Can We Use ‘Social Distancing’ to Defeat the Chinese Communist Party?

Victory ships being fitted out at the Calship yard, Wilmington, Calif., between April 27 and May 30, 1944. Public Domain

Commentary

If there’s one positive outcome from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus pandemic, it may be that the United States finally summons the political will to begin serious disengagement from Chinese communism.

Led by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the United States made a major blunder in the early 1970s by opening political and economic relations with the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Kissinger sold President Richard Nixon on two lies. Firstly, that the United States could play the PRC off against the Soviet Union. Secondly, that U.S.–PRC trade could somehow entice the CCP into abandoning its own raison d’etre—communism.

Now, under President Xi Jinping, the PRC is openly committed to the communist road and is in a formal economic, political, and military alliance with Russia—the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Kissinger was 100 percent wrong on both counts. Today, all of Kissinger’s grand ideas have turned to dust and the mighty United States stands on the brink of disaster.

When Nixon and Kissinger opened the doors to Beijing in the 1970s, the PRC was a backward rural country that could barely feed itself. The PRC had no significant military strength and was in no serious position to challenge the United States.

Now, thanks to 40 years of expanded U.S.–PRC trade, massive American investment, and technology transfer (much of it stolen), the PRC has the world’s second-largest economy, and, in partnership with its ally Russia, can challenge or surpass the United States in almost every military metric.

While Americans love the huge array of cheap PRC goods lining their department store shelves, they’re less enthused about the other side of the coin—the massive de-industrialization of their country and the huge loss of productive capacity and skilled workers.

During World War II, U.S. factories could produce an entire “Victory Ship” in 24 hours. This country had the industrial capacity, the technological know-how, and the skilled workforce to supply not just its own armed forces but those of Britain and the Soviet Union as well—not to mention to feed the displaced and starving millions of Europe.

Many security-conscious Americans have been aware for some time that the PRC produces much of the United States’ steel and holds the majority of rare earth mineral stocks, which are vitally important in modern military technology. Now, people are realizing that most of America’s drugs and medicines are manufactured in the PRC.

What will happen when China is finally strong enough to begin the shooting war it’s been planning for decades? Will American generals requisition the steel and minerals and medicines they need to fight from PRC-based companies?

And speaking of drugs, 67,000 Americans died of opiate overdoses in 2018—much of it attributed to the super-powerful fentanyl. That’s more people than the PRC-backed communists killed through the entire Vietnam War. It’s well known that the bulk of the fentanyl comes from China. Is it possible that the all-seeing CCP doesn’t know about this heinous trade? The PRC is already at war with the United States with every weapon it possesses short of guns and bombs. Trading with the enemy used to be called treason.

Common sense tells that the free market is by the far the most efficient way to build wealth at the local, national, and global levels. However, wealth is worth little if one can’t defend it. A great economy and poor national security are no match for a temporarily lower standard of living and a safe and secure nation. Free trade is a noble ideal, but it should never trump national security.

Right up to the outbreak of World War II, U.S. companies were trading with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. All through the Vietnam War, U.S. companies were trading with the Soviets, which then supplied the North Vietnamese military so they could kill more U.S. soldiers. Is a slightly cheaper battery charger or fishing rod worth putting your son’s life more at risk in the next war?

A few years ago, the U.S. government’s Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack estimated that if China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran detonated a single atomic weapon high in the atmosphere above the continental United States, the resulting EMP blast would destroy most of this country’s electrical infrastructure in seconds.

Most Americans are pretty sick of weeks of CCP virus lockdown. Imagine extending that to a whole year with no electric power. The EMP commission hypothesized that within 12 months, 90 percent of the current U.S. population would be dead through disease, starvation, and social breakdown. Solar radiation surges (sunspots), which are inevitable and regular, could achieve the same disastrous result.

And what would the Chinese and Russians do with a depopulated, disarmed, and chaotic America? What they have long dreamed of—invade.

That EMP threat could be thwarted for a few billion dollars spent “hardening” the U.S. electrical grid. This is a tiny fraction of the cost of combating the effects of the current CCP virus pandemic. The CCP has lulled America with cheap cellphones and underwear. The CCP is now costing this country trillions of dollars and maybe millions of lives. What a bargain.

And, by the way, is it any coincidence that Italy and Iran—two nations heavily tied to the PRC’s Belt and Road economic strategy—are among the worst affected by the CCP virus? The CCP is a criminal enterprise. It can’t be trusted to act honorably in any situation in which its interests are threatened. Clearly, the CCP lied about the extent of the Wuhan outbreak. Consequently, millions may unnecessarily die in this pandemic—but what’s a little more blood on their hands to the Chinese communists. And even now the CCP is poising itself to take economic and political advantage of the resulting global chaos.

Why would anyone want to deal with such dishonorable people?

