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March 25, 2021 - Epoch Times
31:08
Average Investor Unknowingly Financing Firms Complicit in Uyghur Genocide—Keith Krach, Ellie Cohanim
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America's moment is now.
To choose a path, a clean path, to the future for the sake of our children and our grandchildren.
One of the greatest human rights violations of our century.
What is so incredibly reminiscent of the Nazis, the attempt to dehumanize the Uyghur Muslims.
American pension funds, mutual funds and bond portfolios are investing in Chinese firms linked to the genocide of Uyghur Muslims.
How did this come to be?
The average American investor is unknowingly financing the Chinese Communist Party.
In the face of genocide, what can a person do that would actually make a difference?
Today I sit down with former Under Secretary of State Keith Kroc, who led the Trump administration's Clean Network Initiative to keep vendors linked to the Chinese regime out of the global 5G infrastructure.
For this work and more, he was sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party.
Also joining us today is former State Department official Elie Kohanim, who served as Deputy Special Envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.
The American people don't want to repeat the mistakes of the Holocaust.
When we say never again, we must meet it.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Under Secretary Keith Kroc and Deputy Envoy Elie Kohanim, such a pleasure to have you both on American Thought Leaders.
Thanks so much for having us.
Thank you.
So I've been looking at your Newsweek op-ed, and very powerful, the Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide now, and you can stop it.
Fascinating reading.
You cover a lot of really, really important points.
And Ellie, I think we'll start with you.
You say something that I've been very, very careful to say all these years.
This genocide against Muslims in China is shockingly reminiscent of the Holocaust.
Okay, so tell me how that can be.
Jan, first of all, it's really a pleasure to be here with you, an American Thought Leader.
Thank you for having us on.
It is indeed carefully chosen words because, as you know, I'm someone who is fighting anti-Semitism on a daily basis.
And when you're in this space, one item that we're very careful about is any comparisons to the Holocaust.
And sadly, in the popular culture, we see this done all the time, very casually.
And so I have been someone who has voiced over and again asking people to please refrain from doing so.
However, we are now actually in a moment where the State Department in January, after an exhaustive process, identified the fact that there's an actual genocide taking place Being committed by the Chinese Communist Party against the Uighur Muslims.
I think we came to a point in history where we know clearly that there is a genocide taking place and it's time for us to stand up against it.
You know, one of the things that Jewish people ask ourselves all the time after the Holocaust is how could the world have allowed such a thing to happen?
How could the world have allowed the Nazis to perpetrate These atrocities against the Jewish people.
And the response that we've been given over and again is that, well, the world didn't know.
So, in stark contrast, today we know.
And because we know, it becomes incumbent upon all good people to take action.
Ellie, something that struck me in the op-ed was something very, very important, frankly, and it's these efforts.
Whenever a regime is practicing, is doing a kind of genocidal practice of sorts, there's always this element of dehumanization of the target groups.
I'm wondering if you could speak to that, please.
Jan, exactly right.
You know, the Nazis, part of what they did was they literally dehumanized the Jews in the eyes of Germans and then the entire European population.
And I think the best guess is that when you dehumanize a certain group, it becomes that much easier to then commit these atrocities against them.
And so we're seeing these exact same tactics practiced by the Chinese Communist Party, Where they're calling the Uyghur religion a communicable disease.
A communicable plague.
I want to tell you their exact language.
They describe the Uyghurs themselves as malignant tumors.
And they've described the Uyghurs as being similar to weeds and that you must use chemicals to get all of them, right?
And so this kind of language, again, is so incredibly reminiscent of the horrible language of the Nazis.
And again, it's the attempt to dehumanize the Uyghur Muslims, I imagine, so that it's that much easier for the very many Chinese people who are involved in running these 380 concentration camps to do what is necessary to be done.
In order to systematically eliminate the Uyghurs, which is what's taking place right now.
So under Secretary Kroc, something that you also highlight, again, right at the outset, you say the moral imperative to end the Xinjiang genocide is bipartisan.
And of course, I wholeheartedly agree.
But tell me why you're highlighting this?
Well, I think this is one of the most unifying bipartisan issues.
And I think that's important to keep in mind.
