Table of Contents (cont'd)
3. Unrestricted Warfare With Chinese Communist Characteristicsa. The CCP’s Global Propaganda Operations b. The Aim of United-Front Work: Disintegrating the Free World From Within c. Economic Warfare: The CCP’s Heavy Weaponry d. Using the Masses for Espionage e. The Many Forms of Unrestricted Warfare
4. The Communist ‘China Model’a. The Policy of Appeasement: A Grave Mistake b. Why the West Got China Wrong c. The Way Out
3. Unrestricted Warfare With Chinese Communist Characteristics
In the process of realizing its global ambitions, the CCP recognizes no moral limitations and obeys no laws. As discussed in Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, the history of the CCP’s founding and rise to power was a process of gradually perfecting the evilness found through history, both in China and around the world, including the Party’s nine inherited traits: “evil, deceit, incitement, unleashing the scum of society, espionage, robbery, fighting, elimination, and control.” [112] These traits are seen everywhere through the CCP’s global expansion, and the Party has continually enhanced and strengthened its techniques and their malignancy. The CCP’s unrestricted warfare is the concentrated expression of these evil traits and an important part of its success.Unrestricted warfare means that “all weapons and technologies can be used at will; it means that all boundaries between the worlds of war and non-war, military and non-military, are broken.” It utilizes methods that span nations and spheres of activity. Finance, trade, the media, international law, outer space, and more are all potential battlefields. Weapons include hacking, terrorism, biochemical warfare, ecological warfare, atomic warfare, electronic warfare, drug trafficking, intelligence, smuggling, psychological warfare, ideological warfare, sanctions, and so on. [113]
Many people refer to various professional or social environments as “battlefields” by way of metaphor, but the CCP takes this literally. All fields are battlefields because the CCP is in a state of war at all times, and everyone is a combatant. All conflicts are regarded as struggles of life and death. Slight problems are magnified to be questions of principle or ideology, and the whole country is mobilized, as if in a state of active war, to meet the CCP’s goals.
In the 1940s, during the Chinese Civil War, the CCP used economic warfare to harm the economy of the Nationalist government (Kuomintang, or KMT) of the Republic of China and cause it to collapse. The Party used espionage to obtain the Kuomintang’s military plans even before the KMT’s own troops received them. The CCP continues to use unrestricted means of warfare today, on a yet larger and broader scale. Unrestricted warfare, which breaks all conventional rules and moral restraints, leaves most Westerners, Western governments, and Western companies unable to understand the CCP, much less contend with it.
- Exporting Party culture and lies to the world through foreign propaganda
- Controlling global media and carrying out ideological warfare
- Using fame, honey traps (sexual entrapment), interpersonal relationships, bribery, and despotic power to gain leverage over the leaders of global organizations, important political figures, experts in think tanks and academic circles, business tycoons, and influentials from all walks of life
- Supporting, inciting, and allying with rogue regimes to distract the United States and Western governments
- Using trade diplomacy to make free countries compete against one another, using the market of more than one billion Chinese consumers as bait
- Deepening economic integration and interdependency to tie up other countries
- Violating World Trade Organization trade rules
- Making false reform commitments to accumulate trade surplus and foreign exchange reserves
- Using the market, foreign exchange, and financial resources as weapons to suppress human rights through economic unrestricted warfare and to force other countries to abandon moral responsibility and universal values
- Forcing Chinese working in private enterprises abroad to steal information from them
- Making hostages of China’s citizens and those of other countries
a. The CCP’s Global Propaganda Operations
In 2018, when the PRC’s state-run broadcaster established a branch in London, the outlet encountered an enviable problem: receiving too many job applications. Nearly six thousand people applied for the ninety available positions. [115] People’s eagerness to work for the CCP’s mouthpiece — the jobs required reporting news from the PRC’s perspective — reflects the decline of the Western media industry and the threat that the CCP’s foreign propaganda poses to the world.The World’s Largest Propaganda Machine
Mao Zedong once demanded that the Xinhua News Agency “take charge of the earth and let the whole world hear our voice.” [116]In March 2018, the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China led the integration of CCTV, China Radio International, and China National Radio to establish the China Media Group, also called Voice of China. It has become the largest propaganda machine in the world.
The CCP’s foreign propaganda apparatus attempts to blend in by recruiting mainly local reporters and presenters. A video call between Xi Jinping and the Washington, DC, bureau of CCTV America in February 2016 showed that the majority of the journalists employed there were not Chinese. [119] But the CCP’s propaganda department drives the content they report. China’s state-run media thus produces local packaging in the target country, using local faces and voices to spout the Communist Party’s thinking and conflate the regime with the Chinese people. It uses locals abroad to spread the CCP’s stories and the CCP’s voice — not China’s true stories and not the voices of the Chinese people.
The Party also provides scholarships to young foreign journalists, including in the areas of food and education, so that they can study or be trained in mainland China and, at the same time, be instilled with the CCP’s views on journalism.
Aligning the World’s Media With the CCP
In 2015, the foreign ministers of ten countries condemned the CCP for building artificial islands in the contested waters of the South China Sea. At the same time, a radio station in Washington, DC, claimed that external forces had attempted to fabricate the facts and aggravate tensions in the South China Sea. It failed to mention the CCP’s takeover efforts. The station, WCRW, repeats a great deal of content favoring the position of the CCP — and curiously, it runs no advertising. Its only customer is a Los Angeles company, G&E Studio Inc., itself 60 percent controlled by China Radio International (CRI) in Beijing. G&E broadcasts its programs in Chinese and English on at least fifteen US stations, covering Salt Lake City, Philadelphia, Houston, Honolulu, and Portland, among others. [120] The biggest benefit of this operation is to conceal the role of the CCP, and listeners are made to feel that Americans themselves are expressing their support for the CCP.Globally, CRI operated thirty-three such stations in at least fourteen countries in 2015. By 2018, it had fifty-eight stations in thirty-five countries. [121] The control and operations are carried out via local Chinese companies, making it legal, although many people are unhappy about the Party hiding its propaganda. Under the banner of democracy, the CCP advocates for communism and attempts to manipulate its audience into adopting its views by exploiting loopholes in the laws of free societies. It uses democracy to destroy democracy.
