How China reads the 2025 US National Security Strategy

In December 2025, the Trump administration formally released a new national security strategy (NSS), a document that has generated extensive discussion among Chinese scholars, policy analysts, and the media. Among Chinese analysts, the document is not treated as a definitive blueprint for Washington’s future orientation or as a settled consensus on competition with China. Instead, it is widely read in Beijing as a transitional document. Chinese analysts see the 2025 NSS as reflecting America’s domestic political dynamics, shifting strategic priorities amid resource constraints, and mounting dissatisfaction with the liberal international order.

From liberal internationalism to conservative nationalism

China’s strategic community is interpreting the Trump administration’s 2025 NSS as signaling a more domestically focused and economically driven foreign policy orientation, rather than as a tactical update to existing policy. It is viewed as a reflection of a United States that is more skeptical of alliances, less centered on values, and more explicitly transactional in its approach to global affairs.

Compared with the Biden administration’s 2022 NSS, the new strategy reflects a clear shift from liberal internationalism toward a form of conservative nationalism. Chinese analysts generally view this change as a meaningful adjustment in America’s strategic thinking. However, they emphasize that it does not represent a retreat from competition itself. Instead, it marks a redefinition of how the United States understands, prioritizes, and organizes external competition under conditions of growing domestic and fiscal constraint.

In interpreting the new strategy, China’s strategic community first focuses on the shift in the sources of policy legitimacy. The Biden administration’s NSS rested on alliances as its central pillar, emphasizing coordination among democracies to manage systemic competition and framing the defense of the international order as a core expression of U.S. leadership. By contrast, the 2025 NSS more explicitly recenters U.S. foreign policy on narrowly defined national interests, criticizing previous approaches for pursuing overly expansive goals without sufficient strategic focus. Within this framework, foreign policy is redefined primarily as an instrument for safeguarding domestic economic security and industrial resilience. Sustaining long-term global order is no longer treated as a central objective. Some Chinese analysts note that U.S. decisionmaking is moving toward a model that prioritizes sovereignty, cost efficiency, and results-oriented outcomes. The legitimacy of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is, therefore, derived less from value-based narratives and more from its perceived ability to respond to domestic voter expectations and economic pressures.

There is also a broad consensus within China’s strategic community about the reassessment of U.S. relations with European allies in the 2025 NSS. Under the Biden administration, Europe was consistently framed as the United States’ most indispensable alliance network. By contrast, the 2025 NSS adopts unusually blunt language in its assessment of Europe, particularly with regard to migration and demographic trends. The document argues that Europe not only faces economic challenges but also what it describes as the prospect of “civilizational erasure,” highlighting migration policies that are “transforming the continent,” sharply declining birthrates, and the erosion of national identity and social cohesion. Against this backdrop, the 2025 NSS questions whether European states can continue to function as reliable military and economic allies.

This skepticism signals a revaluation of the costs and benefits of U.S. commitments to Europe and marks a notable step toward “partial disengagement” from alliance-centered thinking. From the perspective of Chinese analysts, this shift may weaken the stability of transatlantic policy coordination over the medium to long term. At the same time, they stress that the shift is rooted in a renewed prioritization of core and vital U.S. national interests, rather than a softening of competitive intent.

In its treatment of China and Russia, the 2025 NSS also reflects a clear shift in emphasis. Compared with the Biden administration’s threat-centered framing, the 2025 NSS reduces ideological emphasis and prioritizes competition in technological and economic domains. It avoids portraying China as an existential challenger. Instead, it stresses the need for a mutually beneficial economic relationship and identifies the economic domain as the primary arena of competition, with particular attention to trade, supply chains, and access to critical resources. With respect to Russia, the strategy does not label Moscow as a threat. Rather, it emphasizes Washington’s interest in ending the war in Ukraine and restoring what it terms “strategic stability.”

The absence of any explicit reference to China as a “strategic competitor” in the 2025 NSS is notable. However, Chinese analysts generally view this omission as more rhetorical than substantive. It reflects an effort to reposition the framing of competition, shifting away from overt ideological labeling toward a more transactional and economically centered approach—rather than signaling a reduction in competitive intent. Competition with China remains central to the 2025 NSS, particularly in technological, trade, and supply-chain domains, even as the language used to describe it becomes less confrontational.

The 2025 NSS also signals a shift in the U.S. approach to India, which aligns with Washington’s broader redefinition of policies toward China and Russia. Despite India’s continued tough stance with the United States on tariffs and market access, and its lack of meaningful concessions in recent trade negotiations, the document significantly softens the Trump administration’s previously critical tone. It highlights the importance of strategic cooperation with India and reintroduces references to the Quad framework (Australia, India, Japan, United States) promoted during the Biden years. In the view of Chinese analysts, this warming rhetoric toward India does not indicate a transition toward a stable or deepening partnership. Instead, it reflects a highly instrumental strategy. From a realist standpoint, the Trump administration sees India as a country with potential leverage in U.S.-China competition and regional security issues. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to India and the signing of multiple cooperation agreements further underscore India’s long-standing preference for diversified alignment and risk dispersion in great-power politics.

In addition, China’s strategic community has noted that the 2025 NSS markedly downplays global governance issues. Whereas the Biden administration emphasized climate change, global health, supply chain resilience, and multilateral cooperation, the Trump administration’s new NSS argues that the United States should not be overly constrained by international institutions, nor should it assume governance responsibilities that extend beyond its core national interests, such as promoting democratic reforms abroad.

