Mike Pompeo Slams Hollywood for Self-Censoring Movies to Appease Chinese Censors
3:04
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed Hollywood studios for self-censoring their movies to please China in a speech he gave Thursday at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California.
Sec. Pompeo is the second Trump administration official to take the entertainment industry to task for its sycophantic relationship to China’s Communist dictatorship. Last week, Attorney General Bill Barr gave Hollywood studios and celebrities a verbal lashing for promoting social justice while remaining silent about China’s numerous human rights abuses.
U.S. Department of State / Facebook
On Thursday, Sec. Pompeo brought up Hollywood in a speech focused on the threat that China poses to freedom around the world and the Trump administration’s hardline approach to Beijing’s aggressions. Studios including the Walt Disney Co. and the ViacomCBS-owned Paramount have censored their own movies by removing references to Taiwan and Tibet in the hopes of securing distribution in mainland China.
Live now! Watch @SecPompeo deliver a speech on China at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. https://t.co/AION0lbom2— Department of State (@StateDept) July 23, 2020
“Hollywood – the epicenter of American creative freedom, and self-appointed arbiters of social justice – self-censors even the most mildly unfavorable reference to China,” Sec. Pompeo said.
And there’s ample evidence of censorship or Hollywood studios using major motion pictures to lionize China. Breitbart News’ John Nolte notes:
The big, disaster epic 2012 portrayed the Chinese government as humanity’s literal saviors.Alfonso Cuaron laid some love on the Chinese in Gravity by inventing a space station they do not have.While the book World War Z depicted the zombie plague as having begun at the hands of an incompetent and corrupt Chinese government, the movie moved the origin story to North Korea.Transformers 2 set much of its actions in the gleaming, modern, and pristine city of Shanghai — no squalor there!The upcoming Top Gun: Maverick is so concerned with offending its Chinese masters, Tom Cruise’s iconic flight jacket was stripped of its Japanese and Taiwanese flags.
He also criticized corporations including Marriott, American, Delta, and United Airlines for removing references to Taiwan from their sites in order to please Beijing.
“And how was this corporate fealty…its flattery…rewarded? As Attorney General Barr said in his speech last week, ‘The ultimate ambition of China’s rulers isn’t to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States.'”
Sec. Pompeo concluded with a warning about complacency toward China.
“If we don’t act now, ultimately, the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order free societies have built,” he said. “If we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the CCP, whose actions are the primary challenge to the free world.”
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com
21 May 20204,498
3:25
Sen. Ted Cruz is laying out a
zero-tolerance policy for Hollywood studios that willingly censor their movies
to please Chinese Communist officials, proposing new legislation that will
block all federal assistance to the studios behind those film productions.
The senator
called China “the single most dangerous geopolitical threat” in the world in a
speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday.
Chinese
officials want “to shape what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think,” Cruz
said. Because Hollywood studios voluntarily change characters and plot points
in order to gain access to the Chinese market, Chinese officials “control not
just what audiences see in China but also what Americans see.”
In a bill he
introduced Thursday, Sen. Cruz (R-Texas) is calling for Congress to cut
off Hollywood studios from the federal assistance they receive if those studios
censor their films for screening in China.
The senator
had previously called for the
elimination of Pentagon assistance to studios that cooperate with Chinese censors.
But the version of the SCRIPT Act that he unveiled Thursday goes even further
by suspending all federal assistance. Movie productions often request access to
federal property and military equipment for filming purposes.
The SCRIPT
Act — Stopping Censorship, Restoring Integrity, Protecting Talkies Act — will
almost certainly face opposition from the major Hollywood studios, whose
blockbuster movies often depend on the Chinese
market to make money.
Red Dawn (FilmDistrict,
Contrafilm, FilmNation Entertainment, 2012)
Sen. Cruz
noted a few recent examples of Hollywood’s voluntary self-censorship, including
Paramount’s upcoming Top
Gun: Maverick, which eliminated the Taiwanese and Japanese flags
from Tom Cruise’s iconic flight jacket . The sequel is a co-production
with China’s Tencent Pictures.
