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March 24, 2021 - Epoch Times
37:14
Communist China’s Propaganda Trap—Pompeo Advisor Miles Yu on US China Alaska Talks, Atlanta Shooting
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During recent high-level talks in Alaska, China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi talked about, quote, deep-seated human rights issues in the US, propped up, quote, Chinese-style democracy, and criticized the US for, quote, interference in China's internal affairs.
It's a carefully laid trap, says Miles Yu, a former senior China policy advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo under the Trump administration.
Do not let Chinese propagandists take advantage of you.
How does Chinese Communist propaganda exploit American sensibilities?
And how is the Chinese Communist Party now using the horrific spa shootings in Atlanta to advance its agenda?
Today I sit down with Miles Yu, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and Longtime Professor at the United States Naval Academy.
You have to deal with China with unapologetic strength and self-confidence in our own democratic system.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Miles Yu, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Nice to be back with you again, yeah.
So Miles, let's talk about this recent meeting in Alaska.
Tell me, what are your thoughts?
First of all, overall, even though there's a lot of squabbles, a lot of confrontational remarks on both sides, I think, actually, in a very interesting way, it's probably a good thing to have happened because it truly reflects the nature of U.S.-China relationship.
That is, both sides should really state your true intention, what you think of each other.
So instead of all this smooth, sugary, diplomatic talk, That was very deceptive in the past.
So we now know what the Chinese think of America and their ultimate understanding of American democracy.
We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world.
Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.
According to opinion polls, the leaders of China have the wide support of the Chinese people.
And they are here to basically try to discredit American democracy, try to score a cheap shot.
That actually is very educational to the rest of the world, to see how Chinese diplomats truly function.
I think it's also very important to know that the Chinese begged this meeting to happen.
And it did happen, but it happened in a way that that's not sort of what we want to happen, because the new administration, it seems to me, wanted to basically extend some kind of olive branch to the Chinese side, Hey, listen, let's sit down and talk about real issues.
We're not going to shy away from your human rights issues, from the regional tension issues, from your military and economic expansion.
But in the meantime, we are seeking an area of cooperation.
The Chinese side completely blew the American side away, instead launched a diatribe against the American system and critical of America to say America is not qualified even to be an equal partner with China in talking about issues like human rights.
So that shows to me that there is a lack of sincerity on the Chinese side.
They came to Alaska not to solve problems.
But score a cheap propaganda to sort of promote its own political agenda in Alaska.
That's both unfortunate, but also it's kind of a farce in a way, because this is a very important opportunity.
I think China missed it.
On the other hand, I also quite understand why China took the stand.
It did.
The Chinese state consular Yang Jiechi and the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
They came here at a very unique timing, that is China is unprecedented, isolated internationally.
So they try to blame the America, try to shift its international isolation to focus on the America as if the U.S. is the only country that really makes China suffer.
The U.S. is the only confrontational country that put China in the position where it is now.
That's not the case.
U.S. has enjoyed a much broader international consensus that took place during the Trump administration.
The new administration continued that.
So China knows it's isolation and China knows it's sort of a pariah state in the international arena.
Therefore, they come here to vent.
They come here to basically to shift the focus of the real issue of the day, which is the global challenge posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Another thing is, I also think that it's also a big lesson for the new administration to learn from.
That is, you have to deal with China with candor, with strength, with unapologetic strength and self-confidence in our own democratic system.
Do not let Chinese propagandists take advantage of you.
So you mentioned that there's an opportunity that the Chinese side missed.
What is that?
Well, the Chinese side...
Blame the Trump administration for the deterioration of the bilateral relationship, which is completely unrealistic and untrue.
It's Chinese behavior.
That forced the Trump administration to face reality.
So we respond with sound and practical and realistic yet principled policies.
So the Chinese tried to play the new administration against the previous administration, tried to drive a wedge between the Trump administration and the Biden administration, particularly in the China policy.
And they realized days before that was a mistake because that's not going to happen.
So they became very frustrated and irate.
So they came to Alaska.
With the major motive to vent, to basically hyperventilate and not explain the hypocrisy, the extreme harsh tone uttered by the two Chinese top diplomats.
