Commentary The long-term goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is world economic dominance in all spheres: manufacturing, trade, control of natural resources, policy, legal, technology, and more. With economic dominance comes geopolitical and military dominance. That goal was set long before Xi Jinping came to power in 2012-2013. Xi’s grandiose plans, including the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Made in China 2025, were predated by a strategy developed by Deng Xiaoping after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. Deng delegated economic development responsibility to the CCP bureaucracy, giving them limited freedom and encouragement to pursue policies on their own. These changes resulting in a wave of Chinese studying Western methods abroad, which accelerated through the 1980s to the present, coincided with a leveraging and exploitation of the international system that fueled China’s growth over the last 50 years. Deng’s strategy involved penetrating, coopting, and leveraging international institutions in order …