How the CCP Seeks Global Hegemony: Piero Tozzi

on the one hand while they will present a friendly face to us and they they'll send us cute panda bears to the Washington National Zoo they're telling their people that America is the enemy I think one thing we can be very grateful to Xi Jinping about is that the mask is off whether it's the wolf Warrior diplomacy the aggression towards Taiwan towards the Philippines and we call it the South China Sea maybe we should start calling at the West Philippine Sea are we finally seeing a real pivot to Asia as the Trump Administration signals a dramatic reduction in the US military presence in Europe and demands NATO allies pitch in more for Europe's defense joining me today is longtime China expert Pio tatsi staff director of the Congressional executive Commission on China the CCC there's forced labor in the fishing but there's also forced labor in the fish processing well this enters uh the US supply chain including our procurement by our defense department served on military bases but also US Department of Agriculture purchase for federal prisons and school lunch programs the US government should be setting the example in cleansing our supply chain of products that are tainted by forced labor it should be a no-brainer this is American thought leaders and I'm Yan Kell patsi such a pleasure to have you on American thought leaders well very good to be here Yan thank you for inviting me vice president JD Vance recently at the Munich security conference gave a speech um some people hailed it others found it incredibly controversial and criticized it a lot of focus on free speech um but that wasn't the only focus and uh how do you read it well I think Germaine to our conversation today I think we're seeing a pivot to Asia and that's something that's been talked about for for some time you know President Obama spoke about it uh as well uh and with this Administration we're seeing seeing a realization uh a reprioritization of where does America need to put its assets and I think it's an understanding that the People's Republic of China under the leadership of the Chinese Communist party in Xi Jinping is not simply a strategic rival we're not simply competing with them on economics even militarily but rather they're what I would call a systemic rival in other words they seek to be hedgemon and to as part of that they seek to undo the uh entire rules-based International order and supplant it with one of their own devising uh which I think accounts for their uh not just military aggressiveness um but also you see this effort to set standards it's the hegemon that sets the the the standards whether it's in in technology whether it's seeking to undermine the dollar as the reserve currency and that's you see that I think with bricks and uh issues like the Petro yen uh but you also see in the area of Human Rights you you see uh the CCP the PRC putting forward this notion of a shared common Destiny for mankind a changing of rights as we think of it as principally about uh protecting individuals individual freedoms and transforming into Collective rights right to development and if you look at the universal periodic review of China last year uh January of 2023 uh 24 I mean you had a number of countries that lined up to praise China uh as a rights leader uh whereas the US and like-minded countries um uh including our East Asian allies like Japan and Korea South Korea was pretty vocal too um criticized China's human rights record um so I think um there's an attempt to as as uh the PRC seeks hegemony as a CCP and I think here it's important to dist make that distinction uh between the Chinese Communist party and the Chinese Nation the Chinese people uh they seek to conflate that um but you know really they have a their their goals are systemic it can be very hard to imagine because basically since tianan you know Americans have been Handover fist trying to get into China do anything transfer all the necessary IP offer all the technology voluntarily all you know invest insane amounts into places where it didn't look like a quick return was coming how do you explain this well that that I think goes to the whole kind of mistake of Engagement Theory and you know if you want to talk a little about about the Congressional executive Commission on China how do we come about well we came about um you know if you look at post tenen there was a um realization that the regime was brutal um our China's most favored nation status in terms of trade was up for annual review it um it was uh they had to show that they were making improvements in in human rights and then it was reauthorized now um Bill Clinton when he was candidate Bill Clinton rightfully criticized George HW Bush after tenan and the massacre there the um George HW Bush sent Brent skra to Beijing to reassure them that okay everything will be all right and uh Clinton had that famous phrase he's cuddling butchers from Beijing to Baghdad but then what happened in 1994 Bill Clinton delinked that annual review process and human rights and basically gave them permanent normal trade relation status there were number number of voices that criticized that including Chris Smith he very preent uh said that this is a mistake we're mistaking the nature of the the regime Nancy Pelosi was another critic at that time uh anyway over the the decade of the 1990s um you had this lead up towards uh uh the prc's accession to the World Trade Organization um which is I think in many ways how we really started to give up the the store then uh the idea that you could take a um a regime that is mercantilist it's a communist command economy that's able to devote resources to particular uh not just Industries but particular companies it's able to subsidize um uh low prices through the use of forced slave labor and also steals intellectual property to give it an upper hand if you look at the Canadian company Nortel how its demise it's it should be a you know a but it's how it's How Huawei was