You know, Speaker Pelosi said, if we do not speak out against these human rights violations and genocide in Xinjiang because of some commercial interest, then we lose all moral authority.
And then Congressman McCall, Republican Michael McCall, he said we can't sit idly by.
Watching genocide.
Our silence will be complicit and our action will be our appeasement.
And, you know, both administrations, and I think there's such great power in that.
I think the Chinese Communist Party understands that.
And they also understand that the definition is, with the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, 1948, it fits it to a T. And it's punishable.
And, you know, it was on July 4th this last year.
I was on TV and I called it genocide because of all the horrific acts that That the Chinese Communist Party is doing to Xinjiang.
And that's when I wrote a letter to all US CEOs and all university governing boards and followed up with all the civil society leaders.
And our op-ed was really about taking it to the people, really about taking it to the citizens.
And it was about hitting the Chinese Communist Party where it hurts the most.
And that is in the cash register, in the pocketbook, because they can hear that emptying of that cash register all the way to Xinjiang.
And I think there's a lot of people that are concerned about that, and they really wonder what they can do.
And that's a big one.
Eli, so with the Convention on Genocide, the 1948 Convention, when a determination of genocide is actually made, that basically means that countries need to act, countries under the UN Charter need to act.
So this is not a casual thing by any means.
So what kind of action is expected?
Well, look, we're very pleased that yesterday we saw an announcement from the Biden administration and the EU that sanctions were being placed on China.
And that's exactly the right approach.
The CCP can only understand strength.
And it's really important for the US to show strength in dealing with the Chinese government.
And also, I want to take a moment to distinguish between the people of China and the CCP. The people of China are being repressed, they're being oppressed, they're the most surveyed people in the world.
I wonder how much the broad American audience understands what an average Chinese person is going through there.
There's no such thing as freedom in that country and the Chinese Communist Party has proven over and again what authoritarianism is.
And it is them.
They are the world's leaders in authoritarian regime.
So that's, you know, the average Chinese person's experience and then you drill down and you understand more about the human rights abuses that are That are waged against certainly the Uyghur Muslims, but also the Tibetans, really almost every minority, the Falun Gong, every minority group in China finds itself almost targeted for erasure.
And so that's the nature of this authoritarian regime.
And so from a government perspective, these announcements of sanctions were exactly the right move by the US and the EU. And the reality is, though, because the Chinese threat is so great, I think those sanctions are just the beginning.
I mean, this is kind of an unprecedented action right now, these new sanctions coordinated between the US, UK, the EU, and actually Canada, my nation, my home nation, which hasn't been terribly active in these sorts of things for a while.
And actually, this kind of reminds me a little bit of some of the work you were doing not too long ago, Keith.
It's very similar to the Clean Network Alliance of Democracies, and that's really what it takes.
I really think that's You know, the magic formula and, you know, the Clean Network is comprised of like-minded nations, companies and civil society that operate by a set of trust principles.
And clearly genocide is the biggest violation you could ever imagine of that.
And there's great power in that.
And we proved that.
You know, a year ago it looked like Huawei was unbeatable and it looked like the Chinese Communist Party's master plan for 5G was unstoppable.
Well, we stopped it with the Clean Network.
Now there's 60 like-minded nations on the Clean Network, represents over two-thirds of the world's global GDP. Over 200 telcos and dozens of clean companies.
What that showed was China Inc.
is beatable.
It also exposed their biggest weakness.
And Huawei's orders, 5G orders, went from 91 that they announced over a year ago down to probably about a dozen right now.
And so I think that formula works.
It really works with genocide.
So this is such a positive development.
And now we want to focus on bringing along some key constituents.
And the ones that we talked about in the op-ed, we talked about the biggest asset managers in the world, companies like BlackRock.
And, you know, they talk a really good game, but in terms of really doing something about it, they haven't done anything.
The other community we talk about is the ESG community, and that's environmental, social, and governance standards.
And that started out about 15 years ago with about 17 billion dollars that were under those standards.
Today it's 17 trillion.
So that's a powerful community.
And we haven't seen them speaking out either.
And then there's forums like the World Economic Forum, which is the preeminent gathering for You know, that's a polite way of saying conflict of interest.
