Commentary To ensure the survival of its oppressive dictatorship, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is busy building the world’s most powerful military force, on Earth and in space, to achieve a new global hegemony under which it plans to set the rules that determine prosperity and security. The CCP’s path to hegemony has always depended on its ability to manipulate the democracies, exploit their weaknesses, and to encourage them to make mistakes that open the way for the CCP’s ambitions. An early success was Beijing’s effort to convince the Philippine Senate, which then helped President George H.W. Bush to end the U.S. military presence in the Philippines, greatly reducing American resistance to China’s increasing control of the South China Sea. With control of the South China Sea, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) force on Hainan province can project force through Southeast Asia and into the Indian Ocean, constricting sea lanes …