← American Thought Leaders
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For 30 years, the Chinese regime has been trying to destroy America from the inside using a little known strategy, the
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Wang Huning's philosophy, America against America. So they use American media, they use the freedom of speech. Here they use the justice system.
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Today I sit down with author, historian and popular China affairs commentator Tian Liang Zhang.
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If there is a war between China and the United States, we need to buy our weapons from our enemy. So I mean this is really, really scary to just to think about it.
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His new film China's Stealth Invasion reveals how the Chinese Communist Party exploits democratic values and institutions against American interests.
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They talk about free market because that's the value you treasure, that's the value you feel like is not disputable and you have to follow the rule. But actually they are not following the rules. So they are using your rules to take advantage of you.
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One useful case study of this strategy in Action is the CCP's transnational campaign against the Falun Gong community in America. This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Jania Kellick. Professor Chanliang Zhang. Such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
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Thanks for having me.
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Recently, President Trump gave a speech about the 2020 election about interference, published a series of documents that have been declassified and others. One of those packages focuses specifically on the Chinese Communist Party's efforts. What do we know about how the Chinese Communist Party was involved in all this?
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I think it's not surprising at all. I guess back to 1998. So we have already known that Chinese military or spending money tried to influence or to support a specific candidate. And I guess that pattern just continued all the way up to here, up to now. The most surprising thing to me is that they have already stolen 220 million voters information from us. So I think this is a very, very serious national security issue. I remember that, you know, the federal government wants to collect all the voter information from different states and, and decided we won't give you because we don't want it to be concentrated into one place and then it will be breached and somebody will steal that. But actually it happened, you know, actually China has already had that. And also I read some news, probably unverified, they said that Chinese, you know, people, they have manufactured a lot of driver's license, fake driver's license and then ship it to America and then register them as voters. So I think this is very, very alarming.
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The bottom line, when you look through these documents around the Chinese Communist Party's role, what facts come out? Like what? Because there's A lot of discussion about this, it's kind of a mess. You know, even around this issue of the 220 million voter records, you hear there's some media that are saying, oh, that's just not a big deal. Like those are available. Right. So what is it that these documents showed?
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I think we can see clear intention that CCP wants to understand the voters, their partisan choice. And also I think they are trying to look into their data and then see how they can manipulate their idea. I think nowadays with all this information on these social media platforms, it's very easy to target a specific person and you know, tailor the information that he can see and so that his opinion can be swayed. I think like I have seen some kind of experiment, they tried to manipulate about voters opinion in the election in India. They did find it's very, very effective. So and then people's people were manipulated without knowing. And I think with all the data and also with the platform, the CCP controls like the TikTok and also I believe they also heavily infiltrate into other social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and they can change people's mind to vote the candidates that CCP favor.
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Well, one of the things that I did notice was that there were a number of documents saying that the Chinese Communist Party really didn't want President Trump reelected.
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Yeah, that's obvious. So probably CCP believe in that Biden is probably more easily manipulated and probably in their pocket. They know that President Trump is very, very tough on ccp. Especially he started this tariff war or like the trade war with China that never happened before Trump era. So I think CCP was kind of scared. And also the Secretary Pompeo was also very, very tough to ccp. So I guess CCP was afraid that if Trump has the second term and with Mike Pompeo, CCP will be in a very, very hard position.
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Well, the new Secretary of State is also actually sanctioned. Technically this is actually there's kind of this interesting change in the lang. You can remind us actually, because the exact nature of this. But for Secretary Rubio to go to China, they actually altered the characters in his name. Can you explain that?
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Yeah, that's very interesting because Marco Rubio, I guess CCP didn't really imagine that the second term of the Trump administration they have an even tougher State Secretary, Marco Rubio. Actually he was sanctioned twice. The first time was on the Hong Kong issue and then the second time was on the Xinjiang issue. He was sanctioned twice and he was not supposed to go to China and not allowed. And then because he is now the State Secretary and they have to allow him in and then they change his translation of his name, you know, same pronunciation, but a change of the Chinese character. So this is a very subtle change. People really laugh about that.
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So this is a bit into your expertise. They laugh about it but like it just seems like it's not needed. Right. Like they're letting him in, like why would they do this? Explain to us the mentality here.
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Just to save their face, you know, so they feel like they have to allow him in, but like what will you do? So you want to repeal the sanction or like you want to maintain there? Because if you repeal the sanction it means like you were wrong, you are surrendering and they don't want to give people such impression. So they just change his translation, his name, you know, translation subtly.