And so the question is, hey, are they too big to fail?
I mean, is there too much money on the table to really do anything about genocide?
And I think that's one of the things that Ellie and I really want to push.
You know, when we were talking offline earlier, I took a note of this because you said, if we're going to shine the light on Xinjiang, we actually have to shine the light on ourselves as well, because these things are not independent of each other.
Why is it that these large bodies, for example, that we might expect would take a leading action because they're looking at things like corporate social responsibility and so forth?
Why are they not taking an action on Xinjiang or the Chinese Communist Party?
Jan, you know, I can't speak to their motivations, but the reason why the former Under Secretary and I have taken to writing this op-ed to your airwaves and anyone who will hear from us is because we know, first of all, that the American people are a good people.
And we know that the American people don't want to repeat the mistakes of the Holocaust, right?
So, you know, the greatest thing that we can do to honor the memory of the six million who were murdered by the Nazis is to make sure that it doesn't happen again on our watch in our generation, right?
And that we can be models for our children and for our grandchildren and show them that we just won't allow something like this to happen again in our lifetimes.
So that, you know, when people look back into the future, they can say that the world did take the lessons of the Holocaust, right?
That's the reason why we've laid out a plan for the everyman and the everywoman, right?
And, you know, it's not that difficult.
You know, it's literally picking up the phone.
If you have a pension plan, you have a mutual fund in your retirement plans, or if you're just generally invested in mutual funds, If you are involved as an alumna with your university in any way, you can call your university and talk to them about their university fund.
You can call your mutual fund manager.
You can call your broker.
It's literally as easy as making phone calls and asking questions.
This is the call to action right now.
It's for every American to pick up that phone and call the fund managers and ask a question.
I'm really confident that that's the first step and that a lot will be accomplished with just even that first step.
Keith, you yourself were a CEO at one point of a pretty sizable enterprise.
So let's say we're not talking about the everyman here.
Let's say we're talking about people who are business leaders, perhaps presidents or CEOs of corporations.
What can and should they do in this situation?
But I believe nobody should bend a knee to the Chinese Communist Party.
We clearly have the moral high ground here.
So, you know, I think pulling businesses out of that Xinjiang region, number one.
But I also think, too, in terms of Investing in these companies.
We put out a list, 1,200 companies and subsidiaries at the State Department that either participate in Chinese military civil fusion or human rights abuse or the surveillance state.
And these are companies that should be divested from.
What Ellie was talking about in terms of asking your pension fund manager, in terms of asking your financial manager, in terms of if you donate to a foundation or to a university endowment, you really want to find this out and put the pressure on them because genocide is going on right now.
That was the point of the op-ed because we wrote it very close to the time of The Holocaust Remembrance Day, and really to honor the survivors and those who've passed as well, to never forget them, and to honor them by preventing it in the future, and it's going on now.
And, you know, we failed to stop it last century, and we really need to do something about it again.
And as Ellie and I say, you know, when we say never again, we must mean it.
You were actually sanctioned minutes after the new administration took power.
And so what has been the actual cost?
What has been the impact of that?
Well, you know, it was interesting because I was being interviewed on TV the day before the sanctions, the second to last day of the administration.
They said, well, Keith, you might get sanctioned.
And I said, well, I'm sure I already am.
A lot of people talk about it as a badge of honor.
I think it is a result of the results we got with things like the Clean Network, what we did in terms of our sanctions, our financial sanctions.
One of the things that I was responsible for.
And I don't think anybody should bend a knee to the Chinese Communist Party.
So, you know, so be it.
My family and I, we can't go to China, those kind of things.
But I think one of the big things was, is this was a shot across the bow to the next administration, to folks like Secretary of State Blinken, to folks like Kurt Campbell, who's heading up a lot of the China stuff at the National Security Council.
Because, you know, when you're in a position and you're dealing With the Chinese Communist Party, as we saw in Alaska, just, you know, this weekend, you can't hesitate.
And these guys are going to come after us.
Now, I happen to think that they're actually dealing from a position of weakness, because as I traveled around, you know, 40 countries over the last few months, I could see that citizens of the world have woken up to the Chinese Communist Party.
