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Nov. 30, 2022 - The Charlie Kirk Show
34:16
Power from the Barrel of a Gun with Bill Gertz and Gordon Chang
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Phoenix Arizona December Special 00:01:36
Hey, everybody.
Today in the Charlie Kirk Show, Bill Gertz, China expert, joins us to talk about what's going on in China.
And then Gordon Chang also joins us to help us unpack China.
And Raphael Warnock gets help from Black Preachers in Georgia.
Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.
Open up your podcast app and type in Charlie Kirk Show.
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Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Buckle up, everybody, here.
We go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
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Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
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China's Global Control Strategy 00:11:48
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China, China, China.
China is our greatest enemy.
They're not a rival.
They are not a competitor.
China is an enemy of the United States.
The more we talk about Ukraine, the more we talk about all these silly issues, we lose sight of the Chinese Communist Party's attempted takeover of the world.
Yesterday we mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative.
We talked about their digital dictatorship.
China right now is getting very nervous.
China is sending students home so they can't protest.
Meaning, China is getting very nervous that there is something that is bubbling up under the surface in mainland China.
China is sending university students away from their university back home so that they cannot be consolidated or collected on campuses, which kind of become places for protest and for dissent against the regime.
Every single totalitarian country, from the Russian Revolution to Mao Sedong to Pol Pot, never allows dissent.
You know you are on the side of the deceivers on the wrong side of history if you are the one marching through the streets with weapons preventing people from talking.
Joining us now is Bill Goertz to walk us through the latest report from the Pentagon involving China.
It is military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China.
What a laughable title of their country, but we'll use it.
Bill, welcome to the program.
Hi, good to be on the show.
Thank you, Bill.
Bill, walk us through this report.
I understand they do this every single year.
It is an annual report to Congress.
What are the big takeaways from the Chinese Communist Party's infiltration and aggressive posture towards the West?
Yeah, the main element of the new story is that China will have 1,500 warheads in 2035.
This is part of the nuclear expansion that has been described as breathtaking by the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command.
By contrast, in 2020, they had about 200 warheads, and they've doubled that number within one year, and they now have 400 warheads, and they're deploying large numbers of multiple warhead DF-41 ICBMs.
And this is all part of a Chinese strategy to basically take control of the world, ultimately.
First, Taiwan, and then the rest of the world.
So right now, there are protests happening all throughout mainland China.
The CCP regime seems increasingly nervous as they're recalling students back from university.
They're clamping down on speech.
They've deployed their shock troops or the Chinese Communist Party equivalent of the Gestapo.
Video after video shows them now going around with seems to be batons or wands and smacking citizens.
So nothing overly violent, obviously cruel from a Western lens, but not yet kind of Tiananmen Square type massacres that we saw previously.
How does the Chinese Communist Party's international ambitions, how is that put in jeopardy or actually maybe even going to be focused on more because of what we're currently seeing in mainland China?
Yeah, this is what we're seeing is the Chinese have adopted something that is led by Chinese dictator Xi Jinping called Zero COVID.
It was announced in 2020 after the outbreak of the COVID in Wuhan.
And it's very similar to earlier Chinese Communist Party mass campaigns like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
It is not based on science.
It's based on the Communist Party saying we're in power.
We're so strong that we're going to end this virus.
And it's been an utter failure.
And the positive thing is it's triggered calls for freedom and democracy in China and for getting rid of Chinese Communist Party rule.
Even, you know, Hitler had more popular support in Germany than Xi Jinping now has in China.
And they're very similar in terms of their styles of dictatorial rule.
But they are in big trouble.
The Chinese are cracking down.
They're using their mass surveillance system.
They're stopping people on the street and looking at their phones.
If they have Twitter or Instagram or Telegram or any of these apps, they're eliminating them and people are beginning to be arrested.
But this is an amazing and very dramatic protest.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration gave very lukewarm support to this.
Yesterday at the White House, John Kirby, the strategic communications guy, said, oh, President Biden's not going to support them.
We support protests all over the world, including China.
So they're trying to play it down.
It doesn't surprise me, in fact, I've said this for quite some time, that I believe the American left is jealous of the Chinese Communist Party, of how much power they have and how they're able to basically obliterate somebody's civil liberties.
