Ep 443 ｜ Our Biggest Geopolitical Threat & What to Do About It ｜ Guest： Melissa Chen
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Summary
Melissa Chin is the New York editor of The Spectator and the Managing Director of Ideas Beyond Borders, a non-profit organization that translates books into Arabic and makes them available for free on the internet. In this episode, she talks about how China has influenced our culture, influenced our media, and influenced the way we think in our economics and our technological development so much, and how we can possibly get out of their influence.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today I am with Melissa Chin of Spectator USA. I've had
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her on the podcast before. Today we are going to talk about the threat of China, how we
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got here to the place to where China has influenced our culture, influenced our media, influenced
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the way we think in our economics and our technological development so much, and how we can possibly
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get out of their influence, which, as you will learn through this conversation, is so important.
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And so she's got a lot of insight to give us on this. I'm excited for you to hear it.
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Melissa, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
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Okay. My name is Melissa Chin, and I'm the New York editor of Spectator USA. I'm also the managing
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director of an organization called Ideas Beyond Borders. And what we do is we translate books
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into Arabic, digitize them, and make them available for free.
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Wow. And you talk a lot about, well, you talk about a lot of different subjects, and you're
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a really great follow for that reason. One area that I want to focus on today is China,
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our relationship with China, kind of in general, and also specifically, how you foresee the Biden
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administration kind of dealing with this hostile regime. First, can you kind of tell us your
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So I've always been interested in the China issue, because I think this is the geopolitical
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relationship that is really going to reshape the 21st century.
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I came to the United States when I was about 17. I immigrated here for college, and I love
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the values of the United States, especially the First Amendment. So I was pretty disappointed when
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I started seeing in college, maybe about like, when I was in grad school about 2015, how the country
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was changing. And it reminded me of what it's like being back home in Singapore, where there were
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certain, you know, kind of avenues of speech where you weren't allowed to discuss. And, you know, kind of
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being Chinese, I knew also how important Confucian values were to shaping society. And I felt, okay, this is a
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topic that I need to be a little bit more vocal about. Because I don't think the American, at least back
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then, the Americans weren't really like, we were talking about this issue.
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Right. And can you expound just for people who don't know Confucian values, what you mean by that?
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Um, it's, it's, so Confucius was a philosopher, whose philosophy really underpins a lot of Chinese
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culture. It's very much focused on hierarchy of on duty. And, and it's, it's a very, it's, it's
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focuses also on a lot of discipline, values, discipline, and of the group over the individual.
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Mm hmm. Okay, yes. And so, um, these were very important to, um, to society and to the
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principles that were in Singapore, in, in China, and you kind of saw that infiltrating in American
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Well, it's, um, more likely that, you know, there were certain aspects of culture that was
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very, was increasingly getting very repressive. Um, we were justifying actions by sort of this
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idea about social harmony. Um, and you know, about when I was in school at the time, it wasn't that
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bad, but I continued to work in a very academic environment. And I saw that on campus, you had
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students that were clamoring for repression of speech. These were, you know, the people that
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were going to graduate and go into our newsrooms, go into tech companies, HR departments everywhere.
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And, and they had this idea that, that speech needed to be clamped down upon. It was equivalent
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to violence somehow. And so that was very disturbing to me because I, I saw what that does to, you know,
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And how do you think that happened? I mean, we had this dream, Ronald Reagan, who I really like
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and admire. He had a vision in the eighties. And even when he wrote in the nineties, that if we kind
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of exported capitalism into China, that they would become this freedom loving society and they would
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become maybe even more like the United States. Well, that didn't really happen. They took on
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capitalism and they kind of exported communism and more totalitarian ideas into places like the United
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States to where, like you said, we've kind of become familiar with and comfortable with. Some people
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have, especially in academia, the repression of speech and the repression of so-called dangerous
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ideas. How, how do you think we allowed that to happen over the past few decades?
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So I think it really began, you know, with, um, Milton Friedman, his idea was that political
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freedoms were a necessary condition to lead to economic freedom was necessary to lead to political
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freedoms. And this was consensus, not just in economics, but also in terms of politics and our
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foreign policy for, I don't know, ever since Richard Nixon went to China, this idea that,
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you know, if we just trade it with China, if we just engage with them economically, um, that
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automatically just by default, the Chinese would clamor for more freedoms and they would want
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political rights. Um, and then we also thought, I think that's another of, you know, in terms of
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hubris, um, is that we thought that if China got the internet, um, Bill Clinton famously said,
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China censoring the internet is going to be like nailing jello to the wall. He actually said this
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and he kind of laughed and so did the audience. And of course, you know, fast forward later,
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it's, it's obvious now that they did actually figure out how to nail jello to the wall. Um,
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the Chinese internet is completely censored and, and walled off. They built this great firewall.
