Chapter 33: America’s Anti-Communist Lessons (Part 12)

Third: Dismantle the CCP’s Great Firewall

Some have called on the Chinese Communist Party to open up the internet. Such calls amount to bargaining with a tiger for its skin. The intention may be kind, but it is unrealistic.

The Great Firewall is the CCP’s wall of survival. The Party survives by relying on it. People on the mainland have long grown weary of Communist authoritarian rule, and waves of criticism surge relentlessly beneath the surface. As early as the 1990s, when Jiang Zemin was asked in Hong Kong whether China could relax restrictions on press freedom, he bluntly replied:

“Press freedom? If there were press freedom, the Communist Party would fall apart.”

For this reason, the CCP absolutely forbids press freedom. It does not even allow “improper discussion.” Xi Jinping therefore ordered that no one may “recklessly criticize the Central Committee.”

Today, the CCP’s Great Firewall exercises far greater control over the people than the Berlin Wall ever did in East Germany between the 1960s and 1980s. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy denounced communism in his speech in West Berlin, condemning the Berlin Wall as proof of communism’s failure: “Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put up a wall to keep our people in.”

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan went further, declaring: “Open this gate. Tear down this wall.”

Reagan had earlier condemned the Soviet Union as an “Evil Empire.” The Berlin Wall merely prevented people from escaping. The Great Firewall, however, blocks free and civilized information from entering China. Tens of thousands of internet police suppress information, while a powerful internal propaganda machine deceives the populace, sustaining the CCP’s authoritarian rule through lies and manipulation, keeping 1.4 billion people permanently in the dark.

In response to the CCP’s propaganda offensive, former Deputy National Security Advisor and current Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow Matt Pottinger proposed applying the principle of “reciprocity” to counter the CCP. “The U.S. government should make clear that this reciprocal approach is guided by fairness,” he argued. China exploits social media platforms in the free world to spread disinformation or to whitewash its authoritarian regime’s genocidal actions, while abusing the First Amendment’s protections of free speech as a shield. “This has nothing to do with free speech. U.S. lawmakers should not tolerate CCP influence penetrating American youth and American society.”

The U.S. government should respond in kind—using the CCP’s own methods against it—by banning official Chinese state media, political propaganda materials, and publications, including software that restricts speech under the control of state security organs, from entering the United States.

Beginning in 2020, the United States intensified scrutiny of Chinese official media, designating the U.S. operations of more than a dozen Chinese national and local media outlets as foreign missions. These included Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network (CGTN), China News Service, Jiefang Daily, and Economic Daily. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated:

“Our purpose is not to contain China or to block China, even if we could. Rather, our goal is to uphold the rules-based international order that we have worked so hard to build over decades. We believe this order benefits not only us, but the entire world, including China. When that order is challenged by anyone, we will stand up to defend it—not because we oppose or seek to suppress the country raising the challenge, but because we are committed to preserving that order.” He further emphasized: “Together, we will work to establish a democratic vision for global information and the information space, strengthen resilience against threats, and expose malicious activities from anywhere.”

This move by the U.S. government marked the opening of an “ideological war” to defend press freedom and dismantle information firewalls.

As an editorial in World Journal pointed out, although observers are still waiting for President Biden to unveil a comprehensive China strategy, the broad framework has already emerged: a continuation of the Trump administration’s China policy, with ideology—democracy versus authoritarianism—forming the top-level structure of a new Cold War. As early as 2018, former Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech at a Washington think tank detailing years of multifaceted CCP attacks on the United States and signaling America’s resolve to strike back. This shows that a bipartisan U.S. strategy to counter the CCP is taking shape.

The United States must set aside internal disputes, unite, and demonstrate to the world that democratic systems are superior to authoritarian ones. America’s future grand strategy against the authoritarian CCP will center on U.S. democracy, advocate values such as human rights, and unite allies who share the same values to resist the CCP-led bloc of anti-universal-values regimes. Two global camps are already quietly forming.

Faced with powerful external adversaries, Xi Jinping has clearly made a serious misjudgment of the international situation. He believes that the current global environment favors China’s development. His assessment is that: “The world today is undergoing changes unseen in a century. Recently, the most prominent feature of the world has been ‘chaos,’ and this trend appears likely to continue.” He further asserted: “Only by standing on our own footing, unblocking domestic circulation, and forging an indestructible body immune to all poisons can we withstand international turbulence, remain full of vitality, and continue to survive and develop. No one can defeat us or strangle us.” “Xi does not believe we can. That’s what he’s betting on.” But the United States certainly can.

America’s confrontation with the CCP has expanded from trade wars and technology wars, to military standoffs, diplomatic battles, and now ideological warfare.

Ideological warfare is the decisive battlefield. Today’s struggle against communism is concentrated on the “Information Berlin Wall”—the CCP’s Great Firewall. This is the final confrontation between the democratic world and communist authoritarianism. Trade wars—buying a bit more soybeans or wheat—are child’s play. The United States must take the lead in launching an ideological struggle to purge the poison of communism.

Dismantling the Great Firewall is the central campaign and the decisive breakthrough of ideological warfare. Once the firewall is torn down, real information will flood into the mainland like a tidal wave. When truthful voices spread across China, the people may finally awaken. Only by abandoning communism at the level of thought can the foundations of the totalitarian system be destroyed. The day the Information Berlin Wall falls will mark the beginning of the burial of the communist system.