Speaker 1: She wants reunification. He has said this time and time again.
Speaker 1: He's claimed that it is unstoppable. And look, this has
Speaker 1: been the position since the inception of the Chinese Communist Party,
Speaker 1: but it has become an obsession under She he wants
Speaker 1: the US to stop selling arms, to change his posture,
Speaker 1: and to reduce its.
Speaker 2: Support of Taiwan.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the scary news so far in the big
Speaker 3: summit between Trump and President She, the leader of the
Speaker 3: two biggest economies in the world, the two leaders meeting
Speaker 3: is that man she went there right away on Taiwan,
Speaker 3: and as you just heard in that report there from
Speaker 3: CBS News, it has become an obsession of his that Taiwan,
Speaker 3: the independent country off the coast of China, become part
Speaker 3: of China. President She believes it is part of China
Speaker 3: and should become a full on part of China. Our
Speaker 3: position is currently no, you ain't, but President she said
Speaker 3: to Trump yesterday. If handled poorly, it could lead to
Speaker 3: conflict in an extremely dangerous situation. I've seen no reporting
Speaker 3: on how Trump replied to that. Basically a threat from
Speaker 3: President She about don't get in our way if we
Speaker 3: decide to take Taiwan. So we got that on a
Speaker 3: little more of the optimistic side. This is just out
Speaker 3: from the White House. The two sides agreed that the
Speaker 3: Strait of horror moves in Iran must remain open to
Speaker 3: support the free flow of energy. That's good the President.
Speaker 3: She said that also made clear that China's opposition to
Speaker 3: the militarization of the strait or any effort to charge
Speaker 3: a toll or anything like that. And both countries agreed
Speaker 3: Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. And I hope
Speaker 3: President She means those things sometimes he doesn't. Joining us
Speaker 3: now to discuss all of this. Gordon Chang, we've had
Speaker 3: on the show many times over the years of author
Speaker 3: and calumnist, written a whole bunch of different great books
Speaker 3: that we've talked to him about. He's a columnist at
Speaker 3: The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter at
Speaker 3: at Gordon g Chang. Mister Chang, welcome to the Armstrong
Speaker 3: and Getty Show. Appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2: Oh well, thank you so much. Jack.
Speaker 3: So was that a threat from President She on the
Speaker 3: whole Taiwan thing?
Speaker 2: Sure it was, and President Trump has responded. We've been
Speaker 2: told by a White House official speaking off the record
Speaker 2: that there will be no change in US policy, which
Speaker 2: is good. Now, i'd like President Trump to publicly say, look,
Speaker 2: we're not changing our policy. And actually i'd like him
Speaker 2: to say we're defending Timewan, because I think at some
Speaker 2: point we're going to need to do that. But thing
Speaker 2: has just been huffing and puffing, and I think President
Speaker 2: Trump knows it and he's just not feeling And Trump
Speaker 2: is feeling well, there's no point in actually opposing him publicly,
Speaker 2: but the US will not change its position.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's damned interesting. I mean because the readout after
Speaker 3: their first talks, the Communist Party's readout was basically she's
Speaker 3: threat to Trump, with no indication of how Trump responded
Speaker 3: the White House. Initial White House readout didn't mention the
Speaker 3: Taiwan thing at all. It just talked about, you know,
Speaker 3: business relations. So that's interesting that you have an update
Speaker 3: on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's and you can you know a lot of
Speaker 2: people and there's a whole industry of people who will
Speaker 2: blame Trump for things he has not done, and this
Speaker 2: is one of them where people are really worried that
Speaker 2: Trump will sell out Taiwan. Now she hasn't done it yet,
Speaker 2: and I don't think he'll do it, and if he
Speaker 2: does it, we'll criticize him then for it. But until
Speaker 2: he does it, people should just sort of calm down
Speaker 2: a little bit. And I think it's important for us
Speaker 2: to give the president some credit here.
