The Gloves Are Off! What Next?
Hello, everyone, nice to see you.
The past week can be called an unprecedented one in terms of US-China relations.
Why do I say so? I’ll talk about this after some news updates.
“No. 3 Flood” Hits Chongqing
Heavy rain has battered central and southern China over the past few weeks, causing widespread flooding. A third wave of severe flooding, referred to as the “No. 3 flood,” hit Chongqing on July 27, causing an ancient thousand-year-old town in Chongqing to be flooded. Let’s take a look.
A third wave of severe flooding, referred to as the “No. 3 flood of 2020 in Yangtze River” formed in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River On July 26 and it hit Chongqing the next day. The local water levels of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers continued to rise. Ciqikou, an ancient thousand-year-old Town in Chongqing, on the banks of the Jialing River, the water level exceeded the warning level by more than 3 meters at 10 am on the 27th. Dozens of shops along the river with the lowest terrain have been flooded. The water level in Ciqikou is 184.07 meters.
The river has flooded the Chaotianmen, a landmark building in Chongqing, half of which is submerged in water. Land sliding happened in several places and two people were killed.
According to the local Hydrological Bureau, the inflow of the Three Gorges Dam reached 60,000 cubic meters per second on July 27. A yellow warning for flooding has been issued.
Local officials said the highest water level is expected to appear late on the 27th.
The Three Gorges Dam Makes Flooding 25 Times Worse
With southern China suffering unprecedented flooding this year, the safety of the Three Gorges Dam has caused a lot of attention. An expert says that the Dam has worsened the flooding 25 times more than the natural situation.
The Yangtze River is flooding for the third time since the start of the 2020 monsoon season, as heavy torrential rains continue to batter large parts of China, according to a report from The Liberty Times on July 27th.
The Chinese Communist Party has officially ordered the Three Gorges Dam to discharge and protect the dam, including the Huaihe River, Taihu Lake and hundreds of other rivers will also spill water. People downstream will be affected by floods caused by the spilled water plus the heavy rain.
The previous two waves have created flooding crisis in downstream. The Three Gorges Dam expert Weiluo Wang, who is currently visiting Germany, states that the Three Gorges Dam has no functionality of preventing floods. Research has shown that the Three Gorges Dam has worsened the flooding 25 times more than the natural flooding situation.
TikTok In Trouble, Downloads of Indian and US-made Apps Soar
After India announced its ban on the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok , the ban has now spread internationally, including the United States, and the number of downloads of its competitors’ apps has increased sharply. It seems that TikTok is besieged on all sides. Let’s take a look.
The US Congress this week introduced legislation to block federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices. The Trump administration’s objective is to fully ban the use of considering TikTok. This is in fear that the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, is using TikTok to spy on unsuspecting American citizens.
This past June, and in response to similar fears for their national security, India banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese mobile apps. Then in July, they added an additional 47 Chinese apps to the list of potential spy tools.
According to the market research firm, Sensor Tower, India had been TikTok's largest market. As such, the combined ban by the US and India wiped out two thirds of Tik Tok’s worldwide market.
Creating further problems for Tik Tok, it’s two largest competitors, Reposo and Dubsmash, have been soaking up the market share it has been losing suggesting it may never be as successful as it once was.
An Unprecedented Week
Obviously, the ban on Tiktok and many other Chinese apps can only happen when the global “tide” is turning against the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP. That is why in the past week, so many unprecedented events happened.
The first one was, of course, the unprecedented move on the US side. That is, ordering the CCP, to close its consulate in Houston. The CCP soon retaliated by closing the US consulate in Chengdu, China.
I first heard the news of the closure of CCP’s consulate in Houston from the radio while I was driving last Wednesday. When I heard that there was a fire inside the consulate, I thought the consulate staff was asked to evacuate only because of the fire. Frankly speaking, I didn’t expect that the true story was just the opposite: The CCP received the closure order first, then they started to burn documents.
Although I’ve been advocating for a world without the CCP, this news was still very surprising for me, as well as for many other overseas Chinese, because for so many years, it seemed nobody was willing to or dared to stand up against the CCP.
