That is why China is 'conducting public opinion and intelligence operations in the United States

The following is from an article by Etsunari Kurose, the Washington bureau chief of the Sankei Shimbun, which appears in this month's issue of the monthly magazine Sound Argyment, entitled "The Biden Administration in Peril if It Can Be Made.
The preamble is omitted.
A return to 'reconciliation' with China?　
Even more worrisome is that Susan Elizabeth Rice was one of the backers of the "G2" initiative under the former Obama administration, which envisioned the United States and China, leading the international community to address global concerns.　
In a November 2013 speech on Asia policy titled "The Future of the United States in Asia," Rice shocked Japan, Taiwan, and other countries when she said that the then Xi Jinping regime was "exploring the smooth operation of a new type of great power relationship" proposed in response to the Obama administration's G2 initiative.
In addition to Rice, the Biden campaign's diplomatic and security team includes former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Deputy Secretary of State Blinken, former Director of Policy Planning Jake Sullivan, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Campbell, former Under Secretary of Defense Flournoy, and many others who served in the former Obama administration.　
For this reason, it is extremely worrying to see a Biden administration take the "soft and naïve" path of the previous Obama administration in its diplomacy with China, which has been reversing course under the current Trump administration.　
Countless episodes symbolize how weakening the previous Obama administration was toward China. Still, I would like to cite the occasion when Obama invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to the United States as a guest of honor and held a joint press conference at the White House on September 24 and 25, 2015, as a prime example.
Hegemonic actions by China, such as creating artificial islands in the South China Sea, and industrial espionage and intellectual property theft targeting U.S. companies by Chinese Communist Party-affiliated hackers have been a severe problem since those days.
In this regard, Mr. Xi announced that he would not militarize the South China Sea at a joint press conference.
According to the White House, the two leaders also agreed not to steal each other's intellectual property and business information through cyber attacks.　
A senior Obama administration official at the time stressed that these were "major achievements."
But that it was only a verbal agreement is evident from China's subsequent attempts to turn the South China Sea into a "Chinese sea" by building military airstrips on artificial islands, stationing military units, and deploying anti-aircraft missiles.
In addition, the fact that the large-scale and systematic theft of U.S. intellectual property by China has been actively developed as if there was never any agreement between the leaders of the United States and China is needless to point out again, as is evident from the recent crafting activities based in the U.S. Consulate General in South Houston.　
The stance of the former Obama administration toward China, as seen in the U.S.-China summit in question, is not much different from the appeasement policy of then British Prime Minister Chamberlain, who, at the Munich meeting in September 1938, fully acceded to the demands of Nazi German Chancellor Hitler, which emboldened Germany and contributed to the outbreak of World War II.
Even the "freedom of navigation" operation, in which U.S. Navy ships deliberately navigate around the artificial islands in the South China Sea where China claims its "territorial rights," to demonstrate by action that China's claims are baseless, was carried out only a few times by the previous Obama administration for fear of a backlash from China.　
When I was covering the first term of the Obama administration as a Washington correspondent for the Yomiuri Shimbun, I recall that even when a handful of U.S. media outlets reported that the U.S. Navy had conducted a freedom of navigation operation, Pentagon spokespeople refused to officially confirm it, always taking a bit of time to corroborate the story.
A U.S. military official revealed that the military believes it can be actively publicized, but cannot announce it because of the White House's instructions.
There is no doubt that political considerations for China were at work.　
In response, the Trump administration has made clear its stance on blocking China's maritime hegemony by frequently conducting freedom of navigation operations and releasing every detail to the press and recently holding relatively prolonged exercises with two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the South China Sea.
The Trump administration has made it clear that it will take a stern approach to China on all the pending issues surrounding China, including high-tech, military, trade, and human rights issues in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Uyghurs, and is working to correct the distortions in its policy toward China that have accumulated over the years.　
That is why China is 'conducting public opinion and intelligence operations in the United States to prevent Trump from being re-elected to the presidency' (statement by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence on August 7).
This article continues.