ExclusiveMiles Yu: U.S. Needs to Have "Moral Clarity" to Counter the CCP Threats

Dr. Yu, great to finally be able to meet you in person. Thank you for the time. Thank you very much, Jenny. I'm glad to be here with you. Thank you. So just now you were at the China Forum, this panel discussion, and the title of the panel discussion is Global Governance, World Order with Chinese Characteristics. Now what's your definition of these Chinese characteristics? There has been a great misunderstanding of the phrase Chinese characteristics. The Chinese always say what they're trying to do, what they're doing is socialism with Chinese characteristics. Yeah, the CCP. The misunderstanding is that we normally believe that means that China wants to carry out what they call socialism with the Chinese nationalistic characteristics. And so they say, well, this may not be real communism. This may be just Chinese nationalistic, you know, outburst or their ideology. That's a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the Chinese Communist Party. Because the Chinese Communist Party is a very sort of ideologically vigilant party. Chinese Communist Party believe it alone represents the purest and the most authentic version of communism, of Marxism-Leninism. So when they say socialism with Chinese characteristics, this simply means it's Chinese Communist Party's ideology of socialism-communism with the most authentic interpretation of Marxism-Leninism. It's a Chinese version of Marxism-Leninism. The best one is different from, say, the communism revisionism represented by the Soviet Communist Party, the Vietnamese Communist Party, the Cuban Communist Party. So they use the phrase Chinese characteristics in the context of international communist movement, not in the context of Chinese nationalism. So to be more accurate, it should be the CCP characteristics, isn't it? That's right. It should be like a socialism with the most authentic, most orthodox communism represented by the CCP. So that's their end goal, is it? The global governance, world order with Chinese characteristics, or a world order with CCP characteristics. That's their end goal. I think the end goal, yes, is to establish a world order controlled by the CCP, along with the Chinese version of communism. Now, I have to say this. This is very different from 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, where export of Chinese or Soviet version of radical ideology was on top of the agenda. Because the world has changed. Communism has lost its appeal all over the world. Communism has even collapsed in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. So the Chinese Communist Party knows this. So they know nobody wants to buy expired goods. So what they're trying to do is they say, well, communism in Eastern Europe and in Soviet Union collapsed because, precisely because the Soviet version of communism was not good, was not genuine. So there's a Chinese communist ideology represented the true Marxism-Leninism. And so they're going to carry out to the rest of the world, not by outright export of this ideology per se, but by creating Chinese dominance first, economically, militarily and technologically, and then implement the Chinese version of its ideology. You can see this very clearly because China up to this day is the only Marxist-Leninist government that claim its heritage to Karl Marx. So for example, when Karl Marx's anniversary occurs, the Chinese government to make sure that it's going to send statues to the birthplace of Marx. And Xi Jinping always say, return to the original commitment. 忘初心 Now what is the original commitment means? Original commitment is not rejuvenation of Chinese nationalism. It's not the 中华民族伟大复兴. Return to original commitment. That commitment is commitment to orthodox Marxism-Leninism, to communist ideology. So that's why Xi Jinping, by the way, he has a doctorate degree in scientific socialism from Tsinghua University. So this guy really knows Marxism-Leninism, and he believe he is the theoretical leader of the modern day, the most advanced version of communism-Leninism. So ideology did not die in 1989. Ideology mutates into the Chinese version of Marxism-Leninism, which Xi Jinping believes is the most authentic version of the original commitment. Now we keep talking about Xi Jinping in the ultimate ideologue. That actually is very dangerous as well, because it implies all the problems, all the world's worries about China right now is created by Xi Jinping himself. That's not the case. Xi Jinping has very little original thoughts. His idea of enhanced China's authoritarian control, everything he's trying to say, everything he's trying to promote himself has been said by his predecessors. From Mao, from Deng, from Jiang, from Hu, everything that has been said originally. If you read those guys' selective works, you'll find that all the intellectual and ideological sources of Xi Jinping's theories and Xi Jinping's thoughts. So there's nothing new about him. So I see a great continuity, ideological continuity of the Chinese regime. There's very little difference. The only difference is that between Xi Jinping's China and Deng Xiaoping's China, Hu Jintao's China and Mao Zedong's China is that the Chinese communist regime is much more capable, much more technologically advanced. They use that economic power, use that technological capabilities to further its rule of Marxism-Leninism regime, right? So when China gets hold of a technology, it's not necessarily to benefit the people. China gets hold of the technology to use that technology to enhance the ruling regime of the Communist Party, right? So they use, for example, technology to surveil the people, to spy on people, to check on everybody's banking account, and to censor every single posting on Chinese domestic internet. So that's what technology is doing to China. I cannot say, though, 100 percent that Chinese people have not benefited at all from that kind of technological and economic progress. But that's not the main issue. The Chinese people are never the major