So they missed the opportunity because I believe the Biden team really want to find a common area to work with China on climate, on North Korea, as did we in the Trump administration.
So they really missed the opportunity.
With respect to this harsh tone, it seems to be a breaking of diplomatic protocol, perhaps.
What do you make of that?
Well, in the true sense, Chinese diplomats are not really diplomats per se.
They are the agents of the will of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
To be more precise, it's the voice of Xi Jinping himself, the generalist, the chairman of everything in China.
And, you know, a funny thing you ask, because Yang Jiechi has been known as a gentleman, as a man of political skill.
And that's why he was chosen to be the major interrupter with the major countries of the West.
And yet, when the Chinese politics, when General Secretary Xi Jinping wanted to behave like a bully, like a warrior, like a wolf warrior, he did.
They have no choice.
So this shows lack of individuality of Chinese diplomats.
Of course, diplomats all have some function of that sort.
But in the Chinese case, it was so pronounced It's so obvious.
And they've created endless comedy among the Internet.
You can see from even many of the netizens in the Chinese cyberspace, they mock him.
And so this is basically typical Chinese politics.
So there were indeed a lot of people, as you say, mocking the top Chinese diplomat.
At the same time, there was a lot of criticism of the way the U.S. administration handled it.
You mentioned that the lesson was that the administration should act from a position of strength.
So what's the next step in your mind?
What would be the advice you would offer as the next step after this encounter?
I would point out immediately the hypocrisy and the irony for the Chinese diplomats, top diplomats, who lecture America on the virtue of democracy.
We're talking about the regime that systematically Wipes out the entire ethnic group solely because of its cultural and religious identity.
We're talking about the regime that has starved or killed tens of millions of people, and that policy still continues.
We're talking about a country that systematically conducts organ harvesting.
We're talking about a country that systematically conducts suppression of the most extreme kinds.
In modern history, against dissidents, against religious groups such as Falun Gong, such as an underground Christian church, such as Muslims in China.
So for a country of that nature to criticize America as unworthy of a democratic system is absolutely crazy.
It's also ridiculous.
It shows actually the supreme hypocrisy of the Chinese Communist Party.
We Americans criticize our system because we wish our system to be better.
When the Chinese Communist Party criticizes the American system, it doesn't wish us well.
It challenges the foundation of the American democracy.
It basically tries to destroy and destroy the entire system of freedom and democracy.
They are completely different.
So when we deal with a country like China, we have to keep this perspective in mind.
Otherwise, we'll be just taken advantage of.
Now, I also have to point out the spin, the post-Alaska summit spin was also very telling because the Chinese government doesn't even have the guts to print out the complete transcript of both sides.
They only print out the Chinese side, which is well prepared and full of propaganda high pitches.
And they didn't really show the Americans' response.
And I think that's probably the high point of hypocrisy and also cover this.
You're saying, you know, internally, sure, have the discussions, have the criticisms, have the debates, but externally, you know, stand up for, I guess, the American values, what America represents, and so forth.
America is a country of the free, and we do have a very robust market of ideas, free exchange of ideas in this country.
You have different kinds of political views you can Vent.
You can express.
And you can basically, you know, find your voice or venue, even though sometimes with difficulty.
But nevertheless, the fundamental system endorsed and guarantees such free exchange of ideas.
When you deal with China, it's different.
All you have to deal with China is that you have to keep in mind China is a country that demands unanimity of opinions.
It forces you to comply, to be compliant with its own party line.
And if we don't have sufficient vigilance against this Chinese Communist Party's innate urge to propagandize, to spin, and then you will lose your battle.
It's a battle of ideology, a battle of ideas.
So, in your view, after this encounter, what does the scorecard say?
Who won?
Who lost?
I think Chinese lost.
Chinese lost not only shows its true nature, but also Chinese lost because It shows the Chinese weakness in a very fundamental way because it's completely misjudged the power balance of international politics.
Prevalent in China is thinking that somehow the Western democracy is weakening.
We're in rapid decline.
The Chinese model of authoritarian rule is on the rise.
It's going to become the dominant.