arguably constructed at the beginning right yeah that's that's huawei's rise rise to power uh it cannibalized a uh another Telecom company that was so eager to get into the the the China market so that was a mistake that was made as part of that WTO accession the Congressional executive Commission on China was created to monitor China's human rights record and ironically part of it was to kind of map its its progress towards a uh rule of law Society uh which again s kind of shows that he optimism at the time uh but also to maintain a political prisoner database and to uh keep Congress informed uh what people thought would be progress now is I think it's very clear is regress um and uh the abuse of Human Rights is ongoing and systematic all along through this the Chinese regime was teaching the Chinese people over Generations that America is the enemy like we just didn't notice that somehow well again I think they present one face to the rest of the world and that was especially true with the um during the reform era um you know when they wanted to attract foreign direct investment and uh so they present one face to the the rest of the world then it's a very different message to their own people I think one thing we can be very grateful to she Jing ping about is that the mask is off um whether it's the wolf Warrior diplomacy whether it's you know the the aggression towards Taiwan towards the Philippines and and we call it the South China Sea maybe we should start calling it the the the West Philippine Sea um that aggressiveness towards India on it on its border um I think the mask is is is off and its intentions are much uh clearer for those that want to to to uh to see and we're also seeing I think a withdrawal of Western companies Western Law Firms um that have realized that um this was a a a bad bargain uh that was made you still however it's difficult to extricate yourself if you're a company like uh Microsoft or apple not only is you know a great deal of your production in China um but also you know that's where your your um research and development is we've outsourced so much um to a country again that seeks to be the hamon and also seeks to Foster this um Spirit of grievance and uh uh hostility towards the United States um too so Pier are you telling me that you're going to be submitting a recommendation to the White House for the naming of another body of water uh I think that uh they don't need my uh uh input to to to do that but uh it's it's funny you know it's it's not even called the South China Sea in Chinese nonh high it's the the south sea um yet we do um often times adopt this terminology that favors them we talked about calling Xi Jinping president when the word in Chinese is not president uh we should give him his party title um we also adopt uh language like the South China Sea um so in some ways we're doing their own uh uh propaganda for them which raises an interesting role we talked you know well a very prominent example in the other direction was the renaming of you know Wuhan virus you know the thing that you're really getting me thinking about is this you know these two faces being shown right one internally one externally I mean there's this whole approach I mean since officially I guess since I think it's 2013 of the use of the three warfarespecial the roots of it but if you look at the united front or united front works department activities since the Inception of the Chinese Communist party they attempted to influence uh the guing dong uh infiltrate the uh the guing dong I think Mao talked about it as his secret weapon it's in many ways he attributed it to uh what allowed them to defeat the guing dong in um in mainland China and to come to power that the Nationalist the Nationalist the kmt the the changai Sheek uh party that struggled if you want to personify it maong versus Chang Kai Sheek but it really was um More Than Just A Clash of Titans it was you know the the very alternative visions of what China's future would would look like um and the guing dong in 1949 fled to to Taiwan so to give an example of united front activity just very recent here in Washington DC uh two examples uh there were two united front operatives who were welcomed with open arms uh by here in Washington just just a few weeks ago and there were uh two panda bears uh Bali and Chingo and if you look at the media coverage uh you know these cute and wonderful panda bears um full of praise and a gift of the People's Republic of of China uh a little bit of irony there um balii and and Ching B you know we see the you know opinion romanized words Chinese love puns a lot of Chinese dissidents use puns and you know to kind of Express their their um criticism of the Chinese Communist Party leadership however it goes two ways uh balii is a homonym for um uh violence explosive violence uh Ching B could mean intelligence in the sense of like spy spycraft intelligence uh Gathering so one wonders if sort of the joke is on on us there the other um example of um united front kind of you trying to create Good Will towards China was um the Kennedy Center uh which is a taxpayer funded venue hosting the National Ballet of of China and uh Chris Smith leted a letter along with um congressman mullinar from the select committee Chris Smith is the chairman of the Congressional executive Commission on China wrote to the Kennedy Center and called attention to the fact that this CCP suppresses artists at home and also abroad now you know we do want to uh we're all in favor of artistic expression and we don't want to be censorious here but I think what the letter called for is like will you let your audiences know that there are artists that are repressed in China but also here you know this long arm of transnational repression uh to give an example um there's uh Chen we Ming is a Chinese sculptor who um had a um sculpture in California there's this Liberty Sculpture Park that contains a lot of his artwork and one of them was the CCP virus and it showed XI jingping