I mean, there are members of the American left that would love to be able to walk on the street and look at people's phones and be able to basically control them and micro-engineer them via a digital dictatorship.
Surveill is the word I was looking for.
So, your book is quite fascinating.
It is Deceiving the Sky Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy.
Explain for our audience, because I mentioned it briefly yesterday, but I didn't go into great detail: what is the Belt and Road Initiative?
Yeah, this is ostensibly a developing world infrastructure program, but it's really a stalking horse for expanding Chinese communism.
Chinese communism for years had a strategy put forth by Deng Xiaoping, one of the earlier leaders, called Bide Our Time, Hide Our Capabilities.
They've dropped all pretense of that earlier cautious approach, and now they're on the march.
And the Belt and Road Initiative, they go into developing countries and they tell these countries, we'd like to build a railroad for you.
We'll even finance it for you.
And then they impose extravagant terms on the loans.
And when the countries can't repay it, they say, well, this railroad's now ours.
And they're literally taking over countries by doing that.
And the strategy is to start in the developing world and work their way and try to encircle and control all the countries around the United States.
The United States is viewed as the main enemy by the Chinese Communist Party, and they're working aggressively to undermine and ultimately destroy the country.
And they're doing it to some of the most vulnerable countries.
I mean, there's a story, I can't remember the country.
You would know the country in Africa, Central Africa, where they bought the only airport and then they just shut it down.
Remember what country this was?
It was either the Congo or South Sudan or one of these countries where they just buy up all the critical infrastructure and then they're able to get after the precious metals, which is actually what they want.
Yes.
And also, they're literally using their style of corruption.
They're literally buying off politicians in these countries with large amounts of cash.
And basically, that's how they plan to take over these countries.
And Africa and South America are two key areas where they're very aggressively promoting the Chinese view, even despite the fact that most of the world recognizes that the COVID pandemic came from China and was most likely from dangerous experiments that were taking place at a Chinese lab in Wuhan.
It's fascinating.
Bill, stay right there.
I want to mention your book again, and I think it's very important for people deceiving the sky inside Communist China's drive for global supremacy.
Again, Bill is a national security correspondent for the Washington Times, and again, author of Deceiving the Sky Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy.
Bill, do you think that China and the Chinese Communist Party, do you think they're taking on too many projects at once?
Do you think that they actually might be more likely for a tumble, a fall, or a collapse than they might actually lead us to believe?
Do you think they're overstretched?
It's a good question.
I think that they are in charge.
The Communist Party is tightly in control.
Xi Jinping, since coming to power in 2012, instituted a massive purge of anyone perceived as a threat to his rule.
And we saw this was dramatically played out in October at the major Communist Party Congress where they escorted the previous leader, Hu Jintao, from the meeting.
There's a whole kinds of theories as to why, but the thinking was that Hu Jintao, the earlier leader, was going to vote against Xi Jinping taking on an unprecedented third term in power.
He now has more power than Mao Zedong, or is on par with the power that Mao Zedong had.
And he is imposed a mass surveillance system like the world has never seen.
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of cameras connected to databases that can identify people by facial characteristics, even the gait as they walk.
And we're seeing this now.
This is going to be a test of this surveillance system.
They're starting to arrest large numbers of protesters.
These are really brave people in China that are risking their lives to stand up for freedom.
And it's not just a simple neutral protest.
They're calling for freedom and they're calling for an end to Chinese Communist Party rule and rule by Xi Jinping.
I think it is so admirable.
I'm afraid it's going to be a little bit futile because only one side has the guns.
And if you look at what the Chinese Communist Party has said before, Mao Sedong says political power is derived from the end of a barrel of a gun.
Let's play the tape here really quick of the Shanghai police grabbing phones to search citizens.
Communist Party Fears Rise 00:14:07
Let's play that tape.
Okay, so what you see here is police going through their phones.
Of course, they have no Fourth Amendment, no privacy.
You see, the American left, they would love to be able to do this.
You just imagine them salivating.
And they just go through people's phones.
And they say if they have any connection to the protests, they could be arrested and they could be disappointed.
They could just disappear.
You guys could take that down.
Bill, 20 seconds.
Any closing thoughts?