When it comes to information warfare, the CCP’s totalitarian regime has several advantages over other countries. The Party blocks media from all democratic countries, but is able to insert its state-run media in democratic societies. The CCP prevents media inserts from free countries being added to its own media, but the CCP can insert its content into the media from free societies. CCP media serve the Party first and foremost, and Western journalists will never hold executive roles in their Party mouthpieces. The CCP can, however, send its own undercover people into Western media or train foreigners into being mouthpiece reporters for the Party’s media.
The Communist Party also excels in controlling overseas Chinese-language media. Through coercion and enticement, the CCP has recruited a large number of Chinese-language media, including some Taiwanese-founded media that previously had a strong tradition of anti-communism. The CCP-sponsored World Chinese Media Forum is used as a platform to communicate the Party’s instructions to Chinese media around the world. More than four hundred and sixty overseas Chinese media executives from more than sixty countries and regions attended the 9th World Chinese Media Forum held in Fuzhou on September 10, 2017.
The CCP-controlled Overseas Chinese Media Association, with more than 160 media members, swung into action during the 2014 Umbrella Movement’s pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. The group urgently rallied 142 pro-PRC media outlets in Asia, Europe, Africa, the United States, and Australia to publish its “Safeguarding Hong Kong” declaration supporting the CCP’s perspective. [125]
Alongside the PRC’s economic “colonization” of Africa, CCP media has also reached all corners of the continent. The China-based television and media group StarTimes is now operating in thirty African countries and claims to be “the fastest growing and most influential digital TV operator in Africa.” [126] The regime has been relentless in its penetration of overseas media.
Suppressing opposing voices is another aspect of CCP overseas propaganda operations. The Party threatens journalists who expose it with visa denials and other forms of harassment, leading to self-censorship. The result is that there are few global media corporations that take a completely independent stance on the CCP without regard to consequences imposed by the regime.
There are several ways for a tyrannical regime like the CCP to improve its public image. The first and most direct way is to implement genuine reform and transition to a form of government that respects human rights, universal values, and the rule of law. The second way is for the regime to cover up its crimes through censorship. The third way is to actively convince the outside world to side with the regime. The third method offers the most effective form of cover for tyranny.
Manipulating Cultural Exchange to Indoctrinate the World in CCP Culture
Ideological and political indoctrination is an essential tool in the CCP’s destruction of traditional Chinese culture. But in recent years, the Party has advertised its commitment to restoring traditional culture, seeking to frame itself as the legitimate representative of the Chinese nation and its identity. As discussed in previous chapters of this book, this wave of supposed restoration has left out the soul of the traditions, replacing it with a fake version infused with deviant Communist Party culture. This has not only deceived the world, but also further undermined China’s ancient heritage. Typical examples of this effort are Confucius Institutes, which are set up on college and high school campuses around the world.Confucius Institutes subvert important academic principles of autonomy and freedom of inquiry, aim to promote the CCP’s version of historical events, distort the history of China, and omit the CCP’s appalling human rights record. In some Confucius Institute classrooms, quotes from Mao are hung on the wall. On the surface, Confucius Institutes claim to teach Chinese culture, while, in fact, they promote communist doctrine and transmit Party culture.
According to incomplete statistics, as of the end of 2017, the PRC had established at least 525 Confucius Institutes (targeting colleges and universities) and opened 1,113 Confucius Classrooms (targeting elementary and secondary schools) in more than 145 countries. [127] Confucius Institute funding is provided by Hanban, an organization affiliated with the CCP’s United Front Work Department (UFWD). The use of funds is supervised by personnel from the PRC embassies and consulates.
In addition to offering cultural and language courses, Confucius Institutes also distort history and even organize protests against activities the CCP believes threaten its dominance. For example, pro-Beijing speakers invited to Confucius Institute-sponsored events have repeated the CCP’s lies about Tibet, while others have claimed the United States drew China into the Korean War by bombing Chinese villages, according to a 2018 report by the congressional US–China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). [128]
The US National Defense Authorization Act for the 2019 fiscal year condemned the CCP’s attempts to influence US public opinion, especially “media, cultural institutions, businesses, and academic and political groups.” The act explicitly prohibits any national defense funds from being given to Chinese-language departments in US universities where a Confucius Institute exists. [129]
b. The Aim of United-Front Work: Disintegrating the Free World From Within
On December 18, 2018, the CCP celebrated the 40th anniversary of its so-called reform and opening up. It awarded the China Reform Friendship Medal to ten influential foreigners to “thank the international community for supporting China’s reform.” [130] These ten foreigners included Juan Antonio Samaranch, former president of the International Olympic Committee, which had selected China to host the 2008 Olympics Games; and Robert Lawrence Kuhn, an American businessman who lent his name as author of a fawning biography of former CCP head Jiang. Over the past few decades, countless politicians and celebrities have acted as accomplices to the CCP’s united-front tactics.Mao labeled the united front as one of the CCP’s “three magic treasures.” Western governments have been deceived and suffered losses by these tactics, but some are beginning to wake up, and a number of investigative reports about the united front have been published.