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And so if you were right now, you know, growing up in Beijing and you launched your web browser,
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it looks very different. You can't go to Wikipedia, you can't go to Google, Twitter, any of these,
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you know, social media platforms that you and I can, can just, you know, load up and just like talk
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to people that have dissenting views or even just read articles from, from different sources,
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like the New York times itself. Um, and so you can see that, you know, this, this calculation was,
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was one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes. I think the United States made since about 1930.
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Um, and, but there was good reason to think that China would open up. I don't think that that was
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a bad calculation, but I think we missed a lot of signs along the way that it wasn't going as planned.
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And many of our elites were very happy to reap the economic benefits from that trade.
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A lot of our jobs were shipped overseas and, you know, middle-class was hollowed out. Um, and,
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and here we are with an economically empowered China and they are as authoritarian as ever.
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They've figured out how to fuse capitalism with authoritarianism and in a very new way,
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they call this socialism with Chinese characteristics.
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Hmm. You know, something that disturbs me is, um, the softness and even strange affection that a lot
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of the elites seem to have. And not just the elites because of the economic benefits that we have been
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able to reap, like you said, getting cheap products that aren't made in the United States. But also I
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think that there is a section of progressivism that is actually okay with China or doesn't want to
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criticize China, maybe for a variety of reasons. I think one of them is the intersectional reason
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that we have to just focus on America being bad, the Western world being bad, whiteness being bad.
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And we can't possibly criticize the Chinese regime because in the world of critical race theory,
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we have to see everyone that's non-Western and non-white as, um, a part of the oppressed class.
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I think that's blinding a lot of people to the brutal reality of the regime and what people are
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I totally agree with that. I mean, I I've said often that, that, you know, woke ideology, which
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encompasses critical race and intersectionality, um, has made it very difficult to view certain
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global events. Right. So one of the articles I wrote was about Hong Kong because you had the people
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of Hong Kong, you know, protesting one in seven Hong Kongers were out on the streets protesting and
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clamoring for democracy and, you know, they were pushing back against China and, you know, it was
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very, they were waving, for example, the Union Jack, they were singing the Star Spangled Banner, they were
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waving the American flag and, and, you know, people that kind of view the world through critical race
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are looking at this and saying, how can a former, you know, colony, British colony be raising the flag
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of their, of their former colonial master. It didn't compute, like, cause, you know, in, in terms
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of this ideology, you should be wanting to decolonize everything and they don't, they, it's very difficult
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for people to see that, okay, maybe certain ideas like freedom and democracy are something that is,
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you know, that comes from the West and that people in some countries may actually want something like
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that. And it almost causes this, like, era 404 doesn't compute. And, and so I, I wrote a piece
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about this talking about how it's so limiting to look at global issues like that. And in fact,
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these issues should challenge this view that should really challenge this view that, you know, just
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because a country is or a culture is not white, doesn't mean that, that, you know, they can't,
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that, that you can't criticize it or that, you know, they, they can be flawed. I mean,
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China is not, is being imperialistic. They're imposing, you know, people that really don't
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like imperialism should be fighting China because they are imposing a Chinese way of life onto many
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regions right now. So it's not just Hong Kong. They're also doing it in Xinjiang, for example,
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Yeah. Oh, there are so many questions that I want to ask you based on that. One thing that I was
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thinking about the way that I think intersectionalists and some people on the left
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did try to fit what was happening in Hong Kong into their very myopic worldview was to say, well,
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actually, uh, what the people in Hong Kong are resisting, it's the same thing as what, you know,
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people in Portland and Seattle are doing. They try to compare, you know, the Black Lives Matter
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and Tifa rioters to the demonstrators in Hong Kong. Can you talk about why that's just not
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a good comparison? I would say they're the opposite, but what would you say?
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They're the total opposite. I mean, firstly, that is actually a Chinese Communist Party
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line. They very much love it when people conflate the two. And in fact, they were eager to blast that
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kind of meme and message, um, that linking the Hong Kong protesters to what Antifa was doing,
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um, especially when Antifa was going after federal buildings and, and the Hong Kong protesters were
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occupying the legislative council. Now, obviously the premise of both, um, kinds of unrest, uh, very
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different, um, in the United States, we are a democracy. You can actually elect your leaders.