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It's just, it's so, so it's like basically you're saying it's the most neutral way, it's the most face saving thing they could do or something. Yeah,
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it's very awkward. So I have to say. And people can see that, but like they still do that, you know, sometimes the CCP will do something that looks very, very stupid, but they do it nonetheless. So you can see like Xi Jinping, a lot of people mocked him, you know, as like, because his actual diploma is like just a graduate from an elementary school, but meanwhile he's holding a PhD degree from Tsinghua University. But from what he said, you know, in public speech, he for many, many times he read the Chinese characters with the wrong pronunciation. And it seems like he was not very well educated. But on the other hand, you can see he published tens, maybe dozens of books of his thoughts. And he can get his PhD when he was working, very, very busy position, but he can still get his PhD. So you can see that this is an obvious academic corruption, but he still do that. I remember that he went to Russia, he went to France and some other countries and he gave a speech by just reading a list of books he has ever read. This is a long, long list.
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So people just mocked him, but he did it nonetheless. Yeah, and so because why I think
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he did it just because his secretary gave the list, gave the speech to him. I don't think he even read it before the speech, he just read it. So sometimes when you see his speech, and probably it's also AI made, but they just mark some difficult Chinese characters with a different Chinese character but with the same pronunciation. And then when he read it, they make sure that he doesn't read it wrong.
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Fascinating. You introduced me to the book America Against America and of course this is featured in your new film. But tell me, what is America Against America? What is it, when did it come out? And how does it relate to this election interference you've been discussing?
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Okay, so this book was authored by Wang Huning, who is the mastermind behind three generations of CCP leaders from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and to Wang Huning. He basically came up with three step strategy. The first step was during the Jiang Zemin area era. At that time, it was right after all those Tiananmen massacre and also all those sanctions. So CCP was very weak and then has a very negative view all over the world at that time. So the basic idea is to hide your strength and buy your time.
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So Deng Xiaoping's kind of maxim, Right?
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Right, yeah. You know, after the Tiananmen massacre, so we see like the Cold War finished boiling war was torn down and also Soviet Union was dissolved. And CCP's idea, because at that time they were both very weak militarily and economically and they want to make friends. So when you see like whenever CCP is very weak, they're trying to make friends. I remember in 1939, CCP published a book called A Communist. And the opening remark was given by Mao Zedong, by Mao. And Mao said, we had three magical weapons. The first one is the party building, so basically to build solidarity. And then the second one was armed struggle means like we will never give up violence. And the third one is called the United Front work. So because CCP was very weak at that time. And they always say, like, America is our best friend and we admire what American Americans have achieved and we really like their system, we really like democracy. And they published a lot of articles at that time promoting democracy, you know, praising America. So they did it for like 10 years, from 1939 to 1949 in their official, like the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. And Interestingly like in 1999, 50 years after CCP became the ruling party of the country and the people found, dig out all those articles and republish that and. And they called it like the pioneer voice or the pilot voice of the history. So basically they republished what CCP published 50 years ago, but then that book was immediately banned. So from that story you can tell whatever CCP said, it doesn't count. So even they signed the joint statement with UK about Hong Kong's status. They talk about one country, two system. But like in 2020 and they passed the so called National Security Law. And then they said, okay, so the statement we signed with UK now is a document in the history. So basically it doesn't count. So basically when CCP is very, very weak and they try to make itself look good in other people's eyes and they try to make friends and they try to capture some elites to support them. So this is called the united front work. And this is also exactly the strategy Wang Huning invented for Jiang Zemin. They call the three represents, I don't know whether you heard of that. It means you're trying to making friends with everybody. Like a capitalist with foreign governments. You try to make friends with everyone. And then when Hu Jintao became the leader of CCP, that was in 2002, a very very important thing happened the year before that was 2001 and China joined the WTO and suddenly all the tariff barrier was removed. And then CCP became the powerhouse, became the powerhouse of the manufacturers. So basically they can produce all those very cheap stuff and then flood into other country and then basically destroy other countries factories and also jobs. So this is the second phase. And Wang Hunting called it called a scientific development. It means like we are developing our country in a scientific way. And then after 10 years it came to 2012 and then Xi Jinping became the leader of the CCP. And at that time Xi Jinping felt like we are strong enough so we don't need to hide our strengths. And now we can openly tell the world that we will be the dominant force of the world. So basically he talk about the community of shared future of humanities. So he means like we need to change the international or like the world order which was established by the United States after World War II. And now since we want to be at least the peer force, like peer power of America by achieving this. You can see Wang Huning has been using the idea like America against America. Because during the first phase and we are using the so called the free market and we use the diplomacy to buy the time. But basically when you talk about the free market it seems like nobody here will be against that. But then they are actually not free market because the CCP was stealing intellectual properties and CCP was polluting the environment. And so they used kind of the national allowance to give it to all those factories, all those research centers to develop their own product and, and then dump it into other countries. When you look at a very specific example is like Huawei, you know, so Huawei used to be very, very weak. But then we say oh we have a such large country, we have such a large population. So Nortel, if you want to enter China, and then you have to give us your technology, and then Nortel was
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a Canadian company, famously that, yeah, decide it's like AT&T.
