Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec - December 29, 2022


EPISODE 354： THE CHINA FILES - RISE OF THE RED EMPEROR


Episode Stats

Length

24 minutes

Words per Minute

126.883385

Word Count

3,172

Sentence Count

254

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

9


Summary

In this episode of the China Files, we continue our series on the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader, Xi Jinping. Xi was born in 1953 and grew up in the countryside. He was not raised in a big city. He didn't grow up in Beijing, but in the rural countryside. Xi's father had been a member of Mao Zedong's early Communist Party, and was one of Mao's closest lieutenants. However, during the Cultural Revolution, when all of this went down, and even during the Great Leap Forward, Xi s father fell out of favor. He and his family, including his 10-year-old son, were sent to the countryside, and he was purged.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard to this fourth edition of the China Files.
00:00:17.060 We call this episode Hong Di Juay Qi, the rise of the Red Emperor.
00:00:25.060 Now, where we left you at the end of part three was the opening up of China to the world.
00:00:32.320 And we talked about how the CCP had made a deal with the West that they were going to provide the slave labor while the West provided the capital and the intellectual property for the world.
00:00:46.220 But that began to change when a new leader arose to take over the CCP.
00:00:55.980 Xi Jinping was born in 1953.
00:01:01.280 And interestingly enough, Xi Jinping was not raised in Beijing.
00:01:08.220 He was not raised in a big city.
00:01:10.600 Now, Xi Jinping's father had himself been a member of Mao's early Chinese Communist Party.
00:01:19.820 He was one of Mao's closest lieutenants.
00:01:22.620 In fact, Xi Jinping's father, if you remember all the way back in part one, when I talked about that long march, that they left and then joined up with the communists in the West after being defeated by the nationalists, where they bided their time.
00:01:40.280 Xi Jinping's father was the one who initially set up that base out in the West that Mao Zedong fled to.
00:01:47.020 So this was a guy who was in close standing with Mao.
00:01:51.680 However, during the Cultural Revolution, when all of this went down, and even during the Great Leap Forward, Xi's father had fell out of favor, the same way that so many other communist leaders fell out of favor.
00:02:06.820 And he and his family, including his 10-year-old son, were sent to the countryside.
00:02:15.300 He was purged.
00:02:16.040 And so Xi Jinping didn't grow up in Beijing, didn't grow up as the son of some great leader.
00:02:25.860 In fact, he grew up in the rural countryside, working as one of the laborers, one of the intellectuals who were sent down.
00:02:34.740 During the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guards came around, he wasn't even allowed to join because of his father's questionable behavior.
00:02:46.020 So Xi Jinping could have been one of these Red Guards, but no.
00:02:49.020 In fact, his father had been purged.
00:02:51.500 The persecution of Xi Jinping's father and his family.
00:02:57.360 Xi Jinping had been one of seven, by the way.
00:02:59.240 It was so great that Xi Jinping's older sister even committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution.
00:03:08.200 And we talked before about how so many people committed suicide during this era because of these persecutions and the struggle sessions.
00:03:17.460 But it seems, though, Xi Jinping took a separate kind of guidance and a separate type of highlight away, a different learning from the lessons of the Cultural Revolution.
00:03:34.480 Because he didn't learn that this is not the way to run a country.
00:03:43.160 Instead, he learned that the way to gain power was to purge your enemies.
00:03:49.540 And this is exactly what he would do on his way up the food chain.
00:03:54.920 Now, when Deng Xiaoping came back into power, one thing that Deng Xiaoping did in order to unify the party was to go back and rehabilitate all of the old cadres that had been kicked out under Mao.
00:04:08.880 So Xi Jinping's father gets rehabilitated.
00:04:11.620 He's essentially exonerated of his, quote, unquote, anti-revolutionary stances and crimes and all the other insane struggle session things they put him through.
