Erping

These days, many Washington policymakers, U.S. corporations, Wall Street investors, and some international financial institutions have put aside their rational thinking and, once again, succumbed to wishful thinking. All that is needed, they say, is a U.S.–China trade agreement to smooth the jittery stock market and halt the decline in the global economy.

They overlook the simple fact that Beijing has never honored its promises in the past.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has taken a page from “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu (544 B.C.–496 B.C.), arguably the most celebrated military strategist in China’s history: “There can never be too much deception in war.” If anything, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has overplayed this trick since the very beginning of its creation.

A Habitual Liar

On July 4, 1943, the CCP published the editorial “Long Live America’s Democracy!” in its official mouthpiece the Xinhua Daily, thanking the United States for giving aid to China and touting America’s democratic values.

It stated: “Since childhood, we felt America is a particularly beloved country. We hold that this is not simply because she has never occupied Chinese territory by force, nor waged any aggressive war on China; more fundamentally, the Chinese people’s good feelings toward America derive from American people’s democratic demeanor and great compassion.”

It further added, “America is a pioneer model for the backward China in terms of democratic politics—it teaches the Chinese people to learn from Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson, and enables us to realize that we need courage, fairness, and honesty in order to establish a democratic and free China.”

However, the CCP’s apparent humility and openness couldn’t be further from the truth. Disguised as the champion of a democratic China, the CCP would resort to lies and deception—whatever means it needed—to garner support from people from all walks of life in China and abroad to defeat the nationalist government headed by Chiang Kai-shek, and it succeeded in 1949 after the four-year civil war, the bloodiest war in modern Chinese history.

On June 25, 1950, the Korean War broke out. On Dec. 10, 1950, the People’s Liberation Army quietly crossed the Yalu River into North Korea for the so-called “War to Resist America and Aid Korea,” though Beijing claims that this war against U.S.-led U.N. forces officially started on Dec. 25, 1950.

The Chinese Red Army had its first official face-off with U.S. troops on the battlefield. By then, the CCP’s adoration of America as described in its 1943 editorial in the Xinhua Daily had long been forgotten.

Between 1958 and 1962, Mao Zedong ordered the “Great Leap Forward” campaign, which led to famine, mass starvation, and the deaths of some 20 million to 30 million lives. The most disastrous agrarian policy was the establishment of the so-called people’s communes or socialist collectives.

Inflated grain output figures were widely promoted in the state-run media outlets, creating a deceitful socialist prosperity. The wildest claim was perhaps the People’s Daily’s report on Sept. 18, 1958, that stated a farmland of 667 square meters in Huanjiang County of Guangxi Province was able to produce 65,217 kilograms of rice, or 363 times more than the previous year’s yield.

The CCP routinely revises history to influence public opinion at home and abroad. Instead of truthfully telling the masses that it was the nationalist government that led the resistance against the Japanese invasion in the 1940s, the CCP credits itself in textbooks for defeating the Japanese.

Today, through manipulating and filtering information on the internet and state-run media, the CCP still presents a different reality to the Chinese people, particularly regarding so-called “sensitive topics” such as the Cultural Revolution, the massacre of students on Tiananmen Square in 1989, and the ongoing campaigns of persecution against the Falun Gong spiritual movement, underground Christians, Tibetans, and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province.

According to a 36-page report released by the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy on June 20, 2018, China has engaged in unrestricted warfare over the years against the United States with activities such as “physical and cyber theft, forced technology transfers, evading United States export controls, export restraints on raw materials, and investments in more than 600 high-technology assets in the United States worth close to $20 billion.”

Beijing’s repeated failure to honor its commitment to international covenants since its World Trade Organization membership in 2001 has deepened widespread concern and uncertainty about this rising communist superpower.

Even Fareed Zakaria, a critic of President Donald Trump at CNN, confessed, “Let’s be honest on one fundamental point: Donald Trump is right—China is a trade cheat.” Zakaria expressed his support for Trump’s China policy, as nothing else has worked.

Confucian Virtue Missing Today: Trustworthiness

Confucius (551 B.C.–470 B.C.) preached five fundamental tenets: benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom, and trustworthiness. They have been part of the Chinese (and arguably of Korean and Japanese) cultural heritage for over two thousand years.

Zigong, one of Confucius’s most loyal and important disciples, once sought advice about how to govern a country properly. Confucius said: “One, let the masses have an ample supply of food and clothes. Two, the country should have a strong army. Three, the ruler should have trust from his subordinates and the masses.”

Zigong asked, “If one of the three has to be removed, which one?” Confucius replied, “Take out the army one.” Zigong asked again, “If another has to be removed, which one?” Confucius said: “Take out food and clothes. One would rather sacrifice food and clothes to retain trust. If the ruler doesn’t have the trust from his subordinates and the masses, the country will end.”

Dishonest individuals may exist in all countries, yet when a society is governed by a deceptive communist regime, the society’s culture will inevitably be corrupted over time. The campaign against the “Four Olds” (old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits) during the Great Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) wiped out the moral foundations of the Chinese culture.

Living the Truth

Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, wrote in “The Power of the Powerless,” “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth.”

It is about time for the people of China and elsewhere to live in the truth and confront the Orwellian regime in Beijing.

According to the recent Guardian report “Inside China’s Audacious Global Propaganda Campaign,” the CCP’s propaganda machinery has already reached overseas, hiring foreign journalists to “tell China’s story well”—this in itself is perhaps the best evidence that the party-state is actually not doing well.

In Part III of “Henry VI,” Shakespeare writes, “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.” As a habitual liar, the CCP thrives only if the world looks aside, allowing its deception to prevail.

Throughout modern history, there has never been a communist regime that honored any international agreement, in trade or otherwise. Over the years, China has thrived through its diplomatic deception and theft of technology from the West.

In a recent interview with National Public Radio, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said: “If you ask me when was the first time we had an official government-to-government intellectual property crisis with China, it was during George Herbert Walker Bush’s administration in 1991. That’s how long it is. Since then, we’ve probably seen China agree to correct this problem or some aspect of it maybe 20 times. And they have done none of that till now.”

One should never, after all, believe a wolf in a sheep’s clothing under any circumstance.

(Dec 12, 2018)

It seems that there are two forms of logic in this world: logic that most of us use and Chinese logic. Those who read Josh Rogin’s article “Inside China’s ‘Tantrum Diplomacy’ at APEC” in The Washington Post might ask, why does the international community treat this rogue state with business as usual, as if it is a normal and rational state actor?

Perhaps those guiltless panda-huggers in the West might even get red-faced, if not fizzled out, by Beijing’s uncivilized behavior at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Papua New Guinea, held in mid-November.