And that's why Xi Jinping is saying, the East is rising while the West is in decline.
Mao Zedong had a similar saying back in the 1670s when there was a lot of domestic turmoil in the West, particularly in the United States, anti-war movement, civil rights protests, and racial violence.
That misled Mao to think socialist triumph is imminent.
That encouraged Mao to completely misjudge the global power balance.
That's what made him very dangerously aggressive and increased his involvement in Vietnam and almost brought China and Soviet Union into the nuclear war.
This is basically another major strategic judgment.
Democracy Is not in decline.
America is not in decline.
We're still the dominant power of the world.
And the appeal of American political model, American value, and American sheer real power, sharp power, economy, military, we're still number one.
So there's no decline.
And for Xi Jinping to think that way is really, really ridiculous.
Fascinating.
Are you suggesting that Xi Jinping has a similar mentality perhaps to Mao?
There's been a lot of saber rattling around Taiwan, increased presence of ships, the merchant marine that they have, the overflights, military maneuvers.
What do you make of all this?
Well, you just say, you know, it's a maneuver.
A maneuver has many meanings, right?
One of them is basically a ploy.
Another one is really military exercise.
I think the battle across the Strait of Taiwan is no longer just military.
It's no longer just economic.
It's a battle of values, a battle of ideas.
Taiwan has made a great stride in recent decades.
Taiwan is probably the freest country in Asia.
Taiwan is probably the most vibrant democracy in the entire region.
And it has enormous, enormous progress socially, economically, and militarily also makes a lot of progress too.
America's commitment to defending Taiwan has been rock solid.
And we have been doing this since the 1970s.
There's no chance for America to break away from that commitment.
And most importantly, Taiwan does not only have American support.
Taiwan has the support of many allies.
Because America's prestige in the world actually is built upon, to a larger degree, the alliance system.
You know, we have our allies too.
So the defense of Taiwan is actually a defense of something much larger.
It's a defense of what we are and what we represent.
Well, I know, and I saw, to your point, I saw Japan taking the official position, basically saying we'll stand with America to defend Taiwan.
I thought it was incredible to see such a strong statement, official statement.
Well, it's just the beginning.
I mean, because in the last several years also, partly because of the Trump administration's effort, we have systematically exposed the nature of of China and the degree to which China was aggressive and was destabilizing the global peace and global system.
And I think, you know, we have persuaded a large number of countries to be on our side.
And I think you see this continuation to the Biden administration and we are even in a more solid ground right now on issues, major issues, not just Taiwan, Recently we've witnessed the erosion of rights,
frankly, what a lot of people describe as the Destruction of this once free and open city of Hong Kong.
People are concerned that this will actually happen to Taiwan, that the same model of whatever you want to call it, pacification, takeover, Putting into effect this national security law and essentially what's the Chinese Communist Party ideology into a once free city, that this same model will be applied to Taiwan.
What are your thoughts?
Well, China basically is a country of authoritarian rule.
It ruled China for decades with extreme So now China began to expand the parameters of the rule to beyond China's border.
And the first in Hong Kong, and we see Hong Kong's fall is actually a logical corollary to that kind of system.
And then you go to Taiwan.
Obviously Taiwan is resisting this.
They saw the true nature.
of the one country, two systems formula, which basically based upon hypocrisy, an empty promise.
So there's no credibility left for the Chinese government to lecture the Taiwanese on the virtual one country, two systems, because that's not going to happen.
So I think what the Hong Kong government And its despicable submission to Chinese authoritarian rule is also another tragedy because Hong Kong is based upon high degree of autonomy as promised by the Chinese Communist Party in 1984.
That didn't happen.
And for this large number of Hong Kong officials to openly applaud the Chinese Communist Party's takeover of Hong Kong, this destruction of Hong Kong's autonomy is really, truly, truly unspeakably sad.
You know, in fact, China, or under the Chinese Communist Party, of course, is actually kind of, you know, lecturing the world from its seat at the UN Human Rights Council.
I was just watching this video talking about the great...
The implementation of the national security law in Hong Kong has put an end to disorder and led to better enjoyment of human rights by the Hong Kong people.