I call it their three C's doctrine of concealment, co-option and coercion.
And citizens of the world now understand that the pandemic is a result of the concealment of the virus.
Citizens of the world have seen that the evisceration of Hong Kong's freedom is a result of that co-option of Hong Kong.
Citizens of the world now understand and are beginning to hear About how the coercion in Xinjiang has grown into genocide.
And these citizens don't like it.
Ali, maybe you can talk about this a little bit.
You know, there's, of course, these sanctions we were talking about earlier, coordinated across Western democracies and the EU. The CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, responded with something like, I heard someone said, and I haven't counted myself, so I can't fact check this, but it was like four to one.
For every one that was sanctioned in China, four officials were sanctioned in the EU. And that's from all sorts of walks of life.
And I think that's pretty fascinating because the EU, not too recently, was ready to sign a massive investment deal, which, to my eye, looked like didn't have a ton of accountability.
So, your thoughts?
Yeah, you know, Jan, I think the Chinese approach is...
They're disingenuous at best.
They're trying their best to fool the international community about what's going on in China, right?
And they're trying to point fingers elsewhere.
And so, first of all, to your point about sanctioning American officials and EU officials, I think the fact that former Undersecretary Kroc was the third person on the list On the day that that first round of sanctions was announced is truly a badge of honor.
I think that the undersecretary was able to then leave government knowing that he accomplished much.
Anyone who gets sanctioned, quote unquote, by China should understand it is that they are doing good work, that they have been effective because the Chinese are in essence coming after them.
But to talk a little bit about how the Chinese tried to fool the world and spread this propaganda, the meeting that took place last week in Alaska with Secretary Blinken, when the Secretary of State of the United States was speaking exactly on our topic,
which is this genocide taking place in China, the Chinese diplomats, their retort was to talk about BLM You know, any thinking individual knows there's no comparison there.
I really would encourage any American who receives this kind of nonsensical response from Chinese officials into the future to really kind of throw that right back at their face.
Because, you know, we're talking about punishable genocide.
We're talking about the most heinous human rights violations being committed by the Chinese Communist Party.
And there's just no comparison to anything going on in this great United States of America.
And anyone who would dare to say otherwise is just lying through their teeth.
And so we can't put up with that kind of nonsense.
You mentioned, Keith, this bipartisanship.
How best can this be moved along in a bipartisan manner, do you imagine?
Well, I think so much is being done on Capitol Hill on that already.
I mean, the resolutions have passed.
I think that's going great.
I think it's now to take it out and spread it out from there.
Clearly, in the executive branch, it is right now.
But it's really, you know, our Congress, men and women and our senators, they're interfacing with leaders all the time from around the world and their colleagues.
So I think that is a big, big I think the world has woken up.
And the interesting thing about the Clean Network was that we exposed their biggest weakness, it was trust.
So the number one premise of the Clean Network is trust principles, that it operates by trust principles.
Integrity, reciprocity, transparency, respect for rule of law, respect for property of all kinds, respect for sovereignty of nation, respect for the planet, and respect for human rights.
And what was interesting for me is in my you know, I would say the first few months, I had about 60 bilaterals with my colleagues, foreign ministers, finance ministers, economic ministers, their deputies.
And when, you know, I'd ask him about China.
How's your relationship going?
They would always go, well, you know, they're important.
They're number one, number two, trading partner.
And then they look both ways and they lean in and they say, but we don't trust them.
And all I know is that trust is the most important word in any language.
It's the basis of For every relationship, personal, business or otherwise.
And that's the thing, is that nobody trusts the Chinese Communist Party.
That is something that we can use to our advantage when it comes to things like The Chinese Communist Party perpetrating genocide or what they're doing in terms of their surveillance state and all those other horrific things.
And this has formed out a movement and a foundation.
And I think it's really important to remember that.
It kind of gets back to what Ellie was talking about, you know, in the Alaska meeting.
And that is when you realize you're coming from that position of weakness.
You've got that insecurity.
You're like cornered.
You lurch out.
And that's what a bully does.
And, you know, a bully does things like sanctioning guys like me and everybody else for doing their job.
