Financial Times sent shock waves through the U.S. business community last week when headlines announced that China will overtake the United States as the “world’s leading economic power this year,” a title we’ve held since we passed England in 1872. The previous date for this anticipated event was 2019.

The grim announcement was based on figures compiled by the International Comparison Program which is hosted by the World Bank. The awesome part of this fact, however, is that the Chinese are spending this big money to build their growing military arsenal.

While Obama has presided over hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts to our military, Communist China has been building dramatic new strategic military capabilities in every field of modern warfare. And it’s all been paid for with U.S. money that has flowed to China through the racket mislabeled “free trade.”

One of the world’s best national-security analysts, Bill Gertz, reported that the 2014 U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review includes a warning on page 80 of an 88-page document from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey that the risk of a conflict in Asia is dangerously increasing. The worst part of that prediction is that he says our coming conflict with China will probably be waged on United States territory because distance and the Pacific Ocean will no longer protect us against China’s new weapons.

Communist China is working hard to develop new niche weapons systems designed to attack us in space and in the so-called “cyber domain.” The speed of technology development and the building of increasingly sophisticated systems, Gertz reported, make our estimates unreliable about how and where we would fight a war or militarily intervene.

We face a new power relationship: a weakening American military versus a rising Communist Chinese power, and that has “dire implications for global peace and stability.” This isn’t any accident; Obama has made clear that his goal from the get-go has been to spread around world power internationally just as he told Joe the Plumber that he wanted to spread around our wealth.

Gertz reminds us that the notion that China is not a threat is a common propaganda theme based on ancient Chinese strategic teachings. Tai Kung taught: convince your enemy that you pose no threat and thereby lull him into complacency before advancing for the kill.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in November 2011 that the centerpiece of Obama’s foreign and defense policies is a “pivot.” That was supposed to tell the world that the United States is pivoting its most serious attention away from Western Europe and Africa to Asia.

But this year, Assistant Secretary of Defense Katrina McFarland let the cat out of the bag, saying “the pivot is being looked at again because, candidly it can’t happen” — there simply isn’t enough money for it. McFarland was then ordered to issue a “clarification” of her unauthorized revelation.

When the Soviet Union was threatening the world with its awesome giant missile force, the Kremlin’s goal was straightforward: “We will bury you.” Communist China’s immediate goal is more limited but is just as determined: get the U.S. out of Asia and force all Asian states to bow to Beijing’s wishes.

We need a new leader like Ronald Reagan with determination not to let the Communists rule the world. Reagan’s Peace Through Strength maxim is still the best rule. Not only America but the whole world is safer when the United States has military superiority.

Instead we learn that Admiral Samuel Locklear, whom Obama appointed to head the U.S. Pacific Command (a position once held by Senator John McCain’s father), declared in January that “Our historic dominance is diminishing. Let me say it again. Our historic dominance is diminishing.”

Our relationship with China has been dangerous to U.S. interests for years because of our tolerance of the dishonest slogan mislabeled free trade. There is nothing free about it; it’s terribly costly to Americans because the Chinese cheat us coming and going, steal our patents and copyrights, and use their ill-gotten gains to build up their military to eventually chase us out of Asia.

The Democrats have finally awakened to the high cost of so-called free trade, and we hope the Republicans will wake up, too. We hope Congress will defeat Obama’s new free-trade agreement called TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership).

The last such deal, called the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), cost 60,000 American jobs while increasing jobs in South Korea. That is exactly what most “free trade” treaties do.

Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer, conservative political analyst and author of 20 books. She is the co-author, with George Neumayr, of the New York Times Best-Seller titled “No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.” She can be contacted by e-mail at phyllis@eagleforum.org. To find out more about Phyllis Schlafly and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Website at www.creators.com