THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now. TOM FITTON - JUDICIAL WATCH
With Biden in the White House, President Trump predicted, China would “own the United States.” There’s also something to Trump’s charge that the Bidens are an “organized crime family.”
LLOYD BILLIONGSLEY
IMAGES OF JOE BIDEN’S MANSIONS: NOT BAD ON A BRIBES BUDGET
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/a33809100/joe-biden-real-estate-homes/
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
CHINA’S OLD WHORE SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, AMERICA’S BIGGEST WAR PROFITEER, WAS FIRST TO ENDORSE BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT. WONDER WHY???
As Glenn Bunting of the Los Angeles Times reported in 1997, Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum “has expanded his private business interests in China – to the point that his firm is now a prominent investor inside the communist nation.” In 1995, Dianne Feinstein became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “giving her a prominent platform for her efforts to support China’s trade privileges.”
As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely from the greatly expanded China trade she supported.” The senator also “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.”
For 20 years, through three election cycles, Feinstein maintained on her staff a Chinese spy who would even attend consular functions for the California Democrat. One wonders what the FBI knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it, if anything.
Other politicians with China business connections include Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, whose husband has conducted a series of deals in the Communist nation. Recall that Speaker Pelosi kept Eric Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee even after his “PoonFang” liaisons with a Chinese spy (FEINSTEIN LONG EMPLOYED A CHINESE SPY).
Tucker Carlson Delivers a Monologue So Damning That President Trump Shares It, Includes Explosive Hunter Biden News
By Bonchie
The segment ends with an assertion that Joe Biden has been compromised, and that’s exactly correct. There hasn’t been a more China-friendly politician in the last 30 years than Biden. With his probable swearing-in on the horizon, the communists are rejoicing. That should tell you just how big a mistake it was to let him anywhere near the presidency.
Schweizer: ‘It’s Going to Be Business as Usual’ for Hunter’s Dealings
Video:
The Chinese Communist Party is a global menace
Many Americans know that Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." This is most certainly the reason for being constantly vigilant about the thinking and planning of those at the top levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). From time to time, glimpses of this thinking and planning become evident to peoples of the free world.
Relatively little has been said about the statements made in 2003 by defense minister (General) Chi Haotian in a "secret speech" to many of his top-level CCP comrades. In 2005, a copy of his speech was obtained by sources outside China. The contents of the speech were confirmed as accurate by certain unpublished defector testimony on Sino-Russian military plans.
The extent to which current CCP leaders agree with or support defense minister Haotian's statements is not fully known. Regardless, Americans and other freedom-loving people need to be aware of the cunning, sinister thinking and planning evident in the "secret speech."
The words of the speech are eerily reminiscent of the "superior race" mentality exhibited and cast upon the world by the German Nazi government and war machine prior to and during World War Two.
Following are a few of the more alarming statements by Haotian:
- "It is indeed brutal to kill one or two hundred million Americans. But that is the only path that will secure a Chinese century in which the Chinese Communist Party leads the world."
- "Only countries like the United States, Canada, Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization."
- "Our economic development is all about preparing for the needs of war. Publicly we still emphasize economic development as our center, but in reality, economic development has war as its center!"
- "Only by turning our developed national strength into the force of a first striking outward — only by leading people to go outside China — can we win forever the Chinese people's support and love for the Communist Party. Our party will then stand on invincible ground, and the Chinese people will have to depend on the Communist Party."
- "Therefore our military battle preparation appears to aim at Taiwan but in fact is aimed at the United States, and the preparation is far beyond the scope of attacking aircraft carriers or satellites."
- "So, only by breaking the blockade formed by the western countries headed by the United States can China grow and move toward the world."
The contents of this brief article hopefully will cause many Americans and organizations to seriously think twice about conducting business or making other arrangements with Communist China (effectively the CCP). The goals and objectives of the CCP are diametrically opposed to the freedoms enjoyed by Americans and other freedom-loving people around the world. The CCP is no friend of America, nor of any freedom-loving people.
Paul S. Gardiner is a retired Army officer, Vietnam veteran, and lover of America. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Alabama, and the U.S. Army War College.
Step-by-Step to How Communism Undermines Christianity
By Rev. Michael P. Orsi | July 23, 2021 | 3:04pm EDT
We tend to assume that religion is only about transcendental things, but this is incorrect.
The root of the word “religion” is the Latin term “lig,” meaning to bind. Your religion binds you to a certain way of life, with a corresponding view of the world.
