A U.S. intelligence official has warned that China wants “to replace the United States as the leading power in the world.”

A U.S. intelligence official has warned that China is waging a "cold war" against the U.S. 
Michael Collins, Deputy Assistant Director of the CIA East Asia Mission Center, told the Aspen Security Forum Friday: "I would argue by definition what they're waging against us is fundamentally a cold war, a cold war not like we saw during the Cold War, but a cold war by definition - a country that exploits all avenues of power — licit and illicit, public and private, economic and military — to undermine the standing of your rival relative to your own standing without resorting to conflict. The Chinese do not want conflict."
"At the end of the day they want every country around the world, when it's deciding its interests on policy issues, to first and foremost side with China and not the United States, because the Chinese are increasingly defining a conflict with the United States and what we stand behind as a systems conflict." he continued. 
Collins also spoke of China's goal of dethroning the U.S. as the world's top superpower, saying that the regime "has been aspiring, expanding its ambitions, its interests, its activities around the globe to compete with the United States, and at the end of day, to undermine our influence relative to their influence." 
According to CNN, he and other U.S. officials including FBI Director Christopher Wray pointed to China as a greater threat than Russia, with Wray telling the forum: "I think China, from a counterintelligence perspective, in many ways represents the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country." 
These warnings come amid a looming trade conflict with the Asian country. President Trump recently threatened to impose tariffs on $500 billion worth of Chinese goods--the amount which was imported into the U.S. in 2017.