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Stay informed with FP’s news and analysis as the United States prepares to vote.

But as the U.S. election rapidly approaches, new fault lines have emerged—not just between the parties, but also within the ranks of the GOP. Republicans are clashing over issues including whether to fully decouple from China economically and whether to add conditions to U.S. support for Taiwan.

One debate hangs above all the rest: what the end goal of U.S.-China competition should be, or whether the United States should even articulate one. On this question of grand strategy, the GOP hawks are in discord.

One set of Republicans is rallying around a controversial idea: that in its competition with China, the United States should explicitly aim for a long-term end state in which Beijing transitions away from its authoritarian form of government.

Proponents of this end goal argue that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideology under President Xi Jinping is antithetical to that of the United States, and that the party’s actions increasingly threaten the United States and its interests. Therefore, they contend, the competition with China will only truly be won once the CCP loses power, or at the very least loses the will and the capacity to threaten the United States.

Members of this camp believe that achieving this end state—not through direct, forcible regime change but perhaps through regime weakening—should be the north star of U.S. policy going forward.

“We need to win the Cold War that Beijing has directed at us,” said Matt Pottinger, China program chairman at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Pottinger served as the deputy national security advisor and chief China policy architect under former U.S. President Donald Trump and has become a central figure in this debate.

“If we want to have a really constructive relationship with Beijing, we shouldn’t kid ourselves that that’s going to happen when you have a totalitarian dictator who has pledged in his inaugural address in 2013 to eliminate capitalism from the earth and to impose a Chinese Communist Party form of socialism, which is really totalitarianism,” Pottinger added.

Other Republicans, while certainly hawkish, warn that setting such an end point for the U.S.-China competition would be dangerously escalatory.

“The problem is that pursuing such a goal is both unlikely to solve the problem, but it also could exacerbate the dangers by increasing the sense of fear and insecurity in Beijing,” said Elbridge Colby, a co-founder of the Marathon Initiative and a former senior Defense Department official under Trump who pushed for a greater focus on China. “We are speaking loudly and carrying a small stick. We should speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Foreign Policy spoke to more than 10 current and former U.S. officials and a range of China experts to understand where American policy might be heading. With the possibility of a second Trump presidency on the horizon, which breed of hawk is ascendant matters far beyond Washington.

Drawing on their preferred analogy, the Cold War, Pottinger and Gallagher critique what they describe as U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy of “détente” for failing to confront the rising threat from China, which seeks “to disintegrate the West and usher in an antidemocratic order.” Instead, they argue that “[t]he United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it,” just as it won the Cold War.

They go on to define victory in two parts. First, China—under the sustained pressure of assertive U.S. policy—would abandon its efforts to threaten the United States. And second, after the flaws of the current Chinese approach are exposed, the Chinese people would lead the country out of authoritarianism.

Pointing to Taiwan as an example of what a future democratic China could look like, the authors conclude: “The road to get there might be long. But for the United States’ own security, as well as the rights and aspirations of all those in China, it is the only workable destination.”

The vision is strikingly definitive—though, in an August interview with Foreign Policy, Pottinger added some caveats: “Look, if our goal is to have really good, constructive relations with Beijing, that would require Beijing to become a much more humane government that is not compulsively hostile to the outside world and is not compulsively repressive toward its own people. I’m not saying that that must be the destination.”

As for what role the United States should play in promoting their preferred vision for China’s future, Pottinger and Gallagher have been somewhat ambiguous. They are clear in their Foreign Affairs article that they do not support “forcible regime change, subversion, or war.” Instead, they say that the Chinese people should be the ones to drive change from within. “It’s not for us to decide what the destination is for Beijing’s own form of government,” Pottinger told Foreign Policy.

However, they write that “Washington should seek to weaken the sources of CCP imperialism,” echoing a line from a 1983 Reagan administration directive that called for “internal pressure on the USSR to weaken the sources of Soviet imperialism.” They also call for the United States to help the Chinese people break through the Great Firewall, China’s vast internet censorship system, and communicate freely.

In short, Pottinger and Gallagher preclude the idea of any active U.S. role in overthrowing the Chinese government, but they suggest that Washington has some role to play in putting pressure on the party and empowering the Chinese people. And ultimately, insofar as it is driven by the Chinese people, their long-term aspiration is to see a change of regime in Beijing.

Students attend a celebration of China’s Youth Day at Nanchang Middle School in Shenyang, China, on May 4, 2011. The holiday falls on May 4 every year to commemorate the beginning of the May Fourth Movement in 1919. Getty Images.

