China's neighbours want strong economic and cooperative relations with it, but they all are concerned about Beijing's rising power, a top American intelligence official has said.
"All of China's neighbours want strong economic and cooperative relations with China, but they're concerned about China's rising power and have a renewed interest in the alliances and arrangements that they've had with the United States and, to some extent, with each other, but often through the United States as kind of the hub of the wheel, if you will," said the National Intelligence Council Chairman Christopher Kojm.
Kojm was speaking at the Security Policy Forum on "Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds," a New Report by the NIC.
Refraining to get into policy lane, Kojm said there is little doubt that how the US and China address the many questions before them will have a profound impact on any of these scenarios and, related to that, how China deals with its neighbours and neighborhood.
"At the end of the day, for all these scenarios, human agency really matters, and human agency makes all the difference. So the decisions that our leaders, that China's leaders, that leaders across the Asia-Pacific make and the decisions they're able to make within the confines of the political space they inhabit will make all the different know. The word is yet unwritten here," he said in response to a question.