Your way of life is expressed in your political outlook. Religion thus informs politics. In many ways it precedes politics. You can trace political trends back to their religious roots.
We don’t always think about the political implications of the worldview we hold as Christians. For instance, the fact that our human nature is based on the image and likeness of God in which we’re created probably wouldn’t seem to be the stuff of politics.
Yet, in the Judeo-Christian moral heritage, your reflection of God’s image is the basis of your dignity as a person. We expect society to respect that fundamental human dignity. This effects our political views on a range of issues, from opposition to abortion, to how people should be treated from birth until the end of natural life.
It shapes our understanding of liberty as well. Being made in the image and likeness of God (not created by other humans, by government, or by society), people are entitled to be free. That’s the basis of our constitutional rights: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and all the rest. God has given us certain gifts and we must be free to use them in building our own lives and attending to the wellbeing of our families.
Similarly, our human nature demands that individuals be treated with justice. Creatures who bear God’s image and likeness should not be misused and exploited. We are not meant to be pawns of other people’s whims, or helpless victims of either prejudiced attitudes or abstract historical forces. We are independent agents with destinies of our own.
And so, the Church has developed a comprehensive set of teachings about social justice that demand fair treatment and equality before the law.
Such truths are based on divine revelation and so are religious precepts (referred to as the Cardinal Virtues). But they’re political precepts as well. Our civilization and civic arrangements rest on this worldview. Thus, religion and politics are intertwined.
Certain worldly philosophies have become religions in themselves. Marxism is the most obvious example. It instills its own worldview in those who embrace communist principles, and it binds them to a certain way of living and acting, based on how they see reality.
The primary way in which Marxism operates is by co-opting, in a distorted manner, Judeo-Christian religious/political precepts. So, for instance, social justice is interpreted in the communist worldview not as human dignity, freedom, and equality before the law, but as redistribution of wealth, class warfare, and ongoing conflict between races and ethnic groups (as in critical race theory). These days, any aberrant forms of gender identity and sexual expression also seem to fall under the social justice label.
The religious root of this Marxist worldview is the assumption that humanity has nothing to do with the image and likeness of God, but rather is merely part of the material world. Therefore human beings can be reshaped in any way that suits current desires, attitudes, or expectations.
The practical consequence of this perspective is loss of freedom. Without respect for human dignity, communism inevitably devolves into total control by a strong elite group. And with the loss of freedom, equality becomes a sham, and justice is impossible.
The state has total power to determine what constitutes good and bad, and stripped of their God-given rights, people are mentally and physically abused. They can be imprisoned, tortured, even killed, as suits the values and objectives of the state.
The destruction of rights under communism has been playing out for 62 years in Cuba, only 90 miles from our shores. Presented by Marxists as an example of the ideal communist society, with excellent medical and educational systems, Cuba has, in reality, been a humanitarian nightmare. The people’s wealth has been stolen by the government, their freedom curtailed, their hopes for a better life crushed.
This is why we’ve seen a steady stream of refugees from this alleged Marxist paradise over six decades. And it’s why, in the last couple of weeks, we’ve observed massive crowds in the streets of Cuban cities, demanding recognition of their human dignity.
Indeed, Cuba appears to be approaching some kind of breaking point. And this unfolding drama holds an ironic lesson for us in America.
Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed growing sympathy for Marxist ideas, especially among our young people. And since January, we’ve watched a political regime pursuing changes in our governmental system that are strongly influenced by communist thinking.
We should recognize that the crisis we face in our country is as much religious as it is political — just as the people of Cuba are experiencing their own religious awakening. We human beings are religious in our God-given nature. There’s no dismissing that fact.
And that’s why we should all pray that God’s will might prevail.
For Cuba, let us be as Cubans ourselves, and pray “Cuba libre!” (Free Cuba!). For our own country, let us pray “God bless — and God save — America!”
A priest of the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, Rev. Michael P. Orsi currently serves as parochial vicar at St. Agnes Parish in Naples, Fla. He is host of “Action for Life TV,” a weekly cable television series devoted to pro-life issues, and his writings appear in numerous publications and online journals. His TV show episodes can be viewed here.
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now. TOM FITTON - JUDICIAL WATCH
With Biden in the White House, President Trump predicted, China would “own the United States.” There’s also something to Trump’s charge that the Bidens are an “organized crime family.”
LLOYD BILLIONGSLEY
IMAGES OF JOE BIDEN’S MANSIONS: NOT BAD ON A BRIBES BUDGET
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/a33809100/joe-biden-real-estate-homes/
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
CHINA’S OLD WHORE SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, AMERICA’S BIGGEST WAR PROFITEER, WAS FIRST TO ENDORSE BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT. WONDER WHY???