The think tank Global Public Policy Institute published a report in 2018 detailing the activities of CCP’s united front in Europe. [132] The Hoover Institution at Stanford University released a detailed report on the same topic on November 29, 2018. The report states: “China’s influence activities have moved beyond their traditional United Front focus on diaspora communities to target a far broader range of sectors in Western societies, ranging from think tanks, universities, and media to state, local, and national government institutions. China seeks to promote views sympathetic to the Chinese Government, policies, society, and culture; suppress alternative views; and co-opt key American players to support China’s foreign policy goals and economic interests.” [133]
Politicians and Businesspeople
The USCC report says the CCP regards its united-front work as an important tool for strengthening domestic and international support for the Party. This includes buying off Western politicians. Through persuasion, temptation, and relationship-building, the CCP maintains close ties with many high-level officials in Western governments. The Party treats these politicians as its “state treasures,” giving them lavish gifts and conferring upon them titles such as “old friends of China.” Among them are current and former United Nations secretaries general, heads of state, high-ranking government officials, senior government advisers, heads of international organizations, famous academics and think-tank scholars, and media consortium tycoons. All these people in the united-front network are expected to voice their support for the CCP at crucial moments.Patrick Ho Chi-ping, a former Hong Kong secretary for home affairs, was convicted in the United States for bribery in December 2018. Ho had close ties to the CCP and bribed high-ranking officials in two African nations on behalf of China Energy Co. Ltd., a CCP-linked energy corporation in order to obtain mining rights. [134]
US court papers also document the corruption and espionage carried out by Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE. Two high-ranking telecom officials in Liberia testified that between 2005 and 2007, ZTE bribed numerous officials — including the president, government officials, and judges — with paper bags full of thousands of dollars in cash. [135]
The CCP uses money and women to entrap political leaders and then use them as pawns for the regime’s ends. In a memorandum following the November 2014 midterm US elections, CEFC China Energy outlined a plan to establish relationships and friendships with politicians. Ye Jianming, the now-disgraced chairman of the company, has strong ties to European political leaders. He once asked a security adviser to a US president to persuade the US Army not to bomb Syria because he wanted to buy up oil fields there. Ye also boasted connections to senior officials at the Federal Reserve and the United Nations, as well as family members of US government officials. [136]
When deemed necessary, the CCP can form various temporary united fronts to isolate its enemies. For instance, the CCP has used the votes of developing nations whose officials it previously suborned to pass or block motions at the United Nations. Via proxies, it has disrupted US efforts to stabilize the Middle East. In the meantime, it has been able to forge new economic alliances. In the US–China trade war, the CCP sought to sow conflict between the United States and Europe with the aim of using the latter as part of another united front against the United States.
Local politicians are also targets of the CCP’s united-front work. These include community leaders, city council members, mayors, state senators, and others. The usual approach is to donate to local politicians through Chinese organizations or merchants, who are invited to visit China, where they receive bribes. Their family businesses get special treatment in China. Cases of sexual entrapment, known as “honey traps,” often involve blackmail and the CCP often uses this tactic.
With its strong financial backing, the CCP has paid communist and leftist politicians around the world to become its agents in those nations in order to further spread communist ideology.
Academic Circles and Think Tanks
Many think tanks in the West directly shape their country’s policies and strategy toward China; therefore, the CCP pays them special attention. The CCP exerts control over think tanks via financial sponsorship. It has bribed, controlled, or influenced almost all think tanks related to China. [138] Chinese tech giant Huawei has provided financial support to think tanks in Washington, which then write positive reports about Huawei, according to a 2018 Washington Post report. [139]Huawei sponsors more than twenty universities in the UK, including Cambridge and Oxford universities. Historian Anthony Glees, a British expert in national security, said: “This is about the electronic agenda being driven by the injection of Chinese money into British universities. That is a national security issue.” [140] Huawei, through its Seeds for the Future program, attracted a large number of young talented engineers — a classic communist subversion tactic.
The CCP buys off overseas scholars, especially China observers, with money, status, and fame. Some such scholars then closely follow the CCP’s rhetorical line, publishing books and articles to explain the CCP’s “peaceful rise,” the concepts of the “China dream” or the “China model.” The viewpoints of these scholars then influence the China policies of Western governments to accommodate the CCP as it goes about hijacking the international order.
Overseas Chinese Leaders, Businessmen, and Students
The CCP has successfully exploited the patriotism of overseas Chinese students to create sympathy for CCP policies and ideology. To gain the support of overseas Chinese, the CCP provides them with financial support. It frequently uses the phrase “the love for one’s homeland, the friendship of kin” as part of its deliberate conflation of China and the CCP in order to deceive overseas Chinese. The Party also uses an extensive overseas network of organizations, supporters, and spies to marginalize and attack its opponents.The CCP uses various pretexts to invite overseas Chinese to do business with and invest in mainland China. It gives overseas Chinese leaders special treatment when visiting the country, arranging for them to meet with high-ranking officials and invites them to attend PRC national-day celebrations.
The USCC report also detailed how overseas Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSA) are controlled by the CCP. On their websites, some CSSA branches directly state that they were established by the local Chinese consulate or are its subsidiaries, while in other cases, the control is carried out clandestinely. These organizations receive orders from the PRC’s local consulates, preventing any dissonant views from being aired. Consulate officials harass, intimidate, and monitor students who dissent from the Communist Party line.
