According to a new strategic assessment of the US Department of Defense (Pentagon); China poses the greatest threat to the United States, and officially raised to the top of the list of the most dangerous competitors.
A report in The British Times reported that US Defense Secretary Mark Esper asked military leaders to recalibrate training and operations in proportion to Beijing's capabilities.
Esber said in a letter to the Pentagon staff on the occasion of his first year in office; The military must make China "the accelerating threat in all of our schools, programs and training."
"We are now in an era of competition between the superpowers and China, then Russia, which are our biggest strategic competitors," he added.
The newspaper pointed out that the defense strategy presented by his predecessor James Mattis in 2018 was in China and Russia on an equal footing with the "superpowers" opponents of the United States.
She added that the tension between the United States and China was exacerbated, fueled by competing accounts of trade, theft of intellectual property and piracy, as well as Chinese influence campaigns, counter-intelligence and Beijing's military activities in the Pacific.
The Times also drew attention to tensions over China's growing nuclear arsenal, as the Trump administration asked Beijing to join its talks with Moscow to draft a multilateral arms treaty.
But Beijing considered the demands a hoax by Washington to renounce the bilateral treaty, yet it suggested that it might participate if the United States reduced its arsenal to the size of China, an offer that US President Donald Trump will never accept, according to the Times.
Also on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Ray warned that China "is engaged in a comprehensive endeavor to become the world's sole superpower by whatever means necessary," and represents "the greatest long-term threat to our nation's knowledge, intellectual property, and economic prosperity."
Ray - supported by half of the anti-intelligence investigations in the United States - said the economic damage inflicted by China's intellectual property theft was "startling," adding that "the stakes are very high."
The newspaper hinted that last year all current Pentagon war plans to confront China were reviewed and updated, after a previous simulation considered that China had the upper hand in the Asia-Pacific region due to its huge stockpile of ballistic and anti-ship missiles.
The Times report concluded that the Chinese army's accumulation of these missiles is part of a "denial of access and deprivation" strategy to deter the US Navy from sailing to the region in the event of a crisis.