The Charlie Kirk Show - Gordon G. Chang | How We Can Stop China

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00:00:08.000 Hey, everybody. 0.98

00:00:09.000 Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, I have a great conversation with Gordon Chang, probably the leading China expert in the world who understands his issue better than anyone else so that we can clamp down on China's influence in our country. 0.97

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00:00:52.000 Big interview in store with Gordon Chang.

00:00:54.000 Buckle up.

00:00:55.000 Here we go.

00:00:56.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:58.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:01:00.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:03.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:07.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:08.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:09.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:17.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:26.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:29.000 Hey, everybody.

00:01:29.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:32.000 Thrilled to be joined by probably the number one China expert in the country, if not the world.

00:01:38.000 I've been watching him for years on television, Gordon Chang.

00:01:43.000 Gordon is the author of The Coming Collapse of China.

00:01:47.000 Also, you can follow him on Twitter.

00:01:48.000 I want to make sure I get the handle right, Gordon, so you can mention.

00:01:51.000 I think you said it's Gordon B. Chang.

00:01:53.000 Is that right?

00:01:54.000 On Twitter?

00:01:54.000 Gordon G. I'm sorry.

00:01:56.000 Gordon G. Cheng.

00:01:58.000 Okay.

00:01:58.000 You could follow him on Twitter.

00:01:59.000 So make sure you go give him a follow.

00:02:01.000 Gordon, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:02:04.000 Oh, well, thank you so much, Charlie.

00:02:06.000 I really appreciate this.

00:02:07.000 Of course.

00:02:07.000 So I talk about China a lot.

00:02:09.000 I have been very vocal, calling China our greatest enemy.

00:02:13.000 I don't play games like some people in Washington where they say China is a foe or China is a rival.

00:02:18.000 I just say they're an enemy of the United States and they should be treated as such. 0.98

00:02:22.000 I think that for decades we have allowed the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate our society and our culture. 0.99

00:02:28.000 Can you just give us a big picture update and then we'll get into issue by issue of where you think the Chinese Communist Party and the country of China are currently? 0.97

00:02:37.000 Are they healthy economically, societally, and culturally?

00:02:41.000 And just help us make sense of this outside of the propaganda that we'll likely see in the mainstream press.

00:02:46.000 Well, Charlie, you're absolutely right. 0.95

00:02:49.000 China is an enemy. 0.95

00:02:50.000 And we know this because May of last year, People's Daily, which is the most authoritative publication in China, ran a piece which said, people's war, quote unquote, people's war against the U.S.

00:03:04.000 So they call us an enemy.

00:03:06.000 Obviously, they're an enemy.

00:03:08.000 China's challenge to the U.S. is across the board, and it is existential. 0.92

00:03:13.000 They are trying to do everything possible to undermine us. 0.97

00:03:17.000 And this includes, you know, taking hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. intellectual property each year and all sorts of things.

00:03:25.000 Challenging the U.S. Navy in the global commons.

00:03:27.000 They've increased the tempo of that.

00:03:29.000 They've been going after our allies.

00:03:32.000 They've been going after our friends like India, where on the night of June 15th, Chinese soldiers killed 15 Indian counterparts.

00:03:42.000 This is horrific.

00:03:44.000 We see, for instance, Just a fundamental nature of the communist system where they're committing crimes against humanity, including genocide against the Uyghurs and the Kazakhs and other ethnic and religious minorities.

00:03:59.000 So I don't know how else you put this.

00:04:02.000 China is an enemy and they're going after us.

00:04:05.000 Yeah, it's our greatest enemy, I would make the argument. 0.96

00:04:09.000 And what's so different about the Chinese threat, and I want to unpack this with you, is that unlike other threats that we faced in the 20th century, this particular enemy has really embedded themselves into every single aspect of American culture through our media, 0.99

00:04:27.000 by purchasing advertisements in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, through our tech companies, by trying to win good favor with them so they can create their own social censorship empire through Hollywood, through funding a lot of movies and distributing them throughout mainland China, through our sports, through very, let's say, suspicious deals with the National Basketball Association and the NBA's unwillingness to call out China's evil authoritarian practices. 0.90

00:04:53.000 It seems, and in higher education, Confucius Institutes, we're at our last count, and we have done this at Turning Point USA because we're a campus-based organization.