The Trump administration’s official China strategy explicitly stated that regime change was not a U.S. goal. But, as Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin wrote in his 2021 book about Trump’s faceoff with China, there was a small group of “superhawks” within the administration—including Steve Bannon, chief strategist to Trump during his first months in office, and Peter Navarro, a top trade advisor—who “wanted to speed the downfall of the CCP.”

Then COVID-19 happened. The pandemic that started in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 prompted a hawkish turn in Trump world. Several key China policy speeches exemplified the shift in tone.

In a May 2020 speech, delivered in Mandarin at the University of Virginia, Pottinger praised students’ calls for democracy during the May Fourth movement in China in 1919 and pondered its legacy today. “Wasn’t the goal to achieve citizen-centric government in China, and not replace one regime-centric model with another one?” he asked. “The world will wait for the Chinese people to furnish the answers.”

Another speech, given a couple months later by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, directly criticized the Chinese government and marshalled history to raise the prospect of democratic reform in China.

Pompeo argued that although Nixon’s engagement policy failed to achieve its goal of liberalizing China, the attempt to “induce change” in China was a noble pursuit; it was just the means that were wrong. Today, Pompeo asserted, the United States should pursue the same goal but use sharper tools. “We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change, just as President Nixon wanted,” he said. “We must induce China to change in more creative and assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our prosperity.”

Pompeo was not explicit about the exact nature of that change, but he was clear that it would require U.S. effort. “Changing the CCP’s behavior cannot be the mission of the Chinese people alone,” he said. “Free nations have to work to defend freedom.”

That shift in tone, along with a slew of more aggressive China policies unleashed during the final year of Trump’s presidency, alarmed Chinese experts and officials.

“The year 2020 basically became the worst year [in U.S.-China relations] at least since 1979,” said Da Wei, a professor of international relations at the Beijing-based Tsinghua University. “I think the Trump administration basically advocated for a kind of regime change policy … attacking President Xi himself and the political system. … It’s quite similar to what Pottinger and Gallagher said in the recent article.”

Since Trump left office, calls for a Cold War-style end goal to the U.S.-China competition have begun to come even from mainstream conservative foreign-policy thinkers. The common denominator among these officials and China experts is the belief that the United States can’t fully advance its interests and safeguard its security in the long run while the CCP holds power in China in its current form —but the exact prescription varies.

None of the prominent voices in this debate—including Pottinger and Gallagher—have called for anything as extreme as a scenario in which the United States would take military action to topple the Chinese government. “I don’t know anybody who’s suggested that is feasible in the China context, let alone has suggested that it would be a good idea,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has written on the topic.

But many are discussing regime failure as an end goal. Cooper has argued that “Washington should hope for the mellowing or breakup of Chinese power,” echoing George Kennan, the famous U.S. diplomat who designed the containment strategy against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In Cooper’s view, while Xi rules China, the United States should wait for the CCP to weaken or collapse under the weight of its own shortcomings or pressure from the Chinese people. However, he doesn’t rule out the possibility of some role for the United States to “nudge [China] in a better direction,” in the post-Xi future.

Protesters hold up white sheets of paper to demonstrate against censorship as they march during a protest against China’s strict zero-COVID measures in Beijing on Nov. 27, 2022. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Others have advocated for a more active approach. Matthew Kroenig, the vice president of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a Foreign Policy columnist, wrote an article this summer with Dan Negrea, the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center, suggesting that one scenario of “winning” the competition with China could involve regime collapse, which would weaken the country and render it less able to harm U.S. interests. The two writers called for the United States to play a role in speeding up this process: “The United States and its allies should work to strengthen themselves as well as counter and weaken China (including by working to loosen the CCP’s grip on power).”

Meanwhile, in Congress, Republicans have also embraced the Cold War metaphor—and some have explicitly called for the CCP’s downfall. Introducing his China strategy in 2021, Sen. Tom Cotton said, “We need to beat this evil empire—and consign the Chinese communists, like the Bolsheviks, to the ash heap of history,” borrowing former President Ronald Reagan’s description of the Soviet Union.

Still, this outlook is hardly the consensus among Republicans.

Colby, the former senior defense official in the Trump administration, has publicly opposed Pottinger and Gallagher’s vision. In his view, as expressed to Foreign Policy, instead of pursuing a definitive end goal, the United States should accept that “competition and rivalry are endemic” and can be “dealt with or managed short of an existential conflict” by maintaining the right balance of power in the region.

