Former Kansas Governor and former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback delivered a warning during a recent interview that many American leaders still refuse to fully recognize: Communist China is not simply an economic competitor. China represents a fundamentally different civilizational model built on authoritarian control, suppression of religion, and devotion to government above all else.

For years, American politicians treated China primarily as a trade partner. Brownback argued that the approach no longer reflects reality. He described China as the most significant adversary the United States has faced in generations because Beijing combines economic power, technological advancement, military expansion, and ideological authoritarianism into one system.

More importantly, Brownback emphasized that the deepest conflict between the United States and China is not economic. The real conflict is ideological.

Communist governments throughout history have consistently viewed religion as a threat because religion places moral authority above government. Faith creates loyalty to something greater than the state. Totalitarian systems cannot tolerate that structure because centralized power depends on the government becoming society’s highest authority.

That reality explains why communist regimes have historically waged war against religious groups. The Soviet Union persecuted Jews and Christians for decades. Maoist China destroyed churches and temples during the Cultural Revolution. Modern China continues that same pattern under Xi Jinping.

Brownback pointed to the persecution of Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners as evidence that the Chinese Communist Party sees organized religion as an existential threat to state control.

The Uyghur situation, Brownback argued, constitutes genocide because the Chinese government seeks to erase the religious and cultural identity of the Muslim population in Xinjiang. Tibet faces what he described as a cultural genocide, where language, religious practice, and traditional identity are systematically suppressed in favor of forced assimilation into Han Chinese nationalism.

Brownback also referenced allegations of forced organ harvesting involving Falun Gong practitioners, practices so barbaric that many Americans struggle to believe they exist in the modern world.

These abuses reflect the core philosophy of communist governance.

Brownback explained that communist systems ultimately require devotion to government itself. Once government becomes society’s highest moral authority, individual freedom inevitably declines. The state determines truth, morality, acceptable speech, and even acceptable belief.

That principle directly conflicts with the American founding.

The United States was built on the understanding that rights come from God, not government. Religious freedom became central to the American system precisely because the Founders distrusted concentrated state power. America’s constitutional structure limits government because the Founders believed human authority should never become absolute.

Communist China operates from the opposite premise. Under the Chinese system, rights exist only insofar as the government permits them. Religion becomes dangerous because it competes with loyalty to the state.

Brownback warned that the world is increasingly resembling a new Cold War, divided between authoritarian systems led by China and democratic systems led by the United States and the broader West. Economic cooperation has not erased those differences. In many ways, globalization allowed China to strengthen itself while simultaneously increasing Western dependence on Chinese manufacturing and supply chains.

China spent years cornering industries such as rare earth mineral processing, giving Beijing enormous leverage over global manufacturing and technology markets. Perhaps Brownback’s most important argument involved religion itself as a geopolitical strength for the United States.

He described religious freedom as “the human right of the soul” and argued that America too often ignores one of its greatest advantages: defending the universal right to worship freely. Roughly 80% of the world identifies with some form of faith. Communist China’s officially atheistic system fundamentally conflicts with that reality.

The debate surrounding China is not simply about tariffs or trade agreements. The larger question centers on whether societies will remain rooted in individual liberty, religious freedom, and limited government, or whether authoritarian systems will normalize the idea that government itself should become society’s highest authority.