On the Global Ambitions
of the Chinese Communist Party
delivered 17 July
2020, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan
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Thank you very much, Andrew for your very kind
introduction and I’d like to say that I really appreciate the work that Andrew
and Matt, our U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern and Western District of Michigan
our doing here for the people of Michigan and all the law enforcement community
from Michigan, that is here today. We really appreciate your work and as Andrew
said, after my remarks they are going to put on a presentation of the China
Initiative, which I think you’ll find very interesting, so if you have the time
I urge you to stay for that. I would like to thank the leadership and staff of
the
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum -- especially Elaine Didier -- for
hosting this event. I also thank the Ford Presidential Foundation and its
Executive Director Joe Calvaruso. Even under normal circumstances, it’s hard to
put together an event like this, but in the current circumstances it’s
especially challenging and I really appreciate it. And I really appreciate all
of you who’ve come, I know many have come from around the state and I appreciate
the effort that was made to be here for these remarks.
I was last in Grand Rapids, it would be 30 years ago John. John Smietanka, from
here, was one of my Principal Deputy when I was Deputy Attorney General and
stayed on while I was Attorney General. He was U.S. Attorney here in the Western
District, so John it’s great to see you here. I feel a special bond to the Ford
Administration so it’s appropriate to be here today for these remarks, because I
started out in the CIA in 1973 and President Ford took office and because of
what was going on at the agency, I had the privilege of working closely with
many of the superb people that he brought into government. Many of whom I had
the opportunity to work with over the years, several of whom were my mentors.
One of the people I met was the Attorney General, at that time, Ed Levi, who
President Ford made Attorney General. His portrait is up in my conference room
and his grandson Will Levi is my Chief of Staff, so as I say, I feel a special
closeness with the Ford Administration even though I wasn’t a political
appointee in that Administration. Many of the political appointees that I work
with over the years really cut their teeth during the Ford Administration.
I’m privileged to speak here today about what may prove to be the most important
issue for our nation and the world in the twenty-first century and that is, the
United States’ response to the global ambitions of the
Chinese Communist Party.
The CCP rules with an iron fist over one of the great ancient civilizations of
the world. It seeks to leverage the immense power, productivity, and ingenuity
of the Chinese people to overthrow the
rule-based international system and to
make the world safe for dictatorship. How the United States responds to this
challenge will have historic implications and will determine whether the United
States and its liberal democratic allies will continue to shape their own
destiny or whether the CCP and its autocratic tributaries will continue, will
control the future. Since the 1890’s, at least, the United States has been the
technological leader of the world. And from that prowess, has come our
prosperity, the opportunity for generations of Americans, and our security. It’s
because of that that we were able to play such a pivotal role in world history,
but turning back the threat of fascism and the threat of communism. What’s at
stake these days is whether we can maintain that leadership position and that
technological leadership. Are we going to be the generation that has allowed
that to be stolen -- which is really stealing the future of our children and our
grandchildren?
Several weeks ago, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien spoke about the
CCP’s ideology and global ambitions. He
declared, and I agree, that “the days of
American passivity and naivety regarding the People’s Republic of China are
over.” And last week, the FBI Director Chris Wray,
described how the CCP pursues
its ambitions through the nefarious and even illegal conduct, including
industrial espionage, theft, extortion, cyberattacks, and malign influence
activities. In the coming days, you will hear from Secretary Mike Pompeo, who
will
sum up what is at stake for the United States and the free world. Now,
Chris Wray, told me that shortly after his speech last week, one of the leaders
of the Chinese Communist Party pronounced that his speech was particularly
disgusting. I told him that I was going to aim to be despicable, but I’ll settle
for especially disgusting. But no matter how the Chinese seek to characterize it
I do hope that my speech and Mike Pompeo's speech will encourage the American
people to reevaluate their relationship with China, so long as it continues to
be ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. It is fitting that were here today at
the Ford Presidential Museum. Gerald Ford served in the highest echelons of the
government at the dawn of America's reengagement with China, which began
obviously with President Nixon in 1972, and three years later in 1975,
President
Ford visited China for a summit with PRC leaders including Mao Zedong.