Speaker 4: Well I don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what Trump's true thoughts on this,
Speaker 3: but I don't know that Kamala Harris would have defended
Speaker 3: Taiwan if president or Joe Biden or Barack Obama. I mean,
Speaker 3: so's it's always been kind of an open question would
Speaker 3: we actually go to war with China to defend Taiwan
Speaker 3: if it came down to it. So I don't know
Speaker 3: where we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and we also don't know where we are
Speaker 2: as Americans because we had to go back to nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty where Dean Ahison, who was Secretary of State at
Speaker 2: the time, publicly drew America's western defense perimeter that did
Speaker 2: not include South Korea. So that encouraged Kim olsunga North
Speaker 2: Korea to invade the South. And what did Truman do?
Speaker 2: President Truman immediately sent troops to defend South Korea. So
Speaker 2: we don't even know our own mind, but I believe
Speaker 2: that we would defend Taiwan because if we didn't, it
Speaker 2: would be catastrophic.
Speaker 3: That's what I wanted to ask you about. Explain to
Speaker 3: people why that would be a big deal if China
Speaker 3: was able to make Taiwan part of China in the
Speaker 3: same way that they did Hong Kong, Okay.
Speaker 2: First of all, Taiwan makes ninety two percent of the
Speaker 2: world's most sophisticated semiconductors, so forget about the future with
Speaker 2: involving microchips. But also after the catastrophic which all from Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: Taiwan has become the test of American credibility and resolve
Speaker 2: around the world. China, which has been attacking democracies, we
Speaker 2: cannot allow them to absorb any democracy, especially one as
Speaker 2: important as Taiwan, because the propaganda would be malicious that
Speaker 2: the United States was no longer a world power. And also,
Speaker 2: since the eighteen hundreds, we Americans have drawn our western
Speaker 2: defense perimeter off the coast of East Asia. Taiwan sits
Speaker 2: in the center of that critical line. It protects our
Speaker 2: allies Philippines in Japan. We would not be a world
Speaker 2: power if we allowed China to take Taiwan, and this
Speaker 2: would be just shameful. Forget about these strategic implications. It
Speaker 2: would just be shameful we allowed that to happen.
Speaker 3: I agree with all that, and we're all seeing what
Speaker 3: the Strait of Horror moves has done to the world economy,
Speaker 3: and China controlling all the shipping lanes of that part
Speaker 3: of the world would make that look like nothing.
Speaker 2: Yes, and President Trump deserves a lot of credit because
Speaker 2: just on April thirteenth, the Pentagon announced a defense pack
Speaker 2: with Indonesia. The Indonesian island of Sumatra is the southern
Speaker 2: end of the Strait of Malacca, which is far more
Speaker 2: important than the Strait of Horror moves to world commerce.
Speaker 2: So Trump is thinking about these things in a very
Speaker 2: determined way. So here again give him credit.
Speaker 3: So this is new from the White House. As I
Speaker 3: mentioned a little bit ago, I wondered what your take
Speaker 3: on this isn't and this is good news that President
Speaker 3: she agreed that the Strait of Horror Moves, that's the
Speaker 3: strait with the war in Iran we've been following, must
Speaker 3: remain open. They don't get to charge tolls, all that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff. And he agreed Iran can never have
Speaker 3: a nuke.
Speaker 4: That's all good news, right, well mostly, And the reason
Speaker 4: is we need to keep the Strait of Hormos closed
Speaker 4: until the Iranians actually give up their.
Speaker 2: Nuclear program and their ballistic missiles. And this puts a
Speaker 2: lot of pressure on China, which we need not only
Speaker 2: for Iran but for other things. And you know, it's
Speaker 2: up to us. This is a fault not just of Trump,
Speaker 2: but of all his predecessors, going back to Clinton. Actually
Speaker 2: even before that, Iran has a nuclear weapons program because
Speaker 2: the Chinese transplanted Theirs on Iranian soil. They did that
Speaker 2: by direct transfers of equipment, material and technology, but they
Speaker 2: also did it indirectly through the aq Con black market
Speaker 2: network of Pakistan. So you know, a lot of people
Speaker 2: blame Trump for this war. Trump knows this. He needs
Speaker 2: to say it in public that there's a war because
Speaker 2: China made this war virtually inevitable.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting. I was struck yesterday watching the Leader's
Speaker 3: meet and all the kids dance around and everything like
Speaker 3: that under the watchful eye of a giant portrait of
Speaker 3: Chairman Mao that is there in the square. I can't
Speaker 3: believe that's not more remarked upon about the fact that
Speaker 3: you have this enormous poster painting whatever it is of
Speaker 3: Chairman Mao, the guy responsible for more deaths than maybe
Speaker 3: anyone in human history.