Yeah, we mentioned earlier about the Biden administration's response.
It's a little-known fact, and I've reported this in the Washington Times.
The Biden administration, including the president himself, Jake Sullivan, and the Secretary of State, have said that they're not going to oppose the Chinese communist system.
This is a break from the Trump administration, which made clear that the real cause of the China threat, the threat posed by China, is Marxist-Leninist ideology in China.
And this is the fatal error of the Biden administration's foreign policy.
They've got to recognize that it's a communist threat.
Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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One of my favorite guests joins us right now.
He has been predicting the coming collapse of China for quite some time.
He's also the author of the great U.S.-China Tech War.
He is a China expert.
It is Gordon Chang.
Gordon, welcome to the program.
Gordon, you've been on our program a couple times, and I've heard you speak at several events, and you're always compelling and very fair and accurate.
And dare I say, clairvoyant.
Are we seeing what you predicted?
Is this the collapse of China?
I do believe that we are seeing the first stage of the collapse of China.
And the reason is that there was a fire in Uromuchi in northwestern China on Thursday.
And then immediately, Charlie, across the country, east, west, north, south, you saw these large protests.
They weren't organized.
They were not coordinated.
There were no leaders.
People just went onto the streets.
And when they were on the streets, they not only were complaining about COVID lockdowns, they were complaining about the Communist Party and Xi Jinping specifically saying down with the Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping.
That's revolutionary sentiment.
Now, the Communist Party can squelch protests.
They're very good at that.
But because of the way the people feel, and this is deep-seated and widespread, we are going to see these protests again when there's another incident.
And because China's not really relenting on COVID, I think we're going to see one fairly soon.
Eventually, the Chinese people are going to win over the party.
So I think a very fair analysis of China is that in some ways they're extremely strong.
In other ways, they are remarkably fragile.
A country or a regime that does not embrace liberty will always be overly paranoid and frenetic in how they govern because when you don't have a central governing principle of liberty, the people are always your greatest threat.
For Americans that don't understand Chinese geography, can you explain the scope of these protests about how they're not just in one region, but they are nationwide?
And what is your estimate of how many people are approximately participating in them?
I would think that there's probably somewhere on the order between 10 and 25,000 people who participated in the protests.
There's never going to be a really good number because they were so scattered.
They were so, they rose so quickly.
And just foreigners have basically they've chirped out a lot of journalists.
And so we have a less and less of an idea what goes on.
What we do see are what the Chinese themselves are posting on WeChat and other social media sites.
And there have been on the social media sites, they've just taken over, which means that this sentiment is widespread.
And so, you know, there's got to be tens of thousands of people who went on the streets Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
So, you know, we're looking at this unfold.
How do you see this particular chapter end?
And some people say that Xi Jinping is less popular than ever before.
Do you believe that?
I do believe that.
Xi Jinping was able to consolidate his control over the top of the Communist Party last month.
That was the party's 20th National Congress.
But even then, it was clear that the party was starting to lose control of society.
And we saw that, Charlie, with the extraordinary protests at the Apple iPhone plant.
It's run by Foxconn, which is a Taiwanese contractor.
But this is where more than half the world's iPhones are made.
And that last month, workers were screaming out of that place, scrambling over fences, running through fields to escape.
And that was a sign that there were real problems in society.
And that led to the situation on Thursday.
So this isn't continuing.
We know that there is this widespread discontent, resentment, and anger.
We don't know, and I've been wrong on timing about this, but we do know that eventually the Chinese people are just going to gather in such mass, the party will fade away.
And you're absolutely right.
From the party's point of view, their biggest threat are the people of China.
And because of the way they define that, they then look at the United States as an existential threat because they are worried about the inspirational impact of our values and form of governance on the Chinese people.
So the Communist Party makes an enemy of the United States, the strongest country in the world.
That shows you what you were absolutely saying, that once you have a regime that is not founded on liberty, it will fail.
And you also have leaders that are willing to do whatever it takes.
They don't value human life.
That is not a CCP value, a value of the mouse-tongue worldview.
They don't value human life.
They don't believe that they are image bearers or that human beings are worthy of protection.
They don't believe in individual rights.
It's all about the party.
It's about the state.
It's about the leviathan.