The reason for the closure order, according to the US government, was “to protect American intellectual property and American's private information”.
Senator Marco Rubio, the Acting Chairman of U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tweeted, “#China’s Houston consulate is a massive spy center, forcing it to close is long overdue.”
Fox News reported that the CCP’s consulate in Houston was targeted because of, in part, the CCP’s targeting of U.S. energy firms.
Fox Business quoted Asia analyst Gordon Chang by saying that "Also, there are stories that this consulate had links with protest groups in the United States providing financial and logistical support. That’s unconfirmed.
“But, what is confirmed is that the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Communist Party's global ties have been engaged in a malicious disinformation campaign, deliberately stoking racial tensions in the U.S.
"And, U.S. Customs has seized items coming from China this year that would be very handy for protesters".
As far as I am concerned, all the above reasons could be possible. The consulate in Houston was the CCP’s first consulate in the US. Through many years of operation, it had indeed become “the central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies & influence operations in the United States”, as Senator Marco Rubio has put it.
As early as two years ago, when I covered the news of the arrest of Chinese professor Xie Keping of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, I learned that the FBI had been holding meetings with top leaders of Texas academic and medical institutions to warn about foreign threats to research and academic institutions.
Xie Keping himself was one of the 4,180 experts recruited by China to return to the mainland and provide their expertise in what is called the “Thousand Talents Plan.” And the number 4180 is just as of 2014. The CCP has stopped releasing new information, and actually deleted the previous websites and information related to the “Thousand Talents Plan” after it was identified as a program to recruit scientists and researchers who can steal intellectual property from the US and other countries.
I also learned from the local Chinese community that many Chinese professors and researchers hold positions in both the US and China. They travel between the two countries frequently, receiving salaries from both sides, and taking research information and results, even patents they gather from the US to China, and get paid huge money for it.
Back in 2008, CCP sent more than 12,000 red flags to Australia for the Chinese students in Australia to “turn Canberra into a sea of red flags”, and to “drown out” Tibetan demonstrators and pro-democracy protesters, when the Beijing Olympic Torch arrived in Australia’s capital city Canberra. The Chinese consulates in major Australian cities also organized big buses to transport the students from Syndey, Melbourne, and other cities to Canberra and offered them free meals.
I was at the scene that day. It was quite astonishing to see how those 10 thousand hot-headed Chinese students who thought they were defending their dear motherland turned violent, and even beat up those who disagreed with them.
The point here is, if the CCP could do this to Australia in 2008, one should not be surprised if they do something similar here in the US, such as offering some financial and logistical support to fuel the riots inside the US.
“Manifesto for the Elimination of the CCP”
Right after the closure order for CCP’s consulate in Houston was issued, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a powerful and historical speech on China. Many Chinese people have been comparing it to Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech, as well as Churchill's "Iron Curtain” speech. Some call it “Manifesto for the Elimination of the CCP”; Some say that Secretary Pompeo has raised the rallying cry for the extermination of the CCP.
I also think this speech is a very important turning point. It feels like that the gloves have finally come off, and the US has finally made up its mind regarding what the CCP really is, and how to deal with it.
For me, there are many important indications in Secretary Pompeo’s speech.
First of all, and the most important one, is that America has finally woken up from its long illusions about the CCP, and is seeing the CCP for what it is, and speaking out loudly about it.
I said in my previous program about the possible U.S. travel ban on CCP members, that “treating the CCP like a normal political party is the biggest mistake the West made in the past 40 plus years when dealing with China."
I was glad to hear Secretary Pompeo say the same thing about CCP’s trading practice, companies, students, employees, and the People’s Liberation Army. He recognized that all these are not normal practices, organizations, or personnel.
Time for a Regime Change?
The second indication of Secretary Pompeo's speech is that the US is now ready to call for a regime change.
About one year ago, I was still in Washington DC. I covered a lot of events on US-China relations as a journalist at the US Congress, research institutes, and think tanks. At that time, I could feel that although some politicians were very sharp when criticizing the CCP, none were ready to talk about regime change. They carefully avoided touching this sensitive issue. They were just not ready yet, or the idea was too much.
However, this time it was