(TibetanReview.net, Aug01’26) – The United States is preparing to ramp up funding by hundreds of millions of dollars more for programs designed to counter China’s growing influence around the world, including against its Dalai Lama successor meddling plan, reported the AP Jul 28. This comes after President Donald Trump had earlier put a halt to many of those initiatives last year during a flurry of budget and personnel cuts under his now largely defunct DOGE campaign.
The State Department is considering spending nearly half a billion dollars more on programs aimed at China throughout the Western Hemisphere, Africa and Asia, the report said, citing an internal State Department document.
The proposal, which is still under consideration, would work against Chinese influence in the selection of a successor to the Dalai Lama “by developing proprietary technology to ensure secure communications and information collection.” It also would go after international support for China’s space program and push back against Chinese firms seeking to export surveillance and censorship technology, the report said.
“The United States must respond to the CCP’s growing economic, technological, and diplomatic leverage around the world which undermines our national interests,” the document was quoted as saying, using the acronym for the Chinese Communist Party.
The report said many of those proposed programs were designed to “reclaim diplomatic leverage” through investments in areas where the US had previously been spending money but stopped as the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, carried out deep cuts to government budgets and personnel last year.
Those cuts, which dismantled the US Agency for International Development and eliminated several hundred diplomatic posts worldwide, also affected previously approved projects, including some aimed at countering China, the report noted.
It cited a senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss future administration plans, as confirming the Trump administration’s intended to boost funding on countering China but could not speak to specifics. The official has acknowledged discussions of large-scale projects but said many were still in the discussion phase.
The US plans to spend $175.8 million to replace outdated and ageing undersea telecommunications cables in the Caribbean and Central America to prevent China from moving in. At the same time, the administration has drawn up plans to spend more than $340 million for over 50 specific anti-China projects around the world, including many in the Western Hemisphere, the internal State Department document outlining various proposals was cited as saying.
The administration was stated to have notified Congress in May that it had spent several hundred million dollars in counter-China funding from the 2024 budget that was approved by the Biden administration. However, many other projects funded for 2024 and 2025 had been put on hold.
Trump is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September around the time of the annual UN General Assembly gathering of world leaders in New York. To prepare for that meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week at a regional security conference in the Philippines.
Trump has oscillated between anger and elation with Xi, whom the US leader has sought to cultivate as an ally even while China pursues goals antithetical to many of his administration’s. The ultimate impact of the proposed new programs won’t be known for many months or years, the report said.