This is the CCP’s Greatest Weakness | Amb. Sam Brownback

Ronald Reagan went at the Soviet Union before he was president and he went at them on their values and their rights. There is a moral core here. This isn't a competition between the largest economy and the second largest economy. This is a competition of ideals. And we've got the better ones. Ahead of President Trump's expected meeting with Xiinping, I'm sitting down with Ambassador Sam Brownback, co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit and author of the upcoming book, China's War on Faith. Religious believers are the only community left that we can work with inside of China that would stand up to this regime. And that's why the regime spends billions of dollars to oppress and suppress and control every single religion. I think it is our most powerful tool in undermining the regime. Support the Tibetan Buddhist. Support the Muslim weaguers. Support the Christians that are in prison. Ask for their release. We support the fallen Gong people being able to practice their faith in China as they see fit. It will drive the Chinese Communist nuts. This is American thought leaders and I'm Yan Kellik. >> Ambassador Sam Brownback. Such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. >> Thanks, Sean. Good to join you. >> Recently, the Chinese Communist Party arrested a whole number of leaders of the Zion Church in China. Um, you know, part of their overall constant crackdown on faith. But why this group? Why now? I think they're hostages. I think that'd be the better way to look at it instead of just saying, "Well, this is some random sort of church raid that they did or do all the time." I think they're hostages. I think it was purposeful. I think it was right ahead of the Xiinping uh meeting with Trump that he did it. It's sort of like the rare earth uh issue where he says, "I'm going to cut off rare earth minerals being exported to the United States to try to create this sort of maximum pressure environment." You got a lot of Christians in Washington, in the United States that are uh interested. I think it is one of the most ham-handed things the Chinese could have done. I think it's one of the most ridiculous things, kind of like wolf diplomacy, if you will. This is an oxymoron. You You aren't going to be achieving diplomatic gains by being a wolf. I think it's a terrible move, but I think it's strategic and I one that they've done to create pressure on President Trump. >> The president has mentioned that he may bring up the incarceration of Jimmy Lie in Hong Kong as part of these discussions. So that's interesting because he's indicated an interest in something other than trade when it comes to this whole picture. What h how do you read that? >> Promising. uh because previously and and often President Trump has wanted to really kind of try to isolate things. Let's just talk about economic issues or let's just talk about security issues. So if he's saying we want to talk about economic plus some human rights issues, to me that's encouraging. I you know he wants to get a trade deal uh with Xiinping. He wants to do that to be able to help the economy. He wants to be able to help soybean farmers in red states be able to export into China. These are normal pressure points that you expect and and I think you'll see. But if he wanders into the human rights space, that's I think actually where the payload is in our confrontation with China, you got to talk about this horrific record they have on human rights and you got to talk about it to the world. It it isn't like okay if we trade China for US on economic and global leadership it'll all be the same. These are two diametrically different systems. I I think we've really got to talk about these systems and not just about economic and trade issues. So we're filming this shortly before uh President Trump's meeting with Xiinping. What advice would you give to the president giving everything that you know about how the Chinese regime operates? If you want to hit them where it hurts, hit them on uh human rights issues, genocides in their own country, religious freedom that they don't grant any of their people, whether they be Buddhists, Muslim, fallen gong, Christians. That's where they're the weakest. It's where they're the most vulnerable globally. Uh if you're not interested in that, just cut a trade deal and call it good for now. Although you got to know in your own heart, this isn't going to be good for very long. Xiinping has designs on the world. We may not think we're in a cold war with Xiinping and China right now, but they believe they are. And they've built a military up to have this. They have built up allies of dictators. They've got an operational axis of evil with Russia and Iran, North Korea, and a number of other satellite countries. This thing is already operational against us, whether we believe we're in the fight or not. And I I think we ought to really start hitting them where they're the most vulnerable. Ronald Reagan went at the Soviet Union before he was president >> and he went at them on their values and their rights. He went at them and he said, "Look at what happens to the Jewish refusnix. Look what happens to the evangelicals um and by the godless communist that he would use. He'd use very peorative terms. But what he was doing is he's speaking with clarity to the United States community and the broader freedom loving community about who we're up against. And I do believe the president needs to start speaking in those types of terms about who we are up against. You know, the president is known to talk about the cards. You know, what cards you have and you