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And so you have these instruments of democracy that you can use to affect change. I mean,
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we just changed our president. Is that not proof enough that we live in a world where,
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where, you know, you can actually exercise nonviolent or non-civil unrest kind of means
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to affect change. Now in Hong Kong, they don't even have a chance to elect their leaders. They were
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protesting a broad and very sweeping national security law that would allow anybody with
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seditious thoughts to essentially be arrested, um, you know, jailed in, in China. And, and we all
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know also that the Chinese legal system is, is basically a kangaroo court. Um, it's, it's not
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transparent. There's no separation of powers, um, in the Chinese government, unlike in the U S
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government where executive and judicial and legislative are separated in China, they are all
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fused and, and you have no recourse once you're arrested. So they were really fighting for,
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for their lives in a way, in a very real way, real way. It's, it was about freedom and, you know,
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in Portland, they, they could just not elect the mayor if they didn't like what the mayor was doing.
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You know, why were they burning buildings? It just didn't make sense at all.
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And doing so in a lot of cases with almost total impunity and not just that, but also approval in
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some cases by the powers that be, or at least just kind of, um, looking, nodding along, nodding along,
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right. Or not naming, um, not naming the, the groups specifically and just saying, you know,
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we're against violence, but we won't actually say who is doing the violence. Now, some people
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listening might not actually know what happened in Hong Kong. And I want to use this as a kind of
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transition into the, um, the oppression that the CCP is, uh, is exacting over its people. Um,
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but first, can you talk about why, why Hong Kongers were dissenting? Why were they demonstrating
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So there was a treaty, um, that basically guaranteed Hong Kong after the British, uh, the British
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actually handed over the territory to China, um, in 1997, there was a treaty that would guarantee
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Hong Kong to be autonomous for at least the next 50 years. So till, uh, 2047, um, China, you know,
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was, was very happy to actually let Hong Kong exist under this one country, two systems. So officially
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this is China, but Hong Kong retains the, you know, the institutions and, and the, the sort
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of more democratic, uh, institutions that remain, that was a vestige from, from the British colonial
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past. Um, and also in terms of culture, Hong Kong was, you know, for, for a good part of like the
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eighties and nineties, I mean, you're probably, I mean, you were probably too young, but, but there
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were, uh, it was, it was kind of the center, the cultural center of Asia movies were produced
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there. It was a center for publishing because it had this climate that was completely, that
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was very free, um, in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. So, you know,
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instead of allowing this, uh, to, to go on this one country, two systems model, um, the
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Chinese communist party reneged on its treaty, essentially. Um, they started clamoring down
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on Hong Kong, slowly stripping Hong Kong one by one of, of their freedoms and autonomy that
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was guaranteed by the treaty. Um, so the, the thing that kind of, so the protests, pro-democracy
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protests have actually been going on since 2014. Um, and again, this is because of the,
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you know, little things that have been chipping away at the freedoms one by one, but the thing
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that really set everything off last year, uh, or the year before it was actually this extradition
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law. China basically imposed an extradition law onto Hong Kong saying that, um, anyone that's
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found guilty of, uh, whatever sedition or whatever crime, uh, can be extradited, uh, back to the
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mainland for, for trial. And this was very alarming to a lot of activists, um, to a lot
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of artists, people that are critical of, of the Chinese government and want to retain
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their right to criticize even just policies of the Chinese government, which really should
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be up for criticism. Um, and, and then they blanketed, you know, this new, this security
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law that was even more sweeping, broadened the definition of what sedition was, what
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incitement was. Um, and they started, um, arresting people that were in the sort of
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democracy, the opposition parties in Hong Kong. So they just completely overreached. Um, and,
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and that's why people were, were so angry and they were on the streets. They wanted to fight
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for their, you know, own right to vote in the parties. They wanted to fight to abolish the,
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the security law and they wanted the world to notice and to stand with them. Um, and
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yeah, that's what the Hong Kong protests were really about.
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And did the world stand with them? I mean, I know there were conservative Americans and
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probably progressive Americans too, who, who did at least in our voices. But I mean, what
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about the UN? What about other world powers? Did anyone come to their aid?
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Um, not so much. The global institutions were, were pretty quiet on, I mean, I think he did
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have like human rights watch definitely release statements. Um, but in terms of actual policy,
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right, I think the UK and the US was thinking about this, but the UK definitely, um, opened
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the country up and saying that, okay, if you have a Hong Kong passport, you're going to have
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a pathway to citizenship. You're allowed to, to, you know, travel to, to the UK and at least
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try to, to immigrate. Um, but for the most part, I mean, look at what happened when we had
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a sitting manager of an NBA team basically espouse his support or, for, you know, the Hong Kongers
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who are fighting for their freedoms. Look what happened to him. He, well, he doesn't even manage
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that team anymore, but he was completely, you know, he, he was, he had to grovel and apologize
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for, for what was a very benign, um, statement of support on Twitter.
