Chapter 24: Xi Jinping Builds a Red Empire, America Awakens, 2013–2021 (Part II)

In 2018, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, together with the Asia Society in New York, jointly published the report Chinese Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance. More than thirty scholars and experts participated in the project. Spanning 192 pages and taking a year and a half to complete, the report details how China has infiltrated and manipulated America’s political, business, and academic circles, leading an entire generation of China specialists to the collapse of their illusions and a painful awakening. These individuals had long believed that they were helping China integrate into the global order, only to realize that the outcome had been entirely distorted.

The experts and scholars involved were largely the custodians of U.S.–China relations since Nixon’s “opening to China.” They included figures such as former U.S. ambassador to China J. Stapleton Roy, who accompanied Henry Kissinger on his first visit to China, and former Obama White House National Security Council Senior Director for Asian Affairs Evan Medeiros. Other prominent scholars and former officials included Larry Diamond, Bonnie Glaser, David Shambaugh, and others. This report constitutes the most thorough and comprehensive assessment of the current state and future trajectory of U.S.–China relations to date.

The report points out that China, backed by massive financial resources, has penetrated American educational institutions, political systems, and Chinese-American communities, exploiting America’s democratic openness to undermine its norms and laws, erode democratic values and freedom of speech, and influence U.S. universities, media outlets, and think tanks. It documents how the CCP has launched English-language programs in American media, acquired independent Chinese-language newspapers and digital publications to serve its propaganda needs, and exerted pressure and influence over Chinese students studying in the United States. The breadth and depth of the CCP’s diversified infiltration and influence far exceed Russia’s interference in U.S. elections.

In 2018 and 2019, then–U.S. Vice President Mike Pence delivered two lengthy speeches specifically targeting the Chinese Communist Party. These speeches constituted the most comprehensive denunciation of the CCP by the United States in forty years and were deeply shocking. Pence reviewed how, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the United States believed China would inevitably become a free nation. That belief, he said, was overly optimistic and underestimated Mao Zedong’s anti-American political legacy. Pence pointed out that China’s GDP had grown ninefold over the past seventeen years, largely thanks to the United States.

For forty years, the United States helped rebuild China. China grew fat and prosperous, made its fortune, stole American technology, and then turned around to confront the United States—turning plowshares back into swords—in an effort to push America out of the Western Pacific. At the same time, it exploited America’s freedoms to infiltrate U.S. society comprehensively, openly purchasing advertisements and undermining the American president. Compared with this, Soviet interference in U.S. elections was trivial. America has now awakened. Pence’s speeches amounted to a full-spectrum indictment of the CCP.

Pence stated that the United States had long hoped China would respect liberal principles, private property, religious freedom, and human rights, but all these hopes had been dashed. In recent years, the CCP has intensified surveillance and repression, controlling every aspect of people’s lives. Over the past decade, more than 150 Tibetans have self-immolated in protest against religious repression. In Xinjiang, over one million Uyghurs have been detained. Authorities have torn down crosses, burned Bibles, imprisoned believers, and continued religious persecution unabated. The CCP has also harnessed advanced technology to impose ubiquitous surveillance on the population. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. By 2022, there were an average of two cameras for every one of China’s 1.4 billion people. Today’s China is the most tightly controlled society in human history, often described as a “digital totalitarian” state. Over the past decade, the CCP’s budget for internal “stability maintenance” has consistently exceeded its national defense budget. Its fear of domestic discontent surpasses its fear of external enemies. As Garside, author of Coming Alive: China After Mao, observed, “Its most fundamental weakness lies in its reliance on control rather than trust.”

Faced with the CCP’s comprehensive retreat from the reform and opening-up promised under Deng Xiaoping—along with communist propaganda penetrating the United States through multiple channels, aggressive island-building in the South China Sea, and the Belt and Road Initiative serving as a vehicle for political and military expansion—Pence declared that the United States would not retreat and would resolutely defend its security and economic interests. He expressed hope that China’s leaders would change course, return to Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening spirit of forty years ago, respect the United States once again, and establish a fair and reciprocal relationship. Pence noted that while China’s leaders still paid lip service to reform and opening-up, the concept had in fact been hollowed out.

In response to American criticism, the CCP sought to save face by doing everything possible to block information and prevent its own people from learning the truth. Official spokespeople continued to recite empty platitudes to the outside world, releasing rhetorical smoke screens and proclaiming “no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.” The state-run Global Times weakly claimed, “We will not engage in emotional disputes with the United States. The U.S. may define China however it likes.” Domestically, however, to stabilize public sentiment, the regime adopted a tough tone to bolster its own courage, declaring that “the Chinese people do not provoke trouble, nor are they afraid of it; in the face of any difficulty or risk, our legs will not tremble and our backs will not bend.” The stark contrast between internal and external propaganda revealed confusion and disarray within the CCP over how to respond. Yet judging from its past behavior, the CCP will not change course until it reaches a Cultural Revolution–style brink of collapse.

As Garside observed, many people find it hard to believe that China—the world’s second-largest economy—could experience a change of regime. This attitude stems from decades of indoctrination about China’s supposed success, narratives promoted both by the CCP itself and by those in business and other sectors tied to the regime. Moreover, perceptions of the future are often shaped by inertia: people tend to assume that the world will continue as it is. Yet who, in January 1991, could have predicted that before the end of that very year, the Soviet Communist regime would disintegrate itself?

Zhong Wen concludes: Today, most of the world has come to recognize the true nature of communism. As Chinese-American scholar Yu Maochun has said, communism is an illusory promise—untenable in theory and shattered in practice—and therefore has no future in China. He notes that ordinary Chinese people know this, and many within the Communist Party know it as well; what is lacking is the courage and boldness to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Some have joked that communists fabricated a “parasitic bourgeoisie,” deceived a group of proletarians who wanted to get something for nothing, and ultimately created a truly parasitic bureaucratic class. These people call themselves servants of the people and the vanguard of the proletariat, yet when asked to disclose their assets, they have Global Times warn that such transparency would cause social unrest. The public has given them a nickname: the “Asset-Hiding Class.” In 2015, Michael Pillsbury’s publication of The Hundred-Year Marathon marked a milestone in America’s awakening to the evil nature of the CCP. It helped rouse both pro-CCP figures and the broader public, leading to the recognition that the CCP is America’s greatest enemy. In this awakening, Pillsbury deserves immense credit.