Beijing, apparently, felt stung by this clause in APEC’s draft joint statement: “We agree to fight protectionism, including all unfair trade practices.” Its four delegates, henceforth, attempted to barge into the PNG foreign minister’s office and coerce him to remove the wording.

To maintain its neutrality as the APEC host, the PNG foreign minister didn’t wish to meet with them privately and had to call the police to turn away these unwanted visitors at his door. Despite unanimous consent from all other 20 participating APEC members, China alone objected to this joint statement, thereby forcing the APEC summit for the first time to end without issuing a joint statement.

‘Frenzy Journalism’

The communist regime’s thuggish conduct at the APEC summit was called “tantrum diplomacy.” London-based China Central TV (CCTV) reporter Kong Linlin shared many of the same traits as she staged eye-rolling “frenzy journalism” at the Tories’ annual conference in September on human rights in Hong Kong. Video footage of the 48-year-old Kong hysterically shouting at the meeting and violently slapping an organizer went viral, inviting worldwide attention and reactions.

The security staff had to physically remove Kong from the conference site, while she insisted on her “right to protest” in a “democratic UK.” Kong was briefly arrested by the police and now faces assault charges.

Her bizarre behavior, however, is being embraced as “heroic” by both the Chinese Embassy in London and by her employer, the state-run CCTV.

Some Chinese netizens, however, call the episode “the clash between the civilized and the uncultivated.” One Weibo post even challenged Kong to demonstrate her right to protest at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to find out whether China is democratic.

Zhang Pu, a Chinese writer based in the UK, told Radio Free Asia: “Kong Linlin has become a Communist Party internet celebrity. Any journalist sent overseas by the Chinese Communist Party has certain [political] duties.”

In other words, what Kong did in the UK, however unhinged it may be to the rest of the world, has certainly pleased her superiors and the Party in Beijing.

James Palmer, who once worked for the state-run Global Times, said, “I think Kong Linlin was putting on a display for her bosses in China, in an attempt to promote herself within the hierarchy of Chinese state media.” To the rest of the world, this off-the-wall behavior certainly looks like an odd way to climb the career ladder.

Disappearance

Not long ago, a Chinese family created a scene that caused some distress to the already strained Sino–Sweden relationship. On Sept. 2, they showed up at a Stockholm hostel the night before their booking, then screamed loudly and accused the police of brutality when they were removed from the hostel. The Chinese embassy in Sweden, as well as the state-run media, began to attack Sweden for discrimination.

That occurred against the backdrop of another tricky situation: Gui Minhai, a 54-year-old Swedish citizen who mysteriously disappeared while on holiday in Thailand in October 2015, was later confirmed to be in police custody inside China. Gui is one of the five Hong Kong publishers known for publishing “gossip” about Chinese leaders. Sweden, to this day, hasn’t been able to secure his freedom.

These days, “disappearances” can happen to just about anyone. In September, Meng Hongwei, president of Interpol, vanished during a visit to China from France. His wife, Grace Meng, said: “I’m not sure he’s alive,” as the last text message from her husband was an emoji of a knife.

Meng, former vice minister of the Ministry of Public Security, is under investigation for “corruption and other unspecified crimes,” according to the official government statement. Some Chinese posted on the internet: “As vice minister of public security, Meng once made many others disappear, and now, it is his turn to vanish.”

Running for Cover

The 55th Golden Horse Awards, also known as the Chinese-language “Oscars,” were held in Taipei on Nov. 17, where Fu Yue, a Taiwanese documentary director, said in an acceptance speech that Taiwan should “be treated like a genuinely independent entity.” Her speech was apparently blocked from live TV in mainland China, but has stirred up a heated debate on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Later in the award ceremony, when two-time Oscar winner Ang Lee invited Gong Li, a China-born movie star and this year’s jury chair, to the stage to hand out awards, Gong declined, apparently out of fear of offending Beijing.

In fact, upon the completion of the Golden Horse ceremony, the entire flock of mainland Chinese actors, actresses, and directors skipped the scheduled awards dinner. The fear factor has made these celebrity attendees run for cover and stay out of the spotlight as a result.

To show loyalty to the party-state, some even reposted on their Weibo account the photo of “China, nothing less!” from the Communist Youth League in China. There is, however, one complication here: Like many Chinese celebrities, Gong is no longer a citizen of China and is listed on the program as an actress from Singapore. Chinese netizens are keenly aware of that fact, too, calling these foreign passport holders sham patriots of China.

This summer, top Chinese actress Fan Bingbing suddenly dropped out of sight and was reportedly taken away by the police for several months. Fan reappeared only after agreeing to pay a hefty fine of US$130 million for “tax evasion” and pledging her total loyalty to the party-state. That has certainly had a chilling impact on the entertainment industry in China.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen didn’t hesitate to comment on Facebook: “I’m proud of the Golden Horse ceremony yesterday because it accentuated how Taiwan is different from China.”

Writing the Script

Different and opposing voices, political or otherwise, are commonplace in democratic Taiwan, but this is obviously not the case in communist China, where political views and opinions from public figures and celebrities must conform to the party line if they wish to survive there. The state pressures explain why many of them have quietly acquired foreign citizenship for a sense of security, including the famous kung fu star Jet Li.

While people in mainland China and in Taiwan share the same language, culture, and ethnic roots, the two different political systems have nurtured over time two different types of citizens. This also appears to be true in the case of North Korea and South Korea.

These days, Western democracies are coming to realize that China hasn’t been following the same playbook as the rest of the world. Worse still, Beijing is now setting new norms and rules at will for others to observe. For instance, Beijing is able to dictate what movies Hollywood can produce, according to the article, “How China Controls Hollywood Scripts,” which appeared Nov. 19 in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The article cites the remake of the Cold War drama “Red Dawn” in 2012 and says its original script was to depict “Chinese enemies invading a U.S. town.” But the movie’s production had to be suspended after the “script was leaked and angered the Chinese state media.”

“In the end, MGM spent $1 million digitally erasing evidence of the Chinese army, frame by frame, and substituting in North Koreans instead,” the article stated.

As George Orwell wrote in “Nineteen Eighty-four,” with communism, “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” This is precisely the kind of logic the Chinese Communist Party is operating on, not only at home but, as we see from these examples, abroad as well.

John Ruskin, a Victorian thinker, once said, “Civilization is the making of civil persons.”

(Dec 9, 2018)

Sausages may look awfully tasty on the plate, but few would perhaps wish to know the entire sausage-making process.

These days, while some Wall Street executives and panda-huggers are eager to cheer for China’s economic progress, they may have skipped the latest media headlines on massive rights abuses in the Middle Kingdom.

Recently, 15 Beijing-based Western ambassadors co-authored a letter requesting a meeting with Chen Chuanguo, the Communist Party chief in Xinjiang Province, where some 1 million Uyghurs are reportedly detained in re-education camps.