00:05:01.000 We've actually listed all the Confucius Institutes and the professors that are on CCP payroll, and we keep a weekly track of which ones are being closed, which ones are not being closed.

00:05:11.000 And thankfully, we've put a lot of pressure on lawmakers.

00:05:14.000 There's been over 30 that have closed in the last year, which is terrific.

00:05:17.000 Can you speak about how the Chinese model is not about firing rockets at the United States?

00:05:23.000 Instead, it's a lot more subversive. 0.97

00:05:24.000 It's about getting into the fabric of our country and destabilizing us from within. 0.99

00:05:30.000 Yeah, the Chinese talk about the three warfares, which is subversion, lawfare, and the rest of it. 0.99

00:05:37.000 But, you know, you think about China's subversion of the United States, and it is from the top to the bottom. 0.93

00:05:44.000 It's not only the Confucius Institutes you talk about, Confucius classrooms. 0.91

00:05:48.000 It is supplying a lot of money in the forms of printing contracts, plus also advertisements in those papers that you were talking about.

00:05:56.000 $19 million to U.S. publications over the course of two and a half years, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others.

00:06:06.000 You know, we see a concerted effort on the part of China to do this.

00:06:10.000 They've been doing it for decades, and they've made great inroads into it. 0.93

00:06:15.000 And we have, you've got to remember, Charlie, that, yeah, the Chinese are villains, but this is our country. 1.00

00:06:20.000 We could have stopped them from doing this, and we didn't do it. 1.00

00:06:24.000 And finally, we have an administration that is going after the Chinese from the top to the bottom. 1.00

00:06:29.000 And this is absolutely essential because of what they have done to try to undermine our society. 1.00

00:06:36.000 And we got to remember one thing, just to put this in context. 1.00

00:06:40.000 You know, a lot of people say, oh, you know, the Chinese are just competing with us.

00:06:44.000 And I have no problem with the country competing with us.

00:06:47.000 That's what happens within the Westphalian international system that goes back to 1648.

00:06:52.000 What China is trying to do is not compete with us in this Westphalian system.

00:06:56.000 What China is trying to do is to overthrow the Westphalian system and to replace it with something that the Chinese emperors were familiar with, which is worldwide Chinese rule.

00:07:06.000 They call this Tianxia, or all under heaven. 0.85

00:07:09.000 China's emperors had the right and they were compelled to rule all under heaven. 0.87

00:07:15.000 That's what we're talking about. 0.96

00:07:16.000 So this is an existential challenge to the United States and to every other country on the planet.

00:07:21.000 It's almost a, let's say, Chinese equivalent of the divine right of kings almost, that I have a right to rule the entire world, to make a comparison to a European historical example. 0.86

00:07:34.000 And in some ways, it's very mercantilist in some ways, where they want to create a global empire. 0.81

00:07:41.000 And so let's dive deeper, though, in the American side of it, because you're right, we could have stopped it.

00:07:46.000 And we had Republican and Democrat presidents that were really either they were hypnotized or they were complicit with this agenda, especially on the issue of trade, that somehow it would benefit the United States of America completely and categorically if we deindustrialized our country.

00:08:04.000 Now, what's really interesting is I came across your work in 2012, 2013, right when Mitt Romney was running for the presidency, and you were talking about how we need to be very firm against China.

00:08:16.000 There were a lot of scholars that now have proven to be funded by certain Chinese companies and Chinese affiliates that would make the argument using pure libertarian thinking that it's actually a really good thing on comparative advantage that if our country sends all of our jobs overseas, and I used to believe this, and I couldn't be on the other, I couldn't be more on the other side of it now.

00:08:39.000 Can you talk about how the ruling class has really, in both parties, has designed this system that has been more pro-China than pro-American?

00:08:49.000 Yeah, this is the greatest mistake that the United States has made in the course of its history.

00:08:56.000 What we tried to do, we started out with some like a very generous notion that we could integrate China into the international system.

00:09:04.000 And it was not just China.

00:09:05.000 We're talking about a communist regime.

00:09:08.000 And maybe one can say that in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, there was maybe some justification for this.

00:09:15.000 You know, people talked about Francis Fukuyama talked about the end of history, all the rest of it. 0.73

00:09:21.000 But it became pretty clear that China, as it traded with us, as we engaged China, as the word is, that really what we did was we strengthened a hostile regime. 0.58

00:09:33.000 And instead of becoming benign, that regime became even more belligerent and hostile.

