Special to WorldTribune, June 8, 2026 Real World News
Geostrategy-Direct, June 2, 2026
By Richard Fisher
The late great U.S. Ambassador to China James Lilley would often quip that China “likes to telegraph its punches,” meaning they want to intimidate-coerce their enemy before they attack.
For at least 17 years the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has conveyed its ambition to “contain” the United States, to dictate where it can and cannot send its military forces, or, to limit the ability of the U.S. to defend itself, its allies and partners, and its global interests.
The first known CCP attempt to contain the United States occurred in May 2009, in a meeting between Chinese military officials and former commander of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACCOM) Adm. Timothy Keating, who recounted the following brazen message:
“(The Chinese officer said) You, the US, take Hawaii East and we, China, will take Hawaii West and the Indian Ocean. Then you will not need to come to the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean and we will not need to go to the Eastern Pacific. If anything happens there, you can let us know and if something happens here, we will let you know.”
At that time, it was not clear that Washington regarded this message as a legitimate demand from the CCP leadership, and in 2009 the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) did not have the conventional or nuclear power to enforce a denial of nearly half the world to U.S. military forces.
But that such a denial of military access, or containment of the U.S., remains an ambition of the CCP in 2026, has been made quite clear by the speech and writings Victor Gao (Gao Shikai), a former translator for the late CCP leader Deng Xiaoping, who then earned a Juris Doctor degree from Yale University, and is now a major semi-official spokesman advocating for CCP power.
Essentially, Gao has a “license” to make provocative statements to a global audience as long as they serve to increase the power of the CCP and to diminish the power of the United States and other enemy states.
The CCP has a deep bench of unofficial “spokesmen” like Gao that almost daily make outrageous statements of questionable validity, and should they incur the wrath of their targets, the CCP can quickly deny they represent the CCP or its policies.
On May 13, one day before President Donald Trump and CCP Chairman Xi Jinping met for their summit in Beijing, in the third-level state media Guancha, Victor Gao published his latest explanation for dividing the Earth
into zones dominated by China and then the United States.
Gao explains his idea as a favor to the United States, given that there is very low “confidence” between Beijing and Washington to pursue beneficial goals like nuclear arms control.
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China has not abandoned its ambitions to divide globe and contain America added by Editor Two on
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