In recent weeks, a combination of the virus-related economic shutdown and the Antifa/BLM rioting has shifted our focus away from the strategic threat that is Communist China. This is just what the Chicoms want, as they are concerned about growing calls for indemnification as a result of the economic damage wrought by the Chicom virus to the economies of many countries around the world. Shifting the narrative (and blame) away from the origins of the virus and the irresponsibility of China in failing to report while censuring those Chinese epidemiologists and virologists with direct knowledge of the virus is what the entire Chicom propaganda apparatus has been focused on for months (aided and abetted by US and other Western media).
Let us refocus our attention back to where it should be. The Chinese Communist Party is the primary national security threat to the US – and will remain so for the foreseeable future. China’s GDP is approaching that of the US, as noted here:
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in China was worth 14200 billion US dollars in 2019, according to official data from the World Bank and projections from Trading Economics. The GDP value of China represents 11.72 percent of the world economy.
In comparison, US GDP was $21.2 trillion in 2019 while Russia’s GDP was $1.75 trillion in 2019. As a reminder, virtually the entire Democrat-media complex has been almost exclusively focused on the “Russian threat” since Election Day 2016, yet China’s economy is almost ten times that of Russia. Isn’t it interesting that the top political objective of the Democrat Party and the Chinese Communist Party is the defeat of President Trump in November? The Democrats have been trying to impeach POTUS since he was inaugurated, and the Chicoms want to resume their unimpeded advance toward world domination that has been stopped for the time being by President Trump. This political alignment is well-served by perpetuating and propagating the “Russian threat” bugbear, which effectively camouflages the continuing expansionist policies employed by Beijing around the world.
Note the below graph which depicts China’s GDP from 1970-2019. The upward inflection of growth began in the 1990s and accelerated to the present.
Bill Clinton’s Chinagate corruption in the mid-‘90s opened the door to rapid Chinese economic expansion. The Chicoms were given access to American technology for pennies on the dollar – campaign contributions to Bill Clinton. Thanks to our misguided (and globalist-minded) policies of “free trade” and unfettered access to international institutions such as the World Trade Organization, much of US manufacturing was shifted overseas to Communist China.
But there’s far more to the story.
Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, philosopher, and military strategist in 6th century BC, who is credited with writing, “The Art of War,” which has been studied for centuries as one of the top treatises on warfare ever written. Its principles have been adapted to other human endeavors, too, including diplomacy and economics. Modern Chinese continue to study and employ Sun’s principles to this very day.
Sun Tzu believed in multi-prong attacks on enemies: probe, retreat, probe, hit the enemy’s weak spots, etc. Could there be more at play in the overall Chinese plan than merely overt acts aimed at economic domination via “free” trade? What else might be ongoing behind the scenes? I am convinced their overarching plan involves many prongs:
- Extensive theft of Western technology
- Exploiting cheap Chinese labor to capture Western and multi-national manufacturing
- Massive military build-up accompanied by threatening Taiwan and other near-abroad neighbors
- The lure of the “huge Chinese market” to exploit “capitalist greed”
- Extensive use of economic and military spies (tech, intellectual property, military secrets)
- Access to Western universities to train next-generation Chinese engineers and scientists, including via local chapters of the Confucius Institute and the Thousand Talents program
- Use of “Chinese-American friendship organizations” to mask Chinese intentions
- Use of influence agents in US cultural institutions (media, academia, and Hollywood) to serve Chicom interests
- Exploitation and corruption of non-profit organizations and legacy media through massive Chicom “investment”
- Exploitation of Western “Chinese hands” who have supported rapprochement with Communist China from Kissinger to the likes of Thomas Friedman, all of whom provide obfuscate on behalf of Chicom political and economic objectives
- And perhaps most important, exploitation of corrupt US politicians via illicit campaign contributions and sweetheart deals for relatives in order to push policies favorable to Chinese interests. This ongoing corruption also serves to help the Chicoms gain direct access to the US political class and its collective decision-making processes in order to directly influence political issues important to Chinese interests.
Cynical me also thinks that maybe they have added exploitation of corona-viruses to their bag of tricks. There are no such things as coincidences!
The Chicoms have embarked on a thousand-year march to become masters of the world. The march began with the willing assistance of Henry Kissinger and the rest of the globalists in 1972. Before we get to that, let us briefly review US-China relations since the past is indeed prologue to current events. The history is long and complicated, but current tensions between the US and China make sense when that history is considered.
The US began trading with “Old China” in the 18th century just after the American Revolution, but diplomatic relations were not established until the Treaty of Wangxia was signed in 1844. Large numbers of Chinese emigrated to the U.S. during the California Gold Rush and to work on the transcontinental railroad (depicted memorably in that excellent AMC TV series, “Hell on Wheels”). Racial animosity and competition for unskilled jobs led to passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act 1882 which effectively ended Chinese immigration for 60 years. This is perhaps when Chinese resentment of Americans first became widespread among the political elites in China.
