China’s navy is viewed as posing a major challenge to the U.S. Navy’s ability to achieve and maintain wartime control of blue-water ocean areas in the Western Pacific—the first such challenge the U.S. Navy has faced since the end of the Cold War—

and forms a key element of a Chinese challenge to the long-standing status of the United States as the leading military power in the Western Pacific.Some U.S. observers are expressing concern or alarm regarding the pace of China’s naval shipbuilding effort, particularly for building larger surface ships, and resulting trend lines regarding the relative sizes China’s navy and the U.S. Navy. (Second paragraph of the summary)

Dated December 17, 2020, this report was issued one day after the U.S Maritime Strategy. Read the entire report here: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33153/246