mentioned some of the leverage that the CCP has been using. for example, this rare earth, you know, unprecedented attempt at use of rare earths, but also this kind of hostage diplomacy adding a bit of leverage, you know, with arresting these Christian leaders. Um, how do you think human rights it becomes leverage for the president? I I think it comes leverage as we start talking about it. Um if Secretary of State Rubio flew to Dharm Salah and met with the Daly Lama uh and endorsed his third way approach of a separate independent Tibet inside of China that freaks Chinese uh leadership out. Um if the uh president were to meet with uh fallen gong leaders in the White House, that creates huge pressure internally inside of China. Um these are the sort of things that don't really cost any money, but the visual imagery of it. If the president were to meet in the oval office with a series of people that have been persecuted by Chinese Communist Party uh and just has them tell their story that creates leverage back because it shows what system we are up against and that's what we really need to do in my estimation more than anything right now. This just isn't an economic competition. This isn't a competition between the largest economy and the second largest economy. This is a this is a competition of ideals. Uh and we've got the better ones. Ours are proven and they work and they work in various places around the world. And communism hasn't worked anywhere. And one other just quick point on the the Chinese communists are very big about pointing out that these religions are imports to China. Christianity, Islam, something else. You know the real import to China is communism. Communism was developed in Europe the mid 1800s and it's being imposed on the Chinese people. This is the carpet bagger is communism more than anything. You've described three genocides happening in China. I agree with this you but I just want to explore that a little further. And also just to be clear this term genocide is used so liberally these days by people for you know some kind of you know a significant number of people dying sometimes will people will call that a genocide. Genocide is something quite specific and extreme and maybe if you can just explain that to me and why you think there's three and what they are. >> Yeah genocide is very specific. It involves a lot of carnage and death and attack of people, but it's an identified group of people that this group of people in power seeks to eliminate. So there's an intentionality that goes along with the genocide too. There's of we want to wipe out this group of people. You've got the one declared of the Weaggguers, Muslim Weaggguers in Western China that the United States has declared multiple administrations now and multiple countries have. You've got one against the Tibetan Buddhist that has been going on longer even than the the the weaguer genocide has been going on. And it's both at its culture and it's at its control level and it's killed a number of people as well. And there's a third one of fallen gong and they've arguably had it the worst of anybody where you've had this overt aggressive attack that includes things like forced organ harvesting that you've talked about a great deal. that is just mindblowing in its graphic, horrific nature. But it doesn't even stop there. It's just an attempt to literally wipe out this group and it's intentional and it's focused and they spend a lot of money to do it. Imagine this. You got three genocides going on right now. And here this is a a country that holds itself up for respect in the world and you you're doing three genocides and you're the second largest economy in the world and we're dealing with you and you're doing these things now in front of our very eyes and we know about it. I they're they're the western world and particularly the free world really has to stand up more against uh against this. You raised such an important point here actually because you know when we're if we're making deals, right? We have to understand that we're either working with the same value system or we're working with a different value system. And you're pointing out obviously a very different value system. Um so that hopefully would inform our decision making around deal making, right? I mean or or I I think for many years this was not something that we really understood um frankly in the west broadly not just in the United States. China thinks of the west u and of barely everybody as part of the green party and by green I mean money just that money buys it all. Um, it buys loyalty of your own citizens if we get the economy growing and you just leave us in power. They're just part of the Green Party. They just want to and the then the West is too. Well, and the the Soviets in their era, they said, you know, you give the West enough rope, they'll hang themselves. Uh, you know, it's just part of the Green Party. They just they just want money. Um, but at the end of the day, that actually that's just not true. >> So, right now, probably the last thing you want to be seeing is a pitch from Yan. But I want to encourage you to subscribe to the Epoch Times. It is how we keep the lights on. It is how we keep these interviews coming. Just hit the link below and subscribe to the Epoch Times. Arguably, this is something that Lee Smith argues in his recent book, The China Matrix, is that, you know, one of the big reasons why so many American elites kind of got in bed with the CCP was because of >> they got they became part of the Green Party. I mean to use your terminology now. >> Yeah. No, but but that's the >> actually that's the point. When Davos brings