00:04:20.840 And Xi Jinping joins the party in full at this point, begins moving up the ranks.
00:04:27.160 And he continues this under Chairman Jiang Zemin through the 1990s and then Chairman Hu Jintao, late 90s, early 2000s.
00:04:37.400 And at one point, Xi Jinping actually becomes the chairman of Shanghai itself.
00:04:45.220 One of the major economic cities, one of the major economic drivers in all of southern China.
00:04:54.520 He becomes chairman of Shanghai, in fact, when I was living in Shanghai.
00:05:00.040 So I lived in Shanghai from 2007 to 2008.
00:05:04.180 At that time, the general secretary, which is what they call the chairman of the city, was Xi Jinping.
00:05:09.360 And at one point in the summer of 2008, right before the Olympics started, I always remember the date for the Olympics, 8-8-0-8, right?
00:05:21.800 But prior to that, when the Shanghai World Expo was being planned in downtown Shanghai, they had a facility by the river, Pudong River.
00:05:31.660 I had the opportunity to visit there, and there were some American clients I was working with to bring them in, bring in their representation.
00:05:40.580 And I saw, by the way, every time we brought American clients to China, how much they love the China model.
00:05:46.640 So we're taking them around, and I'm a young staffer on the project.
00:05:50.500 And the day that we go over for our meeting, turns out the local party secretary, the local chairman of the city, is also there.
00:06:00.760 Xi Jinping, with his massive entourage.
00:06:05.920 So Xi's there, and he stands about six feet tall, which is very tall over in China.
00:06:13.920 Head and shoulders above everyone in the room.
00:06:17.120 He was wearing a coat over the shoulder.
00:06:19.780 And you could see with his massive entourage around him, everybody knew.
00:06:23.660 This guy was the boss.
00:06:24.980 And we were actually told to stay back in one room while the entourage was walking by.
00:06:30.180 But he did take a moment to peek in.
00:06:33.340 And I remember seeing him and going, man, this guy's like the Chinese Tony Soprano.
00:06:39.420 You could see the deference to him.
00:06:41.760 You could see the way that he oozed power throughout the room.
00:06:45.560 You could see the way that he just floated throughout every interaction with every person, making way for him, taking their hand, extending it.
00:06:58.200 But we knew that Xi Jinping was going to go far at that point when he was chairman of the party.
00:07:04.940 And he was in there cleaning up what he called corruption.
00:07:10.300 But what was he really doing?
00:07:12.580 He was taking out rivals.
00:07:14.860 In this case, it was rivals who were loyal to Jiang Zemin, who had been the earlier leader of the Shanghai faction of the party.
00:07:22.580 The CCP split into two factions, Beijing and Shanghai.
00:07:26.340 Doesn't necessarily mean, though, that if you are the Shanghai chairman, that you're always going to be loyal to Shanghai.
00:07:32.060 And that's what happened with Xi Jinping.
00:07:34.380 He was there cleaning up rivals.
00:07:36.800 He was there purging people.
00:07:38.360 And to the populace, to the Lao Bajing, he says, well, I'm cleaning up corruption.
00:07:46.340 I'm helping China.
00:07:48.320 And he made sure that every single person that he purged, every single official that was taken down, that their crimes were broadcast throughout the entire city.
00:07:58.900 They hung newspapers up at local parks, showing headlines, showing the arrests, showing all of it.
00:08:04.620 You see, because Xi Jinping had learned from what had happened to his father.
00:08:09.560 He learned that by taking down your enemies, you can build more power for yourself.
00:08:18.820 So Xi Jinping had learned that from an early age, purging your enemies was a path to power.
00:08:24.900 He was taught that lesson by Chairman Mao himself.
00:08:28.340 As Chairman Mao used it to solidify power during the Cultural Revolution.
00:08:32.220 He used it to Xi's own family.
00:08:35.680 Sister committed suicide.
00:08:37.660 Father had been purged.
00:08:39.220 He himself was forced to work in the countryside.
00:08:43.920 And so a hallmark of Xi's rule over the CCP has been what he calls anti-corruption campaigns.
00:08:53.380 Not just during his time in Shanghai, but even during his time as chairman.
