Full Comment - Supporting Taiwan in the face of Xi’s overbearing China

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00:00:51.820 Hello, I'm Anthony Fury.

00:00:53.120 Thanks so much for joining us for the latest episode of Full Comment.

00:00:56.460 Please consider subscribing if you haven't already.

00:00:58.500 American politician Nancy Pelosi's recent visit to Taiwan sure got a lot of people talking,

00:01:04.500 especially the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party government.

00:01:07.800 They practically threatened war over her trip.

00:01:10.340 Everyone had an opinion about whether it was right or wrong for Pelosi to go on that visit,

00:01:14.020 but ultimately, she went and nothing bad, at least in the moment, came of it.

00:01:18.280 But what do we make of China's attempts to tell a prominent U.S. politician, where she can and can't travel,

00:01:24.880 what gives them the right to say Taiwan is off-limits?

00:01:28.500 And perhaps more importantly, what does this episode tell us about the challenges of dealing with China 0.96

00:01:34.260 and the broader intentions of ruler Xi Jinping right now?

00:01:37.900 To help us explore these questions, we're joined now by our guest today, Gordon G. Chang.

00:01:42.300 Gordon is an author, newspaper columnist, and lawyer who has been cautioning the West

00:01:46.200 about the need to deal with an overbearing China for quite some time now.

00:01:49.680 You can find him at gordonchang.com and on Twitter.

00:01:53.240 He joins us now.

00:01:54.620 Great to have you here, Gordon.

00:01:55.660 Thanks for joining us on the program.

00:01:57.680 Thank you, Anthony.

00:01:59.040 What were your first thoughts when you heard that China was making noise about the fact that Nancy Pelosi,

00:02:05.000 how dare she, doing a tour of Pacific nations, and one of them she would be visiting, of course, Taiwan?

00:02:11.160 The most important thing was that Speaker Pelosi had to go to Taiwan,

00:02:16.740 although Beijing then was trying to prevent her from doing so.

00:02:20.620 As she had to go, because if she didn't, she would have legitimized and emboldened the worst elements 0.93

00:02:26.520 in the Chinese political system by showing everybody else that threats against America work.

00:02:32.020 I think that Xi was going to make an unannounced trip to Taiwan,

00:02:36.040 or it would have been announced just the day before arrival.

00:02:39.540 But what happened, of course, was that someone leaked this to the Financial Times,

00:02:43.760 and that someone was probably in the Biden administration who didn't want her to go.

00:02:49.760 And really what President Biden did was open the door to making this much of a bigger controversy

00:02:56.560 than it had to be.

00:02:58.080 Remember, on July 20, speaking to reporters,

00:03:01.440 the president said that the Pentagon thought it was not a good idea that Xi would go.

00:03:05.540 And immediately after that, Beijing not only ramped up its threats with frequency,

00:03:11.360 but also the threats were more ominous sounding.

00:03:14.720 And that's a real indication that this had become a real problem inside the Biden team,

00:03:20.640 who thought that the speaker going was not a good idea.

00:03:23.960 But what it showed to China was that although ultimately the speaker did go to Taiwan,

00:03:29.500 the speaker, you know, poked her finger in the eye of Beijing,

00:03:33.820 and that was a good thing because Beijing needed that.

00:03:37.480 It's gotten very arrogant recently.

00:03:39.380 But what it showed to Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, and others is that

00:03:43.380 although they cannot control the Speaker of the House,

00:03:47.680 they certainly own the Oval Office.

00:03:51.100 And this is going to be an extremely dangerous time

00:03:54.240 as they escalate their threats against Biden,

00:03:57.280 because those threats seem to be working.

00:03:59.500 Now, is it not just the case that Nancy Pelosi going there just isn't that big of a deal

00:04:04.320 that she was talking about going earlier,

00:04:06.360 that many prominent politicians, not the American president,

00:04:09.600 but pretty much everyone other than the president, not administration officials,

00:04:12.840 they go to China.

00:04:13.760 I know of other Western politicians.

00:04:16.180 Sorry, not go to China, go to Taiwan.

00:04:17.700 I know of other Western politicians who have made similar trips.

00:04:20.260 Like it's just not that big of a deal.

00:04:23.980 Yes.

00:04:24.400 Well, the Chinese made it that big of a deal. 1.00

00:04:28.620 And I don't think the Speaker wanted to create this controversy.

