Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norri with
Speaker 2: you up next. Bradley Thayer one of two authors James
Speaker 2: Fanelle is the other, who wrote the book Embracing Communist China.
Speaker 2: Bradley is a PhD, founding member of the Committee on
Speaker 2: Present Danger China and a former visiting fellow at the
Speaker 2: Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Bradley one of the most
Speaker 2: important books I've read in a long time. Welcome to
Speaker 2: the program.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you very much, and it's a great time
Speaker 3: to join you today.
Speaker 2: How did China get to be so strong since they
Speaker 2: took over in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 3: Well, that's one of the key questions that we ask
Speaker 3: in the book is how did this happen? And the
Speaker 3: answer that we examined, particularly after the communist leader Dumshell
Speaker 3: Pig executed a deliberate strategy of deception directed against the
Speaker 3: United States in the wake of the nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 3: Tenemen massacre, where he felt quite rightly that there was
Speaker 3: the end of history moment, George, that you may recall
Speaker 3: where there was the belief that democracy and free market
Speaker 3: governments were the wave of the future. He felt under
Speaker 3: direct threat. So what he did is devise a strategy
Speaker 3: of deception, what's often called the hide and bide strategy,
Speaker 3: where he recognized he could reach out to American manufacturers
Speaker 3: and investors and have them invest in communist China, and
Speaker 3: manufacturing then would shift from the United States, of course
Speaker 3: to communist China, and he would make Wall Street, if
Speaker 3: you will, the US Chamber of Commerce partners with the
Speaker 3: Chinese Communist Party. And what Jim Fanel and I do
Speaker 3: in our book is really firstly explain how that happened,
Speaker 3: and then how Dung as well as of course the
Speaker 3: greed of American of Wall Street, of course, the avarice,
Speaker 3: and of course what they would say their sound business sense,
Speaker 3: shifted American manufacturing and investment directly into China, greatly increasing
Speaker 3: its economic might so that it rose from nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: when it was about zero point six percent, so not
Speaker 3: even one percent of world gross domestic product, to twenty
Speaker 3: and nineteen when it's about nineteen percent, or about one
Speaker 3: fifth of all world gross domestic product. So in thirty
Speaker 3: years it rose from being a less developed country to
Speaker 3: becoming an economic powerhouse, of course, and they use that
Speaker 3: economic might, of course, to convert it into military power.
Speaker 3: Is why we see the rise of this great threat,
Speaker 3: existential threat to the United States today. So it took
Speaker 3: one of a genius strategists like Dungshallping, the communist leader,
Speaker 3: but he also took the United States investment, manufacturing, and
Speaker 3: then ultimately the Clinton administration in the nineteen nineties put
Speaker 3: communist China on the path to intrigue into the World
Speaker 3: Trade Organization, and that just added rocket fuel to communist
Speaker 3: China's growth, and the result is what we see today.
Speaker 3: Embracing communist China led to its rapid rise to the
Speaker 3: point where it's this threat today. And we examine in
Speaker 3: the book additionally what we call the engagement school. Right,
Speaker 3: there was not only that economic exchange with China, but
Speaker 3: that converted into if you will, political power. China and
Speaker 3: US business communities, Wall Street and then ultimately media universities,
Speaker 3: even the military became invested in engaging with China, not
Speaker 3: seeing it as an existential enemy of the United States,
Speaker 3: but seeing it as a partner, and thus fundamentally became
Speaker 3: a co optive We call this term threat deflation. Year
Speaker 3: after year, the US military, the intelligence community, and even
Speaker 3: national security strategists threat deflated the China threat. And again,
Speaker 3: that is the story of the book in terms of
Speaker 3: how we came to where we are, and then of
Speaker 3: course we explore what we need to do about it.
Speaker 2: We have to admit, too, Bradley, that the growth of
Speaker 2: China over this period was absolutely stunning, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: It was? Indeed, again, it moved from just a less
Speaker 3: developed nation status, right for a country of about a
Speaker 3: billion people in nineteen ninety, to where it is today
Speaker 3: one point four billion people approximately and one fifth of
Speaker 3: the world's economy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It went from less than one percent of the world's
Speaker 3: economy to one fifth of the world's economy in thirty years.
Speaker 3: That's a remarkable rise, and that happens very rarely in
Speaker 3: international politics. What's fundamentally remarkable, what's unique is that the
Speaker 3: US didn't do anything about it, to balance it, or
Speaker 3: to try to check its rise. In fact, it it's reverse, right.
Speaker 3: It continued to invest, it continued to trade, It continued
Speaker 3: to if you will, add this rocket fuel to China's growth.