00:08:57.500 And he has systematically gone after so many rivals and purged so many potential detractors from this Jiang Zemin faction, from the Shanghai faction, the faction that could have possibly have opposed him.
00:09:11.960 He's actually created a reality TV show of it.
00:09:14.480 So that these purges, the trials, the incriminations, well, they're not done in front of stadiums anymore, because you don't need that.
00:09:23.820 Now you've got TV.
00:09:25.600 Now you don't need a massive stadium.
00:09:28.440 You can put it right on CCTV and broadcast it to the entire country.
00:09:34.200 And guess what?
00:09:34.740 But it's now the number one show in China.
00:09:38.740 And it's been that way for years.
00:09:41.360 The anti-corruption show.
00:09:44.260 Hosted by Xi Jinping.
00:09:46.740 And so these officials go on and admit their own crimes.
00:09:51.420 But there's no greater takedown.
00:09:54.280 There's been no greater purge.
00:09:56.740 Of Xi Jinping's career.
00:09:59.320 Than that of Bo Xilai.
00:10:02.360 And who was Bo Xilai?
00:10:04.740 Well, if you don't know, it's because Xi Jinping and his guys stopped him.
00:10:11.200 At one point, Bo Xilai was poised to be the next leader of the party.
00:10:15.920 He was running an economic powerhouse in central China called Chongqing.
00:10:20.540 He oversaw the building of the Three Gorges Dam.
00:10:24.320 One of the biggest super projects, mega projects in all of China.
00:10:28.860 Actually damming and building a hydroelectric plant, hydroelectric plant, on the Yangtze River.
00:10:33.980 And then Bo Xilai had started his own cult of personality.
00:10:38.640 He started dressing like Chairman Mao.
00:10:40.500 He started bringing back the old communist songs.
00:10:43.540 People were falling in love with him.
00:10:45.720 But the problem for Bo Xilai was that Xi Jinping and his faction wanted to find out what was going on and stop him.
00:10:59.060 See, because he had been closed to Jiang Zemin.
00:11:00.780 And they didn't want him anywhere near the halls of power, whether in Beijing and certainly not as the next party chairman.
00:11:07.760 And so they did whatever they could to find dirt on Bo Xilai.
00:11:17.320 And it turns out that it wasn't just typical corruption.
00:11:21.500 It wasn't just your typical bribery.
00:11:26.040 Most elites of the CCP were involved in that.
00:11:28.300 They were all getting rich.
00:11:29.720 But no, there was another problem with Bo Xilai because he flew a little bit too close to his son.
00:11:34.600 And in fact, not just he flew too close to his son.
00:11:38.180 His wife did.
00:11:41.740 On the morning of November 14th, 2011, a British citizen named Neil Haywood was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing.
00:11:51.740 Yeah, that's right.
00:11:52.300 The same Chongqing where Bo Xilai was leader.
00:11:55.720 Now, we were told at one point that he died from alcohol overconsumption.
00:12:01.220 People die all the time.
00:12:02.320 All sorts of accidents happen in China, right?
00:12:05.240 It is what it is.
00:12:06.460 Drinking a little too much had a bit of a bender.
00:12:09.460 But here's the thing.
00:12:12.460 It turns out that Neil Haywood had been in a, shall we say, close relationship with Bo Xilai's wife, Gu Kailai.
00:12:26.980 He had helped their son earn admission to a school in England, fancy boarding school.
00:12:32.540 He had also helped the family launder money.
00:12:36.460 Huge, massive sums of money.
00:12:39.560 Hundreds of millions of dollars outside of the country.
00:12:45.060 Now, there was a business dispute.
00:12:48.140 I'm not exactly sure what it was, but he wanted more money.
00:12:53.460 He wanted more than they were willing to give.
00:12:57.840 And so, what happened?
00:13:00.440 Gu Kailai, the wife, she poisons Neil Haywood.
00:13:07.240 She kills him.
00:13:08.400 Now, normally, if some party member does this, their wife does this, it gets cleaned up.
00:13:15.860 The party takes care of things like this.
00:13:18.000 But why do we know about this one?
00:13:20.540 Well, because here's the problem with all of that.
00:13:25.380 You see, because the police chief of Chongqing, the guy whose job it was to clean up the murders,
00:13:40.980 he himself was under surveillance.
00:13:44.740 He himself was surveilling Bo Xilai and wife, Gu Kailai.
00:13:53.560 So, he went and took the tapes.