“What message
does it send that Maverick, an American icon, is apparently afraid of the
Chinese communists? That’s ridiculous,” Cruz said.
The
Disney-owned 20th Century removed all references to Freddie Mercury’s sexuality
in Bohemian Rhapsody in
order to gain access to Chinese cinemas. Disney also cast Scottish actress
Tilda Swinton in a role that was originally meant to be a Tibetan monk in
Marvel’s Doctor Strange.
Sandra Bullock in Gravity (Warner
Bros. Picture, 2013)
Sen. Cruz
said that he wants the SCRIPT Act to serve as a “wake up call for Hollywood.”
“Studios would
be forced to choose between the assistance from the federal government or the
money that they want from China,” he said.
Sen. Cruz
introduced two other bills on Thursday that are intended to curb Chinese
influence in the U.S.
The Blocking
Evasive Attempts to Manipulate Signals Act — or BEAMS Act — would prevent China
from exploiting FCC loopholes to broadcast Communist party propaganda to
Americans from radio stations in Mexico or Canada.
The law would
also apply to partially state-owned stations, such as Phoenix Television.
The Ending
Chinese Medical Censorship and Cover Ups Act would sanction Chinese officials
involved in the ongoing suppression of medical experts, journalists, and
political dissidents.
Biden Sold Out America to
China While Working for Hollywood
Biden: "There is no
question that you've got the right guy with the right influence."
May 8, 2020
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the
Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the
radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Outside the JW Marriot in Los Angeles, Rev. Eddie Perez Romero was
being handcuffed by the LAPD.
Rev. Romero was holding up a “Free China” sign outside a Chinese
Ministry of Commerce conference. Inside was the LAPD's boss Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa, along with Governor Jerry Brown, and Vice President Joe Biden,
who were palling around with China’s future dictator, Xi Jinping.
“My hope is that Vice President Joseph Biden, Governor Jerry Brown
and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will rise above any pandering spirit, but as
true statesmen, intentionally blur the artificial line between the economy and
human rights,” Rev. Romero said.
Biden though had a very different agenda on his mind.
It was 2012 and Joe was thinking about his future. A year earlier
his best friend, Senator Chris Dodd, had left the Senate to run the MPAA. The
MPAA was Hollywood's trade association and the movie industry, reading its own
writing on the wall, wanted into China, and was willing to sell its soul to
make a deal.
Biden wanted Hollywood cash for a future presidential campaign.
Dodd had been one of the sleaziest figures in the Senate, even by
the low standards of the era, eager to do favors for any well-heeled industry
from finance to entertainment. His friendship with Biden gave him a direct
pipeline into the Obama administration. And Dodd gave Biden a pipeline into
Hollywood.
Two years later, in 2014, Biden began an address to the MPAA by
joking, "there have been the rumors all those years when Chris and I
served in the Senate that although I was chairman, he controlled me."
"We've just given new life to those rumors," he
continued, describing how he had left a meeting with Obama and Chancellor
Merkel, telling Obama that he had to address the MPAA.
"There is no question that you've got the right guy with the
right influence," Biden concluded.
And that’s exactly what Biden had been proving in Los Angeles as
he surrounded Xi with Hollywood tycoons, especially Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major
donor to his 2020 campaign, and cut a deal with the Chinese thug to increase
the quota of Hollywood movies allowed in by the Chinese Communist regime.
"Some of you were there. Literally when by end of that lunch
we had a handshake," Biden boasted to the MPAA. “The next year the number
of blockbuster foreign films showing in China has increased by over half and
our share of the box office revenue has doubled -- or your share of the box
office revenue has doubled.”
“Keep me in mind for Chris' assistant later,” he joked.
Biden understandably lost track of the difference between “your
share” and “our share” because Hollywood has been a reliable fundraising
machine for Biden. What was good for Hollywood was also good for Biden.
Katzenberg got Oriental Dream Works, a $330-million joint venture with the PRC,
and eventually hosted Biden's first Southern California fundraiser which
brought in $700K.
