John Lenczowski, a diplomatic adviser to President Ronald Reagan and founder of the Institute for World Politics, described President Reagan’s “comprehensive strategy ... to deter Soviet strengths, exploit Soviet weaknesses, and bring Soviet communism to a negotiated surrender.”
Similarly, in 2023, Grant Newsham, author of “When China Attacks: A Warning to America” and a research fellow with the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo, gave several pieces of advice: Recognize that the United States is already at war with China; reveal communism’s long history of oppression and brutality; admit trade liberalizing communism was never true; and recognize that communist China is vulnerable.
The CCP’s Vulnerabilities
“Communist systems always destroy themselves,” Mr. Newsham said.Red China identified and exploited American vulnerabilities in depth. Likewise, in the short term and the long, the United States is morally obligated to exploit the vulnerabilities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Mr. Newsham identified communist China’s vulnerabilities, or “system fragility”—corruption, human rights, and international lawlessness.
Gordon Chang of the Gatestone Institute said: “China is in turmoil. It can implode or lash out.” America needs to be prepared for both.
Behind the CCP’s loudly and repeatedly declared strengths—fantasies and deep fakes—stand many weaknesses, including the declining credibility of the CCP’s phony statistics, translations, broken promises, and deceitful propaganda; an absence of political legitimacy reflected in its internal instability, turmoil, and protests; and China’s economic dependencies upon foreign trade, specifically 400 items including luxuries, salmon, wine, raw materials, food, fuel, and convertible currencies.
China suffers from the mounting demographic certainties of plunging population growth, an aging population, declining rates of female births and marriages, and hidden deaths from starvation and the Wuhan virus.
China has the accumulating economic problems of slowing economic growth, perpetual poverty, real estate bankruptcies, inconvertible currency, and inadequate food and fuel production.
The “China Labour Bulletin of Hong Kong” reported 140 worker strikes in China over economic issues from January to May 2023, the highest in seven years.
Long-Term Strategies
Retired Air Force Gen. David Stillwell, John Lenczowski, and others have identified the CCP’s greatest vulnerability as its lack of internal legitimacy. The CCP regime lacks consent of the governed—an increasing political liability—among an informed and aroused Chinese people. In China, massive protests erupted over brutal zero-COVID policies and economic failures.Yet how credible are American responses?
American success depends on the credibility of America’s political will, military capabilities, public diplomacy, economic sanctions, and media. The American public and people of China must be informed.
Chicom agents of intelligence and espionage must be vigorously prosecuted for high crimes rather than process violations—mere traffic tickets.
This is a big order—either bring down the imperial communist regime or surrender to communism at home and abroad.
The United States needs to win credibility among the people of China. How ought America demonstrate its interest in the freedom of the Chinese people?
Several actions are necessary, including expressing the support of the American people for the aspirations of the Chinese people; aiding those dissenters and protesters who speak out against the CCP, such as Tibetans, Falun Gong adherents, Uyghurs, Hong Kong protesters, the zero-COVID resisters, the indoctrinated, imprisoned, starving; marketing American values to further inspire the people of China, e.g., zero-COVID protests, Hong Kong resistance, Lady Liberty at Tiananmen, etc.; and vetting and providing visas and/or safer resettlement options to Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, Falun Gong adherents, and other dissidents.
Americans and Chinese can break down China’s American-built “Great Firewall” with AM radio, Sound of Hope’s shortwave radio, TV, internet, satellite communications (Elon Musk’s Starlink), and computer hackers.
The U.S. government can vet and reject visa applications and sanction Chinese officials who suppress ethnic and religious minorities. These officials include members of the CCP and affiliates of China’s CCP-ruled military, paramilitary, law enforcement, public security, and national security forces.
There are ways to disrupt the Chinese government’s communication machine, as Xiao Qiang of UC Berkeley recommends. These include exposing the CCP regime’s persistent failure to speak the plain truth; encouraging the Great Translation Movement (GTM) inside China to continue to accurately translate CCP statements from Mandarin to English; and aiding MyGoPen (a homophone for “don’t fool me again”), a Taiwanese fact-checking group that reviews and corrects CCP propaganda.
Gordon Chang and others had long recognized the CCP’s particular economic vulnerabilities. Communist China had trillions of dollars of vulnerabilities in U.S. trade, food, energy, investments, foreign exchange, treasuries, real estate, science, and technology.