in one of the top Chinese leaders a couple years ago to speak at Davos, you're going, well, wait a minute. What? Look at what this country is doing and why are you hosting this individual here in front of these mega big global company leaders? Well, it's all Green Party then in that situation. But that's not where the American people are. The American people are interested in in making a good living. They're interested in making money. There's also a moral core here that they're going, "No, we're just not going to do certain things or be a part of certain things." And they're not going to be a part of the Green Party, and they don't want their country used to be a part of the Green Party. Uh, and I I think that's where the Chinese Communist Party view of the world is it's just all Green Party breaks down >> because there is a moral core here. And that's what Reagan saw and understood with the Soviet Union. You you appeal to that moral core of the people of the United States. And that's what I really hope President Trump will do. >> Well, so you mentioned this organ harvesting industry. Of course, it's it's on my mind. I'm writing as we speak, you know, a book that's due very urgently. Um, so this is something I think about all the time. I'm thinking about this hot mic moment, right? We have Vladimir Putin talking about achieving immortality through continual organ transplantations if I slightly paraphrase. And then Xiin Ping saying talking about 150year lifespan. How did you react to that? I was a guest as I know about the organ harvesting things and I thought the only way you get the organs that you want is to kill somebody and that person is probably a religious person or somebody that believes in human rights or is opposed to the regime. So you're going to kill somebody so you can live to be 120 or 150 and you're intentional about it and you're willful to do it. I I I mean what what leader thinks of their own people that way other than a diabolical one? >> So this whole organ harvesting industry, it grew exponentially in the early 2000s. Um and kind of hit some kind of a plateau around 2005. Hospitals are being built on mass. There's no organ donation system or registry or anything like that. They're telling everyone these are death row prisoners that are being used. The thing that struck me right is it turns into something like a I've been told a$9 billion a year industry. I think this was David Mus's estimate uh based on you know kind of years of research and understanding all these numbers. But the thing that struck me after this hot mic moment was that if you're one of the Chinese elite, if you're one of those 7 million red card holders that has access to even the highest most elite healthcare that exists over there, you have unlimited ondemand organs available to you forever. And that that's worth more than even a few billion dollars, isn't it? Like if you're if you're an amoral person, >> if you're an amoral person, this is worth all the money you've got. Because once you lose the life here, that's it for you. There's an old uh saying that, you know, for the uh the dictator may take the life of the martyr. Uh but once the martyr's life ends, it actually begins for him. Once the dictator's life ends, it act it ends for him. and you've got dictators and people in position that are willing to to harvest somebody else's organs so that they can live longer. I I I mean the words hurt to say and that that's going on by one of your major global leading countries. uh how how can we how how can you see a system like that leading the world and then leading all these other dictatorial authoritarian countries. This is the way to look at it. If you got the power, you take the organ. It's yours. I that that is a horrific world to consider. And that is a that is a world driven by evil. How much of the Chinese population do you think knows I mean based on what you know that this is actually happening? >> I don't think a very big percentage do at all. I I I think that it's very controlled. Obviously the great China firewall controls a lot of the information that can go in. Um I I don't think the general population knows and it my sense of it is the general population is is so demoralized about the ability to change the system >> that you know the saying that uh it's like they deal with the government like they deal with the weather. You just try to observe do I need to put a coat on now before I go outside or not? I can't change the weather but I can put a coat on or I can take an umbrella. Um, and I would hope that we would start to instill at least particularly in the religious people, no, there is hope and we will stand up uh for you. And that's why I talk really about the religious people so much in all of them because here is a group that's still there. It's the biggest civil society organization that exists within China yet today. It's a group that answers to a higher authority than the Communist Party. It's a group that's willing to put their lives on the line to stand up for their freedoms. And we should be standing for them. We should be standing up and and giving them hope. Giving them hope that somebody outside hears this and this is just not one of those situations where it's the weather, you can't change it. No, this can change and we're going to stand with you to change it. >> Sam, I think you're raising such an incredibly important point and I just want to kind of build on this a little bit. A lot of people don't understand that communism is totalitarian and in this totalitarian structure it hates and tries to destroy all semblance of civil society because civil society by definition is not