00:09:39.000 The one thing that, you know, we talk about trade, and I can understand the notions of free trade and the rest of it.

00:09:46.000 But ultimately, we got to remember that China does not believe in the notion of comparative advantage.

00:09:53.000 And that underpins this whole idea of international commerce.

00:09:58.000 So what we have done by, for instance, admitting China into the World Trade Organization, which occurred in 2001, was we allowed this into a free trade system. 0.73

00:10:08.000 We allowed this completely mercantilist, criminal, and in many ways, criminal organization because they were stealing intellectual property. 0.75

00:10:17.000 So that's the reason why, you know, China was able to make great progress because we were helping China to strengthen itself. 0.51

00:10:25.000 And at some point, and we can argue about when we should have realized this, but certainly we're talking a long time ago.

00:10:32.000 We should have realized that we needed to change course because China was not, the regime was not moving in the directions that everyone predicted.

00:10:41.000 And we were told and we were promised by our leaders: the more we trade with them, the more Western they'll become.

00:10:48.000 And a lot of Eastern European countries were used as an example as to how this can happen.

00:10:53.000 You know, oh, look at Belarus and look at Poland.

00:10:56.000 Eventually, if you trade with them, they'll all be wearing Levi jeans, taking selfies with iPhones, eating Big Macs, you know, in Minsk, and they'll love America, right? 0.81

00:11:06.000 That was basically the thought process. 0.95

00:11:08.000 Or look at Southeast Asia and look at Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia.

00:11:12.000 However, we have learned that the more we trade with them, it's actually the opposite.

00:11:16.000 The more they hate us.

00:11:19.000 That's right.

00:11:19.000 And so it's completely the opposite.

00:11:22.000 And there are still people that are committed to this idea that we must just without any sort of tariffs or sanctions or interruption of the supply chain, continue this descent into the Chinese global empire being strengthened.

00:11:38.000 And a lot of these people sometimes are more on the fundamentalist free market side.

00:11:42.000 And I love the free market.

00:11:43.000 I really do.

00:11:44.000 Milton Friedman, Adam Smith guy. 0.96

00:11:45.000 However, it's not good for any form of liberty if China gets stronger. 0.63

00:11:50.000 I mean, if you love freedom, you should not want China to have any more power than they currently have.

00:11:55.000 One thing that has always really interested me in your writings, though, Gordon, is how you have called out the BS of the Chinese banking system. 0.91

00:12:03.000 It's a very nuanced, intricate point, but I actually completely agree. 0.99

00:12:08.000 I think that their economic model is actually a house of cards waiting to collapse.

00:12:13.000 Can you build that out for us?

00:12:14.000 Because that is not something that we always hear from the media.

00:12:18.000 Yeah.

00:12:19.000 China tries to present itself as sort of the inevitable wave.

00:12:22.000 And they talk about a big economy growing bigger, eventually will overtake ours. 0.75

00:12:28.000 And so there's this whole notion that this can't be stopped.

00:12:33.000 But what we're seeing, what China has done is it's created a currency wall and all other walls, which have really permitted communist leaders in Beijing to set the rules and therefore administer the game.

00:12:47.000 And what they've been able to do looks unsustainable.

00:12:51.000 And eventually it will be, but they've gotten away with it for quite some time. 0.55

00:12:55.000 They've also been benefited by this notion that we've just been talking about that the world should help China.

00:13:02.000 So essentially what China has is a system which constantly requires money from the outside.

00:13:09.000 And because of our engagement notions, we've been supplying that money in terms of trade, investment, technical cooperation, all the rest of it.

00:13:18.000 Right now, the world is decoupling from China for a number of reasons.

00:13:22.000 And we're starting to see the problems in the Chinese system become exposed. 0.62

00:13:27.000 So for instance, even before the coronavirus epidemic, big Chinese companies were starting to default on their bonds.

00:13:34.000 And smaller companies that didn't have access to the bond market were also doing that as well.

00:13:41.000 Now, the coronavirus epidemic has shaken China, just like it's shaken our economy.

00:13:46.000 But we're actually recovering a lot faster than China is because of just the nature of our system.