00:04:32.400 But she realized that it had gotten a lot larger than anyone had contemplated in the beginning,

00:04:38.680 because she was going to go.

00:04:40.620 Everyone knew it in April.

00:04:42.420 And then she contracted COVID.

00:04:45.840 And, you know, people thought that eventually she would go before the new Congress.

00:04:53.300 So right now you have a out of control Chinese political system. 0.97

00:04:58.700 And we can see this from any number of different things that it's been doing and saying recently.

00:05:03.960 And that's what makes the Speaker's visit important,

00:05:06.540 because she showed Beijing that it doesn't necessarily control all elements of the U.S. government.

00:05:14.040 Now, I know there's been a discussion on social media.

00:05:17.800 We saw Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.

00:05:19.700 He was on a big program talking about this, saying, well, hold on a second.

00:05:22.500 It's well established that China actually basically owns Taiwan and all the other countries in the world agree.

00:05:28.880 So, you know, you're poking the bear here.

00:05:30.800 What's the big deal?

00:05:31.560 Back off.

00:05:32.720 And I find it interesting that that message has gotten promoted,

00:05:36.120 because, no, at no point has Taiwan in their history ever acknowledged that, yes, we're part of mainland China.

00:05:41.880 And, of course, their origin story is fleeing Mao's communists and hoping to continue the fight.

00:05:46.880 But I guess they lost the fight, so they had to stay on the island of Taiwan.

00:05:49.660 But they've never said, OK, fine, you know, uncle, we're part of China now.

00:05:54.320 Yes.

00:05:54.680 Well, Roger Waters is a great musician, but he's really deficient on Taiwan history.

00:06:01.580 At no time in history has a Chinese regime had indisputable sovereignty to the island of Taiwan.

00:06:09.780 Now, the Qing dynasty held, you know, ruled at least part of the island for only a brief period of time.

00:06:19.660 But the Chinese at that time did not consider the Qings to be Chinese.

00:06:24.540 They considered them to be Manchus, foreigners.

00:06:27.380 And they bitterly hated the Manchus.

00:06:31.100 Chiang Kai-shek, who was the ruler of the Republic of China, which actually did control the mainland,

00:06:40.400 as you say, he fled the mainland in 1949 and he set up shop on Taiwan.

00:06:47.060 But the Treaty of San Francisco, which formally ended most aspects of World War II, did not confer indisputable sovereignty on him.

00:06:55.220 It left the question open.

00:06:57.140 So Taiwan has never been indisputably a part of China.

00:07:02.600 And in any event today, the people on the island do not consider themselves to be part of China.

00:07:09.020 They don't even consider themselves to be Chinese, Anthony.

00:07:12.280 When you look at self-identification surveys, somewhere north of 80 percent identify themselves as Taiwanese only.

00:07:20.500 Somewhere south of 5 percent, which is now 2 percent in the latest survey, identify themselves as Chinese only.

00:07:28.240 So you can see that the island has moved away from this whole notion of identification as part of China.

00:07:35.860 I mean, people in Taiwan want good relations with Beijing.

00:07:38.460 They want to trade with China.

00:07:39.780 They want to eat Chinese food.

00:07:41.680 But they are not Chinese. 0.64

00:07:44.420 You know, as you know, the Chinese have now said in the last couple of days, well, there are a lot of Chinese restaurants on Taiwan that obviously makes it Chinese.

00:07:52.020 Well, Morgan Ortegas, the former State Department spokeswoman, said, well, that means Kentucky must rule China because there are a lot of KFCs on mainland China. 0.91

00:08:02.460 And so Beijing's arguments are ridiculous.

00:08:04.860 Roger Waters should stick to what he's doing well and not make statements which are historically inaccurate.

00:08:11.140 I went on a media tour of Taiwan in 2018 and toured the beautiful country and we saw different facilities and we talked with different experts and politicians.

00:08:20.420 And you really get a clear sense of a country and a people who are quite happy with their way of life, proud of who they are, proud of having a democratically elected president.

00:08:29.860 And they're also prepared to fight if there's any sort of attack, invasion, amphibious invasions are very difficult historically to pull off.

00:08:38.800 I guess a lot of questions of to what degree the U.S. will defend them.

00:08:42.040 And one thinks, why is this really worth it for China in terms of a small landmass of, I guess, 25 million people or so, which is significantly smaller than, of course, the population of China.