2012 was a big year for the adulterous nuptials of Hollywood and
the Chinese Communist Party.
A few months after the meeting between Biden and Xi, China’s Wanda
Group bought AMC Theaters for $2.6 billion. The Wanda Group, run by a
billionaire Communist oligarch with close ties to regime officials, is working
on a Communist theme park, and its investors allegedly include Xi’s sister. Beyond
just owning the theaters, Wanda owns the Legendary Group which has a hand in a
long list of movies from Spike Lee's BlacKKKlansman, to Pokemon, along with the
King Kong and Jurassic Park sequels.
The only reason Hollywood movies can play in China is because the
Communist leadership directly profits from them and controls what goes into
them, either directly through ownership, or by forcing the industry to submit
scripts for the approval of its Communist censors. HUAC would be superfluous
today. The big studios who make up the MPAA are all working for the Communists.
And they’re proud of it.
That’s why a Tibetan character vanished from Doctor Strange
(Disney has been the worst offender when it comes to appeasing the Communist
leadership), why Taiwanese and Japanese flag patches vanished from Tom Cruise’s
jacket in the Top Gun sequel (the movie was backed by Tencent, the PRC social
media monopoly whose social media controls allow
the regime to censor dissent and which has its paws on Wonder Woman, Venom and
many other blockbusters), and why World War Z erased references to China
covering up the origin of the zombie outbreak. That act of censorship now
appears prophetic.
Biden’s brokering of the relationship between Hollywood and the
Communist elite was more than financial, it was also cultural. Hollywood traded
access for control, not just over what Chinese people saw, but what Americans
were likely to see. Biden’s donors got richer and American movies were reduced
to a bunch of CG cartoons with limited dialogue that had to win Communist
approval.
And it wasn’t just Hollywood.
In 2013, a year after the Xi event at the Marriot, Joe and Hunter
Biden flew on Air Force Two to China. BHR Partners was founded that year and
included Hunter Biden as a board member.
Underneath all the rhetoric about the ennobling virtues of globalism was some
very parochial and familial profiteering.
The big Chinese partner in the BHR arrangement was Harvest Fund Management which,
coincidentally enough, in 2012 was targeting Hollywood with an
$800 million investment fund. That same year, you could find Bruno Wu, who had
been working with Harvest, and Chris Dodd, along with Harvey Weinstein, playing
roles at the Asian Film Summit in Toronto. And the money didn’t just go one
way.
The Delaware Board of Trade was incorporated in 2013. Despite its
name, the DBOT was not a government agency, but a penny stock startup which
received a $3 million loan from New Castle County.
New Castle County had approved the issue of $15 million in revenue bonds to
fund the DBOT "stock exchange" by touting the "globally
recognized leaders in the financial services industry" running it. DBOT’s
founders included people with experience in stock exchanges and financial
services, and Dennis Toner, who was described as a "top aide to Vice
President Joe Biden."
Toner, Biden's deputy chief of staff, is in the news for denying
that Tara Reade ever told him anything.
Reade’s decision to tell Toner and Ted Kaufman was a pretty poor
one. Both are longtime Biden men and considered as close to the boss as family.
And they’ve reaped the benefits of that closeness.
Emperor Caligula appointed his horse to the Roman Senate. After
Obama won, Ted Kaufman was temporarily appointed to the Senate. If there was
anything odd about appointing a Biden advisor to sit in the Senate, it became
odder when Senator Kaufman delivered the opening statement in favor of Toner’s appointment as Post Office Governor, by
vouching for his “loyalty” working for Joe Biden.
Reade might as well have taken her complaint to Biden, as to Toner
and Kaufman.
The current New Castle County exec has since called DBOT’s
founders criminals and threatened to sue after the company was disposed of as a
"distressed asset" in exchange for shares of Ideanomics. Ideanomics
is a Chinese crypto company trading as a penny stock and the software that
served as collateral for the loan has been described as worthless. The chairman
of Ideanomics is Wu.