under its boot. Right? And it's and so what you're describing and it does this very jealously and has been doing it from the beginning and that's what makes it impossible to change except religious believers. >> Right. Right. Religious believers are the only community left that we can work with inside of China that would stand up to this regime. And that's why the regime spends billions of dollars to oppress and suppress and control every single religion within the country. And why I think we've been in malpractice in the west by not standing up more for these religious communities that are in our fundamental belief system. We believe their right to religious freedom and we play believe it applies to everybody and we haven't been standing with them sufficiently. And the other thing, we saw this in some of the Jewish refusnix in the Soviet Union. Once Ronald Reagan started talking about the Jewish refusnix, it gave them hope. They started fighting back more. They started resisting more because they had hope now that somebody was actually listening who had some potential and could do something about it. And that's what we need to do for them. Now, >> you know, something also strikes me here. You mentioned how you think, and I actually agree with you, that most Chinese really have no idea of some of the depths of depravity that the CCP has gone to. Um, you know, we use at Epoch Times, we use uh firewall, a variety of firewall busting softwares that are actually incredibly effective at breaking through that firewall. And I keep thinking about that, you know, if more Chinese had and it's not it's a it's it's not it's a drop in the bucket in a sense compared to the 1.3 billion odd Chinese that are there, but it is some millions that are regularly accessing through these systems. But if that could be increased, right? If people could actually understand that this what this regime does is doing and how and the benefits it's offering to its super elites and what the human cost of that is to the Chinese people themselves and their moral stature and and all of it, right? I something really powerful in that. >> It it powerful and it'll change people. the Soviet Union uh during its and I keep going back to it, but the the fight is substantially similar. They had these stores in the Soviet Union um that uh you can only buy with things with foreign currency because they were short of foreign currency. They had sheets on front of the store. So you had to walk in, you had to be a foreigner, have foreign currency to get in get in the stores. And I remember being there as a young man uh and we were we were on there was an exchange program and I'm going how how did these things exist? Why why aren't the people just mad as hops that they can't go in a store that I can go in? Uh well it it did make them mad. They didn't like it. And it's the same sort of thing here. Once we tell people about, okay, there's a whole health care system that you don't have access to and you're never going to get access to it unless somehow you become an elite within the Communist Party. And that system has organs that they harvest from people illegally and clearly without their will and not with their donation. I you know I think you you you really do start to build this anger up about the system and you start to showcase its own evil nature. And I think this is just a regime who I hope is towards the end of its life expectancy of spreading and and having this sort of evil over its own people and over the world. You know, I posted last night uh from the China Forum uh the very powerful testimony of Grace Jind Drexel, the daughter of the pastor um key pastors of the Zion church. And immediately all sorts of, let's say, very pro-Chinese Communist Party accounts jumped in and started attacking and all sorts of stuff in the comments. And I was just thinking to myself, man, like this X is banned in China, right? And but there but the these these people just have complete free access and and to do just just be kind of really really nasty and it's like yeah that's part of the cost of being in a free country and allowing for free speech and so forth but there's absolutely no reciprocity here right no and and we need to make it reciprocity we need to make it costly on their side while I was governor of Kansas we had a fusion center where we could get in I could get access to intelligence information and the number of probings we had by China, Russia and Iran based probers and group into the state of Kansas was huge and daily regular trying to get into systems nuclear power plant railroad operations just all over the we're fighting it off all day long. Well, we ought to be going at them and particularly on information systems because information is such a warfare tool uh anymore. We we've got to maximize the use of that and and as I say, breaking down that firewall is one of the key ways to do it. >> And just free information, you know, free information. >> Yeah, that's all that's what we're asking to do is just be able to regular Chinese person to get free information where now they don't have that. They don't have access. So they only react to the information that they have and what it all gets is spoonfed to them by the Chinese Communist Party. >> You say that the Chinese Communist Party is preparing the Chinese people for war. Can you explain exactly what you mean by that? >> There's there's studies on this about how governments prepare people for war, how they governments prepare people for peace. And usually for war, it's to, you know, identify an op a people that you're opposed to and then to really start painting them as as dark figures, as