At the time it was unthinkable that China would emerge after the Cold War as a
near-peer competitor of the United States. And even then, there were signs of
China's immense latent power. In the
joint report of their visit to China in
1972, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and then minority leader Gerald Ford
wrote:
If she manages to achieve as she aspires, China in the next half century
can emerge as a self-sufficient power of a billion people...this last impression
-- of the reality of China's colossal potential -- is perhaps the most vivid of
our journey. As our small party traveled through that boundless land, this sense
of a giant stirring, a dragon waking, gave us much to ponder.1
It is now nearly
fifty years later and the pressing pondering as of these two congressmen have
come to pass.
Deng Xiaoping, whose economic reform launched China's remarkable rise had a
famous motto: “hide your strength,
and bide your time.” That is precisely what
China has done. China's economy has quietly grown from about 2 percent of the
world's GDP in 1980, to nearly 20 percent today. And by some estimates based on
purchasing parity, the Chinese economy is already larger than ours. The General
Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party,
Xi Jinping, who has centralized power
to a degree not seen since the dictatorship of
Mao Zedong, now speaks openly of
China moving closer to the center stage, building a socialism that is superior
to capitalism, and replacing the
American
Dream with the Chinese solution. China
is no longer hiding its strength nor biding its time. From the perspective of its
communist rulers, China's time has arrived.
The People’s Republic of China is now engaged in an economic blitzkrieg -- an
aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society)
campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass
the United States as the world’s preeminent technological superpower. A
centerpiece of this effort is the Chinese Communist Party’s “Made in China 2025”
initiative, a plan for PRC domination of high-tech industries like robotics,
advanced information technology, aviation, and electric vehicles, and many other
technologies. Backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, this
initiative poses a real threat to U.S. technological leadership. Despite World
Trade Organization rules prohibiting quotas for domestic output, “Made in China
2025” sets targets for domestic market share (sometimes as high as 70 percent)
in core components and basic materials for industries such as robotics and
telecommunications. It is clear that the PRC seeks not merely to join the ranks
of other advanced industrial economies, but to replace them altogether.
“Made in China 2025” is the latest iteration of the PRC’s state-led,
mercantilist economic model. For American companies in the global marketplace,
free and fair competition with China has long been a fantasy. To tilt the
playing field to its advantage, China’s communist government has perfected a
wide array of predatory and often unlawful tactics: currency manipulation,
tariffs, quotas, state-led strategic investment and acquisitions, theft and
forced transfer of intellectual property, state subsidies, dumping,
cyberattacks, and industrial espionage. About 80% of all federal economic
espionage prosecutions have alleged conduct that would benefit the Chinese
state, and about 60% of all trade secret theft cases have been connected to
China.
The PRC also seeks to dominate key trade routes and infrastructure in Eurasia,
Africa, and the Pacific. In the South China Sea, for example, through which
about one-third of the world’s maritime trade passes, the PRC has asserted
expansive and historically dubious claims to nearly the entire waterway, flouted
the rulings of international courts, built artificial islands and placed
military outposts on them, and harassed its neighbors’ ships and fishing boats.
Another ambitious project to spread its power and influence is the PRC’s
“Belt
and Road” infrastructure initiative. Although billed as “foreign aid,” in fact
these investments appear designed to serve the PRC’s strategic interests and
domestic economic needs. For example, the PRC has been criticized for loading
poor countries up with debt, refusing to renegotiate terms, and then taking
control of the infrastructure itself, as it did with the
Sri Lankan port of Hambantota in 2017. This is little more than a form of modern-day colonialism.
Just as consequential, however, are the PRC’s plans to dominate the world’s
digital infrastructure through its
“Digital Silk Road” initiative. I have
previously spoken at length about the
grave risks of allowing the world’s most
powerful dictatorship to build the next generation of global telecommunications
networks, known as
5G. Perhaps less widely known are the PRC’s efforts to
surpass the United States in other cutting-edge fields, like artificial
intelligence. Through innovations such as machine learning and big data,
artificial intelligence allows machines to mimic human functions, such as
recognizing faces, interpreting spoken words, driving vehicles, and playing
games of skill, much like chess or the even more complex Chinese game, Go. In
2017, Beijing unveiled its “N[ew] Generation Artificial
Intelligence [Development] Plan,” a
blueprint for leading the world in AI by 2030. Whichever nation emerges as the
global leader in AI will be best positioned to unlock not only its considerable
economic potential, but a range of military applications, such as the use of
computer vision to gather intelligence.