The Western Hemisphere pivot doesn’t ease China competition

Unlike the Biden administration, which placed the Indo-Pacific at the center of its strategy and explicitly defined China as the United States’ most consequential long-term competitor, the 2025 NSS redefines the Western Hemisphere as the foundational region for U.S. security and prosperity. The document argues that more diplomatic, military, and policy resources should be directed toward the Americas to address migration, narcotics trafficking, transnational crime, and what it characterizes as external interference. On this basis, it advances a renewed interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The 2025 NSS states that the United States “will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.” It describes this “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine as a restoration of U.S. power and priorities consistent with American security interests. Chinese analysts read this language as reflecting a clear awareness of resource constraints. In their view, it signals a U.S. shift away from a single-region focus toward a more interconnected, multi-regional competitive framework.

China’s strategic community broadly cautions against interpreting this U.S. emphasis on the Western Hemisphere as an overall easing of China’s external strategic environment. On one hand, the United States has not disengaged from the Indo-Pacific but has adjusted how it operates there. The 2025 NSS continues to stress the geopolitical importance of the first island chain and highlights Taiwan’s strategic position within it. At the same time, it calls on allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia to substantially increase defense spending and strengthen their own military capabilities. This approach aims to sustain U.S. regional advantages through burden sharing and cost shifting.

However, Washington may not seek direct confrontation with China in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, it is likely to raise the political costs of China’s regional engagement through regulatory scrutiny, narrative framing, and rule-setting. Such spillover effects of strategic competition may narrow the policy space available to Latin American countries, increasing the complexity of their balancing choices in external cooperation. Meanwhile, the 2025 NSS frames external actors’ growing presence as a strategic risk, noting that “non-Hemispheric competitors have made major inroads” into the Western Hemisphere. It warns that such incursions may disadvantage the United States economically and harm its long-term strategic position. Under this security-centered narrative, China’s economic cooperation, development finance, and multilateral engagement are more likely to be interpreted through a competitive lens.

At the same time, the U.S. shift toward the Western Hemisphere coincides with China’s own systematic policy engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean. On December 10, 2025, China released its third Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean. The document outlines long-term cooperation based on equality, mutual benefit, noninterference, and openness, with a strong emphasis on Global South cooperation and shared development. Chinese analysts generally view this policy framework not as a reactive response to U.S. adjustments, but as part of a longer-term effort to define China’s global role amid structural changes in the international system. While China is attentive to the risk that heightened U.S. security and enforcement measures could complicate China’s regional engagement, these challenges are seen as manageable and concentrated in areas such as investment screening, infrastructure projects, and regulatory oversight, rather than as a source of direct confrontation.

Overall, the U.S. pivot back to the Western Hemisphere does not reduce competitive pressure on China. Instead, it reshapes where and how competition unfolds. Latin America and the Caribbean are transitioning from regions that were not previously at the center of U.S.-China strategic competition into increasingly important arenas of major power interaction and institutional influence. For China, opportunities for pragmatic engagement with the United States in Latin America have not disappeared, but the policy environment is becoming more complex and more explicitly shaped by competitive narratives and regulatory scrutiny. This shift suggests that U.S.-China competition is expanding beyond an Indo-Pacific-centered rivalry into a broader contest over global influence and rule shaping.

Why Chinese analysts do not see the 2025 NSS as decisive

Within China’s strategic community, the 2025 NSS is not seen as a decisive document shaping the trajectory of U.S.-China relations. It does not mark a turning point, nor does it justify a fundamental adjustment in China’s approach toward the United States. While the strategy reflects a reordering of priorities at the level of emphasis, its real impact must be assessed alongside domestic politics, policy implementation, and leadership decisionmaking.

From this perspective, the 2025 NSS is best understood as a compromise among competing policy factions operating under resource constraints, rather than as a coherent and durable China strategy. Three orientations are particularly visible. One reflects security-focused hawks who prioritize military superiority, deterrence, and alliance mobilization. A second centers on economic competition and industrial security, emphasizing tariffs, supply chains, technological advantage, and market rules. A third is driven by “America First” political forces that stress cost control, burden shifting, and transactional diplomacy, while remaining skeptical of long-term international commitments. Their coexistence gives the strategy an inherently uncertain character in practice.

Chinese analysts also highlight a persistent tension between presidential signaling and the broader policy bureaucracy. While presidential rhetoric and the 2025 NSS emphasize recalibrating economic relations and preserving room for negotiation, other instruments, including provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, continue to reflect a more containment-oriented logic. This divergence has been temporarily managed through presidential authority, but it suggests that U.S. policy could harden quickly if leadership priorities shift or new crises emerge.

Trump’s personalized decisionmaking style adds uncertainty. His approach departs from institutionalized and process-driven policymaking and instead favors improvisation and dealmaking. As a result, the 2025 NSS is unlikely to function as a binding guide for day-to-day diplomacy. Reliance on the 2025 NSS alone as a predictor of future U.S. China policy risks overstating its constraining effects while underestimating inherent volatility, even amid periods of intensive high-level engagement.

Against this backdrop, Chinese strategic assessments emphasize that the 2025 NSS presents both risks and opportunities. Competitive pressures in economic and technological domains may intensify, while risks of miscalculation in the Taiwan Strait and the weakening of crisis-management mechanisms persist. At the same time, the U.S. shift away from an explicit commitment to sustaining global hegemony toward more selective regional prioritization under resource constraints is likely to reshape the broader landscape of global competition. In this context, the resulting adjustment in U.S. global engagement may create greater diplomatic and narrative space for China to articulate its development path and governance concepts. Chinese analysts assess that this change could increase the receptivity of some Global South countries to China’s policy narratives, rather than reflecting a simple transfer of leadership or influence.

Rather than marking a turning point in U.S.-China relations, the 2025 NSS reflects a United States in strategic transition. For Chinese analysts, it reflects the persistence of competitive pressure between the United States and China, while also exposing uncertainty in how the United States defines its global role.