Speaker 3: And that's a very strange thing to happen in the
Speaker 3: international politics and the big part of what we do
Speaker 3: in the book. Again, the engagement school is so powerful
Speaker 3: from the Clinton administration, even in George W. Bush's administration,
Speaker 3: the Obama administration, and only President Trump did anything to
Speaker 3: reverse that. Before we see what we term a neo
Speaker 3: engagement under President Joe Biden again, where Biden is attempting
Speaker 3: to return to the Clinton, Bush and Obama strategies of
Speaker 3: engagement with communist China, and we argue, of course, that's disastros.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what the United States should not do is
Speaker 3: a work to engage communist China. But instead, what we
Speaker 3: need to do is formulate a strategy of victory over
Speaker 3: communist China, as Ronald Reagan developed very famously the remarks
Speaker 3: he gave in March of nineteen eighty three in Orlando,
Speaker 3: where he said that the United States saw that the
Speaker 3: Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the centered evil
Speaker 3: in the modern world, and what we were going to
Speaker 3: do as the United States and more broadly the West
Speaker 3: was defeat the Soviet Union. Right, we were going to
Speaker 3: have victory over the Soviet Union. Well, that's what we
Speaker 3: need to return to today.
Speaker 2: It was truly remarkable, Brad the way China has grown,
Speaker 2: and we, as you have so accurately mentioned, played a
Speaker 2: big part of it. Back in nineteen seventy one, I
Speaker 2: was a young reporter in Detroit for radio station, and
Speaker 2: I remember President Nixon at the time opening up the
Speaker 2: doors with what was called Ping Pong diplomacy, where we
Speaker 2: sent a ping pong team to China and it kind
Speaker 2: of opened up relations. Was that a smart move or
Speaker 2: a dumb move?
Speaker 3: Well, in the context of the Cold War, that was
Speaker 3: a smart move because what Nixon was trying to do
Speaker 3: was balanced the Soviet Union. He was trying to use
Speaker 3: the power of communist China, the military mind of communist China,
Speaker 3: and exploit the tensions that existed between the two major
Speaker 3: communist superpowers, the Soviet Union of course in Moscow, and
Speaker 3: then of course Chinese the People's Republic of China and Beijing.
Speaker 3: So what Nixon was trying to do was to use
Speaker 3: those powers against one another. That's classic balance of power reasoning.
Speaker 3: It makes a lot of sense to do that. What
Speaker 3: we've seen in the book, of course, is that well,
Speaker 3: the Cold War ended, didn't mint right? The Cold War
Speaker 3: ended by nineteen eighty nine, and certainly by the death
Speaker 3: of the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety one, but the
Speaker 3: United States never recognized Communist China as the threat that
Speaker 3: it was, and we, of course, in the book explored
Speaker 3: why that was so. So Nixon's strategy he made a
Speaker 3: lot of sense in the context of the Cold War,
Speaker 3: but once the Cold War was ended, what the United
Speaker 3: States should have done is say, hey, look, international politics
Speaker 3: doesn't stop, right, You never get a time out in
Speaker 3: this and if we help Communist China's rise, what we're
Speaker 3: doing is just facilitating the rise of this new communist superpower,
Speaker 3: having just defeated the communist superpower of the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: So that's a big part of the book is explaining
Speaker 3: how that happened and the gross mistakes that we made. Right,
Speaker 3: America's greatest strategic failure was to embrace communists China, leading
Speaker 3: to the situation we have today where China's military, of course,
Speaker 3: has grown so significantly and threatens the Americans. The spy
Speaker 3: balloon that we saw in January of last year, it
Speaker 3: floated over of course the United States, the American military institutions.
Speaker 2: The ongoing hacking of our resources. They're hacking like crazy,
Speaker 2: aren't they.
Speaker 3: Yes, said Director Ray has warned, Right said that this
Speaker 3: is they've been doing that for a long time and
Speaker 3: it's gotten a lot worse. And Director FBI Director Ray
Speaker 3: warned that well hacked, these guys are in our infrastructure
Speaker 3: and could turn out the lights literally at any time,
Speaker 3: as well as turning off the water supply. And they're
Speaker 3: a tremendous danger to our interests globally but also to
Speaker 3: Americans at home. And that takes an economic form, right,
Speaker 3: that was lost jobs that left from Ohio, that left
Speaker 3: from Pennsylvania, Illinois to communist China, but also the pandemic.
Speaker 3: Of course, we all remember COVID nineteen and what happened
Speaker 3: with that and what did we find, George Right, We
Speaker 3: found that well, our personal protective equipment was made in China,
Speaker 3: exactly tiny cut that off, Uh, we don't have it.
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