The PRC’s drive for technological supremacy is complemented by its plan to
monopolize rare earth materials, which play a vital role in industries such as
consumer electronics, electric vehicles, medical devices, and military hardware.
According to the Congressional Research Service, "From the 1960s to the 1980s,
the United States" led the world in "rare earth production." “Since then,
production has shifted almost entirely to China,” in large
"part due to lower
labor costs" and lighter economic and environmental regulation.2
The United States is now dangerously dependent on the PRC for these essential
materials. Overall, China is America’s top supplier, accounting for about 80
percent of our imports. The risks of dependence are real. In 2010, for example,
Beijing cut exports of rare earth materials to Japan after an incident involving
disputed islands in the East China Sea. The PRC could do the same to us. As
China’s progress in these critical sectors illustrates, the PRC’s predatory
economic policies are succeeding. For a hundred years, America was the world’s
largest manufacturer -- allowing us to serve as the world’s “arsenal of
democracy.” China overtook the United States in manufacturing output in 2010.
The PRC is now the world’s “arsenal of dictatorship.”
How did China accomplish all this? No one should underestimate the ingenuity and
industry of the Chinese people. At the same time, no one should doubt that
America made China’s meteoric rise possible. China has reaped enormous benefits
from the free flow of American aid and trade. In 1980, Congress granted the PRC
most-favored-nation trading status. In the 1990s, American companies strongly
supported the PRC’s accession to the World Trade Organization and the permanent
normalization of trade relations. Today, U.S.-China trade totals about $700
billion.
Last year, Newsweek ran a cover story titled “How America’s Biggest Companies
Made China Great Again.” The article details how China’s communist leaders lured
American business with the promise of market access, and then, having profited
from American investment and know-how, turned increasingly hostile. The PRC used
tariffs and quotas to pressure American companies to give up their technology
and form joint ventures with Chinese companies. Regulators then discriminated
against American firms, using tactics like holding up permits. Yet few
companies, even Fortune 500 giants, have been willing to bring a formal trade
complaint for fear of angering Beijing.
Just as American companies have become dependent on the Chinese market, the
United States as a whole now relies on the PRC for many vital goods and
services. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown a spotlight on that dependency. For
example, China is the world’s largest producer of certain protective equipment,
such as face masks and medical gowns. In March, as the pandemic spread around
the world, the PRC hoarded the masks for itself, blocking producers -- including
American companies -- from exporting them to other countries that needed them.
It then attempted to exploit the shortage for propaganda purposes, shipping
limited quantities of often defective equipment and requiring foreign leaders to
publicly thank Beijing for these shipments.
China’s dominance of the world market for medical goods goes beyond masks and
gowns. It has become the United States’ largest supplier of medical devices,
while at the same time discriminating against American medical companies in
China. China’s government has targeted foreign firms for greater regulatory
scrutiny, instructed Chinese hospitals to buy products made in China, and
pressured American firms to build factories in China, where their intellectual
property is more vulnerable to theft. As one expert has observed, American
medical device manufacturers are effectively “creating their own competitors.”
America also depends on Chinese supply, Chinese supply chains in other vital
sectors, especially pharmaceuticals. America remains the global leader in drug
discovery, but China is now the world’s largest producer of active
pharmaceutical ingredients, known as “APIs.” As one Defense Health Agency
official [Christopher Priest] noted, “Should China decide to limit or restrict the delivery of APIs
to the [United States],” it “could result in severe shortages of pharmaceuticals
for both domestic and military uses.”3
To achieve dominance in pharmaceuticals, China’s rulers went to the same
playbook they’ve used to gut other American industries. In 2008, the PRC
designated pharmaceutical production as a “high-value-added-industry” and
boosted Chinese companies with subsidies and export tax rebates. Meanwhile, the
PRC has systematically preyed on American companies. American firms face
well-known obstacles in China’s health market, including drug approval delays,
unfair pricing limitations, IP theft, and counterfeiting. Chinese nationals
working as employees at pharma companies have been caught stealing trade secrets
both in America and in China. And the CCP has long engaged in cyber-espionage
and hacking of U.S. academic medical centers and healthcare companies.