Europeans and the US tried to industrialize and exploit China at the end of the 19th century as part of China’s “Open Door Policy” to develop their country. Chinese resentment of their exploitation by foreigners led to the Boxer Rebellion in 1899 (as depicted in that excellent Charlton Heston movie, “55 Days at Peking”).
After the Boxers were defeated, China was forced to indemnify the Westerners including the US and also Imperial Japan, further adding to Chinese resentment of the foreign presence in their country. Japanese aggression led to a series of Sino-Japanese wars prior to WW-II. The US sided with China and placed diplomatic pressure on the Japanese which had no real effect on continuing Japanese atrocities, including genocide during the “Rape of Nanking” in 1937.
After Pearl Harbor, the US provided massive material support to China throughout WW-II. A main supply line was via air over the Himalayas from India to China in support of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang-led Chinese Republic. Perhaps a relative of yours (or someone you knew) was a member of the American volunteer fliers, the Flying Tigers?
American relations were initiated with Mao’s Chinese Communist group in 1943, and the Kuomintang and Chicoms maintained an uneasy peace while dealing with the Japanese until civil war broke out between the two groups after the war in late 1945. America supported the corrupt Kuomintang (the “Nationalists”) during the Chinese civil war. Gen George Marshall (refer to the Marshall Plan in Europe) failed to broker a truce between the two sides, and eventually the Nationalists fled to Taiwan (where they had previously accepted Japan’s surrender in 1945 and had an established presence) when the more disciplined and effective Chicom troops defeated Chiang’s Kuomintang forces on the mainland. Marshall’s “Marshall Plan for China” failed, which is what precipitated the defeat of the Nationalists, as described here.
As a side note, Harry Dexter White, a Soviet spy who was Truman’s assistant secretary of the treasury, facilitated the Chicom victory by blocking US loans and a transfer of $20 million in gold bullion to the Kuomintang at the height of the Chinese civil war.
And so began the Chicom era in China under the tyrant Mao Zedong. US-China relations were effectively frozen between China and the US between 1949 and 1971, with an actual hot war being fought between the two countries in Korea in the ‘50s. The Chinese crossed the Yalu River into Korea in November 1950 to “save” their North Korean client state, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fought the US-led UN coalition to a standstill until the Armistice was signed at Panmunjom in July 1953. [I have actually visited the building where it was signed, which has remained unchanged since then. The building is evenly demarcated, with half of the conference table in the room in which the Armistice was signed in the DPRK and the other half in South Korea!]
I would argue that the Chinese plan for world domination began in earnest after the Korean War. The Chinese if nothing else retain grudges and long-term animosity for their perceived enemies. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, as that is an element of human nature. But there is nothing in Chinese history and culture similar to the ideology of “turning the other cheek” as is found in the West’s Judeo-Christian-oriented civilization, so perhaps long-term Chinese intentions are more hostile and focused than the “fickle” West/US. We don’t hold grudges for defeated enemies. Ask the Germans and Japanese about that – and even the Vietnamese of late!
I believe that the Chicoms focused on the US as their “Main Enemy” from the Korean War onward. Mao executed a series of pogroms and social campaigns intended to consolidate Chicom power on the mainland (e.g., The “Great Leap Forward” in 1958-62 and the “Cultural Revolution” in 1966-69). The economic reforms failed, but Chicom total political and cultural control was extended throughout the country, giving the Chicom Central Committee respite to devise their long-term plan to replace the US as the world’s sole superpower in every sense of the meaning.
During the Vietnam War, the Chicom plan commenced the use of proxies to diminish the US, including the North Vietnamese, North Korea, and the UN and “Non-Aligned Movement.” The Chinese gave material aid to North Vietnam and North Korea and exerted diplomatic pressure via the UN and the Non-Aligned Movement (the latter member nations being leveraged bigly by Chinese “foreign aid contributions”).
Mao allowed Nixon and Kissinger to “open China” through negotiations and ultimately a state visit by Nixon at the height of the Vietnam War in 1972. This began the first Chinese manipulation of the US political class which continues to this very day. After Mao assumed room temperature in 1976, the US and UN (backed by multilateral corporations) accelerated the push to open and modernize China, eventually even bringing the country into the World Trade Organization in December 2001 (Bill Clinton laid the groundwork for this very bad decision).
Modernizing China included implementation of “free trade” policies and the off-shoring of US manufacturing facilities to mainland China. The US “Rust Belt” did not just happen; it was purposeful, and the multinational corporations and globalists took it to the bank. That was the underlying intent behind Nixon's "opening of China" (at the recommendation of Kissinger). The "free trade and open borders" nonsense preached by American globalists since the '70s has destroyed US heavy industries and gutted the American Upper Midwest accordingly.