The Film and Entertainment Industries
In recent years, the CCP has increased efforts at infiltrating the US entertainment industry. In 2012, the mainland Chinese Wanda Group spent $2.6 billion to acquire AMC, the second-largest movie theater chain in the United States. Since then, it has acquired Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion, and Carmike Cinemas, the fourth-largest movie theater chain in the United States, for $1.1 billion. [143] In 2016, Ali Pictures acquired a stake in Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners, and placed a representative on Amblin’s board of directors to participate in major decision-making. [144]One of the CCP’s main goals in infiltrating the entertainment industry is to have the world follow the CCP’s script—painting a positive image of the CCP and China’s so-called peaceful rise—to conceal the regime’s tyrannical ambitions. At the same time, this image covers up how the exportation of Party culture has corrupted the world. From 1997 to 2013, China invested in only 12 out of the top 100 highest-grossing Hollywood movies. But in the ensuing five years, China co-financed 41 of Hollywood’s most popular movies. [145]
Marginalizing Overseas Experts and Dissidents
The CCP has used intimidation and incentives to influence Western China scholars and marginalize the experts who are critical of the regime. This has led many to willingly self-censor. Intimidation includes refusal to issue visas, which has the greatest impact on young scholars. For the sake of professional advancement, many voluntarily avoid discussing human rights, Tibet, and other sensitive topics that might attract the Party’s ire.Perry Link, a professor of East Asian Studies, was blacklisted by the CCP for his scholarship on the Tiananmen Square massacre. His treatment by the regime became a “lesson” for young scholars as to what not to do. [148]
In October 2017, Benedict Rogers, deputy chairman of the British Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission and supporter of the Hong Kong democracy movement, went to Hong Kong on a private visit to see friends, including democracy activists, but was refused entry and repatriated at the Hong Kong airport. [149]
c. Economic Warfare: The CCP’s Heavy Weaponry
If external foreign propaganda, perception-management, and united-front work are the CCP’s forms of soft power, then its high-tech industry is one form of the Party’s hard power.Since the 1980s, the PRC has implemented a series of strategic plans in science and technology, including the 863 Program (also known as the State High Technology Research and Development Program), which helped facilitate the theft of technology from other countries; the Torch Program, which helped build high-tech commercial industries; the 973 Program, for scientific research; and the 211 Project, which helped “reform” universities. [151][152] The Made in China 2025 plan aims to transform China from a manufacturing country to a manufacturing power by 2025, taking the lead in big data, 5G, and the like. The strategy includes ambitious plans for artificial intelligence, in which China aims to be a world leader by 2030. The purpose is to upgrade the PRC’s status as the world factory to that of an advanced manufacturing giant, thereby attaining global supremacy. [153]
Under normal circumstances, a country may mobilize state resources for the benefit of industrial development, or to invest in the research of key technologies. But the CCP’s high-tech development strategy poses a fundamental threat to the free world, as the PRC does not operate like a normal country, nor respect the norms that govern international relations. The purpose of the CCP’s technological development is not so the PRC can join the ranks of the world’s other high-tech countries or compete on equal footing with them, but rather to eliminate opponents and take down Western economies — especially that of the United States — and thus be one step closer to world domination.
Technological innovation is the fruit of individual liberty, which is in natural conflict with the totalitarian rule of communism. Researchers in mainland China are deprived of the freedom to use foreign search engines, let alone express their freedom in other ways. Thus it is indeed difficult to make real breakthroughs in scientific and technological innovation given the CCP’s restrictions on thought and access to information.
The Trap of Trading Technology for Market Access
In recent years, China’s high-speed rail network has become almost like an advertisement for the country’s high-end manufacturing prowess, and the concept of “high-speed rail diplomacy” has arisen. Chinese state media has called China’s work in this area “legendary,” given its rapid development in only ten years. But to Western companies, China’s high-speed rail buildup has been a nightmare of technological theft, entrapment, and what ultimately became huge losses in exchange for only small gains.Work on the high-speed rail project began in the early 1990s. By the end of 2005, the CCP abandoned the idea of developing the technology independently and turned to Western technology. The CCP’s goal was clear from the beginning: It planned to first acquire the technology, then manufacture the same technology and sell it for cheaper prices on the global market.
The Chinese side requires that foreign manufacturers sign a technology-transfer contract with a Chinese domestic firm before bidding on construction contracts. The Chinese regime also established formal internal assessments called “technology-transfer-implementation evaluations,” which focus not on how well foreign businesses teach their systems, but rather on how well domestic companies learn them. If domestic enterprises don’t completely master the technology, China doesn’t pay. The authorities also require that by the last batch of orders, local companies must produce 70 percent of the orders. [154]
Because foreign companies felt that accessing China’s market was an opportunity not to be missed, such terms didn’t stop them from signing contracts. Japan’s Kawasaki, France’s Alstom, Germany’s Siemens, and Canada’s Bombardier all submitted bids. Still, no Western company was willing to transfer its core, most-valued technology. The CCP thus continued to play games with several of the companies in the hope that at least one would relent and give up something of real value for the benefit of short-term interests. Sure enough, when it appeared that one company would get a chunk of the Chinese market in exchange for technology, the others began to fear being left out. Thus, several of them fell into the CCP’s trap, with the result that China was able to extract key technology from the above four companies.
The PRC has invested huge sums in the rail project, acting regardless of cost, and Chinese firms built out the world’s most extensive high-speed rail system by mileage. In a few years, China rapidly assimilated Western technology, which was then turned into “independent intellectual property rights.” What really shocked Western companies was when the PRC then began applying for high-speed rail patents abroad, with Chinese firms becoming fierce competitors against their former teachers on the international market. Because Chinese companies have accumulated a great deal of practical experience in this realm, and are afforded all the industrial advantages brought by large-scale production capacity and massive state financial backing, China’s high-speed rail industry possesses a competitive advantage against peers. It has become a key element of the Party’s One Belt, One Road project.
While foreign companies once dreamed of getting their share of the huge market for high-speed rail in China, they found instead that not only were they squeezed out of that market, but they also had created a tough international competitor. Yoshiyuki Kasai, an honorary chairman of the Central Japan Railway Company, said: “The Shinkansen [Japanese bullet train] is the jewel of Japan. The technology transfer to China was a huge mistake.” [155]
The CCP itself acknowledges that China’s success in high-speed rail was achieved by standing on the shoulders of giants. Indeed, its purpose from the beginning was to become a giant so as to slay all the others. The CCP has an explicit dual purpose: Its short-term goal is to use economic achievements to prove the legitimacy of its regime and to make economic and technological progress to maintain and excite nationalist sentiment and propaganda. But its long-term purpose is to prove that its communist system is superior to the capitalist system, so it unscrupulously steals technology and uses the power of the entire country to compete with capitalist free enterprise.