The manager of DBOT-I LLC was listed as John Hynansky. The car
dealer is a Biden pal with extensive Ukrainian ties who had lent Biden’s shady
brother half a million dollars and
had received $20 million in
government loans to start a Porsche luxury car dealership in
the Ukraine.
Biden’s vaunted foreign policy expertise has consisted of
brokering deals between family members, donors, and foreign interests. These
deals haven’t been good for America, but they’ve worked out very well for
members of his crooked family, as well as assorted donors, camp followers, and
local boys.
But his biggest deal was helping broker the Chinese takeover of
the American entertainment industry.
Xi’s visit to Los Angeles hit on all the right cultural notes. He
schmoozed Hollywood bigwigs and their errand boys, like Dodd and Biden,
he watched a Lakers game, and cheered
Obama’s 100,000 Strong China initiative
to have a hundred thousand American students study in the Communist
dictatorship.
"I can say with confidence my visit has been a full
success," Xi declared.
In China, culture serves the agenda of the Communist government.
Unlike the Russians, who struggled vainly to stem the impact of American culture,
their Chinese counterparts decided to control it at the source. Biden was a key
figure in negotiating the terms on which the PRC would control Hollywood.
In 1962, the Manchurian Candidate depicted an effort by Communists
in China, Russia, and elsewhere to kidnap and brainwash American soldiers. The
modern remake replaced the Communists with a corporation and the Chinese doctor
with a South African geneticist. China could not be offended.
While Biden, Katzenberg, and Xi were partying at the Marriot, human
rights protesters were calling for freedom, and being arrested by the henchmen
of a one-party Democrat city and state for their trouble.
Even while Biden was falsely claiming that the Hollywood sellout
would improve human rights in China, the rise of China was already violating
human rights in America. Now, as Chinese drones fly over American cities,
police stalk empty streets, social media monopolies monitor every single phone,
and Democrat officials dismiss the Bill of Rights while locking up millions of
people, our rights are gone.
And Joe Biden is the Manchurian Candidate who long ago sold out
the country he now seeks to rule.
JUST FOLLOW THE DIRTY RED
CHINA MONEY RIGHT INTO THEIR GREEDY TRAITORS’ POCKETS.
"The Chinese Communist Party's vision for
the future is global domination," Cruz said. "Unfortunately, Joe
Biden isn't even aware that a battle is waging. After decades in Washington, he
has dismissed China over and over again and has allowed his family to make
money off their tyranny and deception. The United States can prevail in this
contest of nations so long as we have a president — like President Trump
— who is willing to stand up to China and hold them accountable."
Ted Cruz Describes Joe
Biden's 'Sophisticated Corruption'
Cortney O'Brien
"Remember simpler
times when corruption was just $10,000 in a paper bag handed secretly under a
table in a smoky bar in Washington?" Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reminisced on
Sunday.
"Corruption sadly
has gotten much more sophisticated in Washington," Cruz continued in his
conversation with Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. "With
Joe Biden there is just a lot of questions about his family enriching
themselves in order to get policy decisions from Joe Biden."
A lot of this year's
impeachment trial focused on Hunter Biden and his conduct in Ukraine, where he
sat on the board of a corrupt gas company. They paid him $1 million a year.
"I don't know about
you but I've never had a Ukrainian gas company call me up and say, 'Hey come
serve on our board of directors,'" Cruz said. "That's kind of out
there."
Which is strange, Cruz
noted, because Hunter didn't speak Ukrainian and the only thing he probably
knows about gas is that he routinely filled up the gas tank in his car. They
only cared who his daddy was.
Cruz then repeated
President Trump's claim that Hunter got greedy and asked for $1.5 billion from
China when he accompanied his dad on a trip to Beijing in 2013. According to
Trump and others, Hunter negotiated a deal to create a joint-investment fund
between his company, Rosemont Seneca, and a Chinese state-run bank. Wanting
influence with the vice president, they reportedly gave him the money.
President Trump:
"China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened
in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine. So, I would say
that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an
investigation into the Bidens."