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Wow. That's, can you talk about just in case people just don't know, or they just don't
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fully understand the depths of evil of the CCP? Um, and we're talking not just internationally,
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but with their own people. Can you talk about some of the things that they're doing, for
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Yeah. Um, my gosh, the, this is one of those cases that is just so tragic because it's happening
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right, right in front of our eyes. Um, the Uyghur population is, is basically a Turkic, um,
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Muslim minority that lives in Northwestern China in a region called Xinjiang. And, um, they have
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been sort of surveilled, um, their freedoms have been curtailed. They're, you know, some, some
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weaker Muslims are actually put into these modern day re-education camps that look very reminiscent
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of, of, you know, camps past in Auschwitz. And, you know, they, they don't have any, um,
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there's no due process. So if you got, if you got swept up by the state security apparatus,
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you basically get whisked away. Um, your family never knows when they'll see you again and all in
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the name of, you know, fighting extremism, fighting terrorism, um, and separatism because,
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you know, the Chinese government ultimately is worried that, that this minority group wants to,
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to separate and be autonomous from China. And that is no go for the Chinese government. And so based on,
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you know, just their characteristics, now they're actually using genetic data as well to identify
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who's weaker. Um, they are, they are imprisoning them upfront. So, you know, with, with just nothing
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other than no information other than, um, just what, who they are and, and what they believe.
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And so they're also trying to, um, sinusize their habits. They force these Muslims to basically
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shave their beards. They can't eat pork. And when they get, when they get sent to these re-education
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camps, they have to sing praises of the Chinese communist party. They have to sing these patriotic
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songs. It's, you know, make pledges. It's kind of, it's very, very creepy, um, because it's so
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totalitarian in terms of how they're subjugating these people. And, um, you know, satellite images,
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some, some reporters have done amazing work. One of the things about China is that journalists,
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especially foreign journalists don't have freedom of movement in the country. So if you're a foreign
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journalist and you try to go to Xinjiang to even have eyes on the ground and report on this,
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you will probably not be allowed to, um, you know, actually last year during COVID China kicked out
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the New York times, the Washington posts, um, all these Beijing bureaus that were there. So we don't
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even have offices in China anymore. They're not allowed to operate there. And, um, and journalists
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have been expelled for, for just their honest reporting on what was going on in Xinjiang. Um, so it's,
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it's, and, you know, they're also doing a forced sterilization of, of, um, the Uyghur Muslim women
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and, and recently Pompeo, Secretary Pompeo actually, you know, designated what was happening there as
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a genocide. And, um, actually to Biden's Secretary of State's credit, Antony Blinken, he actually agreed
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that it was a genocide. Yeah. Forced sterilizations is what I've seen reported. Forced abortions and just
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some of the testimonies of women that have actually been able to speak, who have somehow escaped or
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who have just been able to, um, give testimony to what's happened. What's happened really for a lot
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longer than I think the United States has known, um, are these forced late term abortions. And there
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was this propaganda tweet that went up not too long ago as we're recording this that said, you know,
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the Chinese Communist Party is, um, they're doing such wonders and such favors for the Uyghur Muslim
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people to make sure that these women, um, you know, they're modernized and they're, um, they're not
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forced to have, you know, eight children. We are being so kind, um, by performing these forced
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abortions and forced sterilization, um, uh, forced sterilization procedures. We're basically liberating
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women because of that. I'm not sure that people understand the willingness and, um, the brazenness
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of the Chinese Communist Party to just flat out lie about everything. And it's, it really amazes me how
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we're not more angry at China, not just for that, but how they've lied about the coronavirus,
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how they've infiltrated the WHO with their lies. I don't know. I don't know if it's naivete by
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Americans or if it's just apathy or if it's that critical race theory coming in, but it really blows
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my mind. I think coronavirus has woken a lot of Americans up to, uh, China's actions because,
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um, you know, how they dealt with COVID, how they've tried to spin the narrative after they got caught
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out for, um, basically letting this spread, um, and not alerting the world about it. And, you know,
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just kind of hampering the WHO investigations that one year later, more than a year later,
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finally a team made it there. And even though a team made it there, they were not allowed to,
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um, examine one hypothesis that seems, you know, not at all to be ruled out, which is the lab leak
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hypothesis. And so you can see that, you know, China is really trying to control this narrative.
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And, um, I, I think the American people also have woken up because of that realization in the few
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months after COVID really like lockdowns kind of happened, China was hoovering up the world supply
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of PPE. Um, and then, you know, it kind of became pretty apparent that a lot of our supply chains
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were located inside a geopolitical adversary. And, and that became a bit of a shock because, well,
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what happens when you need to be militarily ready, um, and all your supply chains are there. So
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I think in the last year, the public opinion has actually kind of shifted on China and Gallup showed
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that like, I think 80% of Americans now view the country unfavorably. Um, so I think we're in a,
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you know, we're in a situation where there is bipartisan consensus that China cannot be seen
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anymore as just a competitor. It is a geopolitical rival. It is a threat. And, and, you know, we have to
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see it more in that context. And I think a lot of people also don't know, even though I am glad to
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hear that the majority of the country do see China, uh, does see China rightly, um, what they're doing
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in Africa, what they're doing in South America, you know, catching these poor countries and debt
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traps by saying, you know, we're going to create these railways or something like in Ethiopia,
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and you'll be able to pay us back with all the money that you're making. The railways don't work.