As Glenn Bunting of the Los Angeles Times reported in 1997, Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum “has expanded his private business interests in China – to the point that his firm is now a prominent investor inside the communist nation.” In 1995, Dianne Feinstein became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “giving her a prominent platform for her efforts to support China’s trade privileges.”
As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely from the greatly expanded China trade she supported.” The senator also “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.”
For 20 years, through three election cycles, Feinstein maintained on her staff a Chinese spy who would even attend consular functions for the California Democrat. One wonders what the FBI knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it, if anything.
Other politicians with China business connections include Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, whose husband has conducted a series of deals in the Communist nation. Recall that Speaker Pelosi kept Eric Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee even after his “PoonFang” liaisons with a Chinese spy (FEINSTEIN LONG EMPLOYED A CHINESE SPY).
Tucker Carlson Delivers a Monologue So Damning That President Trump Shares It, Includes Explosive Hunter Biden News
By Bonchie
The segment ends with an assertion that Joe Biden has been compromised, and that’s exactly correct. There hasn’t been a more China-friendly politician in the last 30 years than Biden. With his probable swearing-in on the horizon, the communists are rejoicing. That should tell you just how big a mistake it was to let him anywhere near the presidency.
Schweizer: ‘It’s Going to Be Business as Usual’ for Hunter’s Dealings
Video:
On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer said he reads President Biden’s statements about his son Hunter’s deals as a declaration that “it’s going to be business as usual in the Biden administration as far as these deals are concerned.”
Schweizer said, “Joe Biden has said there are going to be no sketchy overseas deals during his second term. Here’s the problem: He does not believe that the early deals that Hunter was involved in, the China deal, Burisma, he’s never described those as sketchy. So, I read that as saying, it’s going to be business as usual in the Biden administration as far as these deals are concerned.”
Biden-Connected Lobbying Outfit Teams Up with Leading Chinese Law Firm
Biden has tapped at least 11 Albright Stonebridge alums for his administration
Getty ImagesJack Beyrer • June 13, 2021 4:55 am
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China's biggest law firm is partnering with a top Democratic lobbying practice, which has sent at least 11 alumni to senior positions in the Biden administration.
Albright Stonebridge Group, an advisory agency with deep ties to the Biden administration’s foreign policy team, announced it will partner with multinational law firm Dentons, which operates the largest legal firm in China, to build a new joint venture in international commerce called Dentons Global Advisors. Dentons Global Advisors will focus on "commercial diplomacy" and government relations worldwide, but likely will capitalize on its founders' foothold within the Biden administration.
Included among Albright Stonebridge alumni are several of President Joe Biden's top advisers on national security matters. Before joining the administration, U.N. ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield led the firm's Africa shop, while Vice President Kamala Harris's national security adviser Philip Gordon worked as a senior adviser for the organization. Controversial State Department appointees Victoria Nuland and Wendy Sherman also worked for Albright Stonebridge during the Trump administration.
The firm, which was founded by Clinton administration secretary of state Madeleine Albright, will likely not just have access to officials close to the White House but also strong connections to Chinese business. One of Dentons's subsidiaries is Dacheng, a powerhouse Chinese law firm acquired in 2015.
Dacheng is considered by scholars to be a part of the "iron triangle" in the Chinese justice system, where the courts, lawyers, and law enforcement work together to advance the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese law firm formed its own Communist Party committee at one point, and several senior partners have assumed positions of responsibility within local party structures.
Neither Albright Stonebridge nor Dentons responded to requests for comment.
Before partnering with Dentons, Albright Stonebridge touted its own ties to Chinese enterprise, leveraging the political experience of its many staffers in Democratic White Houses. Albright Stonebridge cochair and former secretary of commerce Carlos Gutierrez was quoted by Chinese state media in 2019 as a chief critic of the Trump administration's trade policies, urging the former president to "put the trade war behind us."
The firm's work on China closely follows Gutierrez's sentiments. In one instance, Albright Stonebridge scrubbed its website of consulting work done in close cooperation with the Chinese government to secure market entry for a U.S. company into China. During the entry process, Albright Stonebridge said one of its prime objectives was to "generate goodwill within the Chinese government" for the client company.
As the Biden administration moves forward in setting its own agenda with Beijing, Albright Stonebridge still appears fixated on growth in its China shop. The China practice at the lobbying firm remains the largest branch of any in the company. Albright Stonebridge senior adviser Kenneth Jarrett said last week that he does not expect U.S. companies to leave the China market even during a period of heightened tensions.