00:08:52.280 Gordon, why do they care so much?

00:08:54.940 Why are they willing to say all this rhetoric they said over Nancy Pelosi's trip, basically threatening, you know, world war?

00:09:00.740 I know they didn't come anywhere near to doing all that much aside from some life fire drills.

00:09:05.800 But why do they care?

00:09:08.860 Chinese rulers view Taiwan as an existential threat to Communist Party rule.

00:09:14.620 Because although the people in Taiwan don't consider themselves Chinese, Beijing believes that they are Chinese.

00:09:21.560 And have endlessly, relentlessly propagated that notion.

00:09:25.780 Well, the Communist Party also propagates the notion that the Chinese people are not ready to govern themselves.

00:09:31.260 They need a totalitarian state to manage China.

00:09:36.840 Well, here you have Taiwan, which you pointed out is a vibrant democracy.

00:09:41.160 The people in Beijing's eyes are Chinese.

00:09:43.440 They seem to be doing really well.

00:09:45.120 They've got a more advanced society than China.

00:09:47.100 And they don't need a one-party state.

00:09:52.540 Matter of fact, what they've got is a vibrant democracy.

00:09:56.160 Now, Chiang Kai-shek, when he came over, was, you know, a Leninist, a totalitarian.

00:10:01.660 But this place has evolved to being a vibrant, self-governing island.

00:10:07.180 And that proves the Communist Party's main propaganda line to be utterly false.

00:10:13.040 How did we get to this point right now where there's such misperceptions, where Taiwan is not really acknowledged as a country by the UN?

00:10:24.020 Other countries, Canada and the US, for example, do not have formal diplomatic relations with them.

00:10:28.720 I know something happened in the 70s where, I guess, Henry Kissinger and others maneuvered a bit of a switchover of which one of these pieces of land and which government was acknowledged as more formal.

00:10:38.540 There's a lot of reasons for that.

00:10:41.260 I think that Beijing has been relentless in its propaganda.

00:10:45.880 And Americans have generally been, well, you know, this is not a big deal.

00:10:50.860 But also, you know, the American policy establishment has worked very hard to engage China, quote unquote, to integrate China into the international system on the belief that a stronger China would be a supporter of the liberal international order.

00:11:09.380 And so we have accepted a lot of crap from Beijing over a number of issues, including Taiwan.

00:11:16.680 I think that people are now starting to see that engagement was an historic mistake, perhaps the biggest mistake in American foreign policy from the beginning of our republic. 0.94

00:11:26.540 But now they're starting to see Beijing as a stronger state is a belligerent, provocative, extremely dangerous.

00:11:38.220 And people are now starting to question their own assumptions about Taiwan and other things.

00:11:45.440 So this is necessary.

00:11:48.040 Taiwan is absolutely critical to the defense of the free world for a lot of reasons.

00:11:52.540 And so this is this is changing.

00:11:56.140 It's not changing fast enough, but it is changing.

00:12:01.180 I mean, I know a lot of people talk about Taiwan having good relations with the U.S.

00:12:05.300 and vice versa as being something not just good for Taiwan, but good for the U.S.

00:12:08.820 in terms of having a presence so close to China in that part of the world.

00:12:13.760 Taiwan, based on just the basic shape of the country, has been described as, I guess, a bit of an immovable aircraft carrier just kind of sitting there.

00:12:22.540 Just far off, not far off of China's shore.

00:12:26.100 Yeah.

00:12:26.260 And it's also been considered the cork in the bottle.

00:12:28.460 But there are a number of reasons why Taiwan is absolutely critical to the defense of the United States.

00:12:35.200 First of all, there is one business on the island that makes 92 percent of the world's made to order computer chips.

00:12:42.780 In other words, the most important ones, that's TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

00:12:48.900 But let's put aside trade and semiconductors.

00:12:54.400 For more than a century, going back into the 1800s, the United States has drawn its western defense perimeter, not off the coast of Hawaii or even Guam, but off the coast of East Asia.

00:13:07.820 And Taiwan sits in the center of that critical perimeter where the South China and East China seas meet, hence the phrase cork in the bottle.

00:13:20.420 But there's something even more important than that.

00:13:23.140 Beijing is attacking not only our democracy, it's attacking the whole concept of democracy.

00:13:31.460 And the United States cannot afford to allow Beijing to absorb any democracy, especially one as important as Taiwan.