"They've gotten
sophisticated in this shakedown," Cruz said of the Bidens.
The senator alleged that
Biden's weak position on China has tainted his foreign policy agenda. Murtaugh
asked Cruz to expand on Biden's history of siding with China and dismissing the
CCP as a threat on the 2020 campaign trail, all of which has earned him the
nickname, "Beijing Biden."
"The Chinese
Communist Party's vision for the future is global domination," Cruz said.
"Unfortunately, Joe Biden isn't even aware that a battle is waging. After
decades in Washington, he has dismissed China over and over again and has
allowed his family to make money off their tyranny and deception. The United
States can prevail in this contest of nations so long as we have a president —
like President Trump — who is willing to stand up to China and hold them
accountable."
Biden also accused
President Trump of being "racist" and "xenophobic" when he
banned travel to and from China in January when we first learned of the
coronavirus. The former VP would backtrack on those remarks and eventually come
to find that Trump was right. It was one of Biden's signature flip flops.
"In what universe is
Joe Biden going to be able to do stand up with strength, with fortitude, and
combat China?" Cruz wondered.
Hong Kong Police Fire Tear Gas, Water Cannon at
Protesters
24 May 2020108
HONG
KONG (AP) — Hong Kong police fired tear gas and a water cannon at protesters in
a popular shopping district Sunday, as thousands took to the streets to march
against China’s move to impose national security legislation on the city.
Pro-democracy
supporters have sharply criticized a proposal, set to be approved by China’s
rubber-stamp parliament this week, that would ban secessionist and subversive
activity, as well as foreign interference, in the semi-autonomous Chinese
territory.
The
pro-democracy camp says the proposal goes against the “one country, two
systems” framework that promises Hong Kong freedoms not found in mainland
China.
Crowds
of demonstrators dressed in black gathered in the Causeway Bay district on
Sunday, chanting slogans such as “Stand with Hong Kong,” “Liberate Hong Kong”
and “Revolution of our times.”
The
protest was a continuation of a monthslong pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong
that began last year and has at times descended into violence between police
and protesters.
Police
raised blue flags, warning protesters to disperse, before firing multiple
rounds of tear gas. They later fired a water cannon at the demonstrators.
At
least 180 people were arrested, mostly on charges of unlawful assembly, police
said.
They
also said that some of the protesters threw bricks and splashed unidentified
liquid at officers, injuring at least four members of the police media liaison
team. They warned that such behavior is against the law and that police would
pursue the matter.
Earlier
in the afternoon, prominent activist Tam Tak-chi was arrested during the
protest for what police said was unauthorized assembly. Tam said he was giving
a “health talk” and was exempt from social-distancing measures that prohibit
gatherings of more than eight people.
The
bill that triggered Sunday’s rally was submitted at the opening of China’s
national legislative session on Friday. It would bypass Hong Kong’s legislature
and could allow mainland agencies to be set up in the city, sparking concern
that Chinese agents could arbitrarily arrest people for activities deemed to be
pro-democracy.
Speaking
at an annual news conference during the legislative session, Chinese Foreign
Minister Wang Yi said Sunday that Hong Kong affairs were an internal matter for
China, and that “no external interference will be tolerated.”
“Excessive
unlawful foreign meddling in Hong Kong affairs has placed China’s national
security in serious jeopardy,” Wang said, adding that the proposed legislation
“does not affect the high degree of autonomy in Hong Kong.”
“It
does not affect the rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents. And it
does not affect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors in
Hong Kong,” he said.
U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called the proposal “a death knell for the high
degree of autonomy” that Beijing promised the former British colony when it was
returned to China in 1997.
Chris
Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong prior to its handover to China,
lamented what he called “a new Chinese dictatorship.”
“I
think the Hong Kong people have been betrayed by China, which has proved once
again that you can’t trust it further than you can throw it,” Patten said in an
interview with The Times of London.
Patten
is leading a coalition of at least 204 international lawmakers and policymakers
who are decrying the proposed legislation. In a statement, the coalition called
it a “flagrant breach” of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, a 1984 treaty
that promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy even after the handover of Hong
Kong to China in 1997.