00:13:53.000 Our system is everyone goes out and within the constraint of rules does what's best for themselves. 0.79

00:13:59.000 In China, that's not the system.

00:14:01.000 The system is the Communist Party dictates outcomes.

00:14:05.000 And in certain cases, they can do well.

00:14:08.000 But right now, the policies of Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, are to go back to what was the early days of the People's Republic under Mao.

00:14:17.000 It's totalitarianism, and it isn't working.

00:14:20.000 And Chinese people themselves are starting to see this.

00:14:23.000 Yeah, I want to follow up on that in one second.

00:14:25.000 I'm actually really interested in that and the intelligence reports you might be hearing and seeing because I believe firmly that human beings have to fight endlessly for freedom.

00:14:37.000 But if they live under tyranny for too long, they could be hypnotized that freedom doesn't even exist.

00:14:42.000 They have to be introduced to the concept of freedom.

00:14:44.000 And the Chinese Communist Party, the ruling class, they are concerned about the United States.

00:14:50.000 They're concerned about other proxies worldwide.

00:14:53.000 But the thing that worries them the most is the people of China rising up.

00:14:57.000 And that is why the three T's are not allowed to be mentioned in China: Tiananmen Square, Tibet, and Taiwan. 0.92

00:15:03.000 Can't mention it.

00:15:04.000 It could get you in prison forever because all three of those are independent examples of sovereignty, of a pushback against the Chinese Communist Party, of people rising up.

00:15:14.000 So you just mentioned that the people are starting to wake up.

00:15:17.000 Can you build that out more for us?

00:15:18.000 I'd be really interested to hear that.

00:15:21.000 Well, what's happened is, and this is a sort of a long historical process, but in the so-called reform era, which started at the end of 1978, you do have the Chinese people.

00:15:33.000 This is not the Communist Party.

00:15:34.000 This is the Chinese people demanding the right to have their own businesses, their own small plots on farms and all the rest of it.

00:15:43.000 And what that's done is it created a new mentality.

00:15:46.000 Now, Xi Jinping is trying to take away some of this economic latitude and autonomy of people.

00:15:53.000 And this is really the push and the pull between the people and the party.

00:15:57.000 But it wasn't the Communist Party that reformed China. 0.68

00:16:00.000 It was the Chinese people demanding that they have the right to open up a little stall, to sell trinkets, to build knickknacks, to do whatever.

00:16:10.000 And that's what's created this big push for growth.

00:16:15.000 Now, Xi Jinping actually believes in a state-dominated economy, so he's moving back.

00:16:21.000 And one other thing, the Communist Party is insecure.

00:16:25.000 So they've started to put together this social credit system, and they hope to have, by the end of this year, have this system in place nationwide, which means that every Chinese resident gets a social credit score.

00:16:38.000 And that score is constantly updated by observable behaviors.

00:16:42.000 So for instance, if you jaywalk, your score will go down.

00:16:46.000 If you say something nice about Xi Jinping, your score will go up.

00:16:49.000 And those people with low scores, they can't send their kids to school.

00:16:54.000 They cannot buy bus tickets.

00:16:56.000 They can't do anything.

00:16:57.000 As Communist Party officials say, and they use these terms, they say that those who have low scores will not be able to take one step outside their doors.

00:17:08.000 This is backed up by a plan, 626 million surveillance cameras in place by the end of this year.

00:17:14.000 So this is going back.

00:17:16.000 You know, we call China authoritarian.

00:17:18.000 No more.

00:17:19.000 We're going back to totalitarianism in China, and they are well on that way, especially with this social credit system. 0.92

00:17:28.000 I hope our listeners are internalizing this.

00:17:30.000 First of all, the fact our media does not cover this just shows that they're bought and paid for by the CCP.

00:17:35.000 Secondly, the fact that Hollywood has not dramatized this shows that they're bought and paid for by the CCP, because that is an incredible piece of cinema that could be created, right?

00:17:46.000 I mean, you have Netflix series about how America is the worst country ever because of our history, which is nonsense, of course.

00:17:53.000 But could you imagine one piece of cinema where that shows that, no, you're actually living through Black Mirror. 0.71

00:17:57.000 Just go to China, right?

00:18:00.000 And I think that the way we communicate what's happening in the world is actually bought and paid for by the CCP.