00:13:38.620 And there's still one more thing.

00:13:41.620 Due to this calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, due to the failure to deter Russia from invading Ukraine, Taiwan has become the test of American credibility.

00:13:54.620 And if we don't defend Taiwan, then we're not only going to have problems in East Asia, we're going to have problems around the world.

00:14:01.960 Because who would want to be a friend of the United States?

00:14:04.760 What does America's commitment mean?

00:14:07.020 And so we need to defend Taiwan.

00:14:10.480 And I believe that defending Taiwan is defending America. 0.62

00:14:15.020 Unfortunately, the Biden administration doesn't see it that way.

00:14:19.080 And unfortunately, the Biden administration, although there are obvious war signs, is not preparing for war.

00:14:25.480 But that is nonetheless the reality.

00:14:29.540 What are these obvious war signs that you're seeing?

00:14:33.040 Well, for instance, just what Beijing says and has consistently been saying.

00:14:37.020 As our great ambassador, great American ambassador to China, James Lilly, said, China always telegraphs its punches. 0.64

00:14:47.620 Well, China's been telegraphing that it's going to punch Taiwan and the United States and everybody else, for that matter, regarding the issue of Taiwan.

00:14:55.200 But we've also seen the rapid buildup of its military, the fastest buildup of any military in peacetime.

00:15:04.680 And of course, these drills that we just saw last week, you know, where they declared first six and then seven live fire exclusion zones.

00:15:17.840 And one of those zones, the one that was southwest of the island, was so close to Taiwan that it actually infringed on sovereign Chinese, sovereign Taiwanese airspace and water.

00:15:31.400 These are incredibly aggressive moves.

00:15:34.460 Oh, and one other thing, of course, on February 5, China actually flew a plane over China's, over Taiwan's sovereign airspace.

00:15:42.240 So this is, these are provocative things.

00:15:46.520 China has been pushing out and it's not just Taiwan, it's India, the Philippines, Japan.

00:15:52.460 And China looks like it wants to fight a war.

00:15:55.500 I'm sure they don't, but they are engaging in activities that history tells us lead to war.

00:16:01.940 We talk about miscalculations as being what leads to war.

00:16:07.020 Are there any particular miscalculations you're concerned about?

00:16:10.800 I'll take the one on May 26th of this year, where China, a Chinese jet crossed the nose of a Royal Australian Air Force P-8 reconnaissance craft in international airspace in the South China Sea.

00:16:26.260 Now, crossing the nose of another plane is very dangerous.

00:16:32.140 But China then did something that perhaps no military has ever done in the history of the world.

00:16:39.800 It fired flares and released chaff in the vicinity of the P-8.

00:16:46.040 We can put the flares off to the side for a moment, but the chaff, you know, chaff is like aluminum foil.

00:16:52.240 It is meant to confuse radar. It's released by planes.

00:16:56.720 Well, the Chinese plane released the chaff so close to the P-8 that the chaff was ingested into one of the P-8's two engines, which means that if circumstances had been just slightly different, they could have lost the plane.

00:17:13.840 Now, fortunately, the crew was able to bring that plane back to base, but you can imagine what would have happened if they had killed the crew.

00:17:22.240 So these are the types of things that Beijing is doing and is just tempting the world.

00:17:29.660 And one of these, the law of averages says that one of these dangerous intercepts is going to go horribly wrong.

00:17:35.180 And then the world will have to take steps because Beijing is making it very clear that they want the world.

00:17:45.600 And by the way, we're not just talking about Taiwan or parts of India or Second Thomas Scholl or the Philippines or the Senkakus in the East China Sea that are governed by Japan.

00:17:59.340 We're talking about the entire world. Xi Jinping has been pressing this notion that China is the world's only sovereign state.

00:18:05.640 And since 2018, the Chinese officials have been publicly talking about the moon and Mars as sovereign Chinese territory.

00:18:12.780 So unless you want to be ruled by China to become a colony, we're going to have to take a stand someplace.

00:18:20.760 Do we not do a good job of listening to what China is actually saying?

00:18:25.880 You know, one thing that I find interesting...

00:18:27.640 Anthony, we do an excellent job of purposefully not paying attention to what China is saying.

00:18:33.920 We are not only oblivious, but we're determined not to listen.

00:18:37.560 I mean, there are those speeches where Xi Jinping has said, and I know there's that missive on the nine no's or however many no's it is, where they're like, oh, the human rights thing.