00:13:56.060 And he had tapes of the entire thing.
00:13:58.360 And he had receipts on Bo Xilai.
00:14:04.180 Now, he first tried to bring this to the U.S. consulate.
00:14:08.320 This is when Barack Obama was in power.
00:14:11.600 The U.S. consulate didn't really do anything for him.
00:14:17.900 However, those tapes then found their way into the higher levels of the party
00:14:23.980 and into the supporters of Xi Jinping.
00:14:28.360 Bo Xilai and his wife were arrested, were removed from every position that they held.
00:14:41.760 Bo Xilai himself was sentenced to life in prison.
00:14:46.060 His wife, who they later determined had actually put poison in this British businessman's drink,
00:14:54.540 was sentenced to death.
00:14:55.940 And believe me, the death penalty is still very, very much in favor in Communist China, even to this day.
00:15:07.440 Xi Jinping orchestrated the receipt collection, the takedown, and the public disgracing of his largest possible rival.
00:15:20.300 And then one year later, stands up at the Chinese National Congress and is announced that he will be the undisputed next chairman of the CCP.
00:15:37.020 And that's 2012.
00:15:41.140 By 2015, a few years into his rule, he decided to go ahead back to old goo, to the old wife, and say,
00:15:48.840 you know what, I'm going to go ahead and commute your sentence.
00:15:51.960 We're not going to carry this out.
00:15:53.800 We're not going to execute you anymore.
00:15:56.360 We're going to give you life in prison,
00:15:57.980 where you and your husband can watch me live out the life that you thought that you were going to have.
00:16:07.260 And we're going to fill this prison with every single friend and ally you thought you had in the party across the entire country.
00:16:17.080 That's how Xi Jinping came to power.
00:16:18.820 So at this point, fast forward, it's 10 years later, Xi Jinping, undisputed chairman of the CCP,
00:16:28.400 changes the internal party constitution, does away with those pesky 10-year deals.
00:16:34.340 No, he's going to be a leader for life.
00:16:37.840 He then begins purging every leader of the military that's not loyal to him,
00:16:41.960 every leader of the judiciary, the legal system.
00:16:44.780 He takes over, and he completely takes over the party.
00:16:49.120 And here's something that you need to understand that's very different between China and the United States,
00:16:55.500 is that the military itself, the People's Liberation Army,
00:16:58.820 is directly subservient to the Chinese Communist Party, to the CCP and the Central Military Commission.
00:17:06.560 The generals, the admirals, they all work directly for Xi Jinping, not the other way around.
00:17:12.920 There's no democratic rule or anything like that, like you might see in the West, not at all.
00:17:22.700 And Xi Jinping showed an ambition that you haven't seen from chairman of the party really since Mao.
00:17:33.260 But Xi's ambition was not communist in the doctrinal sense.
00:17:39.220 He came up with a new strategy, new strategy for rule across not just China,
00:17:47.560 but for the rise of the CCP, because he was focused like a laser on 2049.
00:17:55.320 The 100-year leap forward of China.
00:18:01.260 And he came up with a new strategy.
00:18:03.000 He called it yidai yilu, one belt, one road, and began working diligently with countries all around the world.
00:18:15.400 Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America.
00:18:20.960 He began going around making deals.
00:18:26.100 It's called debt-trapped diplomacy.
00:18:29.820 With third world nations and saying, we'll give you loans.
00:18:32.940 We'll build you roads.
00:18:34.120 We'll build you railroads.
00:18:35.100 We'll build you airports.
00:18:36.120 We'll build you military facilities.
00:18:38.440 You just have to let us use them.
00:18:40.520 You just have to give us your rare earth elements.
00:18:42.360 He's currently now making deals with Saudi Arabia, with Iran for oil.
00:18:49.960 People may have heard of the massive concentration camps and lockdowns in Xinjiang, the Uyghur region.
00:18:58.500 But you have to look at this on the map to understand the importance of it.
00:19:03.180 Because what is directly across the Xinjiang region?
00:19:08.500 Xinjiang is just north of Tibet.
00:19:09.920 Another area subjugated by the CCP.
