The Vandenberg Coalition has released a new video arguing that the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party to the United States is not merely political but civilizational, ahead of an upcoming Trump-Xi summit.
In the video, Elliott Abrams, Peter Berkowitz, Carrie Filipetti, Michael Sobolik, Grace Jin Drexel and Mary Kissel examine why the China threat is ultimately civilizational and why defending America's founding principles is essential to meeting it, according to the Coalition.
The group said the CCP's worldview, in which the individual exists to serve the state, is fundamentally at odds with the principles of liberty and human dignity enshrined in America's founding documents. It added that the CCP views America's tradition of freedom as a direct threat to its ambitions and works aggressively to undermine that tradition at home and abroad.
"One of things that President Trump has really emphasized is this idea of Western civilization, and what really is Western civilization but the concept of the Imago Dei—that we're all created in the image of God and thus have certain inalienable rights that are neither granted nor withdrawn by governments," Vandenberg Executive Director Carrie Filipetti said in the video.
"And this Judeo-Christian mindset is the antithesis of communist China's mindset. Rather than all of us being equally free under God, it is all of us being equally subservient under Xi. And this is why freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of press, most especially freedom of religion—is so dangerous to Chairman Xi," she said.
The release also points to the Coalition's July 2026 letter, signed by 32 conservative national security experts, asking President Trump and Secretary Rubio to make the immediate release of American citizen Min Zin a diplomatic priority and a necessary precondition for any additional summits with Chairman Xi Jinping. Min Zin, who runs a policy think tank, was lured to China at the invitation of a Chinese academic institution under the pretext of speaking at an academic conference, and was arrested on June 3 on what the Coalition described as bogus espionage charges.