The Chinese Communist Party Is Illegitimate_ Expert

Dr. Bradley Thayer testified to the House Oversight Committee earlier today. He joins me now to discuss the hearing and the CCP's political warfare. It's also the founding member on the Committee on Present Danger, China and co-author of Embracing Communist China. Dr. Bradley Thayer, thank you so much for joining us. Steve, it's my pleasure to be with you again. It's great to have you in studio with us, Dr. Thayer. So in your testimony today before the House Oversight Committee, you talked about the relationship between the U.S. and China and drew parallels to the Cold War against Russia. Talk to us about how this relationship compares. Well, certainly there are great similarities between the Cold War against the Soviet Union that the United States fought between approximately 1946 and 1991 and the present Cold War against the People's Republic of China. And the source of the confrontation is the same, and that is the hyper-aggressive ideology of communism. The motivation for the conflict is actually driven by our adversaries, not by the United States. And in your opening statement, you talked about how this ideology is actually foreign to China and that it's not something that should be accepted in China. Talk to us about what you meant. Well, certainly the Chinese Communist Party is illegitimate. There's no reason whatsoever that it should be ruling the Chinese people. Its ideology is a Western knockoff. It's a product of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. So all Westerners who've generated this ideology have been adopted by the Chinese Communist Party completely illegitimately. There's nothing Chinese about the Chinese Communist Party, but there's very much which is Western. And that's why I made the argument in the testimony that it was the Chinese Communist Party is the product of Soviet imperialism. They know they're illegitimate, and this is why their tyrannical methods keep tightening, why their aggression keeps worsening against the Chinese people themselves, but also in international politics against the U.S. partners like Taiwan and key U.S. allies like Japan and the Philippines. Now, as we said, you were testifying on the Hill today in front of the Oversight Committee, taking questions from lawmakers from both sides. In your assessment, what would you say is the, I guess, maybe biggest blind spot that has you most concerned for our elected officials, where they may not completely understand the Chinese Communist Party, therefore, or thereby putting the United States at risk? We can see in the context of that testimony that there still is a mismatch between reality, the harsh reality that you see that the Chinese people experience every day and that we see in international politics every day, where the PRC is aggressing consistently and without end, and how American elites still conceive of China as, in some respects, wanting to continue the failed engagement policy where the United States trades, cooperates, does not yet confront the Chinese Communist Party. So that mismatch was still present. At the same time, there was reason for optimism because some members on both sides conveyed the bipartisan or what I would describe as a nonpartisan approach to this effort. The CCP is a threat to all Americans, and the fentanyl that's killing Americans doesn't ask whether they're Democrats or Republicans or Independents or Greens. It kills them nonetheless. We've seen a lot of bipartisanship or nonpartisanship, as you put it, the way it should be in the CCP select committee's hearings. With the oversight hearings, I believe this was the third, one, the first one sort of devolved into a very partisan, I guess, debate, if you will, with Democrats and Republicans. How do you think Beijing views that when they see Americans fighting amongst themselves over China? Well, at one level, they appreciate that and welcome it. At another level, they recognize that's democracy, that's democratic government. And so that just reinforces their illegitimacy. They cannot do that, right? The closest they came to an open hearing is when Xi Jinping ejected Hu Jintao, right, from the 20th Party Congress, right, in a very powerful statement about who was in charge of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi Jinping has succeeded. And as long as he's healthy, which is a question, he has succeeded in controlling and ever tightening his control over the Chinese Communist Party. He's successfully gotten rid of alternative factions. This is an individual who's hyper aggressive, and he's determined to realize his, in essence, Stalinist ambition for the Chinese Communist Party, which is to defeat the U.S., to conquer Taiwan and to ensure that China is the dominant force in the 21st century. And that's the dispositive question, Steve. It's whether freedom led by the U.S. and its allies, including allies within China, the Chinese people, are going to be able to sustain freedom into the 21st century or whether the CCP will be triumphant and the 21st century will be marked by tyranny. Bradley Thayer, really appreciate you joining us. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Thank you very much.