The decision by the MPC to improve the electoral system in Hong Kong will provide institutional underpinning to the full implementation of the principle of Hong Kong being governed by patriots in the long-term interest of stability in line with the principle of one country, two systems.
Seems like a very different message than what you're telling me.
I watched the video partially.
I couldn't swallow the whole thing because it's just total nonsense.
What this Chinese official, the UN Human Rights Council, was saying was that Hong Kong is more stable.
And by which they basically mean there's no dissent.
He is not 100% right.
The most stable society defined by him would be North Korea.
So there's absolutely no dissent because to do otherwise is very dangerous.
So I think, you know, the kind of stability that he's talking about is basically The silence of all fresh ideas and innovativeness under an authoritarian regime.
So I don't think anybody in the world with a decent understanding of what human rights is really all about should buy that kind of rhetoric.
You know, I want to jump back to basically discussion of how the U.S. should approach China and the Chinese Communist Party.
There was a recent op-ed that I read, and it was frankly, I found it shocking in the New York Times.
It was actually by Ian Johnson, someone who's a very seasoned China hand, been in China for 20 years, did some of the most Best reporting, I remember, 20 years ago about the persecution of Falun Gong.
I think he won a Pulitzer for it.
He had a surprising message to me.
He suggested that the U.S. should reduce sanctions of Chinese officials, should avoid calling Taiwan a country.
Restart Peace Corps and the Fulbright Scholarship programs.
Stop attacking Confucius Institutes.
Lift restrictions on visas for some Chinese Communist Party members.
I mean, a whole slew of recommendations.
Tell me about what you think of this.
Well, first of all, I'm very glad he was not in charge of any U.S. government policy toward China.
Otherwise, it would have been a disaster.
Secondly, I do understand where he comes from.
For people who are stationed in China for work, particularly as a journalist, you very likely will develop a very deep Love for Chinese culture, Chinese people.
So as a result, many people really, really want to have a smooth exchange program set up with China, engage the Chinese people in a non-governmental fashion.
And they would spend a lot of time in China and with many Chinese friends, they themselves become native, so to speak.
I understand there's a tremendous affection for that part of the cultural aspect.
On the other hand, what people often forget is that the Chinese Communist Party exercises total control of access of foreigners to those Chinese organizations, Chinese people, Chinese cultural events.
So the Chinese Communist Party uses that leverage of state control shamelessly to force Western compliance to its party line.
If you don't If you show any sign of disagreement, no visa for you.
No procedural cooperation for your going to China.
And that would be a disaster for a lot of people whose career is China.
So facing this kind of dilemma in the past several decades, there are three possible solutions.
One, you remain silent.
You don't do anything.
Hopefully the passage of time will continue your engaging with Chinese.
Majority of people do this.
So they exercise an extraordinary amount of self-censorship.
Don't do anything.
Two, you behave bravely, stand up to Chinese bullying, and you don't sacrifice your principle, like Professor Perry Link of UC Riverside.
You become a useful idiot.
You're blaming America for all the problems caused by the Chinese Communist Party.
And you send a strong signal that it is the United States that is the driver In going back to the same old policy where Chinese government conducted egregious human rights violations, conducted egregious restrictions on American citizens, on American companies.
And then we don't say anything.
We don't do anything.
That era was ended by the Trump administration.
And we thought, we think we did the right thing.
And normally some people in that category also know this.
If you are in the West, you are part of the free market ideas, and you have no political personal consequences when you are critical of the U.S. government, and you would have severe consequence if you utter any sign of disagreement or criticism of Chinese government.
So in a way, opinion like this, to me personally, is an act of cowardice and hypocrisy.
So, I don't think this is an isolated case.
There's a lot of cases like this.
I think that we as Americans, we should really stand firm to our principles.
Fascinating.
I guess it goes back to what you were saying earlier, that internally, of course, there's a lot of discussion to be had about how work should be done, what's the best way to approach things.
But externally, your suggestion is that America should be unified in its position.
The whole world should be unified.
We had a good example.
The world was unified during the Cold War in the Soviet Union.