beneficiary of the Chinese economic development and Chinese technological advancement. It's the Party. The Party is more powerful, much more enabled, and is much more powerful. And that's the nature of the Chinese threat. So how much progress do you think the CCP has made in terms of their final goal of exporting this global governance model to the entire world? They have made some headway, and also they took advantage of the open society, which actually benefits the Chinese Communist Party as well, because they took advantage of the open society in the natural trading system, and benefited tremendously from that. Not by following the rules, but by benefit from the open society, from the sort of lack of vigilance against the nature of the Chinese Communist regime. So I think they have made some progress, but that progress has been stalled. Because if you look at what happened to the Chinese effort of marching globally in the last two or three years, it has been nothing but frustration for the Chinese Communist government. The Belt and Road Initiative is going nowhere. It has a lot of problems, and it also has exhausted to a great degree of Chinese government's resources of doing those things. And its behavior during the pandemic is nothing but really condemnable, right? It's pretty bad. So China is extremely isolated internationally. It doesn't really have a real friend that China can trust 100% in the world. And if you have a Chinese leader visiting any other country in the world, the issues that that leader will face are not going to be pleasant. It's either a Xinjiang human rights violation, technological and military espionage, or the Hong Kong issue, or the Taiwan issue, and trade imbalance. So mainly on COVID, obviously, the origin of COVID and the COVID cover-up. So China is very, very isolated. I have never seen Chinese diplomacy in such a dire state of condition as it is now. So China's brag about it, it's a triumph of a Xi Jinping version of a Chinese nation. It's actually, it's not true. And I think people know it, I think the Chinese Communist leadership knows about it, too. Yeah, I think the CCP has certainly encountered some setbacks in the last few years. But just now, you talked about the grim reality in terms of the U.S. falling behind when it comes to countering the CCP's threats. What does it take in order to effectively counter CCP's aggression? Number one is actually, is for everybody to understand what's at stake. What's at stake is very, very high. It's basically everybody's individual freedom. It's the foundation of the democratic systems that have existed for over 200 years, represented by the United States. So it's really a sort of the replacement, the potential replacement of the modern governance of freedom and democracy by a CCP style of authoritarian rule. And what does it mean? That means that you will be subjected to the will of the state, controlled by a totalitarian, radical Communist Party, with one leader who doesn't allow any dissent. And you have to study Xi Jinping's thoughts two days a week. You have to study Xi Jinping's thoughts, yes. But you also have to study their version of history. You have to study their understanding of individual rights, which is nothing. You have to subject yourself to the will of the party that basically is very paranoid about its own people. So that's where the repression comes in. Because Chinese repression of its people is pretty complete, right? It's also very deceptive in a way. The greatest trick of the Chinese Communist Party, the greatest accomplishment of the Chinese Communist Party, it enslaves 1.4 Chinese people. Four billion. 1.4 billion Chinese people. And also, yet it tried very hard to convince the Chinese people that they were living a happy life. So that actually is a tragedy on an unspeakable scale. So I think, you know, eventually the truth will come out. And I think, you know, we all have our work to do. And I think, you know, on the surface, you mentioned about the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party to global governance. We also have to be very confident, because ultimately, the regime in China is actually very fragile and very unstable, precisely because it lives on fear, paranoia, and uncontrol. So if a government constantly is in fear of its own people, is in fear of the international global impact on its regime, then that regime has no future. Now, you mentioned something in your speech at San Francisco, the Hong Kong Freedom events by Elmer Yuen. I noticed you said something like, you said the U.S. should have the moral clarity when it comes to countering the CCP threats and to protect people's inalienable rights. Now, moral clarity is something that I don't hear often when it talks about countering the CCP or the foundation of doing that. Can you expand on that a little bit? OK. The challenge that CCP posed to the world is not only technological challenge, is not just an economic challenge, not just merely economic, military challenge, but more importantly, it's a moral challenge. Because the moral nature of the communist rule is antithetical to all the major moral foundations of modern society. For example, the Chinese modern governance denies the inalienable rights of individuals. They believe the rights of the party trumps the rights of individuals. That's a moral issue. And the Chinese Communist Party modern governance also denies the freedom of religion, freedom of worship. Freedom to worship is a fundamental right of every individual. It's enshrined in every international covenants that China actually, ironically, signed onto. So the Chinese Communist Party is an atheist entity. It does not really believe the validity and rights of every individual to worship. That's why they have to lock up millions of Uyghurs into concentrated camps, not just to physically torture them, but most importantly, to brainwash them so that they will get rid of their religious belief. So their persecution of Falun Gong, for example, is not just a physical torture of unspeakable cruelty, but also is to