CIA opening new centre to suppress China’s dominance in Asia

The CIA will house a new ‘China Mission Centre’, in a bid to counter China’s dominance in the Indo-Pacific region.

CIA Director William Burns says the centre will facilitate a whole-of-agency response to China, as a “key rival”.

Burns says the unit will “further strengthen collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century”.

It comes as Washington asserts that it is not seeking a “new Cold War” with Beijing.

But the initiative follows a string of new branch units dedicated to countering Beijing.

The CIA’s classification of China as a “key rival” is likely to anger Beijing.

Chinese officials told their U.S. counterparts that they rejected the term of “competition” to define the relationship between the two nations.