President
Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said it appeared that
China was violating the 1984 treaty.
“And
I can’t see how Hong Kong remains the Asian financial center if the Chinese
Communist Party goes through and implements this national security law and
takes over Hong Kong,” O’Brien said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“That
would be a tragedy for the people of Hong Kong, but it will also be very bad
for China,” he said.
Bernard
Chan, a top-level Hong Kong politician and delegate to the National People’s
Congress in Beijing, defended the national security legislation pushed by
China, saying it was written into Hong Kong’s Basic Law — the city’s
mini-constitution — but never enacted.
Chan
expressed concern that Hong Kong would inevitably face economic hardship given
trade frictions between the U.S. and China.
“I
think we are definitely the collateral damage being dragged into this thing.
But then, I don’t think there’s any alternatives,” he said.
“But
with or without this law, honestly, the U.S. and China are always going to be
continuing this loggerhead for quite some time to come,” Chan said. “China will
remain as a threat to the U.S. in terms of the … world economic dominance.”
___
Associated Press
journalist Dake Kang in Beijing contributed to this report.
U.S.
Sen. Josh Hawley Challenges Nike, NBA: ‘Will You Pledge You Are Slave Free?’
21 Jul 202014
2:57
U.S.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R, MO) took to Twitter on Tuesday to challenge Nike and its
business partner, the NBA, to end its association with the companies that use
Chinese slave labor to manufacture their products.
On Tuesday, Sen. Hawley tweeted out
a challenge to both the NBA and Nike to pledge that they are “#slavefree.”
The Senator is urging corporate
leaders and high-profile athletes including LeBron James to eliminate the
products that they endorse that are made with slave labor:
Executives
build woke, progressive brands for US consumers, but happily outsource labor to
Chinese concentration camps
Sen.
Hawley is calling on American businesses making products overseas to pledge
they are #SlaveFree – that they DO NOT and WILL
NOT rely on forced slave labor pic.twitter.com/DKAwuHTzXy
Hawley was spurred to his questions
by the many reports that Nike and the NBA use Chinese slave labor to produce
their shoes, jerseys, and other products that they earn billions from by
selling to American sports fans and athletes.
Only
months ago, for instance, the Washington Post reported that Nike shoes are made in
factories in Qingdao, China, where Chinese authorities imprison its ethnic
Muslim Uyghur and force them to work in the factories that make Nike products.
Last year, activists also revealed a
shocking video that showed hundreds of young men in prison uniforms, bound and
blindfolded, and sitting cross-legged on the ground near a railroad depot as
armed guards in black watched over them.
Analysis of the video lends credence
to its veracity and finds that the video was recorded in mid-August of last
year near the factory sector of Xinjiang, China.
4 days ago a video showing 3-400 detainees
handcuffed & blindfolded at a train station in Xinjiang was uploaded to
YouTube (https://t.co/GpEaZ7YkIK)
In this thread I'll share how I've verified that this video was filmed at 库尔勒西站 (41.8202, 86.0176) on or around August 18th. pic.twitter.com/hr5xd8nahM
In this thread I'll share how I've verified that this video was filmed at 库尔勒西站 (41.8202, 86.0176) on or around August 18th. pic.twitter.com/hr5xd8nahM
It
has been reported that many of the prisoners in this region are comprised of
China’s Uyghur ethnic minority. The use of Uyghurs as a forced labor force was
recently chronicled in an extensive report by the Australian Strategic
Policy Institute (ASPI).
The
reports says that between 2017 and 2019, the Chinese
government relocated a minimum 80,000 Uighurs from Xinjiang in western China to
factories across the country where they work “under conditions that strongly
suggest forced labor.” The government is reportedly using the slave labor for
manufacturing items ordered by some 83 international companies making
everything from footwear to electronics.
