Tom Cotton’s ‘7 Things You Can’t Say About China’

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton is ready to explain how the Chinese regime is a threat to the United States, in his new book.

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

Mao Zedong, former chairman of Communist China, published his Little Red Book in 1964 to kick off that country’s Cultural Revolution. U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) 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 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) poses to the United States and the strategies that it is employing to replace the United States as the world’s premier superpower.

Cotton has been sounding the alarm on the Chinese regime since becoming Arkansas’s junior senator in 2015. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cotton advocated for a ban on travel from China to the United States. He was also the first national leader to claim that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. In response, the Chinese regime sanctioned him. Cotton has said he still considers this 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 that the United States’ elected leaders can’t or won’t say about the CCP but that he believes 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,” he writes in the prologue. “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.”

Why the Chinese Regime 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 Cotton is encountering those same linguistic slings and arrows from the Chinese regime and from both sides of the U.S. political aisle. The CCP’s tentacles of influence are nonpartisan. 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 that the CCP has been waging a multipronged war against U.S. culture, education, media, entertainment, technology, politics, and even U.S. citizens’ personal health.

“Without Mao, there would be no Chinese Communist Party,” Cotton 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.”

The Chinese Regime Is an Evil Empire

In Chapter 1, 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); and Falun Gong, a peaceful spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. He also discusses the slow-motion genocide in Tibet, the fast-moving genocide of the Uyghurs, and the oppression of Hong Kong.

“Shortly after taking power, [CCP leader Xi Jinping] ... accelerated Communist repression of the Uyghurs into a genocidal campaign,“ Cotton writes. “He instructed local authorities to show ‘absolutely no mercy,’ and the party started building concentration camps.”

According to Cotton, most sources estimate the number imprisoned in those camps to be 2 million, although some believe it could be closer to 3 million.

The Chinese Regime Is Preparing for War

In one chapter, the author notes that the Chinese regime has undertaken the biggest military buildup in history, increasing military spending by 1,000 percent. He also expounds on the CCP’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, its rising aggression with neighbors in the South and East China Seas, and why it can’t achieve its global ambitions without invading Taiwan.

The Chinese Regime 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 the Chinese regime’s subsidies, currency manipulation, and theft of foreign technology amount to “gangster economics.” These tactics have led to economic imperialism that has harmed countries worldwide, especially the United States. According to Cotton, the United States initially sought economic relations with the Chinese regime to increase Western influence over it, but this strategy boomeranged and instead strengthened the CCP’s influence on the West.

The Chinese Regime Has Infiltrated Our Society

The senator details how the CCP leverages greed, fear, and intimidation with its 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 “Kundun“ (Disney). The studios of both films succumbed to CCP bullying, and the CCP has held a boot on Hollywood’s neck ever since.

Cotton also documents how the Chinese regime has targeted the U.S. military-industrial complex using economic leverage, bribes, cyberhacks, and old-fashioned espionage. Chinese entities have even been allowed to purchase U.S. military academies such as the New York Military Academy, U.S. President Donald Trump’s alma mater.

Schools are another ripe target the CCP has sought. The Chinese regime has partnered with the College Board to indoctrinate U.S. high school students prepping for the SAT. Cotton 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 U.S. youth that the senator touches on include TikTok and fentanyl.

Comprised of seven easy-to-read chapters, the book offers a clear, concise argument for 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 the Chinese regime hinges on Taiwan. Cotton believes that if the United States 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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