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So, and then they enter China and Huawei reverse engineered their technology and then they start to build their routers and switches and with the allowance from the government, and then they can sell it
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very, very cheap subsidy. Like by allowance you mean subsidy from the government, right?
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Yeah, yeah, kind of subsidy. Yes, it's the subsidy of the government. And then they can sell it at a very, very cheap price. Nobody can compete with them. Like it's a half price, it's a third price, and they can even give you for free for a few years, and then you can pay me. So basically they finance the product for you, and then nobody can compete. And then Nortel just died. It disappeared. I guess this is just an example. So this pattern is repeated all over the place. So by doing this, when you talk superficially, it looks like a free market, but actually it's not. But they talk about the free market because that's the value. You. That's the value. You feel like it's not disputable and you have to follow the rule, but actually they are not following the rules. So that's the problem. So they are using your rules to take advantage of you.
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And so how does so explain to me how America Against America fits into what President Trump recently talked about, for example, the election.
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So Trump talk about the election. I guess this is a very, very hot topic and even probably controversial. But I want to bring up a story. There was a very famous Chinese scholar called Jin Canrong. From time to time, he entered Zhongnanhai to give lecture to those top leaders of CCP. And then he openly said that there are 435 congressional districts, and if we can have our manufacturers enterprises in every district, and if we are large enough, then we have enough money to support a certain candidate. And then if we have Chinese community large enough, then we can sway probably thousands of votes. And usually in our election, the number of votes are very, very close. So 1,000, 2,000 votes can make a great difference. And he said in that way, nobody will dare to stand against us or to stand against the ccp. And then he said we can turn the US Congress into China's National People's Congress. So it means like every congressman, every Senate is working for ccp. So this is really, really scary. So when Jin Canrong said that Openly he said we. So we don't know he means like we as China scholars or we as CCP this. But like what he said is really, really alarming I guess because they're using our, they're abusing our election systems to put their like figurehead or somebody they can control in the place.
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Well, maybe just to get you to comment on this briefly, there's been all sorts of examples of the Chinese Communist Party capturing politicians or getting people work on their behalf in different ways. And this happens actually not just at the federal level, but at the state level and the municipal level.
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Right. It's a long term plan. So you can see that. Take the Congressman Swalwell as an example. So when he was very, very young, when he was like an entry level politician and then Chinese government has already identified him and then someone approached him and provided him with like kind of honey pot, you know. So I guess this is really, really common because like in our society usually an official is elected and then he takes the office and stay there for eight years and then he's finished and he's moving on to something else. But like for Chinese government they can plan for like 40 years and they can carry it out step by step. So as I said, like Wang Huning, he came here in 1989 or 1988 as like a J1 like exchange scholar. And he stayed here for about half a year and he observed this society. He found like there's something he can make use of, like so called free market democracy, freedom of speech, the independence of like justice system. They feel there are a lot of things that they can make use of. For example, in 2022, Xi Jinping held a meeting, a very high level meeting with Public Security Ministry and also some other intelligence people. And he said our war against Falun Gong outside is like a total failure in the past. So we have to have something new. And then they decide decided to launch war against Falun Gong in two fronts. One friend is the legal friend and the other one is the media front. So basically in this case they are using the freedom of speech, so called freedom of speech to demonize Falun Gong by using American media. And also because in America everybody can sue everybody. So they can sue you and. And then probably they know they will lose. But then they really burden you with like a very high attorney cost. For example, you know, the headquarter of Shen Yin Performing Arts is called the Dragon Springs. And there was a guy who lived in Tianjin for 15 years and then he came back. He's a White guy. He stayed in China for 15 years and then he came back to America and then he opened up a nonprofit organization near where the Dragon Springs is. Then the only thing he did or his nonprofit organization is to sue Dragon Springs in the name of violation of environmental preservation law, whatever. So he sued four times. And every time the Dragon Springs has to respond. And then they had to hire an attorney. So like with all these lawsuits, then they can easily spend a million dollar. And every time he failed. But then he brought up the same lawsuit again. So you can see that this is the pattern. They don't have to win, but they harass you and they kind of like
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wear you down financially. There's also reputational damage, right?
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Yes. So that's exactly what happened on Shane Performing Arts. So they sue you and then they publish on the media saying, like, they are being sued, they are being investigated, but actually they just not only doing that, they spread all this information to all those theaters, all those venues, all those presenters and try to scare them so that, you know, to make it hard for you to sell tickets.
