B (2:46)

Well, Charlie, you're absolutely right. China is an enemy. 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 US So they call us an enemy. Obviously, they're an enemy. China's challenge to the US is across the board and it is existential. They are trying to do everything possible to undermine us. And this includes, you know, taking hundreds of billions of dollars of intellectual property each year and all sorts of things challenging the US Navy in the global Commons. They've increased the tempo of that. They've been going after our allies, they've been going after our friends, like India, where on the night of June 15, Chinese soldiers killed 15 Indian counterparts. This is horrific. 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. So I don't know how else you put this. China is an enemy and they're going after us.

A (4:05)

Yeah, it's our greatest enemy. I would make the argument. 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, by purchasing advertisements in the Washington Post or 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. It seems in higher education, Confucius Institutes, where at our last count, and we have done this at Turning Point USA because we're a campus based organization, 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. And thankfully we've put a lot of pressure on lawmakers. There's been over 30 that have closed in the last year, which is terrific. Can you speak about how the Chinese model is not about firing rockets at the United States. Instead, it's a lot more subversive. It's about getting into the fabric of our country and destabilizing us from within.

B (5:30)

Yeah, the Chinese talk about the three warfares, which is subversion, lawfare and the rest of it. But, you know, you think about China's subversion of the United States, and it is from the top to the bottom. It's not only the Confucius Institute. You talk about Confucius classrooms. It is supplying a lot of money in the forms of printing contracts, plus also advertisements in those papers that you were talking about, $19 million to US publications over the course of two and a half years, including the Washington Post, the New York others. You know, we see a concerted effort on the part of China to do this. They've been doing it for decades, and they've made great inroads into it. And we have got to remember, Charlie, that, yeah, the Chinese are villains, but this is our country. We could have stopped them from doing this, and we didn't do it. And finally, we have an administration that is going after the Chinese from the top to the bottom. And this is absolutely essential because of what they have done to try to undermine our society. And we got to remember one thing, just to put this in context. You know, a lot of people say, oh, you know, the Chinese are just competing with us, and I have no problem with the country competing with us. That's what happens within the Westphalian international system that goes back to 1648. What China is trying to do is not compete with us in this Westphalian system. 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. They call this Tianxia, or all under heaven. Chinese emperors had the right and they were compelled to rule all under heaven. That's what we're talking about. So this is an existential challenge to the United States and to every other country on the planet.

A (7:21)

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. And in some ways, it's very mercantilist, in some ways, where they want to create a global empire. And so let's dive deeper, though, in the American side of it, because you're right, we could have stopped it. 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. 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. 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. 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?

B (8:50)

Yeah. This is the greatest mistake that the United States has made in the course of its history. What we tried to do, we started out with some, like, a very generous notion that we could integrate China into the international system. And it was not just China. We're talking about a communist regime. And maybe one can say that in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, there was maybe some justification for this. You know, people talked about. Francis Fukuyama, talked about the end of history, all the rest of it. 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. And instead of becoming benign, that regime became even more belligerent and hostile. The one thing that, you know, we talk about trade, and I can understand the notions of free trade and the rest of it, but ultimately we got to remember that China does not believe in the notion of comparative advantage. And that underpins this whole idea of international commerce. 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. We allowed this completely mercantilist, criminal, and in many ways, criminal organization because they were stealing intellectual property. So that's the reason why, you know, China was able to make great progress, because we were helping China to strengthen itself. And at some point, and we can argue about when we should have realized this, but certainly we're talking a long time ago, 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.

A (10:41)

And we were told and we were promised by our leaders. The more we trade with them, the more Western they'll become. And a lot of Eastern European countries were used as an example as to how this can happen. You know, oh, look at Belarus and look at Poland. 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. That was basically the thought process. Or look at Southeast Asia and look at Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia. However, we have learned that the more we trade with them, it's actually the opposite, the more they hate us.

B (11:19)

That's right.

A (11:19)

And so it's completely the opposite. 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. And a lot of these people sometimes are more on the fundamentalist free market side. And I love the free market. I really do. I'm Milton Friedman, Adam Smith guy. However, it's not good for any form of liberty if China gets stronger. I mean, if you love freedom, you should not want China to have any more power than they currently have. 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. It's a very nuanced, intricate point, but I actually. I completely agree. I think that their economic model is actually a house of cards waiting to collapse. Can you build that out for us? Because that is not something that we always hear from the media.