00:18:46.320 No, Western fiction.

00:18:47.340 We don't do that.

00:18:49.120 Freedom of the press.

00:18:50.200 No, that's just this joke.

00:18:51.300 Independent judiciary.

00:18:52.440 Uh-uh.

00:18:52.840 It doesn't happen here.

00:18:53.680 And that's like, these are them giving speeches saying all of this.

00:18:56.300 Like, it's not anybody making it up or hypothesizing.

00:18:59.080 They've said it.

00:18:59.780 They've said, we don't do these things.

00:19:01.060 Well, they've been very clear about what they want, about things that they don't do, which they obviously do do, and the things that they do.

00:19:11.580 And we're not, we are purposefully ignoring it or going out of our way not to see it, even though it threatens our critical national security interests, threatens our sovereignty.

00:19:26.200 We have a political class in the United States, and you do in Canada as well, that is not defending my country or your country.

00:19:38.040 We'll be back with more full comment after these quick messages.

00:19:43.760 Do you see glimmers of hope that we're moving in a slightly positive direction?

00:19:50.120 I want to give you a couple examples.

00:19:52.180 Here in Canada, we have started rejecting some Chinese state-owned enterprises, attempted takeovers of some businesses we have here, and it was positive to see that. 1.00

00:20:03.280 I saw that, I'm sure you know John Cena, the movie star wrestler.

00:20:06.640 He gave a groveling apology for referring to Taiwan as a country.

00:20:09.900 But then, I understand they wanted to, China didn't like the fact that in Top Gun 2, they showed decals on their flight jackets of the Taiwanese flag.

00:20:20.360 And then, I guess, Paramount or whoever, Tom Cruise was like, well, too bad, deal with it.

00:20:24.320 And it's the top, top grossing film of the year, and Tom Cruise's best grossing film of his entire career.

00:20:28.840 So it's like, well, there you go.

00:20:30.140 You know, there's just tiny little bits of pushback sometimes.

00:20:34.000 Well, there is pushback.

00:20:35.700 And this is the way democracies work.

00:20:39.040 Democracies don't turn on a dime unless people get killed.

00:20:42.680 Or people get obviously murdered. 0.98

00:20:49.140 China does kill Americans in great numbers. 1.00

00:20:52.560 I'll put that aside for the moment.

00:20:55.040 But, I mean, it's not like 9-11, where it was unmistakable.

00:21:00.700 So this is, that will change American opinion on a dime.

00:21:06.320 But, you know, going back to this, China, we don't know 100% where SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing COVID-19, came from.

00:21:15.160 But, Anthony, we do know some things 100%.

00:21:18.000 And that is that for about five weeks, you can argue four or maybe even longer, but for weeks, Chinese leaders deliberately told the world that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmissible human to human when they knew it was highly contagious.

00:21:36.320 And at the same time, while they were locking down their own country, lockdowns are controversial, but by locking down their own country, they were saying, this is what we think works.

00:21:46.000 While they were locking down their own country, they were pressuring other countries not to impose travel restrictions and quarantines on arrivals from China.

00:21:54.480 You put those two things together, and it's unmistakable that China deliberately spread this disease beyond its borders. 0.98

00:22:01.360 That's 6.4 million people have been killed by COVID-19.

00:22:06.320 When none of them should have contracted it.

00:22:10.080 That's the maliciousness of this regime.

00:22:13.160 And yet the American political system has yet to acknowledge that.

00:22:16.260 Matter of fact, Biden has never, in his five conversations with Xi Jinping as president, has never raised the issue of the origins of COVID-19.

00:22:26.220 And that is dereliction of duty.

00:22:31.560 His most important constitutional duty is defend Americans from foreign attack.

00:22:37.160 China attacked the United States, killed 1,031,000 Americans.

00:22:42.420 And Biden says, well, whatever.

00:22:44.140 Now, we did see some people in China eventually go, we have had enough with these lockdowns.

00:22:50.640 We're typically compliant, but it ain't happening anymore with the Shanghai lockdowns, which continued like whatever two years into it.

00:22:57.320 There were definitely some emerging protests.

00:22:59.360 Where do you see things standing right now in terms of people in China not being pleased?

00:23:05.960 Because we know a lot of people have entered the millionaire class, and it's actually proven quite good for them.