The CCP’s tactics — promising market access in exchange for technology, coercing tech transfers, absorbing and improving foreign technology, having mainland Chinese firms practice in the domestic market before advancing to the world, and dumping products globally to undercut competitors — have caused Western companies, and job markets, to suffer immensely.
A Manufacturing Superpower Built on Theft
How did the CCP boost Chinese manufacturing and innovative potential in such a short period of time? It used the same old tricks: It coerced companies into transferring their technologies, as in the case of high-speed rail, and demanded that foreign companies form joint ventures with Chinese firms so they could acquire the foreign companies’ technologies. In addition, the regime encouraged domestic firms to make acquisitions of overseas high-tech companies, directly investing in startups with key technologies, and establishing overseas research-and-development centers. It induced leading foreign tech and scientific research institutes to set up R&D centers in China, and it used targeted policies to bring in foreign technology experts.Many startups in Silicon Valley need capital. The CCP uses taxpayer money to invest in them in order to get its hands on new technologies, including rocket engines, sensors for autonomous navy ships, and 3D printers that manufacture flexible screens that could be used in fighter-plane cockpits. Ken Wilcox, chairman emeritus of Silicon Valley Bank, said in 2017 that within a six-month period, he was approached by three different Chinese state-owned enterprises about buying technology on their behalf. He said: “In all three cases, they said they had a mandate from Beijing, and they had no idea what they wanted to buy. It was just any and all tech.” [156] A 2018 investigative report by the Office of the United States Trade Representative said that Digital Horizon Capital (formerly Danhua Capital) uses China’s venture capital to help the CCP gain top technologies and intellectual property in the United States. [157]
The PRC’s aptitude for industrial espionage far exceeds the scope of commercial spies in the past. In order to steal technology and secrets from the West, the regime mobilizes all available personnel, including spies, hackers, international students, visiting scholars, mainland Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants working in Western companies, and Westerners lured by monetary interests.
The CCP has always coveted the US F-35 stealth fighter jet. In 2016, a Canadian permanent citizen from China, Su Bin, was sentenced to forty-six months in prison for working with Chinese military hackers to penetrate the computer systems of Lockheed Martin and steal plans for the F-35 and other US military aircraft. Investigators found that Su’s group had also stolen information about Lockheed’s F-22 stealth fighter and Boeing’s C-17 strategic transport aircraft, as well as 630,000 files from Boeing’s system, totaling some 65 gigabytes of data. [158] The PLA’s own J-20 stealth fighter exhibited in recent years is now very similar to the F-22, and the smaller Chinese FC-31 is an imitation of the F-35.
David Smith, an expert on metamaterials at Duke University, invented a kind of “invisibility cloak” with the potential to one day protect US forces. The US military invested millions in support of his research. In 2006, Chinese student Ruopeng Liu came to the United States with the express purpose of studying at Smith’s lab, becoming the scientist’s protégé. An FBI counterintelligence official believes Liu was given the specific mission of obtaining Smith’s research. In 2007, Liu brought two former colleagues, traveling at the Chinese regime’s expense, to visit Smith’s lab, and they worked on the invisibility cloak for a period of time. Later, the equipment used to make the cloak was duplicated at Liu’s old lab in China. [159]
On December 20, 2018, the Department of Justice sued two Chinese citizens from the Chinese hacker organization APT 10, which has close ties with the CCP. According to the indictment, from 2006 to 2018, APT 10 carried out extensive hacking attacks, stealing massive amounts of information from more than forty-five organizations, including NASA and the Department of Energy. The documents stolen included information on medicines, biotechnology, finance, manufacturing, petroleum, and natural gas.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said: “China’s goal, simply put, is to replace the US as the world’s leading superpower, and they’re using illegal methods to get there. They’re using an expanding set of non-traditional and illegal methods.” [160] Kathleen Puckett, a former US counterintelligence officer in San Francisco, said that the CCP puts all its efforts into espionage and gets everything for free. [161] The CCP has launched a “war against everyone” to loot advanced technology from the West, using patriotism, racial sentiments, money, and prestige to drive its unprecedented stealing spree.