“The Chinese government has
facilitated the mass transfer of Uighur and other ethnic minority citizens from
the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country,” the ASPI
report revealed. “Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labor, Uighurs
are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 83
well-known global brands in the technology, clothing, and automotive sectors,
including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony, and Volkswagen.”
In the end, Sen. Hawley wants to
know if Nike and the NBA have stopped using this slave labor to make their
products.
Follow
Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.
Pinkerton:
Josh Hawley Explains How to Take on China and Save America
23 May 2020213
9:33
On May 20, speaking
from the Senate floor, Josh Hawley, the youngest member of the chamber, laid
out his plan for fixing international trade, taking on the People’s Republic of
China, and thereby, too, saving America.
In so doing, Hawley, populist firebrand that he is, showed that
he was willing to overturn the stale orthodoxies that have mildewed our economy
and undermined our security.
In his speech, Hawley
laid out the core problem: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has taken
advantage of the flaws built into the current international economic system,
embodied in the World Trade Organization (WTO), that agglomeration of unelected
globalcrats. As Hawley put
it, “We must recognize that the economic system designed by Western policy
makers at the end of the Cold War does not serve our purposes in this new era.” He added, “And we should admit
that multiple of its founding premises were in error.”
Those founding premises, Hawley
continued, trace back to the save-the-world utopianism of our 28th president,
Woodrow Wilson. Having
entered World War One in 1917, Wilson had some strange ideas; for one thing, it
would be “a war to end all war,” and, he added, we must strive for “peace
without victory.” Yes, such concepts might seem a bit, well, unrealistic; you
know, like the musings of an ivory-tower professor. In fact, Wilson had been a
professor and subsequently, in fact, he held presidency of Princeton University
before winning the White House. So
maybe now we can see the origins of his vaulting but vacuous phrasemaking.
Indeed, without a doubt, Wilson was
a great talker; he wove webs of words and theories that have bewitched many
politicians since, inspiring them to be wannabe Wilsonians.
For instance, there was George W.
Bush, who said he heard “a
calling from beyond the stars,” summoning America to wars of choice, aimed at
“ending tyranny in our world.” Well,
we know how that worked out.
As Hawley said, “During the past two
decades, as we fought war after war in the Middle East, the Chinese government
systematically built its military on the backs of our middle class.” Exactly. While we were liberating Fallujah for
the third or fourth time, the Chinese were hollowing out our economy.
Of course, Bush wasn’t our only
warlike president in the past two decades; we also had Bill Clinton and Barack
Obama, both of whom launched foreign interventions as well, even as they were
welcoming Chinese products and influence into the U.S. Indeed, as an aside, one wonders
what Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, thinks of all this: Has he learned the
lesson of Iraq and other quagmires? Has
he rethought trade with China? Those
are certainly good questions to be answered during the remainder of the 2020
campaign season.
Okay, back to Hawley. Having raised serious questions about
the status quo, he offered three specific answers:
First, we should withdraw from the World Trade Organization. As Hawley put it, the WTO was
built on a false promise: the idea that the nations of the world would converge
around a fair and non-manipulated trading system; as the Missourian put it,
“they wanted a single liberal market to support a single, liberal international
order that would bring peace in our time.” Yet in the decades of the WTO’s
existence, the countries of the world haven’t come together on much of
anything—except, perhaps, to snooker Uncle Sucker.
And we might pause to note Hawley’s
slyly ironic use of the words, “peace in our time.” That’s an allusion to the
catastrophically mistaken statement of British prime minister Neville
Chamberlain; back in 1938, Chamberlain made a wrongheaded deal with Adolf
Hitler, which he said would bring “peace in our
time.” Wrong!
Yes, Hawley is saying, the stakes
today are potentially that high; we can’t stay in an organization that has “not
been kind to America.” He
added, “The WTO’s dispute resolution process has systemically disfavored the
United States”—and favored China.
Second, Hawley says that having left the WTO, the U.S. should
negotiate new trade deals on a more reciprocal and bilateral basis; that is,
the U.S. should make a trade deal with, say, the United Kingdom—and then on to
another deal with the next potential trading partner. As Hawley explained, “We must
replace an empire of lawyers with a confederation of truly mutual trade.”