And, you know, all I know is when you confront a bully, they back down.
And they really, really back down when you have your friends by your side.
And there is strength in numbers and there's power in unity and solidarity.
And that security blanket is what made the Clean Network such a success.
Any final thoughts before we finish up?
Jan, I really just want to emphasize that for 76 years following the Holocaust, we've said never again.
And we're in a moment right now when we're confronted with a situation where it's the test of if we meant it.
And if we mean it, And the reality is it's not too late.
Today's the day.
People can take action.
I encourage everyone to do so.
And I know that the American people want to.
And we want to really mean never again.
We want to mean it when we say it.
Well, give me a quick recap of what folks can do.
And I know you've already kind of outlined a number of things in the episode, but maybe we can start with Ellie and we can finish up with Keith.
What can people do actively now?
Sure.
I think, first of all, educate yourselves.
Just read about the atrocities.
It'll break your heart.
It'll bring you to tears.
Second of all, I encourage everyone to pick up the phone.
Please call every fund manager that you might have a relationship.
So whether it's your brokerage company or If you're an alumni of a university, call the alumni office and talk to them about this issue.
If you're in a pension fund, and basically any kind of a fund that you might be invested in, because you don't want to be invested in China Inc.
So pick up that phone and demand transparency.
And if they're not, you know, if your broker or the fund representative is not willing to share information about where you're invested, then it might be time to look elsewhere.
And what about, you know, a little bit of a larger scale for those folks that are running companies, nonprofits, other organizations?
So if you look at these big nonprofits and civil society, these are powerful voices.
And to shout it from the mountaintop.
You know, a great example is the International Olympic Committee.
They operate under the highest principles.
And now we're about ready to have the Olympics in 2022.
I think that should be really up for debate.
Or if you look at the World Economic Forum, the gathering of all the global CEOs and then also the government leaders.
I mean, put it on the agenda.
At least talk about it.
And these asset managers who can control trillions and trillions of dollars.
This is the time if you're going to make a statement.
They've done a great job on the environment, but when it comes to human rights, let alone genocide, they haven't done anything.
And the whole ESG community is a powerful group, one that has a great human heart.
They really have a powerful voice.
And for CEOs, you know, make sure your supply chains are clean.
And for the financial institutions, it's incumbent on you.
You have a moral responsibility and a fiduciary duty to disclose if you're invested in Chinese companies and particularly ones that are involved in the surveillance state or human rights abuses or military civil fusion.
And especially If they involve like an emerging index fund, like the MSCI emerging index fund or the FTSE emerging index fund, because these index funds have, as of last June, just added 250 Chinese companies into that mix.
What's really sad is that the average American investor is unknowingly financing The Chinese Communist Party, human rights abuses, surveillance state, and their military civil fusion.
And it's buried in these index funds, which are then in all kinds of products, hundreds and hundreds of products in ETFs and in mutual funds.
So the biggest thing is transparency.
Once again, if we're going to shine the light of transparency on Xinjiang, we've got to shine it on ourselves.
So could someone, for example, download this sheet of companies that are basically complicit to a lot of these violations and send it to their manager and say, I want to be sure that none of these companies are in my fund, for example?
Is that the sort of thing you're suggesting?
Absolutely, because there's 1,200 companies and subsidiaries that are on the Pentagon list, and that's for military civil fusion.
You know, one of the things also that I recommended in my last press conference is there's 500 Chinese companies that are on the Commerce Department's entity list.
Now, these companies are so bad, we're saying we're not exporting any technology to them.
And of those, only seven are on the Pentagon list.
And so that's one of my recommendations, I think, is continuity of policy to actually fix that.
I wish we would have had time to do that, but I think the Biden administration is going to be on that.
And perhaps make it mandatory by putting it on the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act.
And the other thing that we did on the fact sheet is we tracked these index funds.
How many have divested from these companies?
And they've divested a few, but they've got a long way to go.
And I think it's good to keep the pressure on them and keep our eyes on them.
Well, Deputy Envoy Kohanim, Under Secretary Kroch, such a pleasure to have you on.
Thank you.
Jan, thanks so much for having Ellie and myself on.
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