In fact, PRC-linked hackers have targeted American universities and firms in a
bid to steal IP related to coronavirus treatments and vaccines, sometimes
disrupting the work of our researchers. Having been caught covering up the
coronavirus outbreak, Beijing is desperate for a public relations coup, and may
hope that it will be able to claim credit for any medical breakthroughs.
As all of these examples should make clear, the ultimate ambition of China’s
rulers isn’t to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States.
If you are an American business leader, appeasing the PRC may bring short-term
rewards. But in the end, the PRC’s goal is to replace you. As a U.S. Chamber of
Commerce
report put it,
[t]he belief by foreign companies that large financial
investments, the sharing of expertise and significant technology transfers would
lead to an ever opening China market is being replaced by boardroom banter that
win-win in China means China wins twice.4
Although Americans hoped that trade and investment would liberalize China’s
political system, the fundamental character of the regime has never changed. As
its ruthless crackdown of Hong Kong demonstrates once again, China is no closer
to democracy today than it was in 1989 when tanks confronted pro-democracy
protesters in Tiananmen Square. It remains an authoritarian, one-party state in
which the Chinese Communist Party wields absolute power, unchecked by popular
elections, the rule of law, or an independent judiciary. The CCP surveils its
own people and assigns them social credit scores, employs an army of government
censors, tortures dissidents, and persecutes religious and ethnic minorities,
including a million Uyghurs detained in indoctrination and labor camps.
If what happened in China stayed in China, that would be bad enough. But instead
of America changing China, China is leveraging its economic power to change
America. As
this Administration’s China Strategy recognizes, “the CCP’s campaign
to compel ideological conformity does not stop at China’s borders.”5 Rather, the CCP seeks to extend its influence around the world, including on American soil.
All too often, for the sake of short-term profits, American companies have
succumbed to that influence -- even at the expense of freedom and openness in
the United States. Sadly, examples of American business bowing to Beijing are
legion.
Take Hollywood. Hollywood’s actors, producers, and directors pride themselves on
celebrating freedom and the human spirit. And every year at the Academy Awards,
Americans are lectured about how this country falls short of Hollywood’s ideals
of social justice. But Hollywood now regularly censors its own movies to appease
the Chinese Communist Party, the world’s most powerful violator of human rights.
This censorship infects not only versions of movies that are released in China,
but also many that are shown in American theaters to American audiences.
For example, the hit movie
World War Z depicts a zombie apocalypse caused by a
virus. The original version of the film reportedly contained a scene with
characters speculating that the virus may have originated in China. But the
studio, Paramount Pictures, reportedly told producers to delete the reference to
China in the hope of landing a Chinese distribution deal. The deal never
materialized.
In the Marvel Studios blockbuster
Dr. Strange, filmmakers changed the
nationality of a major character known as the “Ancient One,” a Tibetan monk in
the comic book,
changed it from Tibetan to Celtic. When challenged about this, a
screenwriter explained that “if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that
he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one a billion people.” Or, as the Chinese
government might say, “We’re not going to show your movie because you decided
to get political.”6
These are just two examples of the many Hollywood films that have been altered,
one way or another, to please the CCP. National Security Advisor O’Brien offered
even more examples in
his remarks. But many more scripts never see the light of
day, because writers and producers know not to even test the limits. Chinese
government censors don’t need to say a word, because Hollywood is doing their
work for them. This is a massive propaganda coup for the Chinese Communist
Party.
The story of the film industry’s submission to the CCP is a familiar one. In the
past two decades, China has emerged as the world’s largest box office. The CCP
has long tightly controlled access to that lucrative market -- both through
quotas on American films, imposed in violation of China’s WTO obligations, and a
strict censorship regime. Increasingly, Hollywood also relies on Chinese money
for financing. In 2018, films with Chinese investors accounted for 20 percent of
U.S. box-office ticket sales, compared to only three percent five years earlier.
But in the long run, as with other American industries, the PRC may be less
interested in cooperating with Hollywood than in co-opting Hollywood -- and
eventually replacing it with its own homegrown productions. To accomplish this,
the CCP has been following its usual modus operandi. By imposing a quota on
American films, the CCP pressures Hollywood studios to form joint ventures with
Chinese companies, who then gain U.S. technology and know-how. As one Chinese
film executive [Yu
Dong] recently put it, “[e]verything we learned, we learned from
Hollywood.”7 Notably, in 2019,
eight of the 10 top-grossing films in China were
produced in China.