Indeed, Hawley argues that a new
focus on win-win trade deals—as freely determined by the two countries actually
involved in the deal, as opposed supranational WTO-crats—deals that would offer
a new opportunity for the U.S. to put together better alliances, based on
mutually beneficial economic and strategic relationships:
We benefit if countries that share
our opposition to Chinese imperialism—countries like India and Japan, Vietnam,
Australia and Taiwan—are economically independent of China, and standing
shoulder to shoulder with us. So
we should actively pursue new networks of mutual trade with key Asian and
European partners, like the economic prosperity network recently mentioned by Secretary
Pompeo.
We might pause over one of the
countries Hawley mentioned above, Taiwan. Its formal name is the Republic of
China (ROC), an island nation whose capital is Taipei. In other words, the ROC
is separate and very much distinct from the People’s Republic
of China, whose capital, of course, is Beijing. The two nations split in 1949,
when Mao Zedong’s Soviet-backed communists took over the mainland. In the decades since, the ROC,
population 23 million, has become a prosperous and free country, while the PRC
is merely … prosperous. (And,
of course, menacing.)
So it’s notable that Hawley has become a
strong champion of Taiwan, which stands not only as a bulwark against the PRC,
but also as proof that the Chinese people, if given a choice, will choose
freedom.
Third, Hawley wants to crack down on the ability of international
capital, including Wall Street, to hopscotch the world—and step all over the
people of the world. As Hawley explains about the current WTO dominion,
There is a reason why Wall Street
loves the status quo. There is a reason why they will object to leaving the WTO
and resist major reforms to our global economic system. That’s because they are on a
gravy train of foreign capital flows that keep their checkbooks fat.
Indeed, underneath all the
complexity of international finance, there’s a simple enough bottom line; Wall
Street, and global capital as a whole, profit from international arbitrage. This international “arb” is the
system of playing off one country’s tax-, regulatory- and wage-systems against
another country’s—and seeking to profit from both sides of the equation.
Indeed, here in the U.S., in the
last few decades, it’s been easy for financial companies to play this arbitrage
game. In effect, they have
issued the following ultimatum to American industrial companies: “You must outsource or relocate to China,
because the taxes/regulations/wages are lower there. If you do so, we’ll reward you by bidding
up your stock price here in the U.S. But if you don’t, maybe we’ll buy you,
replace the management, and then move to China. Or maybe we’ll buy your competitor, move it
overseas, where it can take advantage of the lower costs, undercut you—and put
you out of business.”
This ultimatum, repeated thousands
of times, reminds one of Marlon Brando’s famous line from The
Godfather: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
Many millions of lost American jobs
later, we’ve learned how few companies have been able to refuse this sort of
“offer.”
Hawley makes it clear: As a nation,
we’ve dug ourselves into a deep hole. And
in the meantime, the PRC is on the move: On May 21, the South China
Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper under the sway of the Beijing
government, reported on the
PRC’s plan to allocate an additional $1.4 trillion for technological
mobilization. So yes, we
face a clear and present danger.
Fortunately, a clear-eyed
understanding of a threat is not the same as a downcast bowing down to it. What we need to do is build on
our understanding—and turn that understanding into action.
Hawley is just one senator, and in
terms of seniority, a very junior one at that. And yet he thinks with a wise
historical sweep that could—and should—change the policy course of America. As he said:
We can build a future that looks
beyond pandemic to prosperity—a prosperity shared by all Americans, from our
rural towns to the urban core. We
can build a future that looks past a failed consensus to meet our national
security needs in this new century.
Yes, if we can build that future for
ourselves—reuniting the nation around a renewed appreciation of the common
good, as well as a newfound apprehension of the common threat—then
we have a fighting chance. And
if America can pull together an alliance of other like-minded nations, all
fearful of the Red Dragon, then we all have a strong prospect of success.
Because darn few people anywhere
wish to live in tyranny. And the
Chinese Communist Party is tyrannical.
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