The Thousand Talents Program: Espionage and Talent Attraction
From when mainland China opened up in the 1970s to today, millions of Chinese students have studied overseas, and many have become accomplished in various fields. The CCP seeks to recruit and use these talented individuals, invested in and trained by the West, to directly bring back to China the technology and economic information they’ve acquired. Until its recent disappearance, multiple PRC government departments ran the Thousand Talents Program. Started in 2008, the Thousand Talents Program was ostensibly about recruiting top Chinese talent overseas to return to China for full-time or short-term positions. But the real goal was for state industry to get its hands on new technology and intellectual property from the West. In 2020, following mounting pressure from the West, information about the program has been scrubbed from public view.The FBI declassified a document about the program in September 2015. It concludes that recruiting target individuals allows China to profit in three ways: gaining access to research and expertise in cutting-edge technology, benefiting from years of scientific research conducted in the United States and supported by US government grants and private funding, and severely impacting the US economy. [162]
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) noted in a 2018 report that foreign nationals had transferred US intellectual property to their native countries while on the US government payroll. Their actions have unfairly impacted all US academic institutions. [163] M. Roy Wilson, a report co-author and co-chair of the advisory committee to the NIH director, said that a key qualification of becoming part of the Thousand Talents Program is having access to valuable intellectual property. He said that the problem was significant, not random, and that the severity of the intellectual property losses was impossible to ignore. [164]
Peter Harrell, adjunct senior fellow in the energy, economics, and security program at the Center for a New American Security, said: “China is pursuing a whole-of-society approach to its technological capabilities. That includes purchasing innovative companies through overseas investments, requiring Western companies to transfer cutting-edge technologies to China as a condition of market access, providing vast state resources to finance domestic technological development, financing training for top Chinese students and researchers overseas, and paying a hefty premium to attract talent back to China.” [165]
A Sinister, ‘Whole-of-Government’ Effort
In addition to outright stealing, the CCP uses China’s national power to exert pressure on private business in the West, through state support and subsidies — huge sums of money directed to support key industries in China. This poses an enormous and unique challenge to countries where leaders are democratically elected and leave business decisions to businesses themselves. State subsidies — ultimately taken out of the pocket of the unconsenting taxpayer — mean that Chinese manufacturers can ignore the real costs of doing business, making them unstoppable predators in international markets.The solar cell industry is a classic example of one that profits from state subsidies. In the early 2000s, no Chinese companies existed among the top ten solar-panel manufacturers, but by 2017 there were six, including the top two. The green energy industry was heavily promoted during US President Barack Obama’s first term, but before long, dozens of solar-panel makers were filing for bankruptcy or had to cut back their businesses in the face of unrelenting competition from China, which ultimately undermined enthusiasm in the clean energy industry. [166] The damage was wrought by China’s dumping of products on the international market, enabled by the regime’s subsidies for its domestic solar industry.
In Western countries, states also fund key projects, including those on the cutting edge of technological development. The prototype of the internet, for instance, was first developed by the US Department of Defense. However, in the West, government participation at the national level is limited. Once a technology is commercialized, private companies are free to act as they will. For example, NASA disseminated its advanced research results to industry through its Technology Transfer Program. Many of its software projects simply put their source code on the Web as open source. In contrast, the CCP directly uses the power of the state to commercialize high-tech, which is equivalent to using a “China Inc.” to compete against individual Western firms.
d. Using the Masses for Espionage
The CCP regards information as simply another weapon in its arsenal. Regardless of the field, whether pertaining to the state, private enterprise, or individual endeavors, all forms of information are seen as fair game in the fulfillment of the regime’s strategic ambitions.The CCP also has used legislation to force all Chinese people to participate in its unrestricted warfare. The National Intelligence Law of the People’s Republic of China, passed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, states that “national intelligence agencies may require relevant agencies, organizations, and citizens to provide necessary support, assistance, and cooperation.” [167] This means that any Chinese citizen can be coerced by the CCP to collect intelligence and become a spy.
On December 12, 2018, the US Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing about the CCP’s non-traditional espionage activities. Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI counterintelligence division, outlined the CCP’s approach: The Party plays by the rules when it’s advantageous, while at other times bending or breaking them to achieve its goals. When possible, the Party also tries to rewrite the rules and reshape the world according to its own requirements. [168]
John Demers, assistant attorney general of the National Security Division of the US Department of Justice, testified that the CCP’s Made in China 2025 plan is essentially a handbook of what to steal. He disclosed that from 2011 to 2018, more than 90 percent of the cases of economic espionage allegedly involving or benefiting a country, and more than two-thirds of trade-secret theft cases, were related to the PRC. [169]
The CCP’s espionage is far from limited to intellectual property. The CCP controls all major private companies in China and uses them for international intelligence gathering. US Senator Ted Cruz called Huawei a “Communist Party spy agency thinly veiled as a telecom company,” in a Twitter post in 2018. “Its surveillance networks span the globe and its clients are rogue regimes such as Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba. The arrest of Huawei’s CFO Wanzhou Meng in Canada is both an opportunity and a challenge,” Cruz wrote. [170]
André Ken Jakobsson, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Military Studies in Copenhagen, said: “What is worrying is that the CCP can get very critical and sensitive information. They can enter a system that controls our entire society. Everything will be connected to the 5G network in the future. We are worried that the country that provides such equipment — China — controls the switch.” [172]
For at least two decades, the CCP has used hackers on a large scale to obtain critical information from other countries. As early as 1999, CCP hackers disguised as a Falun Gong overseas website attacked the US Department of Transportation. The department contacted the website to investigate the attack and traced it back to a hacker from a Party-run intelligence agency. [173] In June 2015, CCP hackers attacked the US Office of Personnel Management, stealing the data and security information of more than 21.5 million Americans. Those affected included 19.7 million government employees and 1.8 million of their family members.
e. The Many Forms of Unrestricted Warfare
The CCP utilizes other methods of unrestricted warfare. A few major areas are listed below.Diplomatic Warfare
The CCP’s typical diplomatic method is to divide and conquer. When the world criticizes the CCP for its human rights abuses, regime officials invite each country to discuss human rights separately and in private; consequently, such criticism can have no restraining effect. Moreover, the CCP has virtually disintegrated the international norms that safeguard human rights.The CCP used this method to escape condemnation and sanctions right before being admitted to the World Trade Organization. Once admitted, the CCP immediately began using economic means to tempt various countries, and again used divide-and-conquer to achieve large-scale breakthroughs in various areas.
The CCP also uses rogue tactics of hostage diplomacy to arrest and threaten both Chinese and non-Chinese until its demands are met. Before the PRC was granted permanent normal trade relations status by the United States in 2002, regime authorities arrested dissidents before almost every negotiation session, then used the release of the dissidents as a bargaining chip during the negotiations. The Communist Party disregards the lives of its own people, but it knows that Western societies care about basic human rights. Therefore, it uses the Chinese people as hostages to threaten the enemy — the United States.