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So we've covered Shen Yun and these various hit pieces against Shen Yun, some lawsuits and so forth on this show before. But very briefly, for those that might not be familiar, you know Falun Gong's ancient Chinese spiritual discipline. Why is the Chinese Communist Party. Give me kind of a deeper picture. Why is the Chinese Communist Party so particularly obsessed with. With this group?
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I think one of the reasons, or the most important reason I believe that CCP persecuted Falun Gong was because the teaching of Falun Gong is truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. These three values are directly opposite of CCP ideology. So for example, the number two guy who is actually the assistant of Mao, he said, if you don't lie, you cannot achieve anything. So basically, that's like what CCP believe. So you can see, like in CCP propaganda is full of lies. Like they openly claim, like they didn't kill anybody during the Tiananmen massacre. Nobody died in Tiananmen area. That kind of thing is open lies. And then they have already done so many things, so bad things in the history, and they want to cover it up. For example, the Great Famine. Like the Great Leap Forward. Yeah, the Great Leap Forward and the famine that ensued. So like 30 to 40 million people just died of starvation. So if people just to tell the truth. And CCP is finished. So that's why, you know, the first principle of Falun Gong, Truthfulness. This is what CCP is afraid of most. And the second principle of Falun Gong is compassion. But CCP talk about class struggle. They promote hatred. I remember that the very famous philosopher Russell, he talked about Karl Marx, he said Marxism is quite evil because if you want to make people happy, and then your principle or your philosophy should be based on kindness and love so that you can make people happy. But the foundation of Marxism is hatred. So basically they hate successful people, they hate people who are wealthy, and they hate people with a good reputation, and they just want to destroy them. So that is directly against the compassion. The second principle of Falun Gong and the third principle, principle Falun Gong promoted is called tolerance. And you know, again, CCP talk about violence. You know, they always trying to use violence to achieve their goals. They will arrest all the dissidents. You know, they will gun down all those students in Tiananmen Square. So they always use violence. So that's directly against the tolerance. So I think like CCP found that if everybody in China believe in Falun Gong and then their teaching, their philosophy will be just abandoned. They will be deserted by the people. But you need to understand that the CCP is a party built on an ideology. So if the ideology foundation is gone, and then the party will collapse. So that was Jiang Zemin, I think in 1999, he wrote a letter to the Politburo. He gave two reasons why he cried on Falun Gong. This was published in 2006 in China. He gave two reasons why he persecuted Falun Gong. The first one is the number of followers of Falun Gong are too many. And the second reason was they believe in something other than communism. So that's the real reason. And after the persecution started and Falun Gong group resisted it peacefully, I guess this is also what CCP was very afraid of. Because in history they can crack down anybody, any group, including the president of China, Liu Shaoqi. He was persecuted to death. And even there are million people went to Tiananmen Square to protest after they used the machine gun to dispel people. And then you don't see any mass gathering again, you don't see any.
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They sent the message, yeah, you don't
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see any resistance like in large group. But Falun Gong is very, very different. Because Falun Gong is like a more or less kind of spiritual practice of each individual. So you cannot take it out of people's heart. And then this is the first time in CCP history and they saw this kind of resistance from grassroots in large scale. And with this perseverance, even when they face tortures, killing. You wrote the book Kill to order even when their organs were harvested. But people still were very, very adamant. People still follow this teaching. So that was CCP was very afraid of. Another thing is like you saw a lot of democratic leaders during the Tiananmen movement before the Tiananmen massacre. And then the CCP strategy is just to exile them, put them in other countries. When they are in other countries and they lose the connection with the Chinese people, their voice is not heard. So all these leaders of the movements are no longer a threat. But Falun Gong is different. I think the first day when Falun Gong was persecuted, the Falun Gong practitioners established the weapons websites and start to use emails in chat room people start to tell people what was going on. All these overseas Falun Gong practitioners, they were doing this we called clarifying the truth. And then, okay, so then CCP see not only the resistance from China inside China, but also outside China. And they are bound together so very tightly. So I guess CCP sees it as really as number one threat in its history. And therefore they need to have something new, really like a new strategy to deal with this. And this is the transnational, we call this transnational repression. And the problem is I mentioned this because the way they use is really the Wang Huning's philosophy, America against America. So they use American media, they use the freedom of speech here, they use justice system here to persecute Falun Gong. I think there's a very well known case, a guy called Zhang Chen, he tried to bribe IRS agent just to repeal Shen Yun performing Arts nonprofit organization status. And then actually the FBI found this scheme. And then FBI agent impersonated the IRS agent and answered his call. And then this Zhang Chen was caught and he was convicted. So you can see that they are using irs, they are using DOJ and they are using the media. Actually they are using the Department of Labor in New York State and open an investigation on Shen Yun, the Department of labor, the FBI. So you can see they use all these United States institutions as their tool to investigate a U.S. individual U.S. enterprise. So this is I think a very like a typical case of America against America, how it is implemented here on the soil of the United States.