In the face of mounting evidence of rights abuses, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned against “gossip and rumors,” while his spokeswoman dismissed the letter as being “very rude.”

The official responses drew a sharp rebuke from German foreign minister Heiko Maas, who said: “In any case, we cannot accept re-education camps. We need transparency in order to properly judge what is happening there.”

China is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a permanent member of the powerful U.N. Security Council. Over the years, it appears that the United Nations and the international community have grown accustomed, if not indifferent, to the communist regime’s rampant human-rights abuses.

As a matter of fact, China was just granted a seat again last week at the U.N. Human Rights Council, where the United States happened to give up its membership not long ago.

According to a Guardian report, Julie De Rivero of Human Rights Watch considers China’s election “troubling on two counts.”

“One, is because of their domestic human-rights record—members of the council are supposed to hold the highest standards for protecting human rights. Two, is that they’re quite negative players within the council, in that they reject all initiatives that hold human-rights violators accountable for what they do,” Rivero said.

Students Made to Toe Line

Recently, heavy-handed measures by authorities are spreading on college campuses in China. Student activists who recently rallied for labor rights were sternly warned, and some have been “disappeared” by local security authorities.

Beijing University, perhaps the best-known Chinese institution of higher education, now is led by a former state security official who has set up special units to reinforce disciplinary inspection, as well as controls that ensure all campus activities are in line with the Party.

The controversial political vetting prior to the college entrance exam—a policy adopted in Mao’s era—will be re-established in Chongqing City (a city of 30 million in southwest China) and Fujian Province. The renewed measure has caused an uproar among many Chinese netizens, who use the epithet “mentally retarded” to describe the policymaker.

Those who oppose the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s “Four Basic Principles,” have criminal records, or are “morally corrupt” will fail such “ideological and political morality assessment,” the Chongqing Daily says.

The “Four Basic Principles,” which came into being in 1979 when Deng Xiaoping was consolidating his political power, state: 1) “We must keep to the socialist road”; 2) “We must uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat”; 3) “We must uphold the leadership of the Communist Party,” and 4) “We must uphold Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.”

These may seem archaic and ridiculous to Westerners, but the CCP officials still speak this way and try to force them on the next generation.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong, the Chinese territory once envied for freedom of expression, is now en route to becoming just another city in mainland China.

In October, Financial Times Asia editor Victor Mallet’s visa was revoked soon after he hosted a local speaker for independence at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondent Club, while last month, cartoonist Baidiucao’s sole exhibition in Hong Kong was unexpectedly canceled one day before its opening.

Multiple media sources have also reported that visiting Chinese judges even held a well-publicized CCP branch meeting on the campus of the City University of Hong Kong, where they were part of the Master of Law program.

More recently, Ma Jian, a London-based dissident writer, almost didn’t make an appearance at the Tai Kwun Center for Heritage and Arts in Hong Kong, which canceled his scheduled event, but later reversed the decision because of public pressure.

Ma told The New York Times: “Before, Hong Kong was a haven for arts and literature—a place where we felt like we could hide from China and find true freedom of thought; now, that era is slowly disappearing.”

Falun Gong

Amid these clampdowns, the CCP’s suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement has been among the stories receiving the least coverage by mainstream media. This year has seen an escalation of the CCP’s repression, as each month, hundreds of practitioners are rounded up by local police and sent to either detention centers or jail, according to Falun Gong’s website Minghui.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a Buddha school meditation practice. The Chinese state, its sports commission, and the Qigong Research Society, in particular, initially touted Falun Gong’s health benefits and its moral precepts of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance during the early 1990s, when founder, Li Hongzhi, was giving public lectures across China.

According to a 1999 article by the U.S. News & World Report, an official of China’s Sports Commission said: “Falun Gong and other types of qigong can save each person 1,000 yuan in annual medical fees. If 100 million people are practicing it, that’s 100 billion yuan saved per year in medical fees.”

Because of its overwhelming health benefits, Chinese authorities, at one time, showered Falun Gong and its founder with numerous proclamations for its positive contribution to society. Falun Gong, accordingly, was the most popular health regime in the late 1990s.

As reported in the U.S. News & World Report article, Falun Gong had become “the largest voluntary organization in China, larger even than the Communist Party.” This, however, was not necessarily good news for Falun Gong in a communist society.

The honeymoon with the party-state came to an abrupt end in 1999, when then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin, learned that some 70 million to 100 million Chinese citizens, including many CCP officials and members, were followers of this Buddhist meditation practice. In April 1999, soon after some 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners appealed for their legal rights in front of Zhongnanhai, the seat of the CCP’s leadership, Jiang decided he needed to eliminate the group.

According to a report in the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief, Jiang set up a Gestapo-like organization called the “6-10 Office” in the Politburo on June 10, 1999, to be in charge of a nationwide campaign of persecution against Falun Gong.

This 6-10 Office, in turn, created subordinate offices at all levels of the party and state throughout China, which were all given extrajudicial power to round up, detain, and sentence practitioners to labor camps, brainwashing centers, psychiatric hospitals, and other facilities.

The nationwide suppression and massive propaganda campaign to vilify Falun Gong began July 20, 1999. And now, CCP is applying the same tools of repression against the Uyghurs that it’s been using against Falun Gong for almost two decades.

Over the past 19 years, the CCP’s policy of persecuting Falun Gong has continued, resulting in more than 4,000 deaths due to torture and abuse, a large number of deaths due to forced organ harvesting, and millions thrown into jail and labor camps. Dr. Manfred Nowak, the U.N. Rapporteur on Torture, found in 2005 that two-thirds of reported torture cases in China involved Falun Gong practitioners.

The CCP’s most startling crime is the horrific practice of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, which has been described by researchers as a cold genocide of Falun Gong practitioners.

Despite resolutions adopted by both the European Parliament and U.S. Congress condemning organ harvesting in China, world leaders and democratic countries have yet to take concrete measures to stop this crime against humanity. Mainstream media have done little in the way of investigating and reporting these crimes.

In a letter to Friends of Falun Gong in 2001, the late Rep. Tom Lantos, a survivor of the Holocaust, wrote: “The truth is that falsehood, cruelty, and persecution can never win in human affairs in the long run, and they cannot win in China.”

It’s imperative for mankind to realize that defending human rights is actually a matter of protecting the fundamental constituents of our humanity. Given its track record over the decades, the CCP is the biggest threat to humanity today.

Today’s rampant repression in China is indeed unnerving, yet it might be the darkest hours before dawn. In his final appearance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the popular and outspoken sociology professor Chan Kin Man, who recently decided to retire early, ended a lecture by telling a packed lecture hall, in which hundreds of the Umbrella Movement students and supporters showed up: “Only by being in this darkest environment, may we see the stars.”