00:19:13.300 But Xinjiang directly borders the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
00:19:20.820 And the CCP is building roads, pipelines, and railroads down through Pakistan.
00:19:29.840 They call it the economic corridor.
00:19:32.400 All the way to the Persian Gulf so that they can get their oil.
00:19:36.960 They're building more roads and pipelines through Burma so that they can get to the Indian Ocean.
00:19:44.940 And in fact, they're encircling their one major adversary in Asia.
00:19:51.300 India.
00:19:51.980 The only country in the world that has a military that could be strong enough to actually face off against China.
00:20:01.660 They're encircling them.
00:20:04.100 Making deals with the Taliban.
00:20:06.720 Pakistan.
00:20:07.660 Iran.
00:20:08.540 Saudi Arabia.
00:20:09.800 Burma.
00:20:10.680 Thailand.
00:20:11.040 They know what they're doing.
00:20:15.460 They're building bases in Sri Lanka.
00:20:17.320 They're building bases in the Maldives.
00:20:18.740 They're building bases in Djibouti.
00:20:20.140 They're building bases in Africa.
00:20:22.860 Naval bases on the Atlantic coast of Africa.
00:20:27.300 They're working in Venezuela.
00:20:31.620 They're doing everything they can to become the alternative to the United States in the world financial system.
00:20:42.580 They don't want to be the junior partner anymore.
00:20:47.040 Xi Jinping isn't going to settle for being the junior partner.
00:20:50.400 Because the rival he's looking to purge now, it's not just some of the other communists in Shanghai.
00:20:59.600 It's not just Bo Xilai of Chongqing.
00:21:02.180 No, no, no.
00:21:04.060 It's the United States.
00:21:06.140 It's us.
00:21:07.560 It's our politicians and our elites.
00:21:10.880 If you're not on board, he'll get rid of you.
00:21:14.440 If you stand in his way, he'll take you down.
00:21:17.680 Now, if you've got family members that want to get rich, like, I don't know, a son of a vice president who wants to come over and take millions of dollars in investment, work on some special deals, he's more than happy.
00:21:38.000 More than happy to compromise on his way up.
00:21:43.360 Because he's building an empire.
00:21:47.680 Hongdi, the Red Emperor.
00:21:51.920 This is how he sees himself.
00:21:54.780 Now, he views what he's doing as the rise of China, the strengthening of China, the return of China,
00:21:59.900 to its initial place among the world.
00:22:05.320 Zhongguo means central kingdom.
00:22:09.280 The kingdom that's at the center of the globe.
00:22:11.240 The kingdom that all others bow down to.
00:22:16.720 If you know anything about Asian history, in ancient China, that was true.
00:22:21.340 They ruled Vietnam with an iron fist for over a thousand years.
00:22:25.480 Every country in all of Asia paid tribute to the emperors of China.
00:22:33.300 And this is what he wants again.
00:22:34.760 But the problem for the United States is an old Athenian general's quote.
00:22:43.860 And that was General Thucydides.
00:22:46.160 It's now referred to as the Thucydides trap.
00:22:50.120 And this idea is that when there is a rival power, an emerging power, those trajectories eventually come to a point which leads to conflict and the outbreak of war.
00:23:04.360 Harvard University's Belfer Center ran a study that showed among 16 historical instances of the Thucydides trap, 12 ended and erupted in war.
00:23:21.060 A 75% chance.
00:23:25.180 I've been focused on China for 15 years of my life.
00:23:28.220 I lived there for two years.
00:23:30.040 I studied Mandarin.
00:23:30.900 I joined the United States Navy and became a linguist in Mandarin to understand what was going on with the rise of China.
00:23:40.240 When you look at the way things are escalating with Taiwan, things are escalating with Korea, with Hong Kong.
00:23:48.640 What you saw with the crackdown of the protesters across China just recently, just a few weeks ago.
00:23:54.480 And even John Mearsheimer has come out and said, we are on a collision course with China that will erupt into a world conflict.
00:24:08.620 Are we ready for that?
00:24:10.760 Is the United States ready for that?
00:24:12.820 And what will happen when we go toe-to-toe with the Red Emperor?
00:24:22.200 Thank you for listening to The China Files.
00:24:24.480 My name is Jack Posovic.
00:24:26.200 Ladies and gentlemen, as always, you have my permission to lay ashore.
00:24:29.980 I love you.