Since the 1960s, China has had a concerted effort underway to steal US advanced technology with both commercial and military applications, and seemingly not a day goes by in which there isn't some kind of story about Chinese spying in the news. Within a single generation, the Chinese military is approaching parity with the US Navy in the Western Pacific, and the PLA-Navy has been operating worldwide for nearly two decades. Their military space capabilities continue to improve greatly (gifted by the Clinton's in the '90s). A 13 June article in The Sunday Guardian by CAPT Jim Fanell, USN (ret’d), former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the US Pacific Fleet, provides some very disconcerting projections of Chinese Navy sea control, including superiority by 2049. That article should be a wake-up call to every American!
The Chinese have bought and paid for the Democrat Party (the Clinton's, Obama, Diane Feinstein, the Biden's, and many others). Their Confucius Institutes have penetrated US universities, and they have many other influence agents at work in the US media and Hollywood. They are using economic leverage virtually worldwide to gain control of transportation infrastructure (ports, railways, roads) and resources (the materials needed for heavy and light industries in Mainland China). They are turning a number of Third World countries in Africa and Latin America into virtual vassal states through their One Belt One Road (OBOR)/Belt Road Initiative (BRI) leverage. Here is a graphic summarizing their “investments” just in the Eastern Hemisphere countries:
The purpose of these investments is to gain control of the transportation infrastructures when countries default on their loans – as many do. Chinese help and money come with a set of conditions, which also includes high interest payments, a requirement to employ Chinese labor/goods/technology, and having to grant long-term access to a defaulting country’s natural resources. The Chicom plan for world economic dominance is far-reaching and ongoing.
And the US is paying for it all through our trade deficit with China when we buy anything "Made in China."
In the view from Beijing, their main enemy is the US – and their plan is proceeding apace, with the only known resistance provided by the Donald Trump Administration, as every US administration since Nixon's has been enabling the Chinese plan. Is it any wonder that the Chicoms delayed and obfuscated virus information in order to wreak havoc on the US economy? They know full well that restoring American prosperity for all demographic groups was one of President Trump’s main accomplishments, and that destroying the US economy helps undermine his reelection efforts.
China is following Sun Tzu’s Art of War to the letter, so far. They are winning global economic dominance rapidly while applying Sun Tzu’s strategies to its Belt Road Initiative, as well as leveraging the virus to devastate the US economy while making an overt play for global leadership. To achieve their goals, they must avoid war and can easily do so by continuing to dupe our ignorant “military geniuses” in the Pentagon and the State Dept, some of whom (especially those recently retired) seem more interested in heaping scorn on President Trump these days than in paying attention to the main threat to the US!
Sun Tzu is widely read by our military leaders, but probably not by our diplomats. It takes both in order to have a coherent strategy! There can be no winner in a Yank-Sino conflict. Or can there be? There is a likely winner in the OBOR/BRI adventures – Communist China! We know that China is diligently at work in EVERY African nation, EVERY South American nation except Paraguay, and EVERY Central American nation including Mexico right in our backyard! China is also hard at work in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. And China has been economically “invading” Australia for years.
China may bluster. China may dash gallantly toward the enemy. But China will not risk war when it is conquering the battlefield without firing a shot. Now, Uncle Sam may blunder and stumble its way into a conflict – who knows? But China has been winning in the battle for global economic dominance – using OUR money provided them with every super container ship that arrives in our ports, thanks largely to the policies of Clinton, Bush (times 2!), and Obama.
The Star Trek TV series had a propensity for stimulating thought about many 1960s-era conundrums. Maybe that old 1968 episode about the “Yangs and Kohms” was in reality prescient! That particular episode, The Omega Glory, was about an apocalyptic post-World War III Earth-like world devastated by biological warfare in which the totalitarian “Kohms” (Communists) were pitted against the freedom-loving “Yangs” (Americans). Have we finally gotten down to that “final conflict” in the 52 years since that episode debuted? Have the Chicoms been watching Star Trek and thinking about biological warfare, too? Stranger things have happened.
We have a 2020s-era conundrum (one of many) that must be resolved, too: who moves into the Oval Office after Donald J Trump? If we are foolish enough to pick a globalist and corrupt Democrat – either this November or in 2024 – then the “Omega Glory” scenario could potentially become a reality for our progeny. Except that “Kohms” would win out, not the “Yangs,” as the Chicoms will be that much closer to having achieved their goal of political and economic world domination.
America’s fate is held in the ballot box in November. Choose wisely, and don’t let all of the Antifa/BLM/Democrat/media antics between now and then distract from focusing on the main threat.
Stu Cvrk served 30 years in the US Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. An oceanographer and systems analyst through education and experience, Stu is a graduate of the US Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education. This functions as the key foundation for his political commentary. He threads daily on Twitter on a wide range of political topics, such as the military, foreign policy, government, economics, and world affairs.
Twitter: @STUinSD
Web: stuinsd.net