00:18:06.000 But we do know the laws of economics.

00:18:08.000 We know the laws of physics and the laws of nature and nature's God are applicable to all human beings. 0.97

00:18:14.000 I don't think this model in China is sustainable. 0.99

00:18:16.000 I don't. 0.66

00:18:17.000 I'm not saying that they can't have a very long rule, but I think eventually you cannot program human beings like automatons and put them into a social credit score.

00:18:28.000 They're definitely betting on something that's never been done before.

00:18:31.000 So are you saying, Gordon, that eventually this is going to come into some form of a collapse or a revolution?

00:18:38.000 Or do you think that because of technology, the CCP will be able to make this happen?

00:18:42.000 Yeah, I agree with you.

00:18:44.000 The system is not sustainable.

00:18:46.000 It won't last forever, as they say.

00:18:48.000 You know, I wrote a book, The Coming Collapse of China, and I said that the system would fail within 10 years.

00:18:53.000 So I'm out of time. 0.70

00:18:54.000 What happened in the interim was that you had the 2008 global downturn, which gave the Communist Party a renewed lease on life.

00:19:02.000 But I was wrong about it.

00:19:03.000 But the point here, and we should go back to Havel, who explained it in one sentence.

00:19:10.000 He said, communism goes against life.

00:19:14.000 And that's the point that you just talked about, that it can't sustain itself indefinitely because people want things and the party stands unalterably opposed to those ambitions and aspirations.

00:19:28.000 So I don't think this system is going to last very long. 0.89

00:19:33.000 I mean, it's had the support, as we've been talking about, of foreign countries.

00:19:37.000 But, you know, with President Trump, he has made it clear that he's adopting policies.

00:19:42.000 You know, people say, oh, America first, whatever.

00:19:45.000 But the point is that these policies are undermining China's economy and its system. 0.83

00:19:52.000 And he's not afraid to call out the Chinese, unlike other people, unlike Hollywood, unlike newspapers, all the rest of it.

00:20:00.000 So I think that we are going to see fundamental changes, largely because the world is following President Trump on this. 0.58

00:20:09.000 And part of it is it's China is pushing so hard that countries have got to come to the realization that it's either them or China.

00:20:19.000 It's not both.

00:20:21.000 And for us, to put that in the context of America, there's going to be one survivor.

00:20:26.000 It's going to be the People's Republic of China or it's going to be the United States of America. 0.87

00:20:31.000 Because of China's ideology, it can't be both.

00:20:34.000 And that means we've got to defend our republic and make sure that it's freedom and democracy that survives, not communism and totalitarianism. 0.57

00:20:42.000 Well, that's why the American left has found an ally in China, because they both hate America and they both hate liberty and freedom. 0.58

00:20:48.000 And the American left, they love the Iranians because they hate America. 0.88

00:20:53.000 They love the Chinese because they hate America.

00:20:56.000 And they're happy to take money, to take all sorts of different, let's just say, benefits from these totalitarians because they are also totalitarians within the American left. 0.97

00:21:07.000 I think that's a very important point that we have our own issue within our country of people that want to destabilize and destroy America.

00:21:15.000 And they have created an alliance with the Chinese Communist Party. 1.00

00:21:18.000 And the CCP, they consider the American left to be useful idiots. 0.99

00:21:24.000 I mean, you think that if the American left got into power, you think the CCP would stop? 1.00

00:21:29.000 I mean, that is beyond foolish, that kind of insurrection or that insurgency. 0.91

00:21:35.000 The CCP would get exactly what they want, and then they would obliterate them as well.

00:21:39.000 And so can you talk about what our listeners can actually do to help stop the rise of China? 0.93

00:21:44.000 I talk about moral purchasing, stop buying things that are made in China, demand at your lawmakers that we put on sanctions with China. 0.98

00:21:53.000 The way I look at it is we have basically cut off all trade with Iran, and we have heavy sanctions with Russia. 0.94

00:21:58.000 Why would we not have sanctions on China after what they've done with the virus, the deindustrialization, South China Sea, Confucius Institutes, TikTok, digital surveillance, 1 million Muslims in concentration camps? 0.87

00:22:09.000 I could go on. 0.97

00:22:10.000 I think that they've done incredible damage. 0.99

00:22:13.000 And in the last year, I go to say China's done far more damage to the world and to America than Iran has. 0.99

00:22:19.000 And I'm not diminishing the threat of Iran. 0.97

00:22:22.000 I just think China's a far bigger adversary. 0.84

00:22:24.000 What can we do and what can we call our lawmakers to do? 1.00

00:22:28.000 I think we need to cut trade with China. 0.98

00:22:31.000 We need to prohibit investment.

