Lai noted that things got much harder when Xi Jinping was promoted to dictator for life. Lai expects the Chinese government to continue tightening the screws on Hong Kong. “It is a cold war. It’s a war of opposing values. Let’s look at the world twenty years from now. Do we want our children to live in the dominance of the Chinese dictatorship values, or do we want to continue the values we have enjoyed? Because definitely, in twenty years, China is going to be the biggest economy in the world if we don’t stop them and try to let them learn that the authority to earn from moral force is a much greater force than you earn from using the barrel of gun.”35
The regime is also abusing the rights of people within the borders of China. Pompeo has called out the Communist Party for the more than 1 million Uighurs, Muslim Chinese citizens, locked up in internment camps in the Xinjiang region: “There are also enormous humanitarian concerns we’ve seen, as they continue to collect information and use it in ways that are antithetical to what you and I understand about how human beings are to be treated.… These million Uighurs… are in these terrible situations in these camps in one of the provinces.… The complete absence of political freedom inside of this country is something that the American people need to continue to see.… They are not allowing these people to move freely.” The regime has spent decades repressing another religious minority, the Buddhists in Tibet.36
Many in Congress have introduced legislation to try to hold China accountable. Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) said on Sunday Morning Futures in July, “What the Chinese Communist Party has done to the Tibetans and the Uighurs is despicable. All the Tibetans and the Uighurs want to do is practice their religion. And the Communist Party of China says, ‘Your religion is the Communist Party of China’ ”37
Outside its borders, the regime is claiming for itself international waters of the South China Sea, seeking to dominate a sea lane which carries much of the world’s trade. According to retired U.S. Army General Jack Keane, “What you see going on in the South China Sea—harassment, intimidation, they want to call that piece of water theirs. They have no international right to it whatsoever, they planted some artificial islands, and now they claim that’s part of China.”38
Around the world, the Chinese Communist Party is also pursuing a more subtle campaign to exert influence and control by offering countries attractive financing and low-cost infrastructure. Representative Nunes told Maria that “they’re moving in… first with leverage, like loaning money, building infrastructure… And my warning to a lot of our allies in the countries that I meet with is, ‘Look, there’s nothing for free.’ ”39
Keane added of the Chinese communists, “They are building a deep water port in Pakistan. Why is that? For their navy to impose influence and control on India and the Indian Ocean. They have a navy base at Djibouti. Why is that? To impose influence and control in the Middle East, where 62 percent of their oil passes through the Gulf of Hormuz.… So yes, China’s influence is economic, to be sure, but it’s also becoming a global military power.”40
The administration has urged corporate America in particular to think beyond the prospect of selling to a billion people and instead focus on the the risks of working with a communist dictatorship. “The American business community has been a big part of the problem because they’re willing ultimately, many of them, to sacrifice the long-term viability of their companies for short-term profit so they can get their stock options and move into the golf resort. That’s what’s driving some of this. They’re not taking the long-term view and the national view,” Attorney General William Barr told Maria in an interview in May 2020.41
But for decades we have spoken to many CEOs and managers of global businesses who have looked to grow their businesses by selling to this huge emerging market with its vast population, climbing the economic ladder. One investor told us: “I’m not political. It’s not my role to call out good guys and bad guys. The growth is in China and that’s where I want to invest.”42
Upon hearing the comment, Barr responded, “Well, you know what? We’re not speaking German today because American business in the past didn’t think that way. It stood with the United States and all the privileges and the benefits and the stability. And the rule of law and the ability to profit as they do, both as companies and individuals, comes from the strength of this country. But we are clearly cracking down on researchers and others that are sent over here to get involved in our key technological programs. And this is not just weapons systems.” Barr told us the theft is happening across the U.S. innovation landscape. “This is agriculture. This is medicine. This is robotics. This is artificial intelligence. And so it’s the whole gamut of important technologies going forward. Chinese efforts run the gamut from more traditional espionage of recruiting people to work for them explicitly to cultivating relationships that they’ve been able to use. And the people frequently are not completely attuned to the fact that they are being used as essentially stooges for the Chinese. So it runs the gamut of things. And sometimes some of these high-sounding programs are used to the advantage of the Chinese. So the American business community—we need their understanding of the nature of the problem right now.”43
An operator of a giant U.S. hedge fund who does business in China tells us that “there are not laws in the same way in China. In other words, who knows what it is? It’s like: You do what you get away with and you can’t do what you can’t get away with.”
The hedge fund operator adds of China, “I think it’s a big