remove their thinking so that they will not believe what they believe. So if the Soviet communism focused more on physical elimination of dissent, the Chinese communism focused far more on the conformity of everybody to communism by eliminating individual thoughts, individual freedom to worship. And that is the very, very big moral challenge to modern world. That's what I mean by if we want to encounter the Chinese Communist Party, we must have our moral clarity to understand what is at stake to face this challenge. Do you think we have, we in terms of both Chinese people and people in the U.S. and I think so. I think, you know, despite this saturated Chinese propaganda, brainwashing operation in China, I think the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people understand that the Chinese Communist Party is not representing their interest. And the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people, they don't believe in communism. That has lost its appeal decades ago. But they have no voice to communicate their own feeling. They have no voice to represent their own opinion, voice their own opinion without suffering consequences. So that's the problem. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to create the environment, create a safe space, if you will, for people, not just Chinese people, but also people in some other parts of the world too, to speak out against Chinese Communist Party's cruelty and brutality without suffering the consequences of repression. But I think, you know, it's what the free world is trying to do, not just the United States. The Chinese Communist Party always casts the United States as the arch enemy, the only enemy of the Chinese Communist Party. That's total nonsense. The Chinese Communist Party is facing opposition, resistance from virtually every other free country in the world, particularly the nicest countries, the least likely to provoke any kind of confrontation, like Canada, Sweden, right, and Switzerland. All those countries of a great pacifist tradition have become China's big enemies now. Why is it that China wants to pick a fight with countries like Australia, right, countries like Canada? Because Chinese ideological arrogance is so obvious now. So they think they're representing the better version of governance, and they believe that socialism is superior to capitalism, to international free trade system. I think they're not being realistic. Now I want to ask something specific. Let's talk about action a little bit. Recently, China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, right? I think it sets the U.S. on high alert. The media said that U.S. intelligence hasn't really expected that, so they were caught by surprise. Now, do you really believe that China now owns this new advanced military capability? Well, I cannot speak on capabilities because that's basically classified information that I'm not allowed to speak publicly. But here's what I can tell you. Dictatorship has one very ironic virtue, that is it can really master enormous material human resources to do big projects, right, because they own everything. So what they can do is they can concentrate their resources on certain military technologies. They happen in the Soviet Union. They basically sacrificed people's well-being by spending enormous amount of money on weapons and arms. So in 1957, Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite, the Sputnik. And what that means is that the Sputnik basically was able to carry nuclear warheads into outer space. So that essentially is going to be the first intercontinental ballistic missile against which the United States at the time did not have a very terrific defense. So that was a wake-up call. So at the time, it looked like the communist regime in Moscow was winning. But in the end, it didn't work that way because when China tests some kind of weapon, it says it's the best. And it did really have some kind of reaction in the West, particularly in the United States. But ultimately, what freedom of democracy does to the country really is to generate enormous power, energy of innovation and technological creation. So we are totally confident we can beat the Chinese if we focus on the Chinese threat. So what we're talking about is we need best leadership. If we don't have a leadership with a correct understanding of the China threat, and then China will win. If we have the leadership, like represented by, say, President Trump and particularly Secretary Pompeo, who understood the nature of the Chinese communist threat 100 percent, and then the United States will be unbeatable. And we have enormous, enormous technological and human resources advantages over the Chinese. So I'm not terribly worried about that. I'm not terribly worried about that. But technically, of course, we should take it very seriously. Some said that if the U.S. intelligence got caught off guard by this development, that really shows that the U.S. intelligence was falling behind when it comes to China. Do you agree? Well, first of all, it's just media speculation that we didn't know anything about what China was doing. Well, the media reports said that. So that may or may not be true. I cannot comment on that. But I'm very confident, I'm very confident that we will triumph. That's what I can say at this point, because I don't want to talk about the specifics of military technology. The Chinese communist has made some progress in its military technology, but also it has a lot of flaws. So it has very shortcomings. So I'm not terribly worried about that. Great. Good to hear. Yeah. I'm somebody who's actually in the business, so I think we should definitely be alarmed. But you know, ultimately, we'll get it done. OK. So just now you mentioned in your speech that looking back to the Trump administration, the biggest asset may be that you reset the dialogue, right, between U.S. and China. I'm currently reading a book by Josh Rogin, you know, Chaos Under Heaven. In that book, he mentioned something very interesting. I wanted to get your, maybe shed some