mentioned that the debate in the U.S. foreign policy community several years ago about whether U.S.-China relations should focus on “competition” or “engagement” has now settled. There is now a consensus that the U.S.-China relationship is competitive and, in many aspects, adversarial.
“This debate now turns to the strategic core question: what are we competing for? What is the endgame of the U.S.-China relationship and the Chinese Communist Party itself, and how does this guide our policy-making? What goals are we judging to determine whether the U.S. wins or loses?” he wrote.
According to his observations, while these summaries are straightforward, the participating sides in the debate have presented various subtle, overlapping, and diverse arguments, mostly offering the same policy prescriptions. For example: calling for increased military spending, enhancing defense cooperation with allies, implementing stricter technological and investment restrictions, establishing supply chain resilience, countering CCP influence operations, and exposing the CCP’s authoritarian and genocidal rule.
He expressed that this debate might stem from the reality that “The Chinese Communist Party’s strategic choices have already determined the endgame.”
Wong stated that the CCP has based its domestic legitimacy – and ultimately, its ruling capability – on an imposing international grand strategic foundation. While there are no clear boundaries between domestic and foreign policies for any country, for the CCP, the connection between its international vision and maintaining its domestic rule is evident.
“To legitimize its rule, the CCP relies on unbalanced mercantilist trade, innovation driven by foreign investment and technology (acquired through theft or provided free of charge), coercion for political acquiescence internationally, repression of so-called domestic ‘unruly’ minority groups violating international conventions, forced territorial claims, and the enhancement of its regional military might. In other words, the CCP’s Leninist system is not only incompatible with the liberal order (it certainly is). Instead, more dangerously, it relies on exploiting the vulnerabilities of the free order for its survival,” he wrote.
He explained that these actions from a liberal ideological perspective or from a more rooted classical realist perspective are unacceptable for the U.S. and its partners, demanding the U.S. to restrict and cut off these abusive, unbalanced, and coercive channels of the CCP.
He highly agreed with Jacqueline Deal, the president of the long-term strategic think tank. Deal proposed a containment strategy against the CCP, counteracting CCP abuse of power, upholding U.S. interests, and pointing out that U.S. counteractions will directly impact the CCP regime.
Wong stated that whether the U.S. intended to confront the CCP, the U.S. national strategy would inevitably put pressure on the CCP’s domestic rule.
For example, if the U.S. takes measures to protect its partners and itself from economic and political coercion by the CCP, will they be accused of challenging the nationalism used by the CCP to defend its rule?
If the U.S. enforces international maritime laws, upholds non-aggression principles, and seeks to maintain peace in the Indo-Pacific region and the Taiwan Strait by increasing its military presence, will this be deemed a clear challenge to the CCP’s asserted “territorial integrity” and the majority of its historical legitimacy upon which its military construction relies?
If the U.S. aims to restore reciprocity in the world trading system, curb large-scale IP theft by the CCP, and control strategic technologies that could be used against U.S. citizens and allies, will this be seen as intentionally attempting to cut off the driving forces behind Chinese economic growth and technological authoritarianism?
Wong said the answer is certainly “no.”
“These actions are based on freedom, prosperity under a free order. However, these questions and their answers indicate that the CCP’s parasitism on the free order and the U.S. economy has pushed the U.S. to the final stage, where, whether willing or not, our rational counterattack against CCP’s strategy will bring about legitimacy crises for the CCP,” he wrote.
He believed that the U.S. counterstrategy would inevitably impact the CCP’s domestic rule and provoke intense reactions and attacks from the CCP, but that does not mean the U.S. should back down.
Wong said, “We must accept this reality. The CCP will respond vigorously to the U.S. counterattack and accuse us of undermining Chinese society. But this is not a reason to halt the implementation of our policies.
“Disregarding the CCP does not mean ignoring the fact that it actively undermines the cohesion of American society. Disregarding this fact does not mean we should be forced to surrender American and allied interests to the CCP’s strategy and the CCP’s authoritarian regime.
“Instead, the CCP falling into deeper legitimacy crises in the economic, security, and international political arenas will serve as a clear indicator of the effectiveness of U.S. strategy. This is because it is an inevitable result of the CCP choosing to establish its legitimacy on weakening U.S. interests.”
He said the U.S. and its people must prepare for a level of tension and regional instability unseen since the end of World War II, as well as possible conflicts.
“I say World War II and not the Cold War because the risks in the future are more concerning than those of the Cold War. In fact, ensuring that our competition with China (CCP) remains in a ‘Cold War’ state similar to the competition with the Soviet Union is a more daunting task for us,” Wong wrote.
He mentioned that during the Cold War, the U.S. containment strategy aimed to uphold the borders of the Soviet Union, allowing it to either “soften” under the inherent internal contradictions of communism or collapse, while the “endgame” imposed by the CCP on the U.S. has a different nature and is more perilous.
“When the CCP establishes its rule on financial and technological investments, as well as the spoils of the free order, and extends its hegemony and territorial ambitions into regions covered by U.S. security guarantees and norms, there is scarcely room for indirect Cold War-style proxy competition,” Wong said.
He predicted that when the U.S. begins to counter the CCP, the CCP is more likely to view U.S. policies as a direct threat and consider taking more direct actions, including military aggression.
“Fifty years ago, when China-U.S. relations officially began, the Chinese side’s ‘opening’ strategy, Beijing’s ‘middlegame’ strategy using economic expansion through the free order since the 1980s, and the remaining pieces on the chessboard in our current geopolitical game largely constitute the parameters of the ‘endgame’ of China-U.S. Almost choose who wins and who loses,” Wong concluded.