No one, perhaps, can put a season of distress in a more hopeful manner than the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who once wrote: “O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?” Yes, spring is bound to arrive, the sooner the better.

(Nov 29, 2018)

Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, reminded us in the sixth century BC, “Let reality be reality.”

That seems to be precisely what U.S. Vice President Mike Pence did on Oct. 4, when he delivered a comprehensive policy speech on China at the Hudson Institute.

This speech was historic because no top official from previous U.S. administrations has offered such a straightforward analysis and narrative of U.S.–China relations since the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1979. It was also historic in giving U.S. policy toward China a new direction.

China Policy Returns to Realism

In “All’s Well that Ends Well,” Shakespeare wrote, “No legacy is so rich as honesty.” Despite the detailed accounts of Beijing’s influence operations in the United States and elsewhere in the world, Pence’s speech is seen by some as being “aggressive” or waging a new cold war.

For too long a time and for various reasons, the world has almost given up hope of seeing Washington stand up to the Beijing regime’s offensive for worldwide hegemony. Now, the Trump administration is speaking up for the interests of America and the rest of the world.

For more than two decades, many China watchers in the West, policy makers in particular, appear to have been deeply hypnotized by the illusion of the so-called “constructive engagement policy” with China, hoping that by integrating communist China into the global economy, democracy or an open society would somehow automatically come to the Middle Kingdom.

The United States’ good intentions helped China to rapidly become a world power. In June, in his address to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, President Donald Trump stated, “China has been taking $500 billion a year out of our country and rebuilding China,” a point that the president has repeatedly raised.

The policy of constructive engagement was based on a pipe dream that has brought about, in most cases, the opposite if not few results; Beijing is now impulsively seeking to set the rules for business as well as geopolitics around the world.

In his book, “The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities,” professor John Mearsheimer, a neorealism scholar, faults the so-called “liberal hegemony” for the failure of U.S. foreign policy since the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

In Mearsheimer’s view, the liberal approach of remaking the world in America’s image through advocating for an open international economy and building democratic institutions around the world hasn’t yielded a desirable outcome, because two greater forces—nationalism and realism—haven’t been factored in.

Mearsheimer said, “Trump eventually will have no choice but to move toward a grand strategy based on realism, even if doing so meets with considerable resistance at home.”

Misunderstanding China

The most prevailing, if not the most detrimental, misperception of China among policy makers is the idea that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) operates in accordance with so-called Asian values or norms rooted in the 5,000-year Chinese civilization; thereby, its peculiar actions are perhaps capable of being forgiven.

This understanding appeared in several responses to Pence’s groundbreaking speech; it couldn’t be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, since 1949, the CCP has been relentless in purging the best of the Chinese cultural heritage, succeeding in many aspects in disconnecting the past from the present.

It is little wonder that many first-time mainland Chinese visitors to the Republic of China (commonly known as Taiwan) have been surprised to find out that much of Chinese culture and traditions are actually better preserved on this island than in their homeland.

Should there be any “clash of civilizations” between the United States and China, it would, in reality, come down to the clash between the ideology of the CCP and the norms of Western democracy.

The traditional Confucian culture, as demonstrated in Taiwan, synchronizes in harmony with the Western democratic system. Being a Russian import, the CCP is, by no means, part of the Chinese legacy whatsoever.

New Administration, New China Policy

On Dec. 2, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump’s phone call with Tsai Ing-wen, president of the Republic of China, was seen by many China-watchers as the first sign of departure from Washington’s decades-long protocol.

This significant gesture toward Taiwan was later followed by some senior U.S. officials’ visits to Taipei, as well as by unanimous congressional support for including provisions in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to strengthen Taiwan’s defense capabilities.

The support for Taiwan recognizes, as Pence said in his speech, that “America will always believe that Taiwan’s embrace of democracy shows a better path for all the Chinese people.”

Both the National Security Strategy (December 2017) and National Defense Strategy (January 2018) have communist China (and Russia to a lesser degree) clearly in mind as the top threat to America’s interests in Asia and elsewhere. These strategy documents temper what at least had been a hope that China wouldn’t be an adversary.

Less than a year ago, Trump toasted in Beijing for “a friendship that will only grow stronger and stronger in the many years to come” at a banquet with CCP leader Xi Jinping.

On Sept. 26, 2018, citing Beijing’s meddling in the U.S. midterm elections, Trump told the press at the United Nations General Assembly, “Maybe, he’s not [my friend] anymore, I’ll be honest with you.”

As Pence pointed out, “China wants a different American president.” Clearly, the icy relations with Beijing are now beyond the sheer dispute over trade alone.

A Rebuke

At the Aspen Security Forum in July, FBI Director Christopher Wray spoke of China as “the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country.”

The Telegraph reported on Oct. 9, “China has become the biggest state sponsor of cyber-attacks on the West.” According to The Telegraph, “CrowdStrike, which revealed the Russian hack on the Democratic National Committee in 2016, said China was now ahead of Russia as the most prolific nation-state mounting attacks on firms, universities, government departments, think tanks and NGOs.”

No matter who reads the Chinese tea leaves, one can’t help but notice an unconcealed roadmap of communist expansionism via its so-called “One Belt, One Road” initiative.

One Belt, One Road uses debt-trap financing to gain influence over other nations. In the military installations in the South China Sea, we see naked military power being exerted to put a potential stranglehold on the channels through which much of the world’s commerce flows.

Inside China, the most recent human-rights outrage involves herding hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uyghurs into concentration camps. Observers of the 18-year-old practice of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners believe the techniques perfected against the Falun Gong are now being expanded against the massive population of detained Uyghurs.

Yet, what the CCP has been doing, either with violent suppression at home or belligerent aggression abroad, wasn’t met with any serious international challenge and rebuke until Trump moved into the White House.

Pence’s speech put China and the world on notice that the United States is now responding.

Peace Through Strength

Over the years, the CCP’s hostility and resistance toward Western democracies haven’t been fully recognized by Western leaders, due to its longtime cultivation of close ties with some influential Western academic, business, and political interest groups.

But the “America First” administration is now seeking a level playing field with the CCP, not only in terms of trade and business, but also in geopolitical affairs around the world. If there is any Cold War, Beijing actually started it long before many policymakers in Washington were willing to openly admit it was taking place.

Cold War or not, Washington is finally embarking on a realist’s path in dealing with the party-state. Common sense tells us that it is wishful thinking to count on a wolf to turn into a vegetarian.

History shows the predatory nature of a communist regime has never been tamed by an appeasement policy or by wide-eyed liberalism; instead, it has been subdued by a realist’s approach of peace through strength, as well as by the moral courage to defend humanity.

On Oct. 8, 1951, in her campaign for a seat in Parliament, future British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher articulated this basic insight, “The threat to peace comes from Communism, which has powerful forces ready to attack anywhere. Communism waits for weakness, it leaves strength alone.”