Hollywood is far from alone in kowtowing to the PRC. America’s big tech
companies have also allowed themselves to become pawns of Chinese influence. In
the year 2000, when the United States normalized trade relations with China,
President Clinton hailed the new century as one in which “liberty will be spread
by cell phone and cable modem.”8 Instead, over the course of the next decade,
American companies, such as Cisco, helped the Communist Party build the
Great
Firewall of China -- the world’s most sophisticated system for Internet
surveillance and censorship.
Over the years, corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple have
shown themselves all too willing to collaborate with the CCP. For example,
Apple
recently removed the news app Quartz from its app store in China, after the
Chinese government complained about the coverage of the
Hong Kong democracy
protests. Apple also removed apps for virtual private networks, which had
allowed users to circumvent the Great Firewall, and eliminated pro-democracy
songs from its Chinese music store. Meanwhile, the company announced that it
would be transferring some of its iCloud data to servers in China, despite
concerns that the move would give the Communist Party easier access to e-mails,
text messages, and other user information stored in the iCloud.
Recently, we were able to get into two cell phones used by the
Al-Qaeda
terrorist who shot eight Americans at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. During
the gun fight with him, he stopped, disengaged, put his cell phones down and
tried to destroy them, shooting a bullet into one of his two cell phones; and we
thought that suggested that there may be very important information about
terrorist activities in those cell phones. And for four and a half months we
tried to get in, without any help at all from Apple. Apple failed to give us any
help getting into the cell phones. We were ultimately able to get in through a
fluke that we will not be able to reproduce in the future, where we found
communications with Al-Qaeda operatives in the Middle East up to the day before
the attack. Do you think when Apple sells phones in China that Apple phones in
China are impervious to penetration by Chinese authorities? They wouldn't be
sold if they were impervious to Chinese authorities. And what we've asked for is
a warrant -- when we have a warrant from a court -- that we should be able to get
into because cellphones. That's the double standard that has been emerging among
American tech companies.
The CCP has long used public threats of retaliation and barred market access to
exert influence. More recently, however, the CCP has also stepped up
behind-the-scenes efforts to cultivate and coerce American business executives
to further its political objectives -- efforts that are all the more pernicious
because they are largely hidden from public view.
As China’s government loses credibility around the world, the Justice Department
has seen more and more PRC officials and their proxies reaching out to corporate
leaders and inveighing them to favor policies and actions favored by the Chinese
Communist Party. Their objective varies, but their pitch is generally the same:
the businessperson has economic interests in China, and there is a suggestion
that things will go better (or worse) for them depending on their response to
the PRC’s request. Privately pressuring or courting American corporate leaders
to promote policies (or U.S. politicians) presents a significant threat, because
hiding behind American voices allows the Chinese government to elevate its
influence campaigns and put a “friendly face” on pro-regime policies. The
legislator or policymaker who hears from these American businessmen is properly
more sympathetic to that constituent than to a foreigner. And by masking its
participation in our political process, the PRC avoids accountability for its
influence efforts and the public outcry that might result, if its lobbying were
exposed.
America’s corporate leaders might not think of themselves as lobbyists. You
might think, for example, that cultivating a mutually beneficial relationship is
just part of the “guanxi” -- or system of influential social networking --
necessary to do business with the PRC. But you should be alert to how you might
be used, and how your efforts on behalf of a foreign company or government could
implicate the
Foreign Agents Registration Act. FARA does not prohibit any speech
or conduct. But it does require those who are acting as the “agents” of foreign
principals to publicly disclose that relationship, and their political or other
similar activities, by registering with the Justice Department, allowing the
audience to take into account the origin of the speech when evaluating
credibility.
By focusing on American business leaders, of course, I don’t mean to suggest
that they are the only targets of Chinese influence operations in the United
States. The Chinese Communist Party also seeks to infiltrate, censor, or co-opt
American academic and research institutions. For example, dozens of American
universities host Chinese government-funded “Confucius Institutes,” which have
been accused of pressuring host universities to silence discussion or cancel
events on topics considered controversial by Beijing. Universities must stand up
for each other; refuse to let the CCP dictate research efforts or suppress
diverse voices; support colleagues and students who wish to speak their minds;
and consider whether any sacrifice of academic integrity or freedom is worth the
price of appeasing the CCP’s demands.