Robert O’Brien, who served as Trump’s national security advisor, recently laid out an aggressive China policy proposal for a second Trump term. His plan includes decoupling from China but stops short of calling for fundamental change in Beijing. “We need to be very modest when it comes to regime change with China or Iran or Russia,” he said in an interview with the Wire China this summer. The United States should serve as a beacon of democracy, inspiring the Chinese people, he added, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean active regime change against the Chinese Communist Party.”

Back in Congress, Sen. Jim Risch, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, also takes a more measured view of the appropriate end goal in the competition. “Obviously in utopia, it would be to get China to no longer be a communist country and be a democratic country with guaranteed freedoms for its people,” he said in an interview with Foreign Policy. But, he added, “I think that’s an unrealistic view.” Instead, he said, “the end goal has got to be where each of the sides gets to the point where they say, ‘We can live with this.’”

Rep. John Moolenaar, the chairman of the select committee on the CCP, has referred to the competition in sweeping Cold War terms: “Our competition, like that with the Soviet Union, is not between two countries, but two visions of the future. The only way our way of life survives is if we win and they lose,” he said at an event on U.S.-China tech competition held on Sept. 18. But when asked about specific policy end goals, he was somewhat ambiguous, saying in a statement to Foreign Policy that the status quo is unacceptable and “[I]t is my hope that the Chinese people will one day have a system of governance that does not rely on oppression and hostility.”

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In the Republican Party platform and Trump’s campaign platform, China policy has not been expressed in Cold War terms. Both platforms emphasize Trump’s primary focus—economic competition with China—and propose sweeping new tariffs. Nowhere is regime change or even regime collapse listed as a goal—or referred to at all.

In his public remarks, Trump has also shown little appetite for a Cold War-style confrontation. He has favored a more transactional approach to China policy and said repeatedly that he likes Xi. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek published in July, he said, “I respect China greatly. I very much respect President Xi. I got to know him very well. And I liked him a lot. He’s a strong guy, but I liked him a lot.” The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Kroenig, who previously served in government and has advised several previous Republican campaigns on China policy, said in an interview with Foreign Policy that Trump’s campaign platform does not necessarily reflect what his national security strategy would be. “It is more likely the Trump administration will adopt a clear end goal for China,” he said, adding that he can imagine Trump saying, “‘I don’t manage competitions. I win them. We will win the competition with China.’”

Other China experts read the Trump tea leaves differently. Robert Kelly, a professor of international relations at South Korea’s Pusan University, argued that the former president has no interest in an ideological showdown with China. “Trump clearly craves authoritarian powers at home and is happy to take China’s money. It stretches credulity to suggest that Trump will lead the United States, much less an Indo-Pacific coalition, in a major shift against a power that he admires,” he wrote in a recent Foreign Policy piece.

But personnel is—to some extent—policy. Pompeo has said he would serve under Trump again if the opportunity arose. Pottinger, who resigned as deputy national security advisor on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, has also said he would be willing to join a second Trump administration. So has O’Brien, who did not articulate a change-in-government end goal, as well as Colby, who opposes the idea.

A man looks at his phone near a giant image of the Chinese national flag on the side of a building in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2017. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

The details laid out in the various proposals are scant. In some ways, the policies might look quite similar to Biden’s, reflecting the degree of consensus on China. Rush Doshi, a former National Security Council deputy senior director under Biden, pointed out in his critique of Pottinger and Gallagher’s article that their main policy proposals align with the Democrats’ drive to cut dependence on China and recruit allies to balance power in the region.

But a transition from the Biden policy to the one that Pottinger and Gallagher outline would also include significant changes—rhetoric not least among them. They call for accepting greater friction in the relationship and cutting back on diplomacy, which they dismiss as largely toothless—a move that could cut off the remaining areas of U.S.-China cooperation on key global issues such as climate change and fentanyl. They also advocate for dramatically increasing military spending as part of “a generational effort directed by the president to restore U.S. primacy in Asia.”

Some conservative China thinkers have also floated ideas that would more directly challenge Beijing domestically. Pottinger and Gallagher suggested giving Chinese people living under tight surveillance access to uncensored information and communication channels. “Tearing down—or at least blowing holes in—the ‘Great Firewall’ of China must become as central to Washington’s approach today as removing the Berlin Wall was for Reagan’s,” they wrote. This idea was already included in the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, which was declassified at the end of his presidency.

In fact, Trump may have dabbled in even more aggressive information warfare against China. Reuters reported in March that halfway through Trump’s presidency, the CIA launched a campaign on Chinese social media “to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets.”