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The construction doesn't end or whatever it is. Um, the, these things don't function that they build in
00:25:23.840
these countries. And then they've caught these countries in a debt trap. Or I have a friend who
00:25:29.480
is from Zimbabwe and, um, there, there are places in Zimbabwe where you can, um, you can get oil,
00:25:37.640
you can dig for oil. Um, and rather than the people in Zimbabwe being able to do that themselves,
00:25:44.060
the Zimbabwean government has said, no, we're going to reserve this area for China. Um, and so I think
00:25:49.960
people also don't realize just how, like you said, imperialistic and colonizing this regime is. And
00:25:58.520
it's just interesting that people who are against imperialism and colonization, um, they tend to not
00:26:03.860
have quite as much to say when the Chinese government does it.
00:26:08.680
Exactly. And actually it's even more insidious than that, because when these countries cannot
00:26:12.620
pay up for this debt, like this actually happened in Sri Lanka, they have to give up their ports.
00:26:18.640
They have to give up strategic assets to China. That's part of the contract. And then that becomes
00:26:23.000
a way China is basically controlling important entry points that are strategic in an event of some sort of
00:26:29.900
military operation, for example. And so this is, it's, it's, it's very dangerous.
00:26:36.220
Yeah, it is. And obviously China going into these agreements knows how it's going to end. It concludes
00:26:42.400
exactly how they want it to conclude. They know that these poor countries are not going to be able
00:26:47.140
to pay them back. I don't even think we understand, um, the, the depths of evil and oppression,
00:26:52.980
unfortunately, that they are executing, um, not just on their own people, but around the world.
00:26:58.720
One thing that I do want to talk to you about that we talked about before we started recording was
00:27:02.680
other kinds of religious persecution in China, not just towards the Uyghur Muslims, but also towards
00:27:07.980
Christians. And in particular, this rewriting, um, of the Bible to fit more communistic standards.
00:27:14.300
Can you talk about that? Um, yeah, so actually this was published in the National Review last year.
00:27:20.380
And, uh, it, it, it came to the attention of, of the author, um, that there was in fact, uh, a rewrite
00:27:27.560
of, of, of the Christian Bible. So, you know, in the last few years, Christianity has been really,
00:27:34.040
um, suppressed in China. So, you know, church, uh, crosses have been torn down from churches,
00:27:41.040
pastors have been arrested for no reason. Um, and, and the Xi Jinping himself, uh, has been reported to
00:27:50.740
be afraid of, of the rising influence of Christianity in China. I think the projection
00:27:55.800
is that by 2030, China, China will have more Christians in the country than anywhere around
00:28:00.620
else around the world. Um, and the thing about the communist country is that they, they're very
00:28:07.280
afraid of, of, of religion kind of supplanting the state. And so that's why they keep religion under,
00:28:13.860
under such a strong thumb. And it's not just Christianity, obviously it's the Buddhists. I mean,
00:28:18.860
as the Tibetans, they've been subjugated for a long time, uh, Falun Gong, which is also a Taoist
00:28:24.280
blend and Buddhist blend of, of, um, you know, this, a spiritual group, uh, they, who, they've been
00:28:31.440
subjected reportedly to, um, organ harvesting, for example. But yeah, in the case of Christian,
00:28:37.000
Christianity in particular, it's, it's a big threat because there's just so many, it's, it's,
00:28:41.300
it's a lot in terms of numbers. Um, the Catholics on, on, on one hand have a bit of a easier time.
00:28:47.780
And that's because I think two years ago, the Pope actually, you know, agreed to let China be the
00:28:54.680
one that oversees the appointing of the bishops. But, you know, Christianity tends to be, Protestantism
00:28:59.640
at least is, is more decentralized. And so it's been targeted, uh, a bit more heavily by, by, by the,
00:29:07.000
by the CCP. Um, and so this rewrite of the Bible was actually really, it's so creepy. Um, it was
00:29:15.440
actually a story. One of the, one of the, one example of the rewrite, um, is actually the story
00:29:20.860
in, I think it was in the Gospel of John, where there was an adulteress and, and he, the adulteress
00:29:26.760
was about to be stoned. And Jesus tells the crowd, you know, let, let he who is without sin cast the
00:29:32.440
first stone, um, pointing out to, you know, to the crowd about hypocrisy and about the importance
00:29:38.700
of forgiveness. Eventually the crowd disperses and the woman, you know, doesn't get stoned.