In October 1964, Ronald Reagan said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

Despite waves of international and domestic challenges, an America that strives to protect its fundamental values will continue to be a global beacon of hope for freedom, democracy, and humanity.

Perhaps, the best policy advice for managing the CCP comes from the Chinese philosopher Confucius, “Repay kindness with kindness, but repay evil with justice.”

(Oct 11, 2018)

In “1984,” George Orwell cautioned us, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” Orwell further pointed out: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Perhaps, no entity better practices Orwell’s dictum than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). If you live in China long enough, chances are you will likely witness the CCP revising its own history periodically, depending on its leaders’ political needs or perhaps mood swings.

Starting this spring semester, a newly revised textbook has been adopted. Chinese eighth graders are now taught a new narrative about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (also known as the Cultural Revolution) that Chairman Mao Zedong launched and energized between 1966 and 1976—markedly different content from what the eighth graders studied in the previous year.

The horrific and massive human suffering and death as a result of Mao’s reign of terror and lawlessness during the Cultural Revolution have been well documented as public record these days.

In 1981, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the CCP adopted the “Resolution on Certain Historical Issues of the Party Since the Founding of the P.R.C.,” which, for the first time, denounced Mao’s role in the Cultural Revolution, describing the Cultural Revolution as being “disastrous” and “civil turmoil.” Until now, all leaders who came after Deng have been following this established party line as laid out in this “Resolution.”

There are three major revisions with this new textbook. In the previous edition, there was a five-page section called “10-Year Cultural Revolution,” but the new edition removed this section and combined the Cultural Revolution descriptions with another section while reducing the combined section to three pages only. Apparently, the current CCP leadership has made a deliberate effort to minimize the impact of the 10-year Cultural Revolution.

The old edition states, “In the 1960s, Mao Zedong mistakenly believed that the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was engaging in revisionism, and that the Party and the country faced the danger of capitalist restoration. In order to prevent the restoration of capitalism, he decided to initiate the ‘Great Cultural Revolution.’”

The new edition, however, has removed the word “mistakenly,” attempting to justify Mao’s motive to initiate the Cultural Revolution. It states, “In the mid-1960s Mao Zedong believed that the Party and the country faced the danger of capitalist restoration. Therefore, emphasizing the idea of ‘using class struggle as a principle,’ he wanted to prevent the restoration of capitalism by initiating the ‘Great Cultural Revolution.’ By the summer of 1966 the ‘Great Cultural Revolution’ had been fully launched.”

The new edition also adds the statement, “World history always moves forward with ups and downs,” thereby, making light of the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution as part of the natural evolution of history.

What is, then, the purpose of these textbook revisions and why now? Many CCP members, including current top CCP leader Xi Jinping, are actually among the victims and survivors of the Cultural Revolution.

In 2013, Xi, however, made some unusual remarks, “Mao is a great figure who changed the face of the nation and led the Chinese people to a new destiny … The banner of Mao Zedong Thought could not be lost and losing it means a negation to the Party’s glorious history. The principle of holding high the banner of Mao Zedong Thought should not be wavered at any time and we will hold high the banner to advance forever.”

Many China watchers suspect that by reframing Mao’s role in the Cultural Revolution, Xi is attempting to achieve Mao’s paramount status himself, especially in light of his recent move to end the presidential term limit, which has paved the way to allow Xi to stay in power for life.

Transfixed on Maoist Thought

In a New York Times article, Song Yongyi, an expert on the Cultural Revolution at Cal State University in Los Angeles, used Bo Xilai, a CCP princeling, as an example to illuminate why the CCP elite is deeply attached to the doctrines as well as the legacy of the Cultural Revolution.

Bo, now behind bars as Xi’s political rival, was once an avid promoter of the “Red Songs” from the era of the Cultural Revolution and a rising CCP star, who was seen a few years ago as a successor or even replacement for Xi among those who wanted a change in leadership.

In a conversation with Fang Ning, head of the Politics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Bo disclosed that his family was supposed to resent Mao immensely for being harshly purged during the Cultural Revolution, but upon further reckoning, Bo claimed that Mao’s leadership style was still the best way to save China. In other words, promoting Maoism could actually help Bo achieve his own political ambitions, according to Song’s analysis.

The majority of the Chinese leaders at all levels of the government, Xi and Bo included, belong to the so-called Cultural Revolution generation, also known as the “lost generation.”

They have gone through perhaps a yet more bitter experience than what George Orwell once envisioned in 1984, and their worldviews were mostly shaped since childhood by Mao’s little red book, “Quotations From Chairman Mao Zedong.” Despite present-day economic reform and globalization, their minds and souls have been deeply ingrained with Maoist doctrines, which they continue to hold relevant in this digital era.

This appears to be true with many of the Cultural Revolution generation. It would be a daunting task to think outside the box, especially in a closed society. As Carl Jung once noted, “The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.”

In 1989, when thousands of college students rallied for democracy on Tiananmen Square, few might have noticed that these students often drew inspiration and fellowship by singing “L’Internationale,” the best-known communist anthem from the 19th century socialist movement, because that was one of the few songs they all knew by heart back then, growing up in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution.

Living in a closed society, these young people were not able to create any new song for political reform, nor was it possible at that time for them to be aware of Western protest songs such as “We Shall Overcome” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Haunting the Populace

Major disparities appear between people living in communist societies and democracies, in terms of language usage, mentality, way of life, and culture. The contrast comes into sharp focus when comparing people who lived in East and West Germany, or those who are living now in North and South Korea, or those who live in mainland China and territories outside mainland China, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao.

Since 1949 or after the CCP overtook mainland China, those who live outside the communist rule such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, have been spared the communist brainwashing process as well as various political campaigns.

As a result, these Chinese people, often labeled as “overseas Chinese” by the mainland Chinese, continue to use traditional Chinese characters and uphold 5,000-year-old Chinese traditions while an almost opposite path has been taken in mainland China over the past 69 years. Unlike open societies where multiple versions of textbooks are available, in China there is only one version of textbooks and the CCP controls the content.

These latest textbook revisions, however, did not come out without sparking some emotional debates from almost all sectors of society in China, as the Cultural Revolution remains a tormenting memory for many millions of Chinese people who lived through it, and they fear the second coming of the calamity.

Once again, we witness that online critical posts by Chinese netizens have been quickly “harmonized” or deleted by the cyber cops. One tweeted, “We always protest Japanese textbooks for whitewashing the crimes during WWII in China, but the Party doctors our own history shamelessly to deceive our future generation.”

