With each passing week, it appears that World War III between the United States and China is approaching faster than we think. However, despite China’s aggressive and threatening military buildup, it will not be fought with bullets or aircraft carriers.

It is more likely that an all-out economic war for global supremacy will erupt. The Chinese yuan versus the US dollar. The Nasdaq Composite Index vs. the Shanghai Stock Exchange

Meanwhile, America is dozing off at the switch. Or, at the very least, the Biden administration believes so. It is the worst possible time to raise corporate tax rates, dismantle energy, and increase the national debt. Whether you like or dislike Trump, he was a president who prioritized America and recognized the Chinese regime’s predatory nature. He confronted President Xi Jinping and overturned one-sided trade agreements. His strategy was to do what Reagan did to win the Cold War: build up America’s strategic industries to the point where the Soviet Union or China couldn’t compete.

The danger is that we now have a president in Biden who believes climate change is a greater threat to the world than the Maoists in Beijing.

And there is no doubt about it. China’s communists have retaken power. Xi has effectively declared himself president for life, throwing democracy and free elections out the window. China is also rushing back to fascistic command and control government and industry “cooperation.” That is a model that will eventually implode, but as we saw with the Soviet threat, they can do a lot of damage to peace and prosperity in the meantime.

It’s no coincidence that China’s economy and stock market are in trouble. The US stock market has risen by about 20% in the last year, while China’s Shanghai stock market has fallen by 15%. For the time being, they are sprinting faster toward socialism than we are.

The jitters in the Chinese stock market reflect global investors’ displeasure with the increased political intervention in business affairs. “President Xi has placed China on a risky trajectory that threatens the [free market] achievements of his predecessors,” Foreign Affairs magazine recently said of these iron-fisted interferences in the business activities of its largest companies.

In short, recent military and economic events have confirmed that the modern Maoists are firmly entrenched in Beijing and capitalism is losing. Xi’s administration simply does not understand “that freedom thing,” as George H.W. Bush so eloquently put it. Militant social controls and restrictions on individual liberty are now being matched with economic restrictions on Chinese mega-corporations vying for industry supremacy in technology, biology, manufacturing, and transportation. Is this all reminiscent of Japan in 1939?

How will the Biden administration respond to these threats? The $5 trillion massive spend, tax, and borrow bill he is ramming through Congress will undermine American economic dominance almost immediately. Tax cuts under Trump resulted in a $1 trillion infusion of capital from around the world returning to these shores to bolster our industrial might. Biden’s tax policies will have the opposite effect: they will lead to deindustrialization.

We are now importing tens of billions of dollars of energy from OPEC and Russia rather than selling hundreds of years’ worth of oil, gas, and coal. Do the liberals who now govern Washington truly believe that by erecting windmills, we will be able to defeat the rising communist China threat? Do they believe that redistributing income and wealth is preferable to creating it?

With the policies in place in Washington today, will we be in any economic shape to repel China’s aggressive advances in the South China Sea, India, Africa, and possibly all the way to the shores of Taiwan? Doubtful. The war with China has begun. Currently, only one country is fighting. Let us not see another Afghanistan disaster in Asia. Reagan was correct. At home, you’re unbeatable. Internationally dominant. Are we either today?