| CIA Director William J. Burns characterized the China Mission Center as an effort to "further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government." A senior CIA official drew comparisons to the Cold War fight against the Soviet Union, but said China was a more formidable and complicated rival given the size of its economy, which is entwined with that of the United States, and its own global reach. | 
