Tom Cotton’s ‘Seven Things You Can’t Say About China’

"Seven Things You Can't Say About China" by Sen. Tom Cotton.

Former Communist China Chairman Mao Zedong published his Little Red Book in 1964 to kickoff that country’s Cultural Revolution. U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton published his own little red book in February, “Seven Things You Can’t Say About China.”

Mao’s book is full of propaganda espousing the virtues of Communism. Sen. Cotton’s book is a provocative exposé about the threat Communist China poses to the United States and the strategies they are employing to replace America as the world’s premier superpower.

A Republican from Arkansas, Sen. Cotton has been sounding the alarm on China since becoming Arkansas’s junior senator in 2015. During the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, Sen. Cotton advocated for a ban on travel from China into the United States. He was also the first national leader to claim the virus came from the a lab in Wuhan. In response, China sanctioned him, which Cotton says he still wears as a badge of honor.

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in Washington, on Jan. 14, 2025. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

In his blunt yet brilliant book, the author writes about seven things America’s elected leaders can’t or won’t say about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but he believes that citizens need to know.

“This book lays out the real and pressing threat from Chinese Communists based on established facts and the inherent logic of events; it’s not partisan or a ‘yellow peril’ screed. And let me stress that Chinese communism is the threat, not the ancient Chinese civilization or the Chinese people, the first and worst victims of Chinese communism,” he writes in the prologue.

Why China Is a Threat

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan was roundly criticized for referring to the USSR as “an evil empire.” Fast forward to today and the author has encountered those same linguistic slings and arrows from China and both sides of the U.S. political aisle. China’s tentacles of influence are non-partisan, as Sen. Cotton shows how both Democrats and Republicans have shown a willingness to shill for the Communist state.

The senator makes a very good case in his book how the CCP has been waging a multi-prong war against American culture, education, media, entertainment, technology, political system, and even Americans’ personal health.

“Without Mao, there would be no Chinese Communist Party,” he writes. “And just as his body and portrait remain in the heart of the capital, so his memory and murderous ideology remain at the heart of the party.”

China Is an Evil Empire

In Chapter 1, Sen. Cotton shares the story of how the Chinese Communists came to power in 1949 and how they still kill and oppress their own people in the current day. The oppressed include the world’s largest Christian community, which the senator numbers at 70 million to 100 million (nearly as large as the CCP); Falun Gong, a peaceful spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition; the slow-motion genocide in Tibet; the fast-forward genocide of the Uyghurs, and the oppression of Hong Kong.

“Shortly after taking power, Xi (the current Chinese [regime ruler]) accelerated Communist repression of the Uyghurs into a genocidal campaign. He instructed local authorities to show ‘absolutely no mercy,’ and the party started building concentration camps,” notes the author. He adds that most sources estimate the number imprisoned in those camps to be two million, though some believe it could be closer to three million.

China Is Preparing for War

In one chapter, the author points to China undertaking the biggest military build-up in history, increasing military spending by 1,000 percent. He also expounds on China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, rising aggression with neighbors in the South and East China Seas, and why he says the Communist Chinese can’t achieve their global ambitions without invading Taiwan.

China Is Waging Economic World War

“The United States foolishly abetted China’s rise, in effect paying for many of those Chinese missiles, ships, aircraft, and nuclear weapons,” the senator states in Chapter 3. He describes how granting China permanent most-favored-nation status in 2000 and allowing it to join the World Trade Organization the next year was a colossal foreign policy blunder that launched an economic world war.

The author notes how China’s subsidies, currency manipulation, and stealing of foreign technology amounts to “gangster economics.” It’s led to economic imperialism that has harmed countries worldwide, especially America.  Sen. Cotton notes that America initially sought economic relations with China to increase Western influence over them, but it boomeranged instead and increased China’s influence on us.

China Has Infiltrated Our Society

The senator details how the CCP leverage greed, fear and intimidation with their targeted attacks. He writes that the communists effectively conquered Hollywood in 1997 by attacking two films critical of Chinese genocide and supportive of the Dalai Lama, “Seven Years in Tibet” (Sony Pictures) and Martin Scorsese’s directed “Kundun” (Disney). The studios of both films succumbed to Chinese bullying, and China has held a boot on Hollywood’s neck ever since.

Sen. Cotton also documents how China has targeted our military-industrial complex using economic leverage, bribes, cyber hacks and old-fashioned espionage. Chinese entities have even been allowed to purchase American military academies such as the New York Military Academy, President Trump’s alma mater.

Schools are another ripe target China has sought. China has partnered with the College Board to indoctrinate America’s high school students prepping for the SAT. The author shares how one Chinese firm spent half a billion dollars to buy a network of private schools in California. In another example, he cites a Chinese organization that sent 1,650 Chinese teachers to participate in a guest-teacher program between 2007 and 2020. Other topics involving American youth the senator touches on include Tik-Tok and fentanyl.

Comprised of seven easy-to-read chapters, the book offers a clear, concise argument why Communist China should be viewed not as a competitor, but as this century’s evil empire. It also explains why the ongoing global struggle between the United States and China hinges on Taiwan. Sen. Cotton believes that if America doesn’t defend Taiwan, it will set off a catastrophic chain of events.

“The only winning strategy to preserve American primacy is to deter Chinese aggression in the first place,” the author concludes.

’Seven Things You Can’t Say About China’ By Sen. Tom Cotton Broadside Books, Feb. 18, 2025 Hardcover: 208 pages

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