00:29:44.480
In the Chinese Communist Party rewrites of the Bible, this section, um, Jesus Christ lets the
00:29:50.960
crowd disperse, but he takes a rock and he actually bashes the woman's head.
00:29:56.760
So he kills her himself. Um, and if you, you know, the reasoning for, for this kind of a
00:30:03.340
rewrite is the moral that the story tells that is in line with advancing the CCP's goal. And
00:30:09.960
the CCP's goal is to say that the law of the land cannot be subverted. Um, that religion,
00:30:17.260
Jesus Christ is religious figure had to conform to the law of the land because the law is the
00:30:21.680
law. And it is so disturbing. Um, yeah, if you look it up, National Review did a really good,
00:30:27.460
uh, write up about, about this, the CCP version of the Bible. Um, that's the kind of, you know,
00:30:34.740
it tells you so much too about what the country fears. Um, and, and I think it's a very stark
00:30:42.100
reminder of, of the kind of, uh, you know, lengths at which they're willing to go to,
00:30:48.480
to either supplant, co-opt or repress religion.
00:30:52.700
Yes. And you talked about this so well and so thoroughly that the real enemy, I think it seems
00:30:59.500
that China sees is an ideological enemy. It's not just a military enemy. It's not just about
00:31:05.620
technology, but it's primarily ideology. And to me that, I mean, that seems to be their motivation
00:31:11.680
for infiltrating so many institutions in the United States and for so effectively putting,
00:31:17.800
um, or pushing their propaganda in the United States that unfortunately we see a lot of people
00:31:22.660
repeating without even really realizing it. And certainly as a Protestant Christian myself,
00:31:27.880
I can see why the CCP would see Protestants as a threat. If you look at the history of Protestantism,
00:31:34.940
it has been resistance to tyranny. The, the America probably would not have been founded without
00:31:41.540
the Protestant Reformation. The ideas of the constitution and the declaration of independence
00:31:46.220
are, are built on that. Um, and so I, I can see why I can see why they, they see it as a threat.
00:31:55.000
And I think Christians here should be, uh, more aware of what they are trying to do on an ideological
00:32:02.680
value system level, even more than we are looking at what they're actually doing militarily or what
00:32:09.340
they're doing with our technology. Um, and just kind of be aware of the perversion that they're
00:32:14.540
trying to be able to push on our faith in the name of kind of claiming minds and claiming belief
00:32:19.980
systems. Um, do you think, or do you have hope, I guess, for how the United States is going to
00:32:27.460
confront the threat of China here and abroad under the Biden administration?
00:32:35.800
You know, I, I think what you said about the ideology part is actually spot on. It's something
00:32:40.960
that I think I've been trying to get people to understand that that's actually, you know,
00:32:44.740
they always say culture is downstream of politics. Well, ideology is downstream of culture. And if we
00:32:49.880
don't get that piece, right, we're, you know, and think that we're still in the position where,
00:32:54.280
where China can be engaged with, um, and, and, you know, we can use, I don't know, we, to, to get
00:33:00.080
concessions, to get them to cooperate on say climate change, we're going to concede and appease.
00:33:05.540
Um, you know, it's been demonstrated for the last deck, last few decades that, that, that kind of
00:33:12.780
engagement, appeasement tactic just hasn't worked at all. And, and that's also because that we, you know,
00:33:18.800
we, we didn't really focus on ideological differences between China and the United States
00:33:24.920
and how those ideological difference actually clash. And so if you have room for only one kind
00:33:32.140
of world order, um, which I think that's what the cases that we're looking at here, because they're
00:33:38.700
antagonistic, um, in the sense that they're mutually exclusive. Like if the American world order
00:33:44.940
is going to be the predominant one, the Chinese one cannot be at the same time, um, then, then we
00:33:52.140
really have to push back on what's happening on every front. And, you know, you spoke about the
00:33:59.840
influence operations of infiltrating these institutions. Um, we're talking about on the
00:34:05.980
economic front, um, you know, the theft, corporate espionage, intellectual property theft, um,
00:34:13.840
then the digital front, we're looking at AI, we're looking at, um, sort of big tech issues, um, 5G,
00:34:20.420
for example. And, um, and then you have more like covert influence, influence operations, like
00:34:26.920
the Confucius Institutes, um, you know, kind of cultural exchange kind of, uh, institutions here.