light on it. He said that Secretary Pompeo at the time had a list of 30-something items that he wants to do to counter the CCP threats, including sanctions on Huawei, sanctions on Chinese officials and much more. Some of those were like so harsh that he had to put it off a little bit. Is that true? Was it such a list? I cannot comment on the veracity of that report in that book one way or another. All I know is Secretary Pompeo was very clear on what needed to be done. I was involved intimately with that process, but I just simply cannot really comment on specifics of that. But he had a toolbox, right? I cannot, again, I cannot comment on that. But what I say is, you know, the author of that book probably should widen his pool of sources. I think he's got his sources mostly from the National Security Council. If you talk to more people from the State Department, I think he probably would have a, it's not a bad book, it's not a bad book, but I think he probably would have more information on issues like that. Okay. Yeah. So a lot of people think that, people speculate it, okay? So Secretary Pompeo will run for presidency in 2024. Could you shed some light on it? Do you want to give me a call to ask another question? Yeah, I can do it. I can do it right now. Yeah, that would be great. We can get some directors. Okay, so I think, you know, the presidential election obviously is of great importance to America. And the people are all excited about the next chance, right? The beauty of American democracy is that we won't be stuck with the one political leader forever. If it's good, and he'll get elected, right, for eight years. If not, and then we'll get rid of him in four years. So it's up to Americans to decide. However, I think, I truly believe President Pompeo would make a very, very great president. And whether he's willing to run or not, I'm going to call him right after this. I think, you know, one great thing about the American political election is that it's an open market. Every ambitious person, every patriotic American has the right to run for president, as long as you fulfill the constitutional requirement of age and the residency, that sort of thing. It's a very good process through which the Americans understand their political leader. So I think the good thing about the U.S. is that through the primary, and you will see the quality leadership of a particular candidate, and then you will determine for whom you're going to vote. And I think, I hope Secretary Pompeo will run. And if he did, in which capacity would you help with that? I would help him in every possible capacity I could, because I know this man. I know he will make a great president. He's extremely patriotic, number one. His patriotism is not based upon just the fact that he's American. But also, he has this very deep theoretical understanding of what America is. He understands the meaning of America to the great enterprise, the great experiment of democracy. And I think that's one of the reasons that when he was Secretary of State, he actually had a much, much more comprehensive theoretical, philosophical guidance for all of us to conduct American democracy. That guidance is from the founding principles of our nation, unalienable rights, for example, freedom of religion. And so, if you look at what Secretary Pompeo did during his tenure at the State Department, every major initiative conforms to the founding principle of this country. And that's why we could make such great progress. And also, that's one reason why we could form a pretty broad consensus within the bureaucracy for the State Department. I mean, probably it's not wrong for me to assume that the majority of the employees of the State Department were Democrats. But on China, on the greatest challenge faced by this country, I don't recall I have ever met anybody, any colleague at the State Department who was overtly partisan. On China, we're all together. And that's because we have a leader there who put very clearly the high stakes of facing this challenge and the win in this competition. Great. So, lastly, Miles, I just want to ask you some questions about yourself. I think a lot of Chinese people, a lot of Chinese audience of our program, probably all wonder why you do what you do today. You know, a lot of Chinese, I think, even if they don't like CCP, they are too afraid to speak publicly or they're too busy to do their own things. So I listened to your speech and you mentioned the two things that impact you a lot. I was really impressed by your experiences from the past. Do you want to share with our audience? Well, I think, you know, I don't consider myself particularly significant in that way. You know, in people's lives, luck plays a very important role. If the timing is right, and then your life will take off, make some impact. I'm extremely fortunate to be able to have the opportunity to work on the front line of U.S. government operation, that is, State Department. So I'm still a government employee, even as a professor, basically, in a service academy. So I'm still doing my duty as an American citizen to help my country. But I also think that because of my roots, which is China, I think that I can never shake it off. And I don't want to shake it off because I love the Chinese people. I love the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese people. I mean, Chinese people are very creative. But I think also the most important thing is I don't particularly consider myself. What motivates my action each day is not necessarily that I'm a Chinese person, I'm a Republican, I'm an American, in even that case. I consider myself, first and foremost, as a free man, with a free freedom to choose, with freedom to act. And as a free man, and as a man, everybody has conscience. As a free man, everybody has a right and capability to exercise that conscience. So that's why I think I may be wrong. And I'm wrong all the time, according to my wife. But I can tell you the joy, the tremendous happiness, to be able to speak your own mind. And whether right or wrong, you