China: the existential challenge of our time

The Country needs to wake up to the war China has been winning against America

I’m reading Josh Rogin’s excellent book Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi and the Battle for the 21st Century and I can’t say enough good about it. It is briskly well written with important and sometimes shocking details. I find new information I didn’t know on almost every page - and thus, I’ve been thinking deeply about China.

In every measure and on every level, we are losing the war the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been waging against America and her way of life for the past 2+ decades. This is not a traditional war (although the CCP’s more recent actions have escalated on the military front) but an all-out strategic and psychological one with the sole aim of shaping the world so they dominate it.

Although Rogin’s book does not cover this period, the Chinese Communist Party has been executing this war at least as far back as the Clinton administration. Indeed, the stories about Chinese influence on America’s leaders and institutions began in earnest with the 1996 Clinton campaign scandal. It is worth noting that after the Clinton-Gore campaign received millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions, China was finally allowed to enter the World Trade Organization and obtain permanent Most Favored Nation trading status, in 2001. I want to emphasize that this was a bipartisan effort in Congress as is the corruption that continues. For example, the Bush family has huge ties to China as well - selling out America to China has been a bipartisan mission.

Here is what’s happened to our respective GDPs since China entered the WTO (source):

And here’s what’s happened to our trade deficit with China since then (source):

That’s right - China has overtaken the US in GDP constant prices over this time period. And we have transferred trillions of dollars of wealth to Chinese oligarchs while hollowing out our middle class, manufacturing and industries. The CCP has built the most powerful economic force in the world.

How? According to Rogin, the CCP has been playing a long game of infiltrating our political class and our major institutions over this same period. The CCP is not only influencing our politicians, but are also deeply entrenched in our universities, NGOs, our state governments and social and corporate media. On October 4th, 2018, Vice President Mike Pence gave a speech on China at the Hudson Institute, here is what he said (from Rogin):

I come before you today because the American people deserve to know that, as we speak, Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States…China is also applying this power in more proactive ways than ever before, to exert influence and interfere in the domestic politics and policy of this country.” (Emphasis added)

These are extremely important words coming from the sitting VP, regardless of your politics. I can’t list all of the ways this is proven in Rogin’s book (just read it!) but I am convinced that you would be hard-pressed to find a politician in Washington that is not somehow compromised by Chinese money and influence, including leaders from both parties and former President Trump.

Rogin also details the CCP’s infiltration and huge influence at the UN, the World Bank and other major institutions. These global NGOs are compromised and conflicted by the CCP’s money and influence - they no longer work for the benefit of the world (if they ever did).

Second and perhaps more importantly, the CCP is one of the most authoritarian terror regimes in history. Granted there are no gas chambers (as far as we know), but consider the plight of Tibet, the Uyghurs and others in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The plight of the Uyghurs is the most appalling, and what invites comparisons to Nazi Germany. From Rogin’s book, page 166-67:

In 2016, [President of China] Xi appointed the CCP’s top man in Tibet, Chen Quanguo, to be the new party chief in Xinjiang. Chen quickly issued orders to “round up everyone who should be rounded up,” purging any local officials who didn’t obey. He began constructing a network of what he called “vocational skills, education training and transformation centers.”…they were identical to prisons. The region’s already omnipresent networks of AI-powered cameras and other surveillance tools were tasked with identifying entire classes of people to jail, based on the most random and previously innocent behaviors, such as refusing to eat pork or having a beard.

Years later…the China Cables…revealed how Chinese authorities used technology to justify interning people they suspected of future crimes. They also persecuted Uyghurs living abroad, tracking them and trying to get them deported back to China for jailing. (emphasis added)

The Uyghars are a people of at least 11 million in China. No one that knows has said how many Uyghurs are in these concentration camps, but US estimates are at least 1 million and as much as 3 million people. The atrocities going on at these camps is still being discovered, but here’s a report of forced organ harvesting from these prisoners.

This is going on - right now - in 2021. While we argue about pronouns and CRT.

Indeed, the entire American establishment - to include presidents, members of congress, and those who have led our institutions of State, Defense, Treasury, Commerce, etc are to be held accountable to these awful developments over the past 2+ decades. Our corporate media and other influencers should be held accountable as well. Even LeBron James carries water for the CCP. One wonders if the Hunter Biden laptop cover up had more to do with protecting China than it did protecting Joe Biden. Speaking of which, what is going on with US-CCP relations since January 2021? What is the Biden administration doing about the most immediate and important strategic issue of the 21st century? Does anyone know?

While the US was galavanting across the Middle East for 20 years, draining our valuable resources fighting meaningless, unwinnable wars, the Chinese Communist Party was on the march. They have severely damaged the US economy, our diplomacy and our way of life. We must react now with aggressive and coordinated military, economic and diplomatic efforts before all is lost.

No more deals with the CCP - they have continuously and unerringly promised US leadership one thing while doing another. We must increase the cost of their bad actions or the world order will continue to tilt toward their flavor of totalitarian terror states. This is the existential challenge of this generation; I wonder if we have the leadership and fortitude to do anything about it. The CCP is betting no.