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A
Tell me a little bit about your background. Because you, you know, there's, you know, we, we even have a staff member here. Actually one of the interns here was telling me that he watches your show regularly, right? On YouTube. Very popular in Chinese. Of course I'll tell everyone, but tell me a little bit about your background. Of course, you're a professor at Hutian College.
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B
But yeah, I want to say that I was born in China, so I grew up in northeastern China. My father was a graduate from a College in 1963. But because his father, my grandpa, was kind of in CCP's class, struggle theory is their enemy. And then my father, after graduation, he went to a small city in northeast China. And then my mother, her father was an enterprise and they were very wealthy. And then when CCP came and they found out that they had a lot of money, and then they started to pressure their accountant and then to convict my grandpa, saying, like, they didn't pay tax and then just confiscate their all the belongings. And then my grandpa was very angry, and then he went to the government to argue. And then he was put in labor camp for three years. And he was also put in labor camp in northeast China. That's where my father and my mother met. They married there in 1970, and I was born in 1973. Because at that time, China was still not open. And we can only receive information from the government, from the textbook. Actually, I believe that CCP is a great party and they are working hard for the benefit of the people. And then in 1989, when I was 16 years old, the Tiananmen massacre happened, right? It happened in Beijing. At that time, I was like the 12th grader. I was kind of upset by the government. And in that year I went to Beijing. I became a freshman. For the first two weeks, there's no academic courses. The first two weeks is for brainwashing. So basically, for two weeks, CCP gave you all those videos or their version of narrative and tried to tell us that those are rioters. They are disturbing the social order. They're creating troubles for people. And then that's why it is justified for the government to use force to crack it down. So after two weeks of brainwashing, I was totally convinced. I had to say that I think their propaganda is very, very powerful. If you only receive their information, you're very easily convinced. And then I think I start to believe Deng Xiaoping's theory. Deng Xiaoping said, this is the kind of cost we have to pay for the sake of the country's development, for the benefit of everybody. So we have to maintain stability. Then in 1995, my mother started practicing Falun Gong and her illness was cured. And my father followed. And then my father introduced it to me. At that time, I was working in a joint venture company. It's between actually a company established for military purpose with Siemens. So we producing telephone switch called EWSD. It's kind of like 5ess here in America. And then because at that time, CCP doesn't say anything negative on Falun Gong. So it seems like he just leave you alone. Fast forward. In 1999, the persecution started. Actually, there was like an event before the persecution started. That was April 1999. Some of the people went to magazine publisher because the magazine published something untrue about Falun Gong. And they tried to ask the publisher to take it down to retract it.
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Yeah.
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And then suddenly some police came and then arrested about 45 practitioners in Tianjin. That was April 23, 1999. And then two days later, we had a gathering outside Zhongnanhai. We want to appeal to the central government to release these people and also to give us the freedom of belief. I was there in 1999. On April 25, 1999, I was standing very close to the entry of Zhongnanhai. So at about 10am, I personally saw Zhu Rongji. You know, the then premier came out to talk to us. After that, there were like various rumors about like CCP was about to crack down Falun Gong. I remember on June 14, I was on the business trip to a different city. And then I saw a piece of newspaper. And the headline of the newspaper is saying that the government has no plan to crack down Falun Gong. Everybody has the freedom of practice. That was June 14, 1999. But actually four days before that, on June 10, 1999, Jiang Zemin has already established an office dedicated to the persecution of Falun Gong. But four days later, they tell the whole world that they had no plan. The reason was that they tried to tell you that you know, it's safe, you come out, you can practice, and they can identify who is the leader and who is active. And then they can arrest them. And then on July 20, 1999, this persecution started. You know, all those we call coordinators were arrested.