Speaker 2: No, you're right about that. Mao is responsible for more
Speaker 2: deaths than any other figure in history, more than Hitler,
Speaker 2: more than Stalin, more than Genghis Khan. It's just Mao's
Speaker 2: death toll is enormous. We don't know exactly what it was,
Speaker 2: but from a number of events, especially the famine following
Speaker 2: the Great Leap Forward at the end of the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties in the beginning of the nineteen sixties was horrific.
Speaker 2: Should have known or knew what was happening, but allowed
Speaker 2: the famine to continue. And this is something that the
Speaker 2: United States needs to talk about. You know, the Communist
Speaker 2: Party maliciously hits us every day with propaganda, except for
Speaker 2: the two weeks around a visit of an American leader
Speaker 2: to China or vice versa. But apart from that, you
Speaker 2: get malicious propaganda every day, and the United States needs
Speaker 2: to hit back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would like some sort of statement about that.
Speaker 3: There's the cognitive dissonance thing going on in my brain
Speaker 3: that we can have Elon Musk and all these people
Speaker 3: in Trump and everye we're all smiling, holding hands, and
Speaker 3: the kids are the dancing around, and you got the
Speaker 3: most evil person in world history looking down on it.
Speaker 3: Seems like somebody ought to throw out by the way,
Speaker 3: that system is currently in place, and that's evil. But
Speaker 3: I guess nobody wants to upset the Apple.
Speaker 2: Gart right, And that system has declared the United States
Speaker 2: to be its enemy, and we need to say that
Speaker 2: we ignored Osama Bin Lad, we're ignoring the Chinese. Both
Speaker 2: believe that they must destroy the United States. Fortunately we
Speaker 2: killed Osama Bin Laden, but China is still in a
Speaker 2: position to do that.
Speaker 3: Gordon Chang, thanks for joining us today on short notice.
Speaker 3: I know you're super busy. Everybody wants to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Find him on Twitter at least at Gordon g. Chang
Speaker 3: or writing his column for The Daily Beast. Thanks for
Speaker 3: your time today. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Oh well, thank you, Jack.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got another comment about that, But first I
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Speaker 3: had so we could call out the Soviet Union for
Speaker 3: being bad, although we didn't always. When when Reagan back
Speaker 3: in the eighties said, you know, called the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: an evil empire, a lot of people, oh.
Speaker 2: You can't say that, that's.
Speaker 3: Revocative or whatever. So we didn't even very often with
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union point out loud how awful they were,
Speaker 3: And we weren't nearly as economically intertwined or dependent. I
Speaker 3: looked this up before the show today, because I'm that
Speaker 3: sort of statistic geek. The Soviet Union had about a
Speaker 3: third of our economic power, or we were the number
Speaker 3: one economy throughout the Cold War, they had about a
Speaker 3: third of our economic power. China is about seventy five
Speaker 3: percent of our economic power, and in some ways of
Speaker 3: measuring they're equal to us. So it's a completely different ballgame.
Speaker 3: So I guess that's why business leaders, including our president,
Speaker 3: aren't gonna call them an evil empire. But when you
Speaker 3: got Chairman Mao staring down over everybody as the leading
Speaker 3: killer of humans in human history, that is really weird
Speaker 3: that nobody says anything out loud about that. Not I mean,
Speaker 3: why doesn't the CBS Evening News say that. By the way, there's,
Speaker 3: as you can see in the background, there's Chairman Mao
Speaker 3: responsible for the deaths of thirty to fifty million people.
Speaker 3: Why does nobody say that out loud? Isn't that weird?
Speaker 3: I assume that if you were in Munich and he
Speaker 3: had a giant Hitler poster, somebody would say something. I
Speaker 3: don't know you had any thoughts on that text line
Speaker 3: four one five two nine five KFTC