In a globalized world, American corporations and universities alike may view
themselves as global citizens, rather than American institutions. But they
should remember that what allowed them to succeed in the first place was the
American free enterprise system, the rule of law, and the security afforded by
America’s economic, technological, and military strength.
Globalization does not always point in the direction of greater freedom. A world
marching to the beat of Communist China’s drums will not be a hospitable one for
institutions that depend on free markets, free trade, or the free exchange of
ideas. There was a time American companies understood this and they saw
themselves as American and proudly defended American values.
In World War II, for example, the iconic American company, Disney, made dozens
of public information films for the government, including training videos to
educate American sailors on navigation tactics. During the war, over 90 percent
of Disney employees were devoted to the production of training and public
information films. To boost the morale of America’s troops, Disney also designed
insignia that appeared on planes, trucks, flight jackets, and other military
equipment used by American and Allied forces.
I suspect Walt Disney would be disheartened to see how the company he founded
deals with the foreign dictatorships of our day. When Disney produced Kundun,
the 1997 film about the PRC’s oppression of the Dalai Lama, the CCP objected to
the project and pressured Disney to abandon it. Ultimately, Disney decided that
it couldn’t let a foreign power dictate whether it would distribute a movie in
the United States. But that moment of courage wouldn’t last long. After the CCP
banned all Disney films in China, the company lobbied hard to regain access. The
CEO apologized for Kundun, calling it a “stupid mistake.” Disney then began
courting the PRC to open a $5.5 billion theme park in Shanghai. As part of that
deal, Disney agreed to give Chinese government officials a role in management.
Of the park’s full-time employees, 300 are active members of the Communist
Party. They reportedly display hammer-and-sickle insignia at their desks and
attend Party lectures at the facility during business hours.
Like other American companies, Disney may eventually learn the hard way the cost
of compromising its principles. Soon after
Disney opened its park in Shanghai, a
Chinese-owned theme park popped up a couple hundred miles away featuring
characters that, according to news reports, looked suspiciously like Snow White
and other Disney trademarks.
American companies must understand the stakes. The Chinese Communist Party
thinks in terms of decades and centuries, while we tend to focus on the next
quarter’s earnings report. But if Disney and other American corporations
continue to bow to Beijing, they risk undermining both their own future
competitiveness and prosperity, as well as the classical liberal order that has
allowed them to thrive.
During the Cold War, Lewis Powell -- later Justice Powell -- sent an
important
memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He noted that the free enterprise
system was under unprecedented attack, and urged American companies to do more
to preserve it. “[T]he time has come,” he said, “indeed, it is long overdue --
for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be marshaled
against those who would destroy it.”9 So too today. The American people are more
attuned than ever to the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses not only
to our way of life, but to our very lives and livelihoods. And they will
increasingly call out corporate appeasement.
If individual companies are afraid to make a stand, there is strength in
numbers. As Justice Powell wrote:
Strength lies in organisation [sic], in careful
long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an
indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through
joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action
and national organizations.10
Despite years of acquiescence to communist
authorities in China, American tech companies may finally be finding their
courage through collective action. Following the recent imposition of the
PRC’s
draconian national security law in Hong Kong, many big tech companies, including
Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zoom, and LinkedIn, reportedly announced that they
would temporarily suspend compliance with governmental requests for user data.
True to form, communist officials have threatened imprisonment for noncompliant
company employees. We will see if these companies hold firm and how long they
will hold firm. I hope they do. If they stand together, they will provide a
worthy example for other American companies in resisting the Chinese Communist
Party’s corrupt and dictatorial rule.
The CCP has launched an orchestrated campaign, across all of its many tentacles
in Chinese government and society, to exploit the openness of our institutions
in order to destroy them. To secure a world of freedom and prosperity for our
children and grandchildren, the free world will need its own version of the
whole-of-society approach, in which the public and private sectors maintain
their essential separation but work together collaboratively to resist
domination and to win the contest for the commanding heights of the global
economy. America has done that before and we rekindle our love and devotion for
our country and each other, I am confident that we -- the American people, the
American government, and American business together -- can do it again. Our
freedom depends on it.