00:23:11.160 And obviously, people in the West want to, some business people want to get a crack out of that, want to get a percentage of that.

00:23:16.280 So there's a lot of people who I think are very happy in terms of feeling like they're sharing the spoils.

00:23:20.520 But I get the sense that there's still a lot of people who are increasingly unhappy as well.

00:23:24.900 What's in the balance there?

00:23:27.360 The Chinese people in general, and it's hard to generalize over 1.41 billion people, but a lot of Chinese people are really unhappy for a lot of reasons.

00:23:37.800 And it's not just because of the, quote, dynamic zero COVID policy of Xi Jinping, which, by the way, they're now, you know, we're still seeing that the regime is still imposing these draconian lockdowns across the country, especially in Hainan, in the western part of the country, and in selected areas in Beijing and Shanghai.

00:23:58.280 But it's more than that, and that is the Chinese economy is in distress.

00:24:07.240 We know this because the property sector looks like it's almost in free fall.

00:24:12.380 And property is really important for China, somewhere between 25 to 30 percent of gross domestic product.

00:24:19.040 This is the store of value for many middle class Chinese.

00:24:22.620 They don't buy stocks, or they don't buy gold coins, or if they do, they still put a lot of their investment wealth into unoccupied apartments.

00:24:34.660 And those unoccupied apartments have fallen precipitously in value in the first half of this year, down 30 percent by some measures, maybe more in reality.

00:24:46.080 And that has really hit the middle class Chinese where it hurts.

00:24:51.420 We've seen these mortgage boycotts where people who have bought these flats from property developers, but they're not going to be, you know, they're not, they're unbuilt.

00:25:04.080 But people are paying mortgages to the banks on those unbuilt apartments.

00:25:07.840 Well, we got the mortgage boycotts across the country.

00:25:10.220 They're not paying the banks anymore.

00:25:12.720 And we see the bank runs, people protesting in front of banks, which can't pay back depositors.

00:25:18.820 This is, this is throughout, this is systemic.

00:25:22.980 And Beijing has been able, through its coercive means, its tools to control people.

00:25:28.180 But the people, to answer your question, just are not happy.

00:25:32.040 They may not, they may not demonstrate every day, but you can tell from social media and from other means that the Chinese people are not happy right now.

00:25:43.020 What are the general responses and reception right now of the increasing digitization of their lives that sees them tracked more and more by their government?

00:25:53.200 I understand there's the social credit system that rewards and punishes the behaviors that the state approves or disapproves of.

00:26:00.740 How is that, is that going smoothly for the government?

00:26:03.100 Well, people are not protesting, largely because they don't have a choice.

00:26:11.000 In China right now, people call it authoritarian.

00:26:15.520 China may have been authoritarian during the Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao years.

00:26:21.240 You can argue about that.

00:26:22.600 But it's certainly moving back to totalitarianism now.

00:26:26.860 And we can see that, for instance, with the social credit systems nationwide.

00:26:30.800 We can see it with the digitalization of the currency, which will allow Beijing unprecedented control over people's wealth.

00:26:42.860 People don't really have a choice.

00:26:43.860 Excuse me.

00:26:44.920 People don't really have a choice, though.

00:26:47.740 Beijing is going to, is making progress in eliminating paper money and coins.

00:26:53.140 And China actually, apart from what Beijing is doing, got to remember that Tencent and Ant Group have developed, like, the world's most sophisticated payment platforms.

00:27:07.960 And the Chinese people were used to this well before the central bank started talking about the digital UN, which means that people there were happy to use these extremely efficient payment platforms.

00:27:22.980 Well, then the central bank comes along and now is competing with Ant and Tencent with its digital currency, which is basically another story about how China is attacking its most successful private companies.

00:27:36.820 But that's another story.

00:27:37.680 So, what choice do the Chinese people have?

00:27:43.100 Cash is becoming unacceptable.

00:27:45.740 And to a certain extent, we see that in North America as well.

00:27:49.140 Not like it's being pushed by the government, but just there's a general convenience factor with carrying money around on your phone.

00:27:55.880 And it's happening despite, for instance, the Federal Reserve and, you know, the Treasury Department, which are not pushing a digital currency in our country, but we're seeing the same phenomenon.

00:28:08.340 It's the convenience factor.

00:28:09.740 I mean, I am sort of intellectually against this being boxed in with more and more digitization.

00:28:15.560 I never carry cash on me.