With the rapid development of the Chinese economy, the CCP has become bolder, even taking foreign hostages. Six weeks after the aforementioned Su Bin was arrested in Canada for hacking into a US military database, Canadian couple Kevin and Julia Garratt were arrested in China and accused of espionage. [174]
After the arrest of Huawei’s vice president and chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in Vancouver on December 1, 2018, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs incited a series of protests, with the Chinese Embassy in Canada mobilizing a large number of pro-communist overseas Chinese for the action. In addition, the PRC arrested two Canadian citizens in retaliation for Meng’s arrest. [175] This was both to put direct pressure on Canada and to drive a wedge between Canada and the United States.
Military Warfare
The CCP has developed asymmetric weapons, such as anti-ship missiles and anti-aircraft carrier missiles. In terms of conventional weapons, the CCP has attempted to surpass the technological supremacy of the United States by having a larger quantity of matériel targeting high-value assets. The CCP has grown economically and technically, giving it greater operational space to implement cyberwarfare, outer-space warfare, and other unconventional high-tech attack vectors against the United States, as addressed in the last section.Internet Warfare
Through the efforts of Huawei and ZTE to seize the 5G technology market, the CCP is striving to gain a dominant position in 5G standards, and it wants to play a leading global role in the new technology. The former head of the Federal Reserve of Dallas said, “If China were to win the race, they would establish the protocols for the internet, just as English replaced German as the language of science and became the language of all crucial activity on a global scale.” [177]At present, with the impending rollout of 5G technology, the internet faces a new round of evolution. With the combination of 5G and artificial intelligence, the internet’s control over the physical world is dramatically expanding, and the rules of the entire world are being rewritten. If the CCP dominates 5G, it will be able to act unimpeded.
Narcotics Warfare
At a US Cabinet meeting held on August 16, 2018, President Donald Trump said that the proliferation of opioids, particularly the synthetic drug fentanyl from China, is “almost a form of warfare.” [178] In 2017, more than seventy thousand people died of drug overdoses in the United States, of which more than 40 percent were related to synthetic opioids (mainly fentanyl and its analogues). These drugs are primarily produced in China and then enter the United States through the US Postal Service or are smuggled in via the US–Mexico border. [179]Mass Mobilization Warfare
In September 2018, a Chinese family traveling in Sweden claimed they were mistreated by police after they were removed from a hotel for attempting to sleep in the lobby. A video of the melodramatic family being removed was then exaggerated by the Chinese Embassy and media, and Chinese people began boycotting Swedish companies Ikea and H&M. [181] The Swedish TV station SVT aired a satirical segment about the incident on its comedy show, which further exacerbated the situation. Tens of thousands of Chinese internet users flooded the websites of the Swedish Embassy and segment host Jesper Rönndahl, as well as the TV station’s Facebook page. [182]After sixty years of destruction of traditional culture and its replacement with Communist Party culture, the CCP is able to coerce millions of Chinese people and turn them into a mass army. The CCP is able to use nationalism to control the public because it has suppressed information about the Party’s true history of corruption and killing, leaving the people ignorant of its crimes.
Cultural Warfare
The CCP has been peddling Party culture and its values under the banner of Chinese traditional culture and customs for many years. People all over the world have a strong interest in China’s long history and rich culture, yet their understanding is very limited. The CCP knows this well and takes full advantage of it. By adopting some of the superficial forms of traditional culture, the CCP has disguised itself as the guardian and true representative of Chinese culture, making it extremely difficult for people in other countries to see through the deceit.Financial Warfare
The CCP has begun promoting its own financial payment system and use of the renminbi through “economic assistance” and private enterprises, in an attempt to build a global infrastructure. It intends to use the renminbi to replace the US dollar’s dominance in international currency circulation. According to the CCP’s unrestricted financial warfare strategy, the regime can achieve its goals simply by printing massive amounts of money, thus destroying the financial system when necessary. CCP think tanks have advocated the weaponization of foreign exchange reserves.During the 1989 student democracy movement, the CCP ordered soldiers and police to disguise themselves as Beijing civilians and create riots so that the military could use them as an excuse for its mass killing, which it called “suppressing riots.” During the early years of the persecution campaign against Falun Gong, the CCP fabricated a “self-immolation” incident in Tiananmen Square to justify the ensuing escalation of the persecution. During Hong Kong’s Occupy Central With Love and Peace movement, the CCP transported people from Shenzhen to incite violence in Hong Kong, effectively forcing police action to escalate.
In the eyes of the CCP, murder and assassination are commonplace methods, and when the timing is right, the Party may well use any means — poisoning, assassination, explosions, the sabotage of power grids or transportation facilities, and so on — to create chaos and conflict in the West.
The core of unrestricted warfare is about mobilizing evil people to destroy mankind step by step. The CCP is highly skilled at tempting people to go against morality and their own conscience, and those who do so often end up as either passive in the face of the CCP’s abuses, or active participants. When it comes to influential figures in the political, economic, military, media, cultural, technological, educational, and other fields, the CCP will use any means to discover their weaknesses — whether vested interests or desires — and exploit them to make people willingly collaborate with the Party. When this doesn’t work, the CCP blackmails them into assisting the Party. In some cases, the CCP has even provided organs obtained by killing dissidents to buy off influential figures in need of a transplant.
4. The Communist ‘China Model’
The CCP’s nature means that it will always set itself against traditional culture, morality, and universal values. Today’s CCP is the world’s axis of evil and the enemy of humankind. The world must wake up and take action.China has a vast territory and the largest population of any country on earth. It has become the world’s second-largest economy and, from 2010, the second-largest military power. No tyrannical force in history has had such economic and military power. The Party has absorbed the most sinister and deformed elements of modern totalitarian regimes and ancient Chinese tactics, and therefore, it never plays by the rules. Its strategies are both deep and ruthless, often beyond the imagination and understanding of leaders and strategists in other countries. By hijacking 1.3 billion Chinese people, the CCP has presented a huge and greatly coveted market to the world, attracting foreign capital, business people, and politicians. It has them turn a blind eye to the CCP’s human rights abuses and evil, and in some cases, even gets them to cooperate with the CCP in its crimes.