Thank you very much.
1
Extended quotation:
"If she can maintain political stability, if she can upgrade her agriculture and
industry, if she can remain free from outside interference what will China be
like in another two or three short decades? The answer is obvious. If she
manages to achieve as she aspires, China in the next half century can emerge a
self-sufficient power of a billion people -- a nation whose agricultural output
can provide for her population, whose industrial capacity can be enormous, whose
military capability can be very substantial, with a people united in devotion
and obedience to the State. This last impression -- of the reality of China's
colossal potential -- is perhaps the most vivid of our journey. As our small
party traveled through that boundless land, this sense of a giant stirring, a
dragon waking, gave us much to ponder." [Source: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/035800376.pdf]
2 Extended quotation: Some
Members of Congress have expressed concern over U.S. acquisition of rare
earth materials composed of rare earth elements (REE) used in various
components of defense weapon systems. Rare earth elements consist of 17
elements on the periodic table, including 15 elements beginning with
atomic number 57 (lanthanum) and extending through number 71 (lutetium),
as well as two other elements having similar properties (yttrium and
scandium). These are referred to as “rare”
because although relatively abundant in total quantity, they appear in
low concentrations in the
earth’s crust and extraction and processing is both difficult and
costly. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the United States was the leader in
global rare earth production. Since then, production has shifted almost
entirely to China, in part due to lower labor costs and lower
environmental standards. Some estimates are that China now produces
about 90- 95% of the world’s rare earth oxides and is the majority
producer of the world’s two strongest magnets, samarium cobalt (SmCo)
and neodymium iron boron (NeFeB) permanent, rare earth magnets. [Source:
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/CRSrareearthproduction2014.pdf]
3Entire
Written Testimony by Christopher Priest
[Source: uscc.gov/hearings/exploring-growing-us-reliance-chinas-biotech-and-pharmaceutical-products]
4
"Extended quotation: "For many multinationals -- especially tech
companies -- the policies appear to signal that the pretense of goodwill
is gone. The belief by foreign companies that large financial
investments, the sharing of expertise and significant technology
transfers would lead to an ever opening China market is being replaced
by boardroom banter that win-win in China means China wins twice."
[Source: https://www.uschamber.com/assets/archived/images/documents/files/100728chinareport_0_0.pdf]
5
Extended quotation: "The CCP’s campaign to compel ideological
conformity does not stop at China’s borders. In recent years, Beijing
has intervened in sovereign nations’ internal affairs to engineer
consent for its policies. PRC authorities have attempted to extend CCP
influence over discourse and behavior around the world, with recent
examples including companies and sports teams in the United States and
the United Kingdom and politicians in Australia and Europe. PRC actors
are exporting the tools of the CCP’s techno-authoritarian model to
countries around the world, enabling authoritarian states to exert
control over their citizens and surveil opposition, training foreign
partners in propaganda and censorship techniques, and using bulk data
collection to shape public sentiment." [Source: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/U.S.-Strategic-Approach-to-The-Peoples-Republic-of-China-Report-5.24v1.pdf]
6
Extended quotation context:
"Describing Strange’s magical mentor as a 'a
racist stereotype who comes from a region of the world that is in [a]
very weird political place,' Cargill added: 'He originates from Tibet,
so if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you
risk alienating one billion people who think that that’s bullshit and
risk the Chinese government going,''Hey, you know one of the biggest
film-watching countries in the world? We’re not going to show your movie
because you decided to get political.''" [Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/26/doctor-strange-tilda-swinton-whitewashed-china]
9Extended quotation: "In all fairness, it must be recognized that
businessmen have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerrilla
warfare with those who propagandize against the system, seeking
insidiously and constantly to sabotage it. The traditional role of
business executives has been to manage, to produce, to sell, to create
jobs, to make profits, to improve the standard of living, to be
community leaders, to serve on charitable and educational boards, and
generally to be good citizens. They have performed these tasks very well
indeed. But they have shown little stomach for hard-nose contest with
their critics, and little skill in effective intellectual and
philosophical debate...American business 'plainly is in trouble'; the
response to the wide range of critics has been ineffective, and has
included appeasement; the time has come -- indeed, it is long overdue --
for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be
marshaled against those who would destroy it." [Source: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/1/]