You never see a Western intellectual, with one or two exceptions from the New York Times reporter, to defend the Soviet system and blaming the Western government for the Soviet repression of its domestic dissent.
People in the West during Cold War did not believe that it was the Western policies that caused the Breakdown or meltdown, whatever you call it, of a relationship between the Soviet Union and the rest of the free world.
And China somehow is different.
So, again, the Chinese government is much more sophisticated.
They have many, many ways to force the world to do its own bidding.
And a lot of times the bidding was done not by Chinese government itself directly, but by people who are held hostage, who are basically bullied into doing so.
We have Western scholars.
We have prominent scholars from Canada, from Europe.
Who are defending Chinese policies, who blame everything that goes wrong between Chinese relations with the rest of the world, on the rest of the world, instead of to go to the source of the problem, which is the Chinese Communist Party.
That's very unfortunate.
You know, one of the recommendations was to reopen the consulate in Houston.
You know, another one was, I think I mentioned it already, to basically stop attacking Confucius Institutes.
Does this make any sense to you?
No, it doesn't make any sense to me, because this seems to me totally tone-deaf.
To the nature of those Communist Party actions.
Tell me the reason why we have to reopen the Houston Consulate.
Tell me why Confucius Institute is compliant with Western academic standards.
There are many reasons we listed over there.
So how does the Chinese government function?
I mean, opinions like this serve one purpose.
One purpose only.
It's not about changing U.S.-China policy.
It's about the legitimization of Chinese government and its behaviors.
And that seems to me is completely misguided.
So there's a lot of discussion in America right now of anti-Asian racism.
And this, of course, is something that the Chinese Communist Party has become very interested in.
and as you've seen, I'm sure has taken to lecturing America about its problems.
And I guess I want to give you a chance to speak to that.
Racism, particularly racism against Asian Americans, has been a very controversial topic.
I think there is, in the Chinese diaspora, you have a very different kind of reaction.
It's basically brought into two groups.
For the first Generation of Chinese Americans and Asian Americans overall, they are overwhelmingly supportive of the idea that somehow there's no systemic racism against Asian Americans because they have come from countries often that conduct systemic discriminations.
Say for Chinese Americans.
You come from a country where the state policies were instituted to conduct wholesale discrimination against people of different gender, different geographic location, and your residential registration system.
Your job opportunities, and of course ethnic minorities.
If you're a Uyghur and you're a Han, you will have very different experiences in communist China.
That's systemic.
That's institutionalized.
So for most Chinese Americans who migrated to this country after having lived in a different system where institutional racism discrimination was rampant.
They do not regard attacks on Asian Americans, on Chinese Americans in some cities as systemic.
Rather, they tend to treat them as isolated incidents.
For Chinese Americans, for Asian Americans who were born And conserving liberty and grew up in this country, they are much more sensitive to incidents that were viewed as isolated by the first generation immigrants as something reflective of systemic problem.
Different perspective.
Because absolutely we should pay attention to this kind of egregious acts against Asian Americans as we saw in Atlanta last week.
We should definitely exercise the legal and judicial prosecutorial rights to put these criminals To justice.
On the other hand, we should not go over the top to use this incidence as evidence to prove that America is fundamentally a country that's racist and discriminatory.
You know, the founding principle of this country is all people are created equal.
That's a promise.
The promise has to be a struggle for its full realization.
For the last 200 years, that's precisely what Americans are doing.
In today's America, there's no systemic institutionalized policies, laws, to discriminate a whole set of ethnic, religious, or even immigrant groups.
So obviously there's a lot of bad guys who were racist, who were discriminating against different people of different identities, but to me they are not the mainstream American system.
There are the isolated incidents that should be treated seriously, but we should not overreact.
I know it's very difficult to talk about these kind of issues, but This issue also has been dragged into the American debate of left versus right.
The ironic thing is, in my view, if there's any institutional discrimination against Asian Americans, it's the liberal college-university admissions policies.
Because you have a large number of Asian Americans Whose children were discriminated against in very extremely liberal institutions, university colleges.
And I think we should focus on that more, much, much more, instead of on some of the tragic incidents that seems to me very isolated.