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People that were running the practice sites
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and so forth as volunteers. They were not paid. They just took their video. They just took their tape recorder to play the music. And people can practice. And all those people were arrested. So. And then at that time, actually I was not very active because I feel spiritual practice is very personal. So I meditate at my home every day. I read Falun Gong teachings every day. But I don't mingle with people. But then after I saw this news from Ming Hui's website that was established in June 1999. So I followed some news there and I saw this Then I felt like, okay, so something was wrong, so we need to do something. So then I, together with my wife, went to appeal to the central government, to the Zhongnanhai again. At that time, nobody can enter. So all the police surrounded the Zhongnan High. And anybody they suspect you are Falung practitioners, they will take you away. So we failed to appeal for the first day. And the second day, on July 22nd, we went there again. And then we were standing in baking sunlight. At that time, it's like probably 104, 105 degree Fahrenheit, it's baking. And then the government called a few buses to come and bus to a kind of local government. And we were put there. And the door was closed and locked. And we had to stay there. And we tried to tell the government officials, the staff there, about the truth of Falun Gong. There's misunderstanding. We hope that you can convey the message. But they just told us, you wait until 3pm and we were not allowed to leave. So we were sitting in the auditorium and at 3pm and suddenly all the TV signal kind of cut in. Suddenly it was in the middle of something, but it was suddenly cut. And they start to broadcast the decision of Jiang Zemin that the persecution started. And they demonized Falun Gong with all these so called documentaries. As I said before that moment, I believed in the government. So I believe in the government is doing everything for the people. But when I watched the video, they made the documentary. They made one thing that struck me, because one reason they said in the video why they persecuted Falun Gong was saying that Falun Gong was talking about the end of the world, like the doomsday. And then they played a video clip of the Master, the founder of Falun Gong. And I have watched the original version, the original version saying like the end of the world or the doom state does not exist. But they cut the word does not exist. And then I suddenly felt like I was cheated for so many years. If they can cut just like a few frames out of the context, they know everything, but they choose these two, a few frames to cut to make it the meaning just the opposite. So I was so disappointed. And then I felt that I was cheated for 20 some years by the government. And then I said to my wife, I said, probably this is not somewhere we should stay, so let's go to other places to pursue our freedom of belief. And I came here as a graduate student. My major was in electrical engineering.
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So how did you get out?
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I took TOEFL test the GRE test and applied for admission in.
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They didn't know you were a Falun Gong practitioner yet?
- [42:16]
B
I think the government know and does not know. The reason is that I didn't go to Tiananmen, you know, to openly challenge the government. But on the other hand, I tried to tell everybody around me, like my co workers, my family, my relatives, my classmates, my friends, even my customers. I tell everybody I meet about what CCP was trying to framing up to demonize Falun Gong. So at that time, I think I told hundreds of people, actually I sent a mass email to hundreds of people in our own company because the company is a joint inventure company. And then the general manager was a German guy and he was very sympathetic and he said he read the basically a very influential newspaper in Germany. And he said he knew the truth. And he said, are you in danger? I said probably yes. And he said, if you are in danger, we can send you to Germany.
- [43:28]
A
I see. So that's.
- [43:29]
B
Yeah, he was, yeah, he was very sympathetic. And because my colleagues around me, they know me well and they know that I was a hard working, very friendly co worker. So we had a very good relationship. So even I sent this email to hundreds of people, but they didn't turn me in. And then the problem is at that time, you know, because a lot of practitioners went to Tiananmen Square to appeal to protest. And my father, my sister, my mother, all of them were jailed and my mother was put in labor camp for a year. And then I think the CCP was focusing on the Tiananmen Square instead of my grassroots working. And then I think in August 1999, Jiang Zemin just basically escalated everything escalated everything. Right before that I came to the United States. So if I stay in China, I will be jailed for sure. And then after I came here, because my major was electrical engineering is kind of not on humanity, not on history, but I really wanted to figure out why CCP persecuted Falun Gong. I mean, all the reasons, all the explanations that was explained or published on media on those interviews didn't convince me totally. I feel like there must be a deeper reason. And then I did a lot of research on Chinese culture and on CCP and then suddenly realized this is an ideological war. So this is not nothing about the politics, this is just ideological war. Or you can call it a spiritual war because Falun Gong holds an ideology or a principle that's directly against ccp. They are teaching their philosophy. So that's why there is no middle ground, There is no compromise. So only One will win eventually. So there's no compromise.
- [45:42]
A
That's interesting because, you know, I never imagined like, would Falun Gong practitioners think of it that way, like there's no compromise. I mean, it functioned. Falun Gong functioned very well in communist China for quite a number of years, right? Just growing sort of organically compromise here.