00:34:35.040
And, um, and things like the Belt and Road, which is really the Belt and Road initiative,
00:34:39.180
the debt trap diplomacy is an attempt to, to influence, um, other countries and, and sort
00:34:45.660
of buy their acquiescence, right. Um, things like the thousand talents program, which, you
00:34:51.960
know, China uses to recruit American, um, academics to set up shop in China and, and, and sort of
00:34:59.360
share their research, research that by the way, like the American taxpayers are funding. So essentially
00:35:06.700
you are funding, you know, their, the development of China, um, technologies. Um, so it's, it's been
00:35:14.520
happening on all these fronts. And, and I think, I think the knowledge firstly, like that this is
00:35:23.160
happening has only really started to percolate upwards in the last year or so to the American public.
00:35:29.360
More and more cases, the DOJ has launched this thing called the China Initiative. Um, and the DOJ
00:35:34.920
has been like prosecuting more cases. I think the FBI said that they open, um, out of, out of,
00:35:40.740
out of the, the cases that are currently open in terms of, uh, counterintelligence cases,
00:35:45.420
about 50% are against, uh, Chinese nationals or people that are spying on behalf of, of the
00:35:52.700
Chinese government. So there is growing awareness. Now the question is how are we going to push back,
00:35:58.520
right? Like at the end of the day, we want to avoid a hot war at all costs. Um, but I think the
00:36:04.780
primary way is we're going to finally have to impose costs on China for very bad behavior. We need to
00:36:11.340
disincentivize, um, the kind of behavior that, that really we've let China just run away with for the
00:36:19.160
longest time that has, that has just never, they've not faced any costs for the things that are, you know,
00:36:25.320
for unleashing the coronavirus, for example, they have not faced any costs for reneging on the treaty
00:36:30.880
with, uh, uh, Britain on Hong Kong. So we need to ramp all these, uh, costs up and that's in part
00:36:38.820
what Trump's trade tariffs was supposed to do was to punish them for, you know, for basically taking
00:36:44.820
advantage of the United States in terms of, uh, trade for the longest time and having this like
00:36:48.800
huge imbalance in our trade deficit. Um, but that's the kind of action that we need to do for
00:36:53.580
every action that the Chinese government has been, um, taking a little inch on, you know,
00:36:59.400
militarizing the South China sea. We need to push back. We need to impose a cost on them for doing
00:37:03.900
that. So they know that this is just unacceptable.
00:37:06.480
I think part of our responsibility here is to connect the dots for people that, um, if this
00:37:23.400
truly is primarily an ideological battle, um, and they are pushing forward on that front. And like you
00:37:31.740
said so well that the American world order in the Chinese world order are mutually exclusive. If
00:37:38.920
the Chinese world order is the dominant one, then this idea of equality and inherent rights and free
00:37:45.700
speech and religious liberty, those are all gone. Those are not values that China has. And, and China
00:37:51.860
has, uh, has, has no priority, no desire whatsoever to say, okay, well, once we are officially in charge of
00:37:59.280
everything and everyone will still allow you to have some of your value systems, we'll still allow
00:38:04.040
you to have some of your belief systems. They're not interested in that. They're interested in world
00:38:09.040
domination. The way that America kind of affectionately and maybe naively said, you know
00:38:13.900
what, we're going to kind of give some of our values to China and hope for the best for their people.
00:38:20.060
The feeling is not mutual there. Like they don't have any sort of compassion or generosity or
00:38:26.420
understanding towards other ways of life in other kinds of cultures and other kinds of people or
00:38:31.220
belief systems or other ideas of rights. They just won't allow it. Right. And, and how they are
00:38:39.140
treating their, you know, internally their people domestically is a very good harbinger of, of how
00:38:46.000
they're going to act when, or if they, they have control of a wider swath of the world population.
00:38:51.640
And so it really behooves us to take that as, as a sign and, and act on principle rather than,
00:38:58.400
you know, let them fester. And, and by the way, they're going to be, they're actually perfecting
00:39:02.760
this techno surveillance state, um, the panopticon, they're perfecting that on the Uyghurs and you
00:39:09.120
know, they're going to deploy it on a, on a much larger scale. I mean, they already have this
00:39:12.760
rudimentary, actually it's not even rudimentary, it's pretty sophisticated, um, social credit system
00:39:17.540
that the entire country is subject to. Um, they've co-opted technology and digital technology and
00:39:23.120
all encompassing kind of, um, apps that, you know, determine whether or not you can buy a ticket
00:39:30.460
to travel, whether or not you can make a doctor's appointment. I mean, essentially what they're going
00:39:36.320
for all the way, like, you know, from denying political rights, denying speech, it's, it's really
00:39:41.280
even thought control because once you have a social credit system set up, you can essentially
00:39:47.020
just control what people think by, by, you know, imposing costs, um, in terms of participation
00:39:53.600
in society, which, which, you know, is necessary for life. So it's, it's very disturbing because
00:39:59.500
if they're successful at this and they gain more influence and they do become a willpower,
00:40:05.560
um, there's almost no question that that's, that's really going to be the world that we live in.