By embracing the ghost of the Cultural Revolution, the CCP rulers are continuing to haunt the populace with the past nightmare. They seem to have forgotten the stern warning from their guru, Karl Marx, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

As noted by Song Yongyi in the New York Times article, “If one wants to know whether the Cultural Revolution has truly ended, just find out if Mao’s portrait on Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) has been taken down or not.”

(Oct 3, 2018)

A new report should spark self-examination by China scholars and questioning from others at how individuals who are often protected by tenure are serving Western societies.

According to the 35-page report, “The Repressive Experiences Among China Scholars: New Evidence from Survey Data,” by Sheena Chestnut Greitens of University of Missouri and Rory Truex of Princeton University, 70 percent of the 562 scholars who responded to the global survey agreed that self-censorship is a major concern in the academic field of China studies.

There are reasons for this. Quite a few of them have been banned from visiting China, and 9 percent have even been “served with tea,” a euphemism for being interrogated by Chinese security agents.

Perhaps, the most harrowing experience belongs to professor Anne-Marie Brady of University of Canterbury in New Zealand, whose office and home were both burglarized after publishing a detailed report on China’s influence operations in New Zealand. Her well-cited paper drew worldwide attention and likely the ire of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Both Interpol and New Zealand Security Intelligence Service reportedly are investigating the break-ins. Brady believes, “It was a psychological operation; it was intended to intimidate.”

A spokesperson for the prime minister was quoted as saying, “New Zealand remains vigilant to the threat of foreign interference and has robust measures in place to protect our values, institutions, and economy.”

In 2007, Carsten A. Holz, an economist at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, authored an alarming article, “Have China Scholars All Been Bought?”, in the Far Eastern Economic Review, holding Western researchers in China studies accountable for currying favor with the CCP, in exchange for access and personal safety in China.

In the article, Holz writes: “Our use of language to conform to the image the Party wishes to project is pervasive. Would the description ‘a secret society characterized by an attitude of popular hostility to law and government’ not properly describe the secrecy of the Party’s operations, its supremacy above the law, and its total control of the government? In Webster’s New World College Dictionary, this is the definition of ‘mafia.’

“The Party’s—or the mafia’s—terminology pervades our writing and teaching. … We are not even willing to call China what its own constitution calls it: a dictatorship.”

The epidemic of self-censorship has extended to elite universities in the United States, according to a recent article in The New Republic, which calls it, “The Other Political Correctness.”

After conducting interviews with more than 100 professors, administrators, and students, the writer concludes that some individuals and academic institutions appear to be too eager to please Beijing or too fearful of offending the party state. The article cites a number of instances of self-censorship, including Columbia University’s Global Center in Beijing canceling several politically sensitive talks.

Sophistry in China Studies

Plato’s depiction of sophists might be less than positive, and perhaps rightly so, should they serve to be merchants of insincere and superficial opinions, and oppressors of souls and wisdom. If integrity is missing in China studies, authentic scholarship will vacate, allowing sophistry of various kinds and even lies to permeate the discipline’s work.

It’s perhaps understandable for researchers living in China to kowtow to the CCP, but it’s unconscionable for scholars outside China to behave like timid collaborators of the communist regime through self-censorship. Topics that are particularly sensitive to the CCP include Tibet, Taiwan, Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square massacre, underground Christians, and Xinjiang.

The late Margaret Thatcher, a former UK prime minister, once said, “When I’m out of politics, I’m going to run a business. It’ll be called ‘rent-a-spine.’” Sadly, the Iron Lady is no longer around.

A good number of China scholars, however, conduct their research truthfully, irrespective of how the CCP reacts and as a matter of intellectual hygiene.

They might now be on the CCP’s blacklist, perhaps to be known in the future as the honor roll when China becomes an open society. After all, the public in the free world and elsewhere certainly deserves to be informed of research findings from all sides on any academic topic.

‘White-Washing’ the Party State

One might ask, when did Beijing take the community of China studies hostage? Even during the Cold War’s most hostile time, Russian studies researchers who lived outside the Eastern Bloc never faced such widespread apprehension and self-censorship. What is called China exceptionalism is perhaps in part to blame.

These days, the definition of China exceptionalism has many interpretations, depending on who writes about it.

China apologists, otherwise also known as Panda Huggers, paint a rosy picture of the Communist regime indiscriminately, to the extent that they would whitewash this Orwellian party-state as an alternative state capitalism, or the so-called “China model,” to compete with the “flawed” Western democracies on a global scale.

These apologists may come from think tanks, media, academic, and business interest groups. They willfully overlook the CCP’s ruthless domestic suppression and the final communist mission as stated by Mao Zedong—“the ultimate emancipation of mankind as a whole.” At the same time, they normalize, rationalize, and accept what is actually abnormal, irrational and unacceptable, regarding Beijing’s behavior at home and abroad.

Over the years, these China apologists have successfully lobbied Washington to refrain from confronting Beijing on a wide range of concerns, such as unfair trade, piracy of intellectual property, human rights, and espionage on U.S. soil.

They persuaded policymakers to save the CCP’s face by holding human rights dialogues behind closed doors, instead of addressing publicly Beijing’s dismal human rights record, including the horrific crime of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.

Each time Washington moves a step closer to sell some defensive weaponry to Taiwan or to take similar acts that annoy Beijing, these apologists rush to echo the CCP’s proverbial backlash: “The feelings of 1.3 billion Chinese people are hurt!”

Such recycled verbiage, however, is so obviously self-serving that Chinese netizens often feel compelled to clarify their frustrations online.

One wrote on Twitter, “Let me tell you, I’m a member of the Chinese people, and my feelings haven’t been hurt by you in the least. The feelings you’ve really hurt belong to the people of Zhao.” To avoid censorship, the Chinese netizens are now using the term, “the people of Zhao”—the powerful upper-society family in a famous novel by Chinese writer Lu Xun (1881–1936)—to refer to the CCP elite today.

When this type of exceptionalism steered by China apologists becomes pervasive, it becomes inevitable that much of the CCP’s wrongdoing is made to appear somehow justified.

The so-called constructive engagement policy embraced by all previous administrations lacked the guts to stand up to Beijing and failed to make the honest Sinologists feel secure, thereby setting the stage for the rampant self-imposed censorship—truly, a fear-based habit.

While the CCP is going about its scare tactics as usual, things are beginning to take a new turn in some aspects of life in dealing with China since President Donald Trump moved into the White House, according to a U.S. diplomat who was once stationed in Beijing. For instance, Washington no longer hesitates to point out the CCP’s espionage and infiltration on America’s college campuses, pointing to the Confucius Institutes in particular. As evidenced in the Greitens-Truex report, China scholars are beginning to share their significant concerns over Beijing’s interference with their research.

While some China watchers are reluctant to acknowledge it, a new cold war between Beijing and Washington has already begun, and may be around for some time.