And most immigrants, Asian Americans, would find this country very welcoming.
Otherwise, they would have gone through all this trouble to come to this country.
America is the most welcome country of the world because we accept the most immigrants each year from all parts of the world.
And I know we should not be bragging about this, but that's a simple fact.
And so if we trust the human condition, the human condition is that nobody would willingly come to the country knowingly that he will be discriminated against.
Okay then, so what do you make of the Chinese Communist Party wading into this issue?
Chinese Communist Party is almost entirely immune to sarcasm, And irony.
This is a country that conducts a wholesale genocide against the Uyghurs.
This country that has killed tens of millions of ordinary Chinese for political reasons, has starved to death almost 40 million people.
So this is one of the most brutal regimes in human history.
It's deeply racist with some kind of extreme ideas and ideologies that categorize the whole nation.
Into different groups.
And some of them were completely deprived of basic rights.
So for a regime of this nature to criticize America as being racist is just at the height of hypocrisy.
This is just the CCP's cynical ploy to delegitimize American model of governance.
To discredit The American's democratic virtues, and we should never fall for that.
I think another area of oversensibility, which I totally understand, is the issue of our political leaders use, for example, Chinese geographic locations to identify a particular problem, like the China virus or Wuhan virus.
Again, there is a difference between the first generation Asian Americans and the people who are born here.
For many first generation Americans, this is not a problem because many of them themselves use, say, Wuhan virus, China virus for a while.
And even today, the entire population of Taiwan, over 26 million people, still use Wuhan pneumonia to identify the scourge that broke out in Wuhan in 2019.
So, are they all racist?
No.
That would be racist against themselves, right?
And for the longest time, probably half of the Chinese population used Wuhan virus.
Wuhan I Ching.
As a matter of fact, it was a designation of the geography, is a designation of a location where the first It's nothing to do with race.
People with common sense understand this is not racially motivated.
But when it's spoken, used by Western leaders, many people become very sensitive.
And overly sensitive, perhaps.
So, I don't know where I come from, but I don't think it's justified entirely.
To say, if somebody says, Wuhan virus therefore is a racist, that's too simple.
And I think we should be vigilant about any racist remarks, but we should never, again, as I said before, overreact.
Otherwise, we'll just render the Chinese Communist Party another tool of propaganda, another opportunity to promote its own party line.
Well, this is so to kind of avoid, I guess, this issue to some extent.
At the epoch time, we call it CCP virus or Chinese Communist Party virus.
Okay, well, I don't dispute that, but for me, it's Wuhan virus.
Because it doesn't really mean that the Chinese people should bear the stigma of that virus.
It simply means this virus started in Wuhan.
This is an indisputable fact.
So if we dispute that and then we fall into the Chinese cynical attempt to deny the fact that this whole virus started in Wuhan, the Chinese government is spending enormous amount of money and energy worldwide to find Another possible point of outbreaks of this virus outside of China, which is ludicrous.
So this is why, this is the political geographical implication of avoiding Yu's Wuhan virus.
And for the Chinese Communist Party, he has a particular point, and point of propaganda, point of policy management.
So this is something that we should be very aware of.
Because they never want to accept responsibility for...
In the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, the Party itself is infallible.
You cannot say the Chinese Communist Party did this wrong, did that right.
When the Wuhan virus broke up in Wuhan, the first thing the Chinese Communist Party was thinking of was not how to prevent it, how to sort of be transparent, tell the world the danger of this.
The first thing is make sure that the Chinese Communist Party's image would not be stained.
So Xi Jinping's very first talk about this was about how to showcase the Chinese Communist Party's overall greatness in combating this virus.
And he wants to promote what he called the 正能量, the positive energy, which means that all negative reporting, all reporting, all truth-telling journalists, doctors, and scientists should not say anything negative about this virus.
That is absolutely dangerous, and it has done the world a great harm.
And this is the ultimate culpability of the Chinese Communist Party in creating, causing this global catastrophe.
Any final thoughts before we finish up?
Well, God bless America.
God bless the people of China and the United States.
Such a pleasure to have you on.
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