Decoupling much of the U.S. economy from China would hurt the CCP more than the United States.
In the Very Short Term (2024)
The CCP’s weaknesses present not only opportunities to defeat it, but also dangers. Might the CCP and its leader, Xi Jinping, be desperate to strike before it is too late for them?In short, to stay in power Xi and the CCP might need a nationalist cause to rally the Chinese people to distract them from internal vulnerabilities. The CCP has indeed used nationalist appeals, escalating rhetoric and menacing military actions toward Taiwan.
Xi’s timeline, perhaps as early as 2024, might be shorter than the time America had hoped we'd have to catch up with the People’s Liberation Army’s present military powers.
Xi has been relentlessly practicing blockades, rehearsing joint operations to invade or siege Taiwan, accelerating the pace of building ships and missiles, stockpiling oil imports, building coal power plants, training troops and the young, and adding longer-range missiles (DF-17 and DF-26) to target Taiwan’s allies including the United States.
James Fanell, former head of intelligence for the Pacific fleet and co-author of “Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure,” considered the Joint Island Landing Campaign in mid-August 2023 a final rehearsal.
Xi has the political will and technology the United States does not have at this time. Unfortunately, the kowtowing and compromising Biden team has been both begging for peace in a phantom pursuit of a deal on climate, and slow-walking prepaid military aid to Taiwan.
Nonetheless, since time could be short, the United States needs to prioritize immediate practical measures.
Grant Newsham argued that the United States has successfully faced tough situations, as in 1942: “It seemed like we (and our allies) were losing everywhere—and it seemed like we might indeed lose World War II. We didn’t.”
It is prudent for the United States to respond quickly to imminent China threats to America proved by the words and deeds of Xi. A domestically troubled Xi might have a short timeline to fulfill his promise to “reunify” Taiwan by force, as a political necessity.
Internationally, in the Indo-Pacific and in Europe, nations are awakening to China threats, which are no longer dismissively wished away.
Timely Options for 2024–2025
Ready or not, it is always “come-as-you-are war.” In the case of China, it is “make sure the PRC doesn’t destroy us first,” in the words of Kerry Gershaneck, a fellow with the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Pacific Forum.Ret. U.S. Navy Adm. Michael Gilday advises mobilizing to “fight tonight.” Hence, the United States should recruit, train, and mobilize reserve sailors and troops.
Existing forces must be redeployed to confront the CCP and perhaps deter it from launching war. Deploy ships and aircraft to the Indo-Pacific, the Taiwan Strait, and the East and South China Seas from bases in Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea.
Deploy nuclear subs to South Korea, the Philippines, and perhaps Japan.
Mr. Newsham recommends relocating elements of “desk warrior” intelligence and State Department employees “away from their local cafes, pubs, and comfort zones” in Washington to sea and air operations in Asia against China.
Bureaucratic processes ought to be streamlined to permit the building and the fielding of new military technology, for example, anti-ship missiles.
The Longer Term (If There Is One)
If it is not too late, wage war on military, political, economic, legal, and related fronts to counter China’s existential threats to the United States and its allies.A number of measures to consider are: halting U.S. research grants to Chinese labs in Wuhan and elsewhere as likely sources of China’s COVID-19 biological warfare; sanctioning known Chinese entities providing the ingredients of fentanyl to Mexican cartels; conducting joint military operations against Mexican cartels; banning sales of U.S. farmland near U.S. military bases to Chinese nationals or to their business proxies; banning the installation of Huawei and ZTE equipment in U.S. telecommunications and reimbursing/mitigating the cost to telephone companies; dismantling American cell towers containing Huawei and ZTE equipment used to intercept military communications, and which are operating near heartland U.S. nuclear installations—Malmstrom, F. E. Warren, and Minot Air Force bases; adding companies to the Commerce Department’s Entity List connected to the Chinese military and intelligence services; and prohibiting Chinese access to strategic “dual use” technologies disguised as innocent commerce.
“We must have the desire to resist the People’s Republic of China and to keep our way of life and our freedoms,” Mr. Newsham stated.
Americans Are Awakening
A spy balloon, a police station, and Chinese purchases of farmlands helped open the previously closed eyes and ears of Americans to far more extensive 24/7 spying.As China’s brazen invasion of U.S. airspace with its spy balloon proved, China has utter contempt for U.S. political will and military power.