bad actors, as people that are after uh after them. You're seeing that in the language that China is using with its own people towards the United States. And then you just see it in the sheer military buildup that they've got going on now. Um, they've got a navy bigger and newer than ours. Why do why do they need a big blue sea navy? Uh, what's their objective here with this? Um, why have they tanked their economic relationships with the West and particularly with the United States and built up a military at the same time? What What is that not obvious on its face? And then Xiinping two months ago has this Davos of dictators as as a friend of mine has referred to it as getting together. Um, and if that doesn't send you just this clear message of here is a group that's lined up with evil intentions against us and against the western democratic open human rights system. I don't know what more proof you need uh that that this is a preparation and a preparing a a people and a whole side for war. You know, I'll mention a couple of things that that are, I guess, more on the hopeful side. So, having watched this whole reality of organ harvesting evolve in terms of how much awareness there is and how much willingness, as you point out, it's very hard to even find sometimes willing people to to to learn about this issue because it's so macabra, because it's so horrible when you realize what it really means that, you know, innocent people are being murdered for these for these organs. Um well the last few years there's been a massive sea change in terms of understanding at least from my view watching over 20 years. Um there's these you know two pieces of legislation two in the senate now have passed the house to target this issue in a very meaningful way. There's there's there's one in committee even. So there's even a third piece of legislation made. There's multiple states. I just just as we were uh you know sitting down I saw that Wisconsin is bringing up an organ harvesting uh bill which that I think they're quite likely to pass. So there is sort of some kind of positive uh change at least in our ability here to address this and just kind of at least accept that it's real and maybe challenge it somewhat. That's one side. The other side is and this is a story I don't get to tell often enough is this uh the quit the communist party or tui dying movement in China where over the last 20 years the felon gong have been going around talking to individual people encouraging them to quit the Chinese Communist Party and its related organizations and they've managed to get over 450 million people to do so. There's a kind of power in that and I and I wish we could tell this story more. just there's only so much you can you can try, right? Um, but it's there there's there's there's really some very positive things happening in China as well. >> Very positive things. >> I remember having a conversation with David Eisenhower several years back about what was taking place in China. And David Eisenhower is a a grandson of of Dwight Eisenhower uh son-in-law of Richard Nixon uh well educated uh and very knowledgeable about global issues and I says what's going on in China I because this is when Xiinping was really starting to really grab power and and he said well you know I I don't know I'm not a China expert uh but he would he said they're not acting like a confident leader. They're acting like an authoritarian, a bully, somebody that's not confident of their system. They're not confident of the the long-term trajectory of where they're going. And I thought that's what it seems like to me. >> They're acting just much more uh we got to do this by strength instead of by persuasion. We've got to do this not by example, but we've got to do it just by ruthlessness. That's not a confident leadership. That's a leadership that's scared. Um I I think there's a lot of signs here of real aging of um of this party's ability to lead. So, one of the big topics at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation's China Forum was this idea of transnational repression, which is the Chinese Communist Party extending that persecution of people that it does back home actually to America and other countries in the West. You recently visited uh the Shenyun headquarters and uh where the Shenyun dancers are trained in the college there and so forth. And so this is a group that I've been following very closely. We've been sponsors of Shen Yun for for a long time and who are subjected to this type of transnational oppression in a very surprising way. Can you can you spell out to me why the CCP would be so obsessed with Shenyun? Yeah, it does make sense, does it? So, here's a here's a show of beauty. I've attended uh one of the presentations of it here at the Kennedy Center. Here's a show of beauty of Chinese culture and the Chinese Communist Party is opposed to it. Uh you're going why? Well, because it represents the Chinese culture before the communist came in power. uh it represents what a a carpet bagger system Chinese communism is to the history the thousands of years of history of Chinese civilization. Uh it in many respects goes right at the philosophical base of governing China. Should it be governed by a continuation of Chinese culture or some representation of that or should it be governed by these authoritarian dictators that claim a communism that's not Chinese at all, not Chinese civilization at all? It's developed in Europe as I said earlier. The other thing is too, and that it's amazing to me and it it's just taken me a while to get it. Chinese people are very spiritual. uh just one of on a natural basis. Communism is