00:22:33.000 We need to stop all of these technical cooperations, cooperation agreement. 0.55

00:22:37.000 And it should be the policy of the United States to end the rule of the Communist Party. 0.75

00:22:42.000 We can get along with China, but we can't get along with the Communist Party of China. 0.58

00:22:48.000 And Charlie, just to put this into context, today we're speaking, there are 136,000 Americans that have died from the coronavirus.

00:22:57.000 We got to remember that Xi Jinping took steps that inevitably led to the spread of this disease beyond China's borders.

00:23:06.000 China admitted, and let me go into this just for a second, because I think it puts everything into perspective.

00:23:14.000 China admitted that the coronavirus was human-to-human transmissible only on January 20.

00:23:20.000 But doctors in Wuhan, the epicenter, knew about this no later than the second week of December.

00:23:25.000 And if Chinese leaders had said nothing in that five weeks, that would have been grossly irresponsible.

00:23:30.000 But what they tried to do was to convince the world that it was not human-to-human transmissible.

00:23:36.000 And at the same time, Chinese leaders pressured other countries, including the United States, not to impose travel restrictions and quarantines.

00:23:44.000 You put those two things together.

00:23:46.000 That meant a disease which was going to be just located only in the center part of China became a global pandemic affecting nearly every country in the world.

00:23:56.000 And, you know, we look at this and we've got to say, I don't know what was in Xi Jinping's mind, but if he wanted to level the playing field after seeing what the coronavirus did to his own country, if he wanted to spread it beyond his borders, he would have done exactly what he did.

00:24:12.000 And that should put into perspective for Americans what's at stake here.

00:24:16.000 Today we talk, 136,000 Americans have died.

00:24:24.000 And that is almost 50 times that of 9-11.

00:24:29.000 Probably, that's about right, 45 times that of 9-11. 0.95

00:24:32.000 And the death toll is going up, not to mention the economic damage, the displacement, all because the Chinese Communist Party did what they do best, which is lie. 0.94

00:24:43.000 They are deceitful by nature. 0.95

00:24:45.000 They have no moral compass at all whatsoever.

00:24:48.000 And they're also the most hostile to Christianity of any country, probably besides North Korea in Asia.

00:24:55.000 And so can you game this out for us?

00:24:58.000 Do you see America getting honest and tough with the Chinese Communist Party, or do you anticipate more appeasement? 0.89

00:25:05.000 And to kind of close it out, can you just give us what the consequences are if we don't get tough? 0.80

00:25:12.000 Well, if we don't change our views of what's going on with China, if we don't defend our society, we're not going to have a society because China will continue its malicious attacks on us. 0.68

00:25:24.000 And that means, you know, as we go into this election season, we need to be very, very get clear views from both candidates about what they intend to do about China. 0.93

00:25:37.000 Because that, to me, is the central issue in the campaign.

00:25:41.000 Yes, we've got things we've got to do in our own country, but we're Americans.

00:25:45.000 We can deal with that.

00:25:46.000 But we've got to remember that every single day our country comes under attack by a militant regime that means us harm.

00:25:54.000 So for us, that should be the central question of this election.

00:25:59.000 Well, I agree.

00:26:00.000 And I also think that any individual that supports an organization that's in bed with the CCP, you are then complicit with the CCP.

00:26:08.000 And we know from how we treated the Soviet Union back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s that a posture and a policy of icing them out, of being strong and tough, sanctions do work, and just limitlessly deindustrializing our country and sending hundreds of billions of dollars of capital flow to the enemy that killed indirectly 136,000 Americans with 10 million jobs that have been lost just from manufacturing, 20 million from the Chinese coronavirus,

00:26:38.000 not to mention the infiltration in our country. 0.92

00:26:40.000 At what point are we going to get wise to their infiltration in American society?

00:26:45.000 And so I'm right there with you.

00:26:47.000 It is America's greatest enemy for someone who's 26 years old.