as a as a CCP virus essentially a a month after it was opened it was burned down and the FBI investigated and it turns out there were agents of the uh Chinese Communist party that that did that and attacked that form of artistic expression so you see um for example most egregiously uh at the Apec conference in San Francisco last year how demonstrators against Xi Jinping were beaten by Pro CCP demonstrators they were exercising their first amendment freedoms on the you know with they were permitted on a uh in San Francisco you know and another prominent example I'm just thinking of because I've been covering it quite a bit recently there was uh two Chinese agents that were actually found guilty of trying to bribe IRS agents to revoke uh shenyun Performing Arts tax exempt status and then never mind the bomb threat and death threats and things to theaters to try to I mean since we're talking about the Arts right at the kened center and again the united front uh uh activities it really you you see the long arm of that you see these Chinese police stations uh illicit police stations in major American cities um we also see examples of how they try to infiltrate our political system Linda Sun who was uh arrested who had been an adviser to governor hokel uh too and and sought to um curate information that the governor received and also um blocked for example taiwan's representatives from having a a voice there so you know Fong Fong the uh who targeted Eric swell before he even before he became a congressman so you see um this targeting uh of uh in order to influence uh whether it's the the IRS uh there or whether it's us politicians um broad base of united front uh activities Pi one quick sec we're going to take a break okay and we'll be right back and we're back with the staff director of the Congressional executive Commission on China pii what I'm thinking to myself as we're discussing all this is I think that deep down inside the Chinese regime and its leadership understands that it's illegitimate and I think the thing that it fears the most of anything is actually accountability by its own people because of the terrible things that has done to them right what do you think 100% uh it it goes to the question of of legitimacy and we don't want to engage in regime change um that really is for the Chinese people to to to do at the same time however we should not be be subsidizing tyranny us companies that have forced labor in their supply chain which is in violation of US law like the weaker Force labor prevention act or the the the the Tariff Act um these companies have to uh be accountable for that or companies that that um uh partner with pla companies we saw it recently with cattle the Chinese B battery manufacturer catl not cows these are pla entities so what we should be doing is enforcing our laws uh there and I think as this greater awareness you're seeing this effort to move out of of China move your production out of China um you saw a company like Milwaukee tul for example that was accused of having forced labor in a supply chain it does its you know equipment manufacturing in the United States now but it also moved like it's for work loves and things like that out of China to Cambodia in response to these uh these allegations um so you're seeing American companies disengage uh because they realize that there's a risk with doing business in China I think there's more that we can do I mean one thing I I would like to see is the Securities and Exchange Commission you know it's hard to pass laws use existing laws the 1934 Securities Exchange act and Rule 10 B5 under that's promulgated under that uh concerns any statement well not just any statement by a publicly traded company it it prohibits material misstatements but also material omissions so if you're a publicly traded company and you're not disclosing the fact that that um uh your supply chains are corrupted uh with uh and tainted by forced labor then that is a a potential violation of the secuity exchange Act was it can affect the stock price um of the corporation at the moment if you're a publicly traded you know Chinese company through this you know strange Cayman Islands instrument right you don't even really have to submit a meaningful audit well so so there are a couple of issues there I I'm talking about American companies in particular that have corrupted Supply chains but there also is this idea of Chinese companies having access to US capital markets that's another area where we should uh draw a line and um you know that's I think uh a tool that hasn't been fully utilized uh we should not be rewarding these companies but I'll give you another example US government purchases so you know Ian urbina uh who testified at a CCC hearing and had that wonderful Series in the New Yorker looking at the um uh fish supply chain um you have forced labor on these uh fishing boats these Chinese fishing boats which often times double as uh Naval militia by the way and we see their actions in the west Philippine Sea South China Sea uh there where they often times swarm Filipino vessels um so there's forced labor in the fishing but there's also forc labor in the fish processing you have Wagers and North Korean women is mostly women that are are basically forced to process these fish well this enters uh the US supply chain including our urement by our defense department served on Military basis but also USDA us uh Department of Agriculture purchases for prisons federal prisons and school lunch programs so what we should be doing is you know the US government should be setting the example in cleansing our supply chains of uh products that are tainted by forced labor um so that's kind of should be a a no-brainer there and again it's done in violation of US law well Pio Tosi it's such a pleasure to have had you on well thank you Yan it's good to good to see you thank you yeah thank you all for joining Perot Tosi and me on this episode of American thought leaders I'm your host Yan Kell [Music]