00:28:17.260 So, I'm one to talk.

00:28:18.300 My actions are actually propelling us in that direction.

00:28:20.260 I like cash because, and it's not a question of surveillance, it's just, you know, suppose you're, you know, you run out of, in the middle of the night, your car breaks down and, you know, there's a small garage and the guy doesn't, you know, take, you know, whatever.

00:28:39.980 If you have cash, that's good.

00:28:41.800 But that's another story.

00:28:43.120 But, you know, you're right.

00:28:44.080 This is happening around the world.

00:28:45.740 So, we had an interesting debate happen here in Canada when the two Michaels, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were arbitrarily illegally detained for well over two years.

00:28:56.880 We finally got them back.

00:28:58.520 And there's a lot of talk simultaneously about how we must ban Huawei because, of course, there was the detaining of Huawei CFO, Menwang Zhu, here in Vancouver at the request of the U.S. Justice Department.

00:29:11.040 She was sent back.

00:29:12.080 The two Michaels were brought here.

00:29:13.360 It seemed like definitely something of a trade.

00:29:16.300 And then finally in May, Justin Trudeau did say Huawei has been banned.

00:29:20.280 We never thought he'd do it, but he did it.

00:29:23.400 Is this a sign, and the other 5G nations have all done the same to varying degrees, is this a sign that we're going to make more of the right choices to, I don't know if decouple is the right term, but to insulate ourselves from this sort of stuff?

00:29:38.840 Or are there still a gazillion battles ahead?

00:29:40.500 It is both a good sign.

00:29:44.700 And yes, there are a gazillion battles ahead.

00:29:48.120 I mean, if Canada wanted to stay a five eyes country within the intelligence sharing consortium, it had to ban Huawei because otherwise, you know, the most sensitive intelligence could not be shared over Huawei networks.

00:30:03.580 So it was a good thing.

00:30:05.500 The thing about Trudeau was that it took him a very long time to make the only reasonable choice in these circumstances.

00:30:14.500 So that shows you how powerful China is.

00:30:18.200 But yeah, we are moving in the right direction.

00:30:20.100 But the problem, Anthony, is that we're not moving fast enough.

00:30:23.580 We are, we sort of understand the danger that China is now posing. 0.99

00:30:29.340 It started to percolate through, but Beijing could, could do something in the very near term, and we would still be unprepared by we I mean, not only America, but the rest of the rest of the world.

00:30:45.380 We had a couple proposals and discussions that were front and center here in Canada, in previous elections, and particularly when the two Michaels were being detained, there's a lot of public interest in this, politicians were proposing a broader ban of state owned enterprises, Chinese state owned enterprises making purchases here, I thought it just flat out ban made sense.

00:31:04.340 But I guess they were going to narrow it to more sensitive industries.

00:31:09.000 Another one was Canada withdrawing from the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank, which is like China's attempts to basically supplant the IMF and the World Bank is, as you know, what other things would you put on the table?

00:31:21.060 Because we're kind of at a lull period where those ideas were really being sent around, but they're not really anymore.

00:31:25.540 And I worry we've kind of lost interest in that.

00:31:27.420 Yeah, China uses every point of contact with our country, for instance, to take down our society. 1.00

00:31:35.800 So that means until we get a handle on this, we need to eliminate those points of contact.

00:31:41.880 We're talking investment, we're talking trade, we're talking technical cooperation.

00:31:47.260 Eliminate trade both ways?

00:31:49.460 I think that we absolutely have to do that if we want to defend ourselves.

00:31:54.320 I know that it's not politically acceptable.

00:31:56.740 I know it'll take some time.

00:31:58.960 But unfortunately, China is using its position in trade to move our country in directions where it shouldn't be going and to actually destroy our country. 0.81

00:32:10.960 How do we deal with the fact, though, like how we're addicted to cheap debt, we're also addicted to cheap products from China?

00:32:16.280 It's kind of what's fueling our lower middle classes. 0.66

00:32:20.120 And we have to make a decision whether we want to remain a free society or whether we want to buy crap at Walmart.

00:32:29.200 But things are changing in that regard, though not fast enough.

00:32:36.940 I mean, we should be on-shoring.

00:32:39.540 And just, you know, China threatens its hold over, for instance, pharmaceuticals.

00:32:44.580 They did that in the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, saying that they would withhold pharmaceuticals from the United States.