completely atheistic. Shen Yu reminds them of how spiritual Chinese uh people are and that's a complete threat to the Chinese Communist Party that demands adherence only to the government. What Shen Yu represents is the historical thousands of years of Chinese culture, which is what the supporters of Shenu want to bring back to China. They just let's let's have the beautiful Chinese culture that's been suppressed and stomped on and damaged by the Chinese Communist Party. Just get that get that cancer out of here. And that's what ShenYun shares is this cultural value and this cultural beauty of what China is, but yet subject to transnational oppression. So now China figures out how okay, how can we send drones in on the training area? How can we bring lawsuits against Shen Yu? How can we use the the West legal system to to create difficulties uh for a group that simply really wants to showcase Chinese beautiful thousands of years of culture? Mhm. >> Here's this beauty of a culture versus an oppressive um Chinese communist regime and the oppressive regime really using the west systems and openness um in an oppressive way. You talked about earlier how you know religious freedom is this kind of in the armor of communism. And I'm I mean I'm I'm extrapolating a little bit here, but um how can Americans how can they support that aside from prayer obviously would be would be one way, but this seems like a very powerful thing. >> You know, I I would start with prayer because of the the importance and the power of that. But secondly, it's really getting into the the technical and and supporting of this in China. did an article this week where we're saying we should care about the religious oppression in China. The American people should care uh about this. I think it is our most powerful tool in undermining the regime. I think it's similar to what Reagan did towards the Soviet Union. You undermine the legitimacy of the regime and how it treats its own people. I think people can hold this up as examples. I think they can hold forums in their own communities. I think they can get a hold of their congressmen and senators and say, "You know what? We should support religious freedom in China. We should be robust about it and we should be specific. We should support we we support the fallen gong people being able to practice their faith in China as they see fit." And it's appropriate that they should. They should invite people that have been persecuted that are fallen gong to speak in radio stations or on uh in venues that they have. And they're here. They the number of people that have fled China off of religious oppression that are in the United States is substantial of all kinds. Uh I I I I think just really raising that awareness amongst people themselves uh and pushing for finally religious freedom to be a national security issue for the United States. religious freedom in China to be a national security issue for us >> would be key. Not it's not just a human right and certainly not a boutique human right is a foundational freedom and it actually is foundational for our national security. Pushing that would be very helpful. >> Just spell it out. How is religious freedom in China, you know, so far away a national security issue for America? Spell it out for me. Well, it's a national security and this is our urstwile enemy. The Chinese Communist Party, not the Chinese people. My wife and I have adopted a Chinese daughter. She's a wonderful lady. The Chinese people are wonderful people. It's not the Chinese people. It's the Chinese Communist Party. They are our URSTW enemy. They have organized a group of dictators against the United States. And we need to go at them like they're going at us. And one of the key ways we could do it would be to support religious freedom amongst the people in China, support the Tibetan Buddhist, support the Muslim weaguers, support the Christians that are in prison, uh ask for their release, support the fallen gong practitioners and their ability and and publicly do so in the White House, in the Congress, uh in venues that we have here. It it will drive the Chinese communists nuts crazy because now you're talking about hundreds of millions of Chinese in country now in their country now that somebody's actually speaking out for if this is the way they're treating their own people and this word gets out. I I think it's one of the most powerful tools we actually have in our confrontation with Chinese Communist Party today. And you say it'll drive them nuts, but some people in the uh national security and uh diplomatic establishments driving them nuts prevents us from being able to negotiate with them. How would you respond to that? >> You don't negotiate with evil. You kick it out. Um we we've in the Soviet era when we were they tant and well we'll exist, they'll exist, everything will be fine. And that bumped along for a couple of decades. And Ronald Reagan comes in and he he says, "This is an evil system. Uh you you don't tolerate evil. You confront it uh and you defeat it." That you there's not a coexistence with evil. And I I think we need to talk with that level of moral clarity uh in the current situation today. >> Well, Ambassador Sam Brownback, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. >> My pleasure. Yeah. My pleasure and best to you and and and to this program and to the book you're writing and working on on on forced organ harvesting. It's just so important these things be brought to light. >> Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you all for joining Ambassador Sam Brownback and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Dana Kell. [Music]