It feels like the Iran model in some ways where they quell uprisings every couple of years.
And so, Gordon, they have now basically sent all students away from universities back home to try and calm down the clusters of people together that might be able to then result in protests.
There's also a wrinkle of this that I want to explore with you.
Can you elaborate or explain to our audience how some people would, I would definitely say this, how superstition plays a role in the behavior and the decisions of the Chinese Communist Party.
For example, fearing as if you're going to lose the mandate of heaven.
Can you talk about that and how does that play into this zero COVID policy attempted by Xi Jiping?
Well, the Communist Party, they're materialists and they don't believe themselves in superstition, or at least the senior leaders don't.
But, you know, the Chinese people are the Chinese people, and they definitely believe it.
And so, for instance, the blood-red sky that appeared over China just a day or so ago is taken by people as a sign that the party has lost the mandate of heaven.
And the Chinese people, and even many Communist Party members are superstitious.
That is something that the party worries about.
And so they try to downplay these rumors all the time.
But clearly, you have people who look at signs in society and believe that the party is basically on its last legs.
Right.
But the kind of folklore amongst the commoner in China, they definitely believe in some of the superstition.
And that that is something.
Yeah, and so therefore, Xi Jipeng has to take that seriously.
Is that fair to say?
Oh, absolutely.
Because he knows the people that he rules, and he understands that that's deeply embedded in Chinese society.
And that seven decades of Communist Party propaganda has not eliminated that from the Chinese psyche.
That's so fascinating.
And so you kind of have unfolding in China, the buried lead, if you will, the subterranean story, is an atheistic, materialistic regime that is governing a multi-thousand year people that still have cultural traditions and basically a common story of believing in, okay, blood, red sky, mandate of heaven, plague.
That's a contradiction, isn't it, Gordon?
And that also is, in some ways, a recipe for inevitable failure.
Yes, and there's another aspect to this, and that is that the fastest growing phenomenon in China today is not communism, but is Protestant Christianity.
And one of the reasons why the Communist Party has such trouble dealing with it, and there are many reasons, but one of them is that atheists don't understand religion, and they don't understand the power of religion.
And so that's why they've not been able to control it.
And that's why there could very well be, you know, no one knows the number of Protestants in China, but you'll hear estimates anywhere from 15 to 130 million.
That also suggests one other thing.
Because they've banned, for the most part, Christianity, it's gone underground.
Because it's gone underground, the Communist Party doesn't know about it.
They can't control it.
And so you put those two things together.
The failure to understand religion and driving religion underground has made Protestant Christianity a mortal threat to the Communist Party.
And the story of Christianity under siege or kind of Christian martyrdom is it actually creates an anti-fragile religious community that actually grows a lot stronger and more fervent and more committed.
In a paradoxical way, Christianity, when it is actually institutionalized in a quote-unquote theocracy, it actually grows very corrupt and people actually stray away from the faith sometimes, not always.
When Christianity is allowed, like in America, still, I mean, you see the numbers dive off.
But interestingly, when Christianity is under the threat of persecution, it actually can be more robust.
Not that we would want that, and it's still a very small percentage of what exists in China, but this underground church is a direct threat to the CCP.
So let me, final question here, Gordon.
Do you anticipate a Chinese Communist Party move against Taiwan to distract from some of the bedlam happening domestically?
Yes.
But before I answer that, just one other thing about it.
The Communist Party is deadly afraid of Christianity because Christians have the fervor that the Communists had in the 1930s and the 1940s.
1949 is when communists took over China.
So they see that in the Christians, there's this fervor that they can't stop.
And because no one has that fervor in the Communist Party anymore except for Xi Jinping.
You know, on your question, yes, because Xi Jinping right now, he has all these domestic failures of which he is the author of.
He has no way he can solve them.
The only thing that he can do to unite the Chinese people is to go to war.
And I actually don't think it's going to work.
And it doesn't matter what I think.
I think that Xi Jinping thinks it's going to work.
And so we need to have a sense of urgency of what China will do in Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, India, somewhere.
We've got to be really concerned that he can take us by surprise.
Kingdom Over Government Urgency 00:06:43
That's really well said.
I want everyone to check out Gordon's book, The Coming Collapse of China, but also the great U.S.-China tech war.