B (12:18)

Yeah. China tries to present itself as sort of the inevitable wave. And they talk about a big economy growing bigger eventually will overtake ours. And so there's this whole notion that this can't be stopped. 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. And what they've been able to do looks unsustainable, and eventually it will be. But they've gotten away with it for quite some time. They've also been benefited by this notion that we've just been talking about that the world should help China. So essentially what China has is a system which constantly requires money from the outside. And because of our engagement notions, we've been supplying that money in terms of trade, investment, technical cooperation, all the rest of it. Right now, the world is decoupling from China for a number of reasons. And we're starting to see the problems in the Chinese system become exposed. So for instance, even before the coronavirus epidemic, big Chinese companies were starting to default on their bonds. And smaller companies that didn't have access to the bond market were also doing that as well. Now the coronavirus epidemic has shaken China just like it's shaken our economy. But we're actually recovering a lot faster than China is because of just the nature of our system. Our system is everyone goes out and within a constraint of rules, does what's best for themselves in China. That's not the system. The system is the Communist Party dictates outcomes and in certain cases they can do well. 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. It's totalitarianism and it isn't working. And Chinese people themselves are starting to see this.

A (14:23)

Yeah, I want to follow up on that in one second. 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 for, fight endlessly for freedom. But if they live under tyranny for too long, they could be hypnotized. That freedom doesn't even exist. They have to be introduced to the concept of freedom. And the Chinese Communist Party, the ruling class, they are concerned about the United States, they're concerned about other proxies nation worldwide. But the thing that worries them the most is the people of China rising up. And that is why the three T's are not allowed to be mentioned in China. Tiananmen Square, Tibet and Taiwan can't mention it. 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. So you just mentioned that the people are starting to wake up. Can you build that out more for us? I'd be really interested to hear that.

B (15:21)

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. This is not the Communist Party, 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. And what that's done is it created a new mentality. Now Xi Jinping is trying to take away some of this economic latitude and autonomy of people. And this is really the push and the pull between the people and the party. But it wasn't the Communist Party that reformed China. 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. And that's what's created this big push for growth. Now Xi Jinping actually believes in a state dominated economy, so he's moving back. And one other thing, the Communist Party is insecure. 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. And that score is constantly updated by observable behaviors. So, for instance, if you jaywalk, your score will go down. If you say something nice about Xi Jinping, your score will go up. And those people with low scores, they can't send their kids to school, they cannot buy bus tickets, they can't do anything, 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. This is backed up by a plan. 626 million surveillance cameras in place by the end of this year. So this is going back. You know, we call China authoritarian no more. We're going back to totalitarianism in China. And they are well on that way, especially with this social credit system.

A (17:28)

I hope our listeners are internalizing this. First of all, the fact our media does not cover this just shows that they're bought and paid for by the ccp. 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? I mean, you have Netflix series about how America is the worst country ever because of our history, which is nonsense, of course, but could you imagine one piece of cinema where that shows that. No, you're actually living through Black Mirror? Just go to China, right? And I think that the way we communicate what's happening in the world is actually bought and paid for by the ccp. But we do know the laws of economics, we know the laws of physics, and the laws of nature and nature's God are applicable to all human beings. I don't think this model in China is sustainable. I don't. 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. They're definitely betting on something that's never been done before. So are you saying, Gordon, that Eventually this is going to come into some form of a collapse or a revolution. Or do you think that because of technology, the CCP will be able to make this happen?

B (18:42)

Yeah, I agree with you. The system is not sustainable. It won't last forever, as they say. You know, I wrote a book, the Coming Collapse of China, and I said that the system would fail within 10 years. So I'm out of time. What happened in the interim was that you had the 2008 global downturn, which gave the Communist Party a renewed lease on life. But I was wrong about it. But the point here, and we should go back to Havel, who explained it in one sentence, he said, communism goes against life. And that's the point that you just talked about, that it is. Can't sustain itself indefinitely because people want things, and the party stands unalterably opposed to those ambitions and aspirations. So I don't think this system is going to last very long. I mean, it's had the support, as we've been talking about, of foreign countries. But, you know, with President Trump, he has made it clear that he's adopting policies. You know, people say, oh, America first, whatever. But the point is that these policies are undermining China's economy and its system. And he's not afraid to call out the Chinese, unlike other people, unlike Hollywood, unlike newspapers, all the rest of it. So I think that we are going to see fundamental changes, largely because the world is following President Trump on this. 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, it's not both. And for us to put that in the context of America, there's going to be one survivor. It's going to be the People's Republic of China, or it's going to be the United States of America because of China's ideology. It can't be both. 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.

A (20:42)

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. And the American left, they. They love the Iranians because they hate America, they love the Chinese because they hate America, 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. 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. And they have created an alliance with the Chinese Communist Party and the ccp. They consider the American left to be useful idiots. I mean, you think that if the American left got into power, you think the CCP would stop? I mean, that is beyond foolish. That kind of insurrection or that insurgency. They would be. The CCP would get exactly what they want and then they would obliterate them as well. And so can you talk about what our listeners can actually do to help stop the rise of China? I talk about moral purchasing. Stop buying things that are made in China. Demand that your lawmakers that we put on sanctions with China. The way I look at it is we have basically cut off all trade with Iran and we have heavy sanctions with Russia. 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. I could go on. I think that they've done incredible damage. And in the last year, I go to say China's done far more damage to the world and to America than Iran has. And I'm not diminishing the threat of Iran. I just think China's a far bigger adversary. What can we do? And what can we call our lawmakers to do?