Western democracies must be as firm in their standoff with this communist regime in Asia as they once were with the former USSR near the North Pole. The main difference this time is perhaps we are facing a much more formidable foe.

In times of this importance, humanity needs to be unafraid. As Shakespeare wrote in Measure for Measure, “virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.”

(Sept 19, 2018)

A video showing policemen in Shenzhen walking into a young woman’s apartment last month and taking her away in the middle of the night went viral in China.

The police had no arrest or search warrant, and when the woman demanded an explanation, the police responded by asking, “What have you posted on the internet lately?”

This video clip, which was subsequently removed by authorities, has angered many Chinese netizens who were able to view it, and sparked the mocking of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doctrine of the so-called “Four Self-Confidences” as being so fragile that an online post could undermine the regime.

The ‘Four Self-Confidences’

At the CCP’s 18th National Congress in November 2011, then-Party General Secretary Hu Jintao came up with the doctrine of the so-called “Three Self-Confidences” —namely, self-confidence in China’s socialist path, theories, and system. In 2016, current General Secretary Xi Jinping added self-confidence in socialist culture.

The doctrine of “Four Self-Confidences” has become so crucial that, in May 2017, the China State Council Information Office, in an unusual move, distributed an article titled “The Four Self-Confidences Are the Spiritual Foothold for the ‘China Dream,’” which was originally published in a journal of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The Information Office said that Xi’s “China Dream” can’t be achieved without the doctrine of “Four Self-Confidences.”

Plato once said, “An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.”

No other ruling party on the planet boasts of anything such as the “Four Self-Confidences.”

Apparently, the CCP leadership has paid no heed to Confucius’s precept, “One must stop when one’s act borders on shame.”

People might wonder where the CCP’s self-confidence in the socialist path comes from. Former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who opened up the Chinese economy, said on a number of occasions that his “socialism with Chinese characteristics” was an uncharted course.

In Deng’s own words, his socialist journey was like “wading the river by feeling the stones underneath”—a description that gives little indication of self-confidence. Many Chinese netizens, accordingly, have mocked Deng’s socialist adventure.

Such Soviet-styled dark humor perhaps exemplifies vividly how much faith the public truly has in China’s socialist path.

Self-Deception

As for the CCP’s self-confidence in socialist theories expressed by their Party leaders—from Mao’s thought to Deng’s theory, Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents,” Hu’s “Scientific Development,” and now Xi’s new thought—these hollow propositions are at best self-deceiving.

No matter how they are labeled, all aim to maintain the CCP’s dictatorship in a changing world environment. Yet each CCP leader has been eager to leave a legacy of his own by incorporating his peculiar doctrines into China’s constitution.

Mao’s familiar calligraphy “Serve the People” might be the most visible slogan on the wall at the entrance of Zhongnanhai, the seat of the CCP’s headquarters in Beijing, but few Beijing residents who pass by this Ming Dynasty imperial gate would seem to be particularly impressed.

In Beijing, people are familiar, however, with this joke:

A customer once complained to a restaurant owner, “Why can’t I find any beef in this bowl of ‘roasted beef noodle’?” The owner shrugged and said, “Why are you so fussy about the name of the food we serve here? Do you expect to get a wife from eating a ‘wife cake’ (lao po bing)? Or better yet, have you ever seen any everyday people in the Great Hall of the People?”

Qin Hui, a former Tsinghua University professor, wrote about how the CCP hasn’t moved out of the shadow of the imperial system, in the insightful best-seller “Moving Away From the Feudal System” in 2015.

Drawing lessons from major events in modern Chinese history, Qin argued for a republic based on constitutional democracy that respects fundamental freedoms and protects diversity. Not surprisingly, his book was banned soon after it was published.

A journalist teased, “Had his book been called ‘Moving Into the Feudal System,’ it would have all been fine.” Qin is now teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Socialist ideology is a foreign import, and certainly not part of China’s 5,000-year civilization. It is totalitarian and repressive by nature. With China now becoming part of globalization, more people are being exposed to and hailing Western liberal democracy.

While boasting its self-confidence in socialist culture, the CCP might have a difficult time explaining to avid Chinese fans of Winnie the Pooh why this popular cartoon figure and the movie “Christopher Robin” are banned in China. Unlike leaders in open societies, the CCP rulers are thin-skinned and certainly aren’t to be teased by the masses on the internet, let alone when being compared to a puffy-looking bear, cute or not.

The CCP is paranoid about all sectors of society. On Aug. 6, Shaolin Temple, one of the best-known Buddhist pilgrimage sites in China, raised a national flag for the first time since the temple’s establishment some 1,500 years ago, to pledge loyalty to the CCP.

In some places, people must show personal identification cards to purchase a kitchen knife, reminiscent of what was required in the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1638), when the Mongols ruled the Chinese.

Lessons From History

King Li, the 10th king of China’s Zhou Dynasty, was known for his tyranny during his reign from 877 B.C. to 841 B.C. He sent agents to spy on people’s private conversations and would execute those who dared to air any negative views about his rule by terror. As a result, people would hesitate to express themselves.

With much satisfaction, King Li told Zhao Gong, one of his senior ministers, “Now, I am finally able to gag all critics.”

Zhao Gong replied, “Muzzling the public is much more dangerous than attempting to block a deluge. A deluge can be best handled by guiding it to flow away, not by building a dam—and this is true with governing your people, who should be allowed to express themselves one way or another.”

King Li didn’t listen and later ended up living in exile when his people rose up in revolt.

The collapse of the USSR in the 1990s is another example, as few Russia experts in the West anticipated its fall, given its powerful appearance. Interestingly, dictators, in China and elsewhere, aren’t good students who learn lessons from history.

A European diplomat once pointed out, “If you wish to know which country or political system is better, just look where immigrants are heading.”

Despite the CCP’s relentless propaganda against Western democracies, CCP officials appear to be among the most zealous about sending their children and assets to America.

Multiple Chinese media sources reported that Beijing is hoping to seek cooperation from foreign governments to retrieve some $21 trillion in hidden assets and unpaid taxes overseas. No one, however, seems to know the exact amount of capital flight from China since Deng Xiaoping pioneered his economic reforms in the 1980s.

If one looks at the long line every day outside the U.S. consulate visa offices in China, one can’t help but wonder about America’s self-confidence on multiple levels, which goes unproclaimed.

Propaganda posters touting the “China Dream” might be visible everywhere in China, but for many Chinese—and young people in particular—their dreams might actually include an opportunity to come to the United States, the land of the free, where they hope to fulfill their American dream.

Instead of transitioning to an open society so as to better address a variety of social ills, including widespread unrest, corruption, income disparity, and social injustice, the CCP often, by its predatory instinct, resorts to repression or even violence against dissenting voices. What the CCP leaders don’t realize is that their suppression, in turn, amasses still greater retribution that will shorten their rule in the end.
Perhaps, one should never have expected to turn a wolf into a vegetarian.