The CCP has killed eighty million Chinese people. In recent times, it has committed countless crimes against Falun Gong practitioners, underground Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs, dissidents, and those at the lower end of society. Once the regime collapses, it will be brought to justice and punished for all its crimes. To avoid this fate, the CCP will not hesitate to commit more horrific crimes to protect itself.
The Chinese Communist Party is the communist specter’s main agent in the human realm. Fated for elimination, its existence has always been accompanied by a strong sense of crisis and fear. Driven by this sense of constant crisis, the CCP resorts to any means necessary at critical moments, taking extreme measures to keep itself going. It has built itself up in an attempt to replace the United States and dominate the world and is preparing for the final battle with the United States with determination and nonstop effort. At the same time, it has used a range of means to export the CCP’s model and the Communist Party’s ideology, poisoning the world.
If the orthodox morality that has helped humankind survive for thousands of years is ever truly destroyed, the result will be the destruction of the entire human race. Therefore, in addition to its military, economic, scientific, and technological endeavors, the CCP is also bent on imposing its ideology of atheism and warped views of good and evil on other countries.
5. Lessons Learned and the Way Out
a. The Policy of Appeasement: A Grave Mistake
Ambitious and eager to assert its global hegemony, the CCP poses a serious threat to the world. Sadly, to this day, many countries, governments, and political figures still wish to befriend the CCP, oblivious to the danger. The relationship is illustrated by a Chinese saying: “If you raise a tiger cub, eventually it’ll grow up to devour you.”Without the aid of the developed Western countries and the support of so many multinational corporations, high-tech giants, and large financial institutions, the CCP could not have developed from a weak economy with a regime on the verge of collapse to an indomitable axis of evil over the short span of just a few decades.
Pillsbury, the national security expert, has argued that the West all along has held unrealistic expectations of the CCP, such as believing that the PRC would inevitably become more democratic, that it longed for an American-style capitalist society, that it would inevitably integrate into the international social order, that US–China exchanges would bring about full cooperation, or that the hawkish elements in the CCP were weak, and so forth. In his 2015 book, he strongly urged the US government to quickly face reality and adopt counter-measures against the CCP, lest it allow the CCP to win. [183]
b. Why the West Got China Wrong
The West got China wrong for many reasons: the communist specter’s complex arrangements mentioned earlier, the duplicity and chameleon-like nature of the CCP, and the difficulty that free societies have in differentiating the CCP from China, among others. In addition, the West got China wrong because of the pursuit of short-term gains, whether by individuals, companies, or entire nations. This provided yet another opportunity for the CCP to exploit.The morally corrupt CCP targets gaps in the morality of people in free societies, people whose pursuit of short-term profits allows the CCP to infiltrate and corrupt the very foundations of these societies. Policies adopted by the United States regarding the CCP, are largely based on considerations of short-term gain instead of the most fundamental, long-term interests of America, such as the spirit upon which the country was founded.
Humankind’s glory and authority come from the divine and are determined by humankind’s moral level. The prosperity and strength bestowed on an ethnic group or nation also depend on its level of morality. Using ordinary means, humans are incapable of negating the arrangements made by the communist specter. Following this logic, where the West has gone wrong becomes clear: Whatever the human methods applied, ultimately they cannot succeed in overcoming the forces of evil.
Many governments, large companies, and business people may, for a period of time, ostensibly obtain benefits from the CCP in exchange for the sacrifice of their moral principles. But in the end, they’ll lose more than they gain. Such ill-gained, superficial benefits are all poisonous.
c. The Way Out
Today, China and the world are at a crossroads. For the Chinese people, the Chinese Communist Party, which owes countless debts of blood, cannot be expected to make any real reforms. China will be free only when the Party is consigned to history.For people around the world, China is known as the land of an ancient civilization characterized by courtesy and righteousness. Free of the Communist Party, China will once again be a normal member of the civilized world — a nation whose human and natural resources, diverse ancient traditions, and cultural heritage will be part of the wealth of humanity.
The seemingly indomitable Soviet Union dissolved overnight. Though the CCP is baring its fangs globally, its dissolution could occur just as rapidly once the world recognizes its evil nature and makes the righteous choice.
The rise of the CCP resulted mostly from moral corruption and from people’s being blinded by the pursuit of vested interests. To escape this fate, we need to summon our moral courage, revive traditional values, and firmly believe in the divine.
Simply depending on ordinary secular means will never be enough to defeat the CCP. The communist specter has greater power than humans, and this is the underlying cause of the CCP’s continuous expansion. However, evil can never rival the divine. As long as humans can stand by the divine and abide by divine will, they will be blessed and able to overcome the specter’s infernal arrangements.
The CCP is the enemy of all humanity, having established the bloodiest yet most powerful tyranny history has ever seen. All nations and peoples must resist its global ambitions if they are to secure their future and that of all civilization. The evil CCP is destined for elimination; to reject the CCP is to avoid sharing in its fate.
References
112. “Commentary Two: On the Beginnings of the Chinese Communist Party,” in Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party (New York: Broad Press Inc., 2004), http://www.ninecommentaries.com/english-2.121. Lim and Bergin, “Inside China’s Audacious.”
131. Bowe, “China’s Overseas,” 5–6.
142. Bowe, “China’s Overseas,” 10–12.
150. Bowe, “China’s Overseas,” 7–8.
161. Dorfman, “How Silicon Valley.”
