Washington Free Beacon senior editor Bill Gertz said Friday that China is working against America ahead of the 2020 election because it wants "a different president."

"They are already working in the farm states," Gertz said Friday on Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson Tonight. "They are working against the whiskey industry in the United States to undermine Trump. They want a different president."

Discussing his new book, Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy, Gertz explained that China poses a grave threat not just to American elections, but also to U.S. leadership around the globe. He argued Democratic presidential candidates were wrong to say climate change is the greatest "existential threat" to the United States when China is fast accumulating more military and economic power.

"It's going to take all of America's will, policy focus, and effort to mitigate that threat," Gertz said. "We are in real trouble. China is on the march."

Gertz said Chinese President Xi Jinping has actually pulled China in front of the United States in key strategic areas.

"Xi Jinping has shifted the old policy of Deng Xiaoping, which was ‘bide our time, build our capabilities.' They are now out front. He has something called the China Dream, which is really a Chinese communist nightmare," Gertz said. "They are doing this Belt and Road Initiative, which is a cover for military and economic expansionism around the world."

The U.S. policy of "engagement" to open China up and turn it into a "benign, free-market, open system" was a gamble that has "utterly failed," Gertz argued. He pointed to Chinese theft of nuclear secrets following increased military cooperation with the United States during the Bill Clinton administration.

"They ended up stealing nuclear secrets on every deployed U.S. warhead. That technology was then spread to Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and other places," he said. "We helped their missiles and now their missiles are aimed at our cities. They have an array of long-range, short-range, and intermediate-range missiles. This is a real problem."

According to Gertz's reporting, Chinese officials are directing a sophisticated, four-pronged influence strategy to harm Trump's reelection chances. In addition, Trump administration officials have recognized publicly that China has continued its cyberattacks on U.S. government networks.