The PRC and Russia are arming at breakneck speed. The United States hasn’t built a nuclear weapon since the beginning of the Clinton era. To his credit, President Donald Trump has been doing his best to increase defense spending and rebuild the U.S. nuclear deterrent. How will the CCP virus effect those plans? How does the United States stand up to China’s and Russia’s war plans with a shattered economy?

U.S. business makes billions trading with the PRC. U.S. taxpayers spend trillions defending this country from a PRC–Russian war machine that U.S. business helped to build.

How is that in any way rational?

Like quitting PRC heroin, going “cold turkey” from the CCP “economic opium” will bring some short-term pain. Prices for some consumer goods will rise, and some strategic commodities may be in short supply. However, I believe that, inspired by a clear commitment to defending U.S. sovereignty and putting the American worker first, the American people will rise to the occasion.

Temporarily higher prices will spark massive new investment into the U.S. economy. American enterprise and technology will lift U.S. productivity to even higher levels. High-quality U.S. made goods will soon fill American and foreign shelves. American workers’ wages and salaries will climb steadily higher.

And deprived of U.S. investment and stolen technology, what will happen to the PRC?

If the United States keeps starving its own industrial base to feed the CCP war machine, two eventualities are likely—neither of them pleasant.

A weakened and friendless United States will capitulate to Beijing and become an economic and political vassal of the PRC and Russia. Americans will become slaves of the world’s cruelest masters. Or the United States will make a brave and futile military stand (all alone) against the combined forces of Beijing and Moscow and likely go down to a crushing defeat. The few surviving Americans will become slaves of the world’s cruelest masters.

Alternatively, if the United States decouples from the CCP and works quickly to rebuild a badly weakened U.S. military, this country might yet stand a chance. If America’s leaders are courageous enough to stare down the PRC, the Chinese communists will come under huge internal pressure to reform or face mass revolt. American sanctions have emboldened the Iranian and Venezuelan peoples.

If this strategy is maintained, someday those two nations will be free.

To have any hope of a free China and a secure America, the CCP must be sanctioned to the point of genuine reform or total collapse. President Ronald Reagan sanctioned the Soviet Bloc into a major retreat. Had subsequent U.S. presidents kept up the pressure we wouldn’t be witnessing the rebirth of the Soviet Union as we are today.

Appeasement and engagement failed with Hitler and the Soviet Bloc. Only sanctions and disengagement have ever brought down a tyranny without having to resort to war.

Trump must do to the CCP what Reagan did to the Soviet communists—on steroids.

A free China is a real hope for the world. Imagine a free Chinese people liberated from the evil tyranny of the CCP. Think of all that energy, intelligence, and culture working for good, rather than harnessed to evil. A free China, working as a responsible member of the international community, would be boon to every nation.

Already U.S. companies are disinvesting from the PRC. Trump needs to speed that process along. He has the legal authority to do so. Major tariffs should be placed on Chinese products or they should be banned altogether. The PRC produces many of the products that Americans buy—from peeled garlic to Christmas decorations made with forced prison labor. Many of these prisoners aren’t even criminals—they’re Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, Muslims, and Buddhists, or political dissidents. This is illegal under current U.S. law. Those laws should be strictly enforced. This process is fortunately already underway.

Every CCP spy working in this country should be prosecuted and, if convicted, jailed or expelled. That would mean tens of thousands fewer enemy agents working in U.S. laboratories, businesses, and universities.

There should be one exception to this. Any CCP agent willing to expose what he or she knows about the communist networks in this country should be allowed to stay here and be placed under government protection. Any reports of retaliation against the informant’s family in the PRC should be met with further expulsions and sanctions.

The Justice Department should announce a one-month “foreign agent amnesty.” After that, any foreign spy still in the country should be subject to vigorous prosecution. CCP networks would crumble under that kind of pressure.

All PRC student visas should be canceled. The CCP’s Confucius Institutes, which are now established in many major universities, should be immediately closed down.

All land, technology, or business purchases by PRC nationals and businesses should be halted. All existing businesses found cooperating in any way with the PRC regime or People’s Liberation Army should be forfeited. The Italian Mafia was severely damaged through the extensive cultivation of informants and the witness protection program, vigorous prosecution, and long jail sentences. The CCP Mafia networks operating in this country should be dealt with the same way.

All further immigration from the PRC (except for carefully vetted refugees or some family reunifications) should be immediately halted. Any PRC-born American citizen found to be cooperating with the CCP or its representatives in any way should be stripped of his or her citizenship and deported or jailed.

To defeat the CCP virus, we must quarantine all who are infected. To defeat the CCP, we must apply the same strategy.

That’s my plan to start solving the CCP problem. I welcome any better ideas.

Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics. He is best known for his book “Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress” and his similarly themed documentary film “Enemies Within.” His soon-to-be-published book is “White House Reds: Communists, Socialists & Security Risks Running for U.S. President, 2020.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.