are able to do so. And I'm very, very motivated by the fact that 1.4 billion people in China who happen to be Chinese do not have that freedom to exercise their conscience. And I think if my freedom to exercise my conscience could help alleviate or in the ultimate best scenario, sort of a disappearance of that system, to give 1.4 billion people who happen to be Chinese in that piece of land, then I'll be very, very happy. And I think I will fulfill my duty as a human being to do that. And I also think that that's why I think everybody who lives in the United States should be very grateful to this country that affords each one of us who live on this land the freedom to exercise that conscience. Whether you like the United States or not, that's beside the point. You have the right to say you like it or you don't like it without suffering the consequences that you will see in China. So I think ultimately the China challenge really, really is really a matter of tyranny versus freedom. And I think there are some landmarks in my life that you mentioned earlier that really helped me to understand that really the motivational source of everybody's behavior. One of them obviously is Tiananmen, right? I mean, Tiananmen. June 4th. Tiananmen, June 4th, is a landmark watershed event in everybody's life if you're coming from that country. The essence of Tiananmen to me is not really how correct or how incorrect, how strategically sophisticated those people in the square were. The essence of Tiananmen Square to me is that they absolutely enjoyed seven weeks of incredible, incredible freedom to express themselves without fear. A nation without fear is a nation of freedom. A nation constantly living in fear is a nation of tyranny and dictatorship. And I think that basically, I hope that answers your question. I'm not a philosopher, but I do think that everybody should really develop some kind of, not necessarily courage, I don't consider myself as a completely brave man. I consider myself as somebody who actually cherishes what freedom can give you. Who wants the truth. I mean, the power of truth is enormous, right? The power of truth is you really can free yourself. This is nothing new, by the way, and nothing really deep. If you read the 18th century Enlightenment philosophers, from Voltaire to Montesquieu to Rousseau to Jefferson, everybody was talking about what really was the truth. How truth can really liberate one's soul from self-imposed enslavement, of intellectual indolence, inaction, and cowardice, right? So that's why I have a boundless optimism for the triumph of freedom over tyranny. And that's why I see a bright future for the Chinese people. And I'm very excited to be part of that cause among millions and millions of people, including you, including this gentleman here who is filming this, including many, many brave people, men and women who showed up in, say, a couple weeks ago in San Jose, thousands of them. And I saw hope. Particularly, I saw hope in the millions of people who took to the streets in Hong Kong. They were not instigated by some black hands. They were not stupid. They were not instigated by some kind of selfish economic gain. They are motivated to go to the street by the power of freedom. They want to be free men. They don't want to be subject to the tyrannical rule of a communist regime. And that's the essence of Hong Kong protests. I'm glad people realize, even though they're done now, but it's not over. For now. Yeah. If I may just comment a little bit about your stories, because you talk about the June 4th story and how it made you totally realize the nature of CCP, and the other incident, how you argue with the American professor and how you defend America, America's traditional values. I think the reason that those incidents have the kind of effect on you is also because you have this moral clarity that you just described, right? People may experience the same thing, but they may not have the same realization or they may have different effects on them. So I think this moral clarity is a key thing in every one of us. Okay. So, talking about moral clarity, just to add what you alluded to moments earlier, there's another very important legacy of Tiananmen, right? Now, Tiananmen took place in 1989, at the height of what the world knew was the Chinese Communist Party reform movement. So Deng Xiaoping was the reformer, the ultimate reformer. He was the favorite. He was the moderate. He was the architect of reform opening up, as the Chinese Communist Party said. Even with that credential, with that kind of a very moderate, pragmatic approach to Chinese social problems, he was a communist. The most moderate communist would not blink an eye in ordering its own people. And he was very proud of doing that. So the legacy of Tiananmen should really be everybody, nobody should harbor any hope at all for Chinese Communist Party's reform. Those reforms are phony, bogus. The ultimate goal is not to change the Chinese political system, not even reform the system. The ultimate goal is to enhance the dictatorial rule of that party. So that's why one very big legacy of Tiananmen massacre should really be Chinese Communist Party's reform. We'll have no hope. It's a pity that it wasn't a big wake-up call for the West, for the rest of the world. It actually was a wake-up call, but there was no leader to follow through, that's all. So not until the Trump administration. And we're not the one who suddenly had an epiphany by eating a piece of Morshu pork. No. We knew, everybody knew this in Washington a long time ago. So the difference is that it was during the Trump administration, with the leaders like Secretary Pompeo, we took action. We took action, and we say what we would do, and we did what we say we would do. And that actually, I think, is the ultimate illustration of leadership. Well, great. Well, thank you so much, Myles. It's great to have this conversation with you. Thank you very much, Jenny. All the best with your future endeavors. Thank you. And Secretary Pompeo's. With yours, too. Thank you.