Understanding China’s national security decisionmaking

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping before a bilateral meeting at the Gimhae International Airport terminal, Thursday, October 30, 2025, in Busan, South Korea. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

By Zachary Burdette, Shanshan Mei, Elizabeth Bujwid, Ian Burns McCaslin, Libby Weaver, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Kristen Gunness • Mar 02, 2026

In October 2020, officials in China became concerned that the U.S. military might provoke a war as part of an effort to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election. While these concerns about a U.S. attack had no basis in reality, the extent of China’s fears became so strong that they prompted reassurances from senior U.S. officials that no attack was in the works.

This October 2020 incident underscores the difficulty and importance of understanding the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) perceptions and national security decisionmaking. A deeper U.S. understanding of the PRC’s decisionmaking would enable more effective competition and would help foster greater stability in the U.S.-China relationship.

However, understanding China’s decisionmaking can be challenging, and the United States has frequently encountered difficulties in the past. Without strategic empathy—understanding a rival’s perspectives, motivations, and constraints to inform and improve one’s own decisionmaking—it is much harder to anticipate a competitor’s actions and identify opportunities to influence its decisions.