- [46:01]
B
I mean, ideologically, because, you know, Falun Gong people cannot adopt the CCP's like this kind of hatred, killing, violence, lies anymore. Because, you know, this is the righteous principles. And the CCP will not adopt Falun Gong ideology either. I remember that in the book 1984, he said there are two purpose of the party. The first one is to conquer the surface of the earth. And the second one is to eliminate all the independent thoughts. That's the two purpose of the party in 1980, in the book 1984. So I think the CCP really want to conquer the surface of the earth. They are competing with America. And the second one is they really want to eliminate all the independent thoughts. And Falun Gong is apparently independent thoughts they need to eliminate. This is also explained why they need to crack down the Tibetan Buddhist monks and also dissidents because they have independent thoughts. They have to be cracked down. And on the other hand, they said they want to conquer the surface of the earth. But I think CCP understands that it's not possible to do it militarily. You can see the purge that Xi Jinping has already purged a lot of generals around him. Like all the top generals were purged because Xi Jinping doesn't trust people. They feel like all these people were plotting against him. He's really obsessed with his power and he doesn't want anyone to challenge him. So the problem is a lot of people talk about the armed invasion of Taiwan. The CCP will invade Taiwan in 2027, which means next year, 2030. But actually, I don't believe Xi Jinping would do that ever. Because Xi Jinping doesn't trust his general. If he gave them the authority to control the military, to command the military, if they gave them the guns, he never. I mean, he cannot imagine what they will do with those power and guns. What if they turn against himself? So I think if Xi Jinping wants to control a place, his strategy, no matter it's Taiwan or South Korea or like United States or Australia, what he will do is exactly what he does here. That's infiltration and subversion from within. That is America against America. For example, in Taiwan, I'm sure Xi Jinping's strategy is Basically to control one party, name it KMT or any other party, and then probably control their congress and then they do something and then they try to control the media of Taiwan in Taiwan, try to brainwash people, try to glorify CCP and to make Taiwan people feel like, okay, it's nothing wrong to get united with ccp. I think they are used the same strategy in Taiwan. They're using Taiwan against Taiwan, they're using South Korea against South Korea, they're using America against America. But then the problem is we see the consequence. It's very, very scary. And now I guess remember that I think Trump talk about made in China 2025 and he said like China became like the powerhouse of all those manufacturing and then America supply chain, our factories were destroyed and he wants to use tariff to protect America. But it's kind of late and Xi Jinping didn't mention made in China 2025 again. But actually they have already achieved the goal. And now it's like a 40 to 50% of the manufacturing of the whole world is now done in China. So they have created this supply chain dependence. You see, like Trump has this tariff war last year where immediately he backed down because our rare earth is dependent on China. 90%.
- [50:07]
A
He played his card and the CCP played its card.
- [50:11]
B
Yeah. And 90% of antibiotics is from China.
- [50:15]
A
But do you think. So I want to ask you this since I have you here, but I felt like that when they did play the magnets card. Right, The Aerith magnets card. That's something everybody needs in substantial quantity. Pardon me. I almost felt that was like an escalation really, because they've been using all sorts of leverage. But this was a kind of leverage, which kind of very revealing kind of leverage. Right. Like we're going to do this if you decide not to play along with what we want.
- [50:48]
B
Exactly. And also we see that the chips in our weapon, 40% of them were produced by China and 90% of antibiotics were produced by China. So it means like if there is a war between China and the United States, we need to buy our weapons from our enemy. So I mean this is really, really scary to just to think about it. So I think we now see the consequence. And also ccp, I guess they are using all kinds of ways to corrupt the society, to sow division. So like the fentanyl, they clearly know that the fentanyl precursor was produced in China and then they export it to the United States. And every year the death toll caused by the fentanyl abuse is kind of like twice the number of the death toll in the whole Vietnamese war. So this is like they are launching a war against us, but we just don't know about that.
- [51:52]
A
In your new film there's a book that would be very familiar to the viewers of American thought leaders. Unrestricted Warfare. You basically say that America versus America and the unrestricted warfare book that together they explain China's strategy under the ccp. Explain that to me.
- [52:16]
B
I think America against America was kind of philosophy that Wang Huning developed. But how to implement that? That's the unrestricted war. So they can control our infrastructure. You know Watt, that was sponsored by the Chinese military. So basically they try to control the infrastructure of America including the power grid, the water supply. And also they have another project called Salt Typhoon that was sponsored by the mss, the Ministry of State Security. So that purpose was to eavesdrop and collect the data from American people. So from that we talk about from South Typhoon and Rotaifung, you can see they are actually in a war with us without, without our knowing. They have seen dozens of research papers on how to take down the power grid of America. This data, they are using the real American power grid as the model to study which node to attack to blackout the whole country. So this is kind of unrestricted war. And also the fentanyl is really like an unrestricted war. This is like an opium war like 150 years ago or 200 years ago. Also I think they want to manipulate or maneuver the election result to put the person they favor into that position. I think all these. But the problem is we can give you a lot of data that looks very scary. For example, TP Link, it's home router. 65% of American families and small enterprises are using TP Link. But TP Link has a backdoor so that they can control that.