Kroenig described other tactics that the United States might deploy while noting that all would require further consideration. These ideas included disseminating jump drives in China preloaded with the contents of the entire internet—an idea that he said he’d heard could be possible using large language models—to allow people to access information ordinarily censored by the government. Covert operations to sow distrust among the top echelons of the party could also be part of the approach, he said, as well as another classic Cold War strategy: supporting opposition movements in places such as Tibet and Xinjiang.

Then-U.S. President Donald Trump, with Chinese President Xi Jinping behind him, attends a welcome ceremony in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2017. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images

This spring, the Pottinger and Gallagher article circulated widely among Chinese academics, think tank scholars, government officials, and other America watchers, despite the fact that Foreign Affairs is blocked in China.

“This article basically tells the Chinese reader that, yes, it’s true that the U.S.—at least some elements in the U.S. or in the Republican Party—want you-die-and-I-live competition,” said Tsinghua University’s Da. “We think this is, I would say, basically equal to: first, regime change, secondly, defeating China completely. I think this is their goal.”

Liu Yang, a Xinhua reporter who runs a newsletter and podcast on Chinese current affairs, said in an episode responding to the article that it represented the next phase of the downward spiral in U.S. policy. “For me, it is very worrying, because it won’t surprise me if, in one year, we have someone coming out supporting a war and slamming this piece for being too soft on China.”

The debate has also heightened concerns in China about a second Trump term. “Even though China has dealt with President Trump for four years, we still don’t know, if he wins, what kind of Trump administration we will have in 2025,” said Da. “So the basic question I have asked many times in China is, ‘Will Trump 2025 look more like Trump 2018 or Trump 2020?’ That means: Will Trump 2025 be characterized by a transactional approach or regime change policy?”

It’s not hard to imagine how the CCP might respond to a hardening of U.S. policy. “The Chinese clearly pay attention to what prominent people are saying [in the United States],” Colby said. “I don’t think there’s any question that they heard rhetoric on regime change, on primacy, on Taiwan and encouraging moves toward independence—that clearly has affected Chinese decision-making.”

According to Wall Street Journal reporting from 2022, the Trump administration’s hawkish turn, including Pottinger’s 2020 speech, caused the CCP to assess that the United States posed a much greater threat to its survival, which—along with other factors such as the desire for greater deterrence over Taiwan—reinforced the government’s decision to accelerate its nuclear arms buildup.

Pottinger, for his part, dismissed the idea that Beijing was responding to his speech, pointing to pre-2020 U.S. intelligence assessments that China had changed its nuclear strategy. “My staff and I got a good, long, hardy laugh from that report,” he said.

Colby and other China experts fear, though, that more inflammatory rhetoric could lead to further escalation in a relationship that’s already on the edge. “It actually creates the sense that this competition is more existential than it needs to be,” said Doshi, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There are already plenty of paths to serious confrontation or even conflict between the U.S. and China. We don’t need to add to that list.”

In the Indo-Pacific hot spots, such as the Taiwan Strait, it’s important to give China an “incentive for peace,” Colby said. Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University who served in the Biden administration, agreed. “I think the belief that the United States would not stop at anything other than regime change would make it harder to stabilize the situation and prevent the erosion of Taiwan’s autonomy,” she said.

Other risks that these China thinkers have raised include the concern that such rhetoric could backfire, stoking nationalism in China and strengthening the Communist Party’s grip on power. The United States could also alienate allies who have not always aligned with Washington’s approach to China.

In fact, Harris’s rhetoric, on the surface, also rings zero-sum. “I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence. That America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century,” she said in her Democratic National Convention speech—a sentiment that she echoed during her Sept. 10 debate with Trump.

Yet, ultimately, Harris’s China policy is expected to hew closely to Biden’s, which means that “winning” will likely not be defined in existential or ideological terms. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, summarized the current administration’s position in a September interview for FP Live. “An essential truth about the U.S.-China relationship is that it’s going to be competitive for years to come, well into the next decade. And so we have to pursue that competition,” he said. “But in doing so, if you talk about an end state, we want a peaceful relationship between these two very strong countries with the two strongest militaries of the world.”

Meanwhile, in Trump world, hawks of different feathers will be fighting to stake their claim on the future. If one camp prevails, China policy could continue along its current course of competition—with added Trump characteristics. But there is also a possibility that it could swing toward a reprisal of the Cold War, with the inherent risk that one day that war would turn hot.

Robbie Gramer contributed reporting.