"It's important to understand that even within an overall dynamic of competition, there is still room for cooperation," Jarrett said. "The majority of U.S. companies are successful in China and see that success as an important contributor to their global performance. … They are not looking to exit the China market."
Albright Stonebridge's close ties with China and the Biden administration mirror those of a similar advisory firm whose alumni have become White House foreign policy mavens. The Washington Free Beacon reported in December 2020 that WestExec Advisors, another top consultancy, came under scrutiny during the nomination process for Secretary of State Antony Blinken for scrubbing its site of China-related work. Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines also worked for WestExec.
Jack McEvoy contributed reporting for this article.
Biden Removes Chinese Military Tech Company from Blacklist
Chinese tech company Sugon worked on nuclear weapons research, Uyghur surveillance
The Chinese flag / Getty ImagesJack Beyrer • June 10, 2021 5:05 pm
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President Joe Biden issued an executive order dropping a ban on investment in a Chinese technology company known for its cooperation with the Chinese military and the surveillance of Uyghur Muslims.
Sugon, a Chinese company blacklisted by the Trump administration in November 2020, did not appear on the updated blacklist of Chinese companies announced by the White House this month. The United States had prohibited Americans from investing in Sugon over the company's sale of supercomputers to the Chinese military for nuclear weapons research. The company's cloud computing and facial recognition technology has reportedly been used for the surveillance of Uyghur Muslims.
Michael Sobolik, a fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council who researches China issues, told the Washington Free Beacon the Biden order was "strange" due to its omission of Sugon, though it otherwise makes steps in the right direction by extending sanctions on other Chinese tech giants such as Huawei and Hikvision.
"It's strange that the Biden administration removed Sugon from the list," Sobolik said. "This company's resources have supported the CCP's draconian surveillance in Xinjiang—specifically, the Orwellian model of ‘predictive policing.' Some members of Congress have also warned that Sugon has also been involved in the PLA's nuclear and hypersonic glide vehicle testing programs. Sugon seems to check both boxes of the EO, which raises questions as to why it's delisted. The administration may have a perfectly reasonable explanation; if so, officials should clarify their decision."
The decision comes amid intensified tech competition between the United States and China. On Tuesday, the Senate passed a massive spending package intended to increase funding for American technological and scientific research, along with several other areas of competition.
Some Biden administration allies have ties to Chinese technology firms. Biden's nominee for the director of national intelligence's general counsel position admitted in May to doing work for Huawei while employed at one of the Chinese tech powerhouse’s top Washington lobbying firms. A member of the administration's trade transition team managed a Chinese firm tasked with raising funds for Chinese companies listed as banned in the Biden administration's executive order.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
China Praises Biden’s TikTok Reversal
Order halts Trump ban on downloading Chinese app
Getty ImagesJack Beyrer • June 10, 2021 5:00 pm
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China’s Ministry of Commerce praised President Joe Biden for reversing a Trump administration decision to halt U.S. downloads of the Chinese apps WeChat and TikTok.
Gao Feng, a ministry spokesman, applauded the Biden administration's reversal, saying Chinese businesses should not be politicized by the United States.
"The U.S. should treat Chinese companies fairly and justly and refrain from politicizing trade issues," Gao said. "All countries have the responsibility to develop their own industries and enhance the well-being of their people, and China is pleased to see the economic development and technological progress of other countries."
The Trump administration took on TikTok during its final year in office, citing the potential for the Chinese Communist Party to collect data on the Chinese app, as well as other national security issues. A series of orders from the White House and legislation in the Senate banned the app from government devices and ultimately from being downloaded by U.S. citizens. But federal courts held up the orders and legislation, and they never took effect. Former Trump administration official Keith Krach told the Washington Free Beacon in September 2020 the app allows China to "spy" on American children.
The Chinese Communist Party requires companies operating in China to share data when the government requests it. A document leaked in October 2020 shows an ex-CCP official dictated content policies for TikTok in its growth stage, and China has openly discussed an interest in greater party control over companies operating within the country.
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.”
.@Nike will you pledge you are #slavefree?
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 21, 2020
.@NBA Adam Silver will you pledge your corporation is #slavefree?
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 21, 2020
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
— Senator Hawley Press Office (@SenHawleyPress) July 21, 2020
.@NBA Adam Silver will you pledge your corporation is #slavefree?
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 21, 2020
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
— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019
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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