- [54:23]
A
So first of all, it's a Chinese company and every Chinese company is under the auspices of the CCP. And there's the national, national, you know, 2017 national intelligence law, which means you have to cooperate for spying purposes. And all these routers are a perfect spying tool. Basically at 65% of the homes.
- [54:44]
B
65% homes and small enterprises.
- [54:47]
A
That's astonishing. Yeah, I mean that's a, you know, why aren't we talking about this all the time?
- [54:54]
B
I don't know but I think like I saw it, but people just didn't pay attention.
- [54:58]
A
Just, I mean it. These things come up blips, right? There's a high level staffer of a governor is indicted all this, it's coming up all the time but we kind of lose it in the news cycle. For the revelation is 65% of routers used in America by small businesses and homes. Roughly. That's an astonishing level of exposure if all of them have a backdoor. Right. And then you know how data hungry the CCP is, right? Yeah, that's what I mean by saying why aren't we talking about this all the time? Right? Yeah, yes, but why aren't we talking about this all the time? Why are there still TP link routers in people's homes?
- [55:40]
B
I think the Congress needs to do something. Should ban it? I think so. That's why I feel like this kind of war. If CCP is using the whole of society approach to attack us, our response must be also like whole of society which means everybody in this society needs to understand the CCP's scheme and we need to fight back. So I mean actually it's very simple for us. For example, we just don't use any electronic devices from ccp. You know you buy some eye rollers, it's easy.
- [56:11]
A
Except it's not easy because they cheap. They've had so much of the market. Right. And it's changing.
- [56:16]
B
I know, I guess like it's mainly the price. They can really build something that is very useful and very cheap and if you buy it from Taiwan or from other countries then probably you need to pay twice, three times, even four times the price. So that's the reason they're using the so called free market, the wto to dump all their stuff here. So that's why I feel like we really need to raise awareness in this society. Like we need to for example uninstall all the apps like WeChat, like TikTok from my perspective.
- [56:54]
A
Well so explain to me this, right? Just I think a day or two after the President gives this speech about the 2020 election, points out how China's doing all these compromising activities, right? Election interfering activities and the next day it's approved for TikTok to be on government phones or some government phones.
- [57:19]
B
Maybe his reasoning is that now it's acquired by Oracle or American Enterprise.
- [57:26]
A
Has this been checked now? Is it true?
- [57:29]
B
I have no idea. Actually I had a theory. I said if you really want to make sure TikTok is safe to use, then open source, everybody sees code. Otherwise I'm very, very suspicious. There must be some backdoor ccp. They plant a backdoor everywhere. All those solar panels, they have a back switch and it's actually A kill switch and they can remotely control by the ccp. So if one day China and the US is at war and then they can remotely shut down all those solar panels and we have no power and they have the back door in there Irobert the sweeping the floor. But actually now the ccp, they have their own version and much cheaper and even better quality. But then they are actually they are moving around your family, mapping your floor plan and then probably they were listening to what you're saying, like you don't know. So they have backdoor everywhere. So I think American people really need to be aware of that. Don't use electronic devices made in China. I don't use and also I install all apps that it was developed in China. Very difficult though, very difficult.
- [58:48]
A
I mean it is shifting but at
- [58:51]
B
least the people needs to know that. But the problem is like people doesn't know.
- [58:54]
A
Yeah, well, hopefully a few people will learn from this, from this episode.
- [58:59]
B
Yeah. If, if they see the movie then they will see what CCP was doing and they will know what they should do.
- [59:07]
A
I think let's quickly run the trailer of the film so people know what they're in for.
- [59:15]
B
What is China quietly doing Inside America's most vulnerable systems? China's hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real world harm to American citizens and communities. If we don't change course, we are going to live in a world where
- [59:35]
A
much of what matters to us on
- [59:36]
B
a daily basis, from our security to our health, will be dependent on whether the Chinese allow us to have it or not. It's being called one of the biggest hacks in US history.
- [59:46]
A
Chinese government linked hackers targeted cell phones used by former President Donald Trump and his running mate.
- [59:53]
B
Has bytedance spied on American citizens? I don't think that spying is the right way to describe it.
- [60:00]
A
Two Chinese nationals have been caught smuggling potential agroterrorism fungus into the United.
- [60:06]
B
Workers on both sides fear that with control of U.S. farmland, China could manipulate U.S. food supply.
- [60:12]
A
I mean we're the United States, but they treat us like a colony. Fentanyl poisoning is now the leading cause of death in the United States for people under the age of 45. China controls every link in the chain. Well, Professor Tianliang Zhang, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
- [60:39]
B
Oh, thank you again for having me.
- [60:42]
A
Thank you all for joining Professor Tianliang Zhang and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Ye Kellogg.