00:26:50.000 I know very clearly, I see where this is headed. 0.97

00:26:53.000 If we do not get decisive and not just tough, but we have to get aggressive with China, 15 years from now, America will be the backseat driver on the world stage. 0.96

00:27:03.000 China will be the main cultural, just let's say, conductor of what's happening. 0.96

00:27:10.000 And we'll no longer have a republic that we enjoy because the Chinese Communist Party, as you say, they think that they can control everything under the sun. 0.81

00:27:17.000 Any final thoughts, Gordon? 0.97

00:27:20.000 Charlie, that's really important.

00:27:22.000 You know, we go back to the middle of the Cold War, and we had a series of presidents, both parties, who talked about détente, talked about accommodation with the Soviet Union.

00:27:35.000 That didn't work.

00:27:36.000 It is only until Ronald Reagan became president.

00:27:39.000 He said, we win, they lose.

00:27:42.000 He stood for freedom and democracy, and we know what happened.

00:27:46.000 This is absolutely critical for us Americans to go back.

00:27:50.000 to understand what happened and why we have our freedoms today, because it was somebody named Ronald Reagan who did not accept the Soviet Union, who didn't see it as legitimate, who decided he would defend our republic.

00:28:05.000 And the harder, the harsher we get on China, the more we're going to realize there are incredible allies in Asia that are waiting for us to do this.

00:28:12.000 Japan, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, India, they will come and they will thank us tremendously.

00:28:19.000 And any sort of benefit we get from China, whether it be if you absolutely need to manufacture something in Asia, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam have incredible capacity to do what China does probably even, you know, I would say even more cost-efficiently than China.

00:28:34.000 I don't think there's any economic benefit anymore dealing with China.

00:28:37.000 That's my own opinion.

00:28:38.000 And I think that if you actually want the United States of America to continue, you have to stop all trade instantaneously with China. 0.91

00:28:45.000 They cannot survive without U.S. dollars flowing into their system. 0.94

00:28:48.000 They can't.

00:28:50.000 Absolutely.

00:28:51.000 The leverage in their banking system, the debasing of their currency, they will collapse.

00:28:56.000 And you actually might see China break into a couple different countries, or you might see China actually have some form of a fair and free election or leader.

00:29:06.000 But you made a great point earlier, and I know we're low on time, which is they're insecure.

00:29:10.000 And that's a very important point because Stalin and Lenin and Mao, all of these individuals that wanted to create themselves as gods, if you really study the people that did biographies on them, they died as insecure individuals.

00:29:24.000 They never were able to have total and complete peace about their authoritarianism.

00:29:29.000 We have to play into that.

00:29:30.000 And by the way, the CCP probably is going to watch this interview.

00:29:33.000 I hope they do, because I hope that they realize they're going to lose, and we are going to win, because we have truth and light and liberty on our side, and they have darkness and authoritarianism.

00:29:44.000 And that's not sustainable.

00:29:47.000 Yes.

00:29:48.000 As Havel said, communism goes against life.

00:29:51.000 I love it.

00:29:52.000 Well, again, so say as the Twitter handle one more time so I don't butcher it.

00:29:57.000 It's Gordon G. Chang.

00:30:00.000 There we go.

00:30:00.000 Gordon G. Chang, check it out.

00:30:01.000 And the book is The Coming Collapse of China.

00:30:04.000 Thank you so much, Gordon.

00:30:05.000 We'll have you back on the show soon.

00:30:07.000 Appreciate it.

00:30:07.000 Oh, well, thank you so much, Charlie.

00:30:09.000 And stay safe.

00:30:10.000 Thank you.

00:30:13.000 What a great conversation that was with Gordon Chang.

00:30:16.000 If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com.

00:30:19.000 That is tpusa.com, the nation's largest conservative student organization fighting on over 2,000 high school and college campuses across the country.

00:30:29.000 Email me your questions directly, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:30:35.000 I want to thank those of you that are supporting our program by going to charliekirk.com slash support.

00:30:41.000 That is charliekirk.com slash support.

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00:30:55.000 Thank you guys so much.

00:30:56.000 Thanks for listening.

00:30:57.000 God bless you.

00:31:02.000 Coffee

The Charlie Kirk Show - July 18, 2020

Gordon G. Chang | How We Can Stop China

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