00:40:11.400
And Americans, I think for the most part, we almost can't understand that because our limiting
00:40:15.660
principles are different. We think, okay, at some point, um, everyone has the same basic
00:40:21.520
understanding of evil, the same basic understanding of right and wrong. Everyone knows when too far
00:40:27.480
is too far, but that's, it's just not true. It's just not true. They don't have any kind of limiting
00:40:32.980
principle. You can bet that if there is some kind of development that actually allows real mind
00:40:38.920
control, if there is actually a technological advancement that allows that China is not going
00:40:44.120
to think, you know, that's too far. The brain is a frontier that we just, we're just not going to
00:40:49.320
allow because we want people to have freedom of thought. That kind of idea is just, it's, it's not
00:40:54.940
accepted by the CCP. I think one thing, and I know we've got to wrap up, but one thing that I just
00:41:01.120
see us damaging or see damaging us so much here and weakening us so much is the kind of curriculum
00:41:07.240
that we are teaching our kids and teaching in academia that, that encourages a hatred and a
00:41:14.000
resentment and a loathing of the United States so that people think, well, we're no better than the
00:41:19.260
CCP. Why, why should we fight for our principles? Why should we care about the constitution or inherent
00:41:25.320
rights? All of these things are systemically racist. They're oppressive. They're wrong.
00:41:30.140
And America is just as bad as any evil regime, even worse. That kind of idea, I don't know if
00:41:36.480
it's directly from the CCP, but the CCP loves it. That's exactly. They benefit from it. Yes. That's
00:41:42.780
exactly what they want us to think. I just, I see that as almost the biggest domestic threat that we
00:41:48.260
have, that if you have people that hate themselves, hate their fellow countrymen, hate their country and
00:41:53.620
founding principles, why, why would anyone stand up against the totalitarian values of, you know,
00:42:02.380
a regime like the CCP? Right. No, you're, you're exactly right. So, um, do you have any kind of
00:42:08.660
encouragement for people or any just final advice in our everyday lives? Um, how we can make ourselves
00:42:15.700
aware of what's going on, how we can kind of push back against some of the threats that we're seeing.
00:42:20.460
Most people listening probably aren't, aren't part of the FBI. Um, and they don't have that kind of
00:42:25.280
access. Is there anything that we can do in our own lives practically? Yeah, I think, um, for example,
00:42:31.680
you know, being aware of, of products, I think, you know, made in China, for example, it's so difficult
00:42:37.800
to actually boycott something like that. Everything is made in China. Um, but, but more awareness about
00:42:43.660
what is, what isn't, you know, I think decoupling as far as possible will go a long way because it
00:42:50.760
will allow us to respond in a way that, that is based on principle and also pressure companies that
00:42:56.340
are, you know, basically trading in principle and ethics for market access. So, you know, you're
00:43:03.220
looking at media companies, your, your Hollywood companies, um, that are rewriting scripts to, to
00:43:08.020
tailor to the Chinese, uh, communist parties narratives. They don't want any reference to
00:43:12.780
Tibet, for example. And so, you know, they change characters that are Tibetan monks in their,
00:43:17.140
in their movie scripts. Um, you know, be aware of, of what institutions, uh, the Chinese government
00:43:24.160
has infiltrated, you know, watch out for that boycott that personally. Um, and, and, you know,
00:43:30.540
if you have a representative, a local representative, you know, write to them and make sure that they're
00:43:36.640
aware of, of, of such issues and, and that, you know, Chinese investment, for example, should
00:43:41.700
be viewed very skeptically. Um, so I would say that's probably the best thing we can do and,
00:43:46.100
and just keep, you know, keep reading the news about this stuff. It's, it's very important because
00:43:51.560
this is going to define the next, the next century. Yeah, I completely agree with you. And where can
00:43:56.840
they, where can they follow you and how can they read all of your stuff and all of your insight into
00:44:01.320
what's going on in China? Um, you, so my beat is China that that's kind of what I focus on writing
00:44:07.860
for spectator USA. So you can find it on, on the spectator USA website. Um, but also you can just
00:44:12.880
follow me on Twitter. It's, um, at sign miss M S Mel M E L Chen C H E N. Awesome. Well, thank you so
00:44:20.020
much, Melissa, for taking the time to talk to us. Thank you for talking about such an important thing.
00:44:24.440
I'm really glad that more, you know, more people are really trying to, to, to, to air,
00:44:29.940
air all this stuff out and, and inform the American people. Definitely. Well, thank you.