Genuine self-confidence originates in compassion. As wisely put by Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, “Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”

These appear to be the last things on the minds of CCP rulers.

(Sept 10, 2018)

Recently, there has been some buzz in the media about President Donald Trump’s alleged characterization of virtually every Chinese student studying in the United States as being a spy, despite the fact that he didn’t identify the country by name. While the mainstream media might find his words far-fetched, Trump wasn’t totally off the mark.

On Feb. 13, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified at a Senate hearing that a massive Chinese intelligence espionage network, “whether it’s professors, scientists, students,” is in operation at universities across the United States. “We see [that] in almost every field office the FBI has around the country. It’s not just major cities. It’s small ones as well,” he said.

“I think the level of naiveté on the part of the academic sector about this creates its own issues. They’re exploiting the very open research and development environment that we have, which we all revere. But they’re taking advantage of it.”

There are some 350,000 students from mainland China (about 35 percent of all foreign students in America) currently enrolled at U.S. higher-education institutions. According to Michael Wessel, commissioner of the congressional U.S.–China Economic Security Review Commission, Beijing is recruiting some of them to secure technology knowhow.

Cases such as Ruopeng Liu, a former Duke doctoral student accused of passing sensitive technology to China, aren’t uncommon, although often not as sensationally covered as a Russian spy story by the press.

The Shady CSSAs

Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs) exist at virtually all U.S. universities that have enrolled Chinese students. They are influenced and frequently funded by their local Chinese consulates.

These are not typical student clubs; rather, they serve to monitor fellow Chinese students and carry out a variety of state missions such as harassing the so-called anti-China speakers on campus and greeting any visiting Chinese leaders, rain or shine, outside their hotels.

In 2015, when Chinese head of state Xi Jingping was in Washington, the Chinese Embassy used WeChat and relied on these CSSAs to mobilize some 700 Chinese students from nearby universities to show up, waving red flags to welcome their communist leader, each being compensated later with $20 for their effort; some were even bused into town from locations hours away, such as Virginia Tech.

In a jaw-dropping example, hundreds of Chinese students studying in Europe were flown to Iceland when Jiang Zemin made an official state visit there in 2002. The Iceland authorities fell on their knees to receive Jiang, while denying the entry of hundreds of Falun Gong and Tibetan protesters at the Reykjavík–Keflavík Airport, using a blacklist provided by Beijing.

As if such CSSAs weren’t bold enough in their missions, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has openly set up its branches on university campuses across America.

In an interview with Foreign Policy, a student member of the CCP cell at the University of Illinois said: “After we went back to China, we had one-on-one meetings with our teachers. We talked about ourselves and others’ performance abroad. … We had to talk about whether other students had some anti-party thought.”

Such CCP cells are operating in California, Ohio, New York, Connecticut, North Dakota, and West Virginia.

The culture of students spying on one other isn’t unique in an Orwellian society. In fact, students are also encouraged to report on their professors.

As a result of tip-offs from students,  professor You Shengdong of Xiamen University, professor Zhai Juhong of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, and professor Tan Song of Chongqing Normal University have all been suspended from teaching for making politically incorrect comments in the classroom.

Stockholm Syndrome

I once asked a Chinese student, a devoted Christian: “Why would you answer the CSSA’s call to greet the visiting Chinese leader while your underground church brothers and sisters in China are hiding and being persecuted by this atheist communist regime? If anything, I could understand if you would go and protest on their behalf.”

He was visibly at a loss, struggling between whether he should fulfill his patriotic duty or defend his personal faith. Neither was he able to differentiate what has become an ambiguous line between China and the CCP, thanks to decades of systematic propaganda that has equated the nation with the party.

Some of these active CSSA members may very likely have parents or grandparents who went through a tough time during the Cultural Revolution, but the CCP seems to have succeeded in convincing these students that “without the CCP, there is no New China,” according to a universal slogan.

Dr. Jingduan Yang, an Oxford-trained psychiatrist, was the first Chinese doctor who sought to explain the internal conflict the Chinese people have suffered all these years.

At a well-attended Yenching Auditorium at Harvard in May 2006, Dr. Yang used the case of the famous Chinese writer Ding Ling to illustrate how the entire Chinese population has been a victim of Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome, coined after a 1973 bank robbery that took place in Sweden, is used to describe the paradoxical feelings a victim experiences for his or her abuser.

Ding Ling, who barely survived the living hell of the “Anti-Rightist Movement” in the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, to the surprise of many, ended up vigorously defending the CCP’s “Anti-Rightist Movement” after she was rehabilitated. Of course, Ding Ling wasn’t alone in this regard, as an Orwellian society that is sustained by fear and mind control can mass-produce individuals with such distorted thinking.

Although no one living in Beijing’s Zhongnanhai compound—the headquarters for the CCP—may have ever heard of B.F. Skinner, it appears that they have certainly mastered his behavior-modification model, better perhaps than many counselors in the West.

Skinner’s model, referred to as operant conditioning, is based on the premise that behavior can be shaped by external stimuli. Through multiple experiments, Skinner discovered that such stimulation, specifically rewards or punishments, is most likely to impact behavior in a well-controlled environment. Few regimes have done a better job than the CCP in isolating their citizens to better manipulate and control their thinking and behavior.

Often, longtime victims of Stockholm syndrome may not be aware that their thinking is distorted or that they have been victimized. From a young age, Chinese people aren’t educated with objective facts but instead indoctrinated with ideas the government wants them to believe. This is dangerous for the Chinese people, as well for those living outside China’s borders.

This is not to say that a democratic government is completely free of ideological manipulation, but there is a big difference: The success of a democracy depends on the active participation of its citizens whereas the success of a communist regime depends on the passive adherence of its populace, which can only be achieved through relentless propaganda and a draconian grip on all media, including a well-insulated intranet for its 600 million internet users.

Therefore, the only treatment for an entire people held hostage by a massive authoritarian system is a free society.

Overcoming the effects of Stockholm syndrome or other types of mind control from years of communist education is perhaps one of the most daunting tasks facing all Chinese people, particularly overseas students who have a decent opportunity to transform themselves in a free society. George Orwell wrote in “1984,” “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

Instead of offering overseas Chinese students scientific and technology know-how exclusively, U.S. universities may find it a worthy cause to invest resources in studying mind control and Stockholm syndrome under the Chinese communist system. Workshops on these topics may help students overcome the traumatic effects of the constant and insidious propaganda to which they were subjected, so that they can feel safe enough to think critically and creatively.

Winston Churchill said, “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” If we are to help China become a peaceful and trustworthy nation, nurturing a healthy mind is perhaps a good place to start.

(Sept 2, 2018)