Understanding China’s National Security Decisionmaking

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.

This paper presents a primer for U.S. policymakers on China’s national security decisionmaking, describing a building block framework that identifies three universal elements (information, analysis, and authorities) that shape how governments make policy decisions. The authors map this framework to China’s national security decisionmaking ecosystem, drawing on historical examples to illustrate recurring dynamics. These building blocks help identify patterns in China’s decisionmaking and cue U.S. policymakers to think about what China’s decisionmakers are likely to know, how they will interpret the available information, and who within the system makes which decisions.