00:32:54.040 Well, that's completely unacceptable.

00:32:55.440 And, yeah, we have to do this.

00:32:59.540 I'm not saying it's politically practical right now.

00:33:02.820 But I'm saying that if we want to remain a free society, we're going to have to do those things which are considered to be impractical.

00:33:11.260 I mean, if China kills American service people, then, yeah, people will get on board. 1.00

00:33:17.380 We are seeing, as you point out, attitudes changing about China.

00:33:23.240 And what was considered to be impossible before is now actually being done.

00:33:28.760 But we're not moving, as I said, fast enough in that direction.

00:33:33.800 There's been a lot of discussion about the ways Xi Jinping is or is not watching how Vladimir Putin's incursions into Ukraine are unfolding.

00:33:40.360 What do you think China is taking away from that right now?

00:33:44.640 They saw the failure of the West to stop a far weaker Russia.

00:33:50.380 Last year, the United States, the 27 nations of the European Union and Great Britain had an economy 25.1 times larger than Russia's.

00:34:01.940 And yet this coalition with overwhelming power couldn't stop Putin.

00:34:07.940 I think that that's what China sees.

00:34:09.740 I think that China sees the unenthusiastic imposition of sanctions, the unenthusiastic support for Ukraine with military equipment.

00:34:22.620 And they say, well, look, you know, the West is done.

00:34:26.240 Now, I'm not going to say that that perception is correct.

00:34:30.680 But it doesn't matter what I think.

00:34:32.820 It doesn't matter what the truth is.

00:34:34.140 It matters what the Chinese think.

00:34:35.740 We know from Chinese propaganda from the fall of Afghanistan, what they think of the United States.

00:34:43.720 And they were very clear.

00:34:45.160 And they were actually talking about Taiwan as the Afghan capital was falling.

00:34:50.540 So we don't need to speculate how these folks look at us.

00:34:55.820 Right now, we're not deterring China very well. 0.72

00:34:59.880 And the Biden administration has an obligation to reestablish deterrence.

00:35:05.480 History tells us that those times where countries try to reestablish deterrence are the most dangerous of all.

00:35:11.860 And we're in this period right now.

00:35:13.720 Gordon, to bring it back full circle, talking about Taiwan, whether it's Nancy Pelosi's trip there, future trips, future discussions and relations we have with that country.

00:35:23.720 What would you recommend policymakers in Canada and America or just regular Canadians who are curious about the issue?

00:35:32.100 What do they need to do next and keep front of mind when it comes to Taiwan?

00:35:37.340 The president of the United States needs to go into the Oval Office before the cameras.

00:35:42.280 Prime Minister of Canada needs to go behind his desk in Ottawa in front of the cameras and say to Beijing, we will defend Taiwan.

00:35:50.940 I think they also need to say that we will offer mutual defense treaties to Taiwan if Taiwan wants it.

00:35:58.000 We should offer to recognize Taiwan as Taiwan, not as the Republic of China, if Taipei wants it.

00:36:04.580 We should pre-position munitions and supplies on the island.

00:36:08.740 And we should be putting troops on the island as a tripwire. 0.59

00:36:11.840 That's an effective strategy.

00:36:13.120 We know that because a small American force sitting in South Korea has stopped a far superior North Korean military from crossing the demilitarized zone in force.

00:36:25.540 We do it with 28,500 Americans, which would be wiped out in the first hour of a general war on the Korean Peninsula.

00:36:33.960 But they stop the North Koreans from thinking that they can do this. 0.99

00:36:38.320 We need to do the same thing with Taiwan. 0.61

00:36:40.140 We do that.

00:36:41.700 The Chinese will huff and puff. 1.00

00:36:43.120 They'll scream and yell, but they will not invade for a lot of reasons.

00:36:47.400 We don't do that.

00:36:48.680 We're inviting World War III. 0.98

00:36:50.420 It's as simple as that.

00:36:53.000 Gordon Chang, thanks as always.

00:36:54.680 Great conversation, insightful, provocative.

00:36:57.460 Lots of great ideas on the table.

00:36:59.600 Thank you, Anthony.

00:37:00.840 All the best.

00:37:01.560 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:37:03.960 I'm Anthony Fury.

00:37:05.180 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx, with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:37:09.160 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:37:11.580 You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

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00:37:23.260 Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - August 22, 2022

Supporting Taiwan in the face of Xi’s overbearing China

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