There's something very powerful happening in China right now.
And you might be witnessing the first stage, the coming attractions, the preview, the canary in the coal mine of the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party.
I really believe that if we had a better leader in the White House, we could just tip the scale and get rid of these evil tyrants that run the CCP.
Gordon, thank you so much.
Thank you, Charlie.
I really appreciate it.
Terrific commentary.
Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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Getting a lot of questions here, freedom at charliekirk.com, about what do we do next, Charlie?
What do we do next?
Well, I want to talk just for a second here about the Georgia runoff.
I don't think it's getting enough attention, nearly enough attention.
Now, the Georgia runoff is coming up in, boy, a week from today.
Is that right?
Boy, they really moved that up.
Jeez.
It used to be in early January.
It's a week from today.
It is an opportunity to get a win.
It's an opportunity to defeat an incumbent Democrat senator.
And currently, we are hearing that Democrats are enthused and they're going to show up in big numbers.
And Republicans are, we don't know what Republicans are going to do.
I encourage you, if you're in Georgia, to vote in person and early or vote on Election Day.
But if you vote on Election Day, just be ready for lines or for trouble.
Do we have the clip of those pastors that I sent earlier that I can play?
If not, I'll just read it out.
So there was a 35-minute interlude at a black church in Atlanta.
Now, hilariously, for the last couple of months, we have been told, as Christians, can't get involved in politics, don't get involved in politics.
What they're trying to say is don't get involved in conservative politics.
But in black churches, when they come out and they start talking about voting for Raphael Warnock, everyone's just fine with it.
So, for example, we have Murphy, this guy, Murphy, a pastor, says, quote, God would have us mix worship and justice and politics.
I'm decreeing and declaring that folk who had no intention on voting for Raphael Warnock, the Spirit of God, is going to arrest them.
He continues.
A couple dozen pastors from around the country take the stage, including Bishop Jamie Dixon, the president of NAACP Houston, revs up the crowd.
Quote, God's about to cause a shift in this nation, in this world, through the election of Raphael Warnock.
We're going to praise him into the Senate.
They continue, it's time to put the kingdom over government.
What God is doing by sending this man of God into the Senate, he's putting man there with a kingdom identity, a kingdom mentality, a kingdom authority to establish a kingdom territory.
Continues, Warnock ties his stump speech.
A vote is a kind of prayer, he says, to two verses about actual prayer, James 5, 16 and 2 Chronicles 7, 14, to encourage turnout.
Pray Monday, pray Tuesday, pray Wednesday, pray Thursday, pray Friday, and pray again next Tuesday.
So let me answer me this, Reverend Warnock.
Why is it that as a Reverend, you're voting to redefine biblical marriage?
Why is it that you're okay with let alone any abortion, but late-term abortion?
Why is it, Reverend Warnock, that you invoke the word of God while you talk about some of the most heinous and cruel policies towards churches and Christians imaginable?
Not to mention the fact that the church was deemed non-essential during the entire pandemic.
Where were you, Raphael Warnock, for all of that?
No, no, no.
These black pastors are congregating around, creating multiple, repeated, and public heresies saying that we got to go vote for Raphael Warnock.
Why?
Because he's going to go bring a kingdom mentality to go bring post-birth abortion to the U.S. Senate.
To go bring the transgender agenda.
That's really what black pastors are uniting behind in Atlanta, Georgia.
Now, of course, if conservative pastors were doing this, they'd be investigated by the IRS for losing their tax-exempt status.
But black pastors, they just get away with it.
They're never going to be investigated.
They're never going to be looked into.
They could do whatever they want.
That's the new regime we live into.
But you know what?
Deeper than the very blatant IRS violation that conservatives have to live under, but the left can do whatever they want, Raphael Warnock has been and is a heretic, repeatedly putting his name and his reputation behind the transgender agenda, the radical abortion agenda, the open borders agenda.
Warnock does exactly what we are commanded the opposite to do in the Ten Commandments.
Do not take the Lord's name in vain.
But it's not actually says, do not carry the Lord's name, meaning do not do evil in the name of the Lord.
And I'm sorry to say Raphael Warnock does just that.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thank you so much for listening.
God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.
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