B (22:28)

I think we need to cut trade with China. We need to prohibit investment. We need to stop all of these technical cooperations, cooperation agreement. And it should be the policy of the United States to end the rule of the Communist Party. We can get along with China, but we can't get along with the Communist Party of China. And Charlie, just to put this into context, today we're Speaking, there are 136,000Americans that have died from the coronavirus. We got to remember that Xi Jinping took steps that inevitably led to the spread of this disease beyond China's borders. China admitted, and let me go into this just for a second, because I think it puts everything into perspective. China admitted that the coronavirus was human to human transmissible only on January 20th. But doctors in Wuhan, the epicenter, knew about this no later than the second week of December. And if Chinese leaders had said nothing in that five weeks, that would have been grossly irresponsible. But what they tried to do was to convince the world that it was not human to human transmissible. And at the same time, Chinese leaders pressured other countries, including the United States, not to impose travel restrictions and quarantines you put those two things together, 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. And, you know, we look at this and we 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. And that should put into perspective for Americans what's at stake here. Today we talk. 136,000Americans have died,

A (24:24)

and that is almost 50 times that of 9 11. Probably that's about right. 45 times that of 9 11. 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. They are deceitful by nature. They have no moral compass at all whatsoever. And they're also the most hostile to Christianity of any country, probably besides North Korea, in Asia. And so can you game this out for us? Do you see America getting honest and tough with the Chinese Communist Party, or do you anticipate more appeasement and to kind of close it out? Can you just give us what the consequences are if we don't get tough?

B (25:11)

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. 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, because that, to me, is the central issue in the campaign. Yes, we've got things we've got to do in our own country, but we're Americans. We can deal with that. But we've got to remember that every single day our country comes under attack by a militant regime that means us harm. So for us, that should be the central question of this election.

A (25:59)

Well, I agree. 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. 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, 136,000Americans with 10 million jobs that have been lost just from manufacturing, 20 million from the Chinese coronavirus, not to mention the infiltration in our country. At what point are we going to get wise to their infiltration in American society? And so I'm right there with you. It is America's greatest enemy. For someone who's 26 years old, I know very clearly, I see where this is headed. 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. China will be the main cultural, just, let's say, conductor of what's happening. And we will 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. Any final thoughts, Gordon?

B (27:20)

Charlie, that's really important. You know, we go back to the middle of the Cold War, and we had a series of presidents, both parties, who talked about detente, talked about accommodation with the Soviet Union. That didn't work. It is only until Ronald Reagan became president. He said, we win, they lose. He stood for freedom and democracy. And we know what happened. This is absolutely critical for us Americans to go back 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.

A (28:04)

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. Japan, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, India, they will come and they will thank us tremendously in 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. I don't think there's any economic benefit anymore dealing with China. That's my own opinion. And I think that if you actually want the United States of America to continue, you have to stop all trade instantaneously with China. They cannot survive without US Dollars flowing into their system. They can't absolutely. The leverage in their banking system, the debasing of their currency, they will collapse. 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. But you made a great point earlier, and I know we're low on time, which is they're insecure 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. They never were able to have total and complete peace about their authoritarianism. We have to play into that. And by the way, the CCP probably is going to watch this interview. 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. And that's not sustainable.

B (29:46)

So yes, as Havel said, communism goes against life.

A (29:51)

I love it. Well, again, so say as the Twitter handle one more time so I don't butcher it.

B (29:57)

It's Gordon G. Chang.

A (30:00)

There we go. Gordon G. Chang. Check it out. And the book is the Coming Collapse of China. Thank you so much, Gordon. We'll have you back on the show soon. Appreciate it.

B (30:07)

Oh, well, thank you so much, Charlie, and stay safe.

A (30:10)

Thank you. What a great conversation that was with Gordon Chang. If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com that is tpusa.com, the nation's largest conservative student organization fighting on over 2,000 high school and college campuses across the country. Email me your questions directly. Freedomarliekirk.com, freedomarliekirk.com I want to thank those of you that are supporting our program by going to charliekirk.comsupport that is charliekirk.comsupport. if you guys want to win a signed copy the MAGA Doctrine, for the first 10 people that type in Charlie Kirk show hit, subscribe, give us a five star review. We'll give you a signed copy of the MAGA Doctrine. Thank you guys so much. Thanks for listening. God bless you. Talk to you soon.