The timing is right to immediately inform an alerted American public of ongoing Chinese communist threats to their jobs, investments, and liberties.
Americans are already learning about the China threat. In March 2023, a Gallup poll found that only 15 percent of Americans held a favorable view of China—the lowest in recorded history. In April 2023, the Pew Research Center found that 83 percent of Americans held a negative view of China and 38 percent saw China as an enemy.
U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said that the “Chinese spy balloon’s transit over the continental United States” looked “like child’s play” compared to TikTok, Huawei, satellites, hacking, and 24/7 spying. Really? Yes.
TikTok, WeChat, Huawei, and Hikvision surveil more than 100 million Americans. China’s 260 spy satellite systems scour U.S. skies 24/7. TikTok and its collaborators influence U.S. politicians and citizens.
Emerging Bipartisan Actions
Despite the Biden team’s pathetic pleading for happy relations with the CCP-ruled China, common political ground is emerging in policies to counter and confront China threats in Congress.These include bipartisan actions such as the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which required intelligence agencies to report Chinese violations of the liberties of Chinese natives and Chinese Americans.
The 2023 NDAA sought to eliminate Department of Defense spending on movies bowing to CCP censorship of the content of American films.
The 2024 NDAA required immediate reporting of corporate investment in Chinese high tech, and it also enacted a bipartisan “Ten for Taiwan” set of provisions to deter Chinese military aggression in that area.
The House passed a bill 413–2 in 2024 to punish anyone, including U.S. patients, participating in the CCP’s forced organ harvesting (killing people to sell their organs for transplants).
Congress passed, and the president signed, a bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in late 2022. It was opposed by U.S.-China Business Council (USCBC) members including Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike, and others who are profiting from Uyghur slave labor.
Bipartisan support for Taiwan increased over 2022–2023, including a new U.S.-Taiwan trade agreement.
A Senate bipartisan committee recognized China’s Thousand Talents Plan as espionage.
A bipartisan Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, giving the U.S. semiconductor industry a $50 billion boost to American chip manufacturers.
The House unanimously passed a bill to revoke wealthy China’s status as a “developing country,” thus potentially limiting low-interest World Bank financing of China’s Belt and Road projects and International Monetary Fund bailouts of unpaid Belt and Road loans.
Congress revoked China’s proclaimed status as a developing nation as enshrined in the Paris Climate Accords, which was a means of exempting China’s sky-blackening carbon emissions.
The House fiscal 2023 budget modestly authorized $170 billion to purchase long-range munitions and $145 billion for R&D for new fighter jets. The Navy got an insufficient 4.5 percent increase to $255.8 billion.
Agreements emerged to increase America’s rare-earth mining and processing, despite environmentalists’ opposition.
Though it faced a Generation Z veto, Congress developed a consensus to ban or block TikTok.
So, with emerging bipartisanship on China, it might be possible to stimulate the political will to prepare for or deter a hot war—building back industrial capacity to manufacture missiles, aircraft, and ships.
Only the deluded, compromised, and complicit Biden team and its allies in Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the Ivy League, and chambers of commerce have stood in the way.
Political Warfare
At home and abroad, the United States ought to unleash its own political war against Beijing by conducting congressional investigations, restoring to public school the history of American founding principles and institutions and of the incontrovertible evils of communism in power, and demanding international investigations of the Red Chinese origins of COVID-19 and fentanyl.There is much to expose—both the source of the virus and the Chinese regime’s intentional cover-up and spread of the virus, murdering millions worldwide. Worth exposing are Chinese communist mistranslations softening the Mandarin words and deeds of Xi, rabid wolf warriors, and the CCP’s tyranny.
Registrations and disclosures under the Foreign Agents Registration Act ought to be expanded to cover U.S. and Chinese spokesmen, lobbyists, consultants, and Chinese state media.
The United States ought to cut federal university funding, tax exemptions, student loans, and Pell grants for any U.S. college or university aiding the Thousand Talents Plan or hosting Confucius Institute programs. The government should reduce STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) funding of Chinese students while increasing subsidies of American STEM students.
The U.S. government ought to reinvigorate or defund the National Endowment for Democracy. Democrat and Republican elements have gone soft on China.
We can aid Chinese dissidents who oppose the regime and its billionaire rulers, grant political asylum to carefully vetted applicants with “well-founded fear of persecution” based on existing law and objective facts. (About 67 percent of applicants from China were granted asylum from 2001 to 2021, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University).
We can photograph and expose the lives of communist billionaires with 8x10 glossy color photos of their yachts, cars, properties, and pampered princeling children. Similarly, we can expose the offshore bank accounts, properties, companies, and investments of the wealthiest 500 CCP members, for example, the exposure from the Offshore Leaks Database of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ exposure of the Panama, Pandora, and Paradise papers. The United States can revoke green cards and visas and place liens on the properties and bank accounts of the top 500 CCP members. Why not? U.S. citizens are subjected to such “anti-corruption” actions without trial.
Media Warfare
Severely neglected by the United States, but not China, is war in the media.Informing the American people is a solemn obligation. Several steps will accomplish this goal. Several valuable media entities stand out.
The United States Information Agency was effective in countering communist propaganda during the Reagan administration. The Voice of America could better monitor, expose, and answer China’s foreign media influence and disinformation as well as providing airtime to Chinese dissidents.
Using native Chinese media in the diaspora, such as The Epoch Times, NTD, and Sound of Hope Radio, ought to answer directly the massive CCP takeover of Chinese language media in the United States.
Privately funded U.S.-based media, such as Radio Free Asia and China Uncensored, reach out to Chinese audiences.
Key U.S. agencies dealing with CCP media influence need to employ Chinese speakers. The United States needs to revitalize the Foreign Broadcast Information Service to accurately translate and expose the howling voices of the wolf warriors of the CCP to Americans.
American media need to better inform state and local officials about Chinese and proxy interference in the 2024 elections. The media also need to inform the American people about China’s media partnerships with U.S. media running CCP paid advertising—that is, propaganda disguised as news in U.S. newspapers.
The United States ought to help mainland Chinese, Chinese diaspora, and Chinese-American media, think tanks, and scholars.
Economic Warfare
Mr. Chang, who authored “The Coming Collapse of China,” argued that economic warfare is America’s best policy to “bankrupt China” the way Reagan took down the USSR. The United States also conducted economic warfare against Adolf Hitler in Germany, Hideki Tojo inJapan, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.America ought to wage economic war against China using both sticks and carrots, punishments and rewards. The following are some of the “sticks” they could use.
“Decoupling” the U.S. economy from China would return millions of jobs to America. In any case, it would disentangle and lower the risks of U.S. trade, business, and investments in China.
The United States ought to stop funding the CCP and the PLA with U.S. trade deficits by challenging the economic legitimacy of China’s status as a Most Favored Nation entitled to Permanent Normal Trade Relations and membership in the World Trade Organization.
The United States can target Chinese individuals and companies to sanction those responsible for suppressing the truth about the coronavirus and fentanyl, funding the Chinese military or engaging in human-rights violations such as slavery and genocide.
Other actions could include delisting Chinese companies on U.S. stock exchanges for failing to comply with the same regulations and audits as U.S. firms; restricting U.S. investors such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street from China’s emerging tech industries and military-industrial complex; expanding export controls on “dual use” and critical technologies aiding the PLA; diversifying the U.S. economy beyond Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood to enterprises feeding, powering, and curing Americans; decoupling U.S. dependency on Chinese batteries, solar panels, mining, and manufacturing; and removing all Chinese financial institutions from the U.S. dollar currency-exchange networks.
Legal Warfare
“Every one of those [COVID-19] coffins comes with a lawyer,” said Josh Rogin, author of “Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century.”So it is, too, at fentanyl funerals. Legal reforms must be made to allow lawsuits against Chinese perpetrators.
Some of these include exempting China from the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, subjecting Beijing to lawsuits in U.S. courts over COVID-19 and fentanyl where intentional or grossly negligent acts cause deaths, and expropriating the U.S. property of those convicted of victimizing Americans with COVID-19 and fentanyl.
The United States could sanction major fentanyl producers and distributors, just as happened with Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family.
It could also prosecute scholars, students, agents, investigators, proxies, and others who criminally intimidate Chinese nationals and dissidents who live in the United States, and those who harass their families back home in mainland China.
The United States should also exit, defund, and evict those international organizations that cover for the CCP when it violates the rules it pledged to honor, including the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, UNESCO, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and the United Nations itself.
The end is near. If we do too little, it could be too late.
