By and large, the American people are not getting the information they need about China’s government and the threat it poses to our national life. I suspect a similar problem exists in Taiwan. Too many politicians, media moguls, and corporate tycoons have a vested interest in continuing business as usual with the Chinese Communist Party and are willing to sacrifice truth on the altar of market access.
They say nothing as Xi Jinping (習近平) distorts the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. They feign ignorance about the ongoing genocides in Tibet and Xinjiang. They pretend Beijing’s systematic exploitation of forced labor, modern day slavery, and human trafficking has nothing to do with their supply chains.
When our commercial institutions profit off the misery of 1.4 billion oppressed human beings and our government officials do nothing to stop them, we are all in big trouble. Such a callous attitude toward what happens to men, women, and children in a different country suggests that the fumes of imperialism have yet to be washed away by the winds of time. Maybe we are not as civilized as we thought.
How could this have happened? Colonel Grant Newsham’s new book, When China Attacks: A Warning to America, describes how the Chinese government’s psychological warfare operations have justified “inaction, lethargy, or compliance in the face of outrageous, inhumane CCP behavior.” Newsham observes that “it’s all part of being conditioned to think that the PRC is not a threat or cannot be resisted, as that will only make things worse.”
Beijing has succeeded in coercing a remarkable number of Americans to limit their own freedom of speech and artistic expression. It’s now a monumental challenge to find a Hollywood movie that portrays the CCP in an accurate and unflattering light.
Many blockbuster films look like state-run propaganda, showing the Chinese government saving the day. YouTube has demonetized shows like China Uncensored that expose human rights violations. The NBA fired a star player who supports social justice in China. Marriott International canned an employee in Nebraska just for liking a tweet issued by the Dalai Lama.
Think the US government is getting tough on China? Think again. Last year, Washington allowed Wall Street to invest even more capital in the success of CCP-owned and controlled companies, including those with known links to the People’s Liberation Army. Rather than being compelled to leave China, our publishing houses, technology titans, and aerospace giants have found it all too easy to stay and submit to censorship.
Where are the consumer protection groups? And why haven’t they organized boycotts of Chinese giants like TikTok and Lenovo? American electronics stores continue to sell products from companies that are forced by PRC law to spy on their customers. Our ports, hospitals, and drug stores remain dependent on state-owned suppliers — some of which are PLA front companies.
While it might be tempting to blame greedy CEOs or corrupt politicians for our China troubles, that would be like faulting each withered tree branch for the forest fire. It was a popular, bipartisan government policy that got us all into this mess; only by building consensus around a new policy can we get out.
There are most certainly not enemies within or “bad Americans” (or Taiwanese) who must be rooted out or shamed into silence on political grounds. One of the worse things we could do is reverse the progress of civil liberties by curtailing freedom of speech. To the contrary, we should welcome our ideological challengers. They do us a great service by forcing us to confront our own hypocrisy and social shortcomings.
China’s totalitarian rulers have no hope of defeating us ideologically unless we adopt their own oppressive methods. But they will defeat us economically, technologically, and militarily if we continue to help them. It seems imperative, therefore, that we sever our business entanglements with China and increasingly treat that country much like we treat Russia and North Korea. The alternative risks making our corporations complicit in a dystopian future, a homogenized globalized society that is dangerously dogmatic, conformist, and devoid of critical thinkers. The price of inaction, then, is too high to pay.
If one of our companies is not bright enough to figure out how to make a profit without the help of the PRC — a superpower that threatens human freedom more than any regime since Nazi Germany — should that company be pressured into closing down or, failing that, be culled by government policy? That would be the Darwinian approach to strategic competition, but we can do better than jungle rules.
It’s time for the great democracies of the world to build a 21st century that is both safer and more ethical. The United States should work with free countries like Taiwan to create new global trade networks that help companies escape from the CCP’s grip. We can stop doing business as usual with China — and we must.
Ian Easton is a senior director at the Project 2049 Institute and the author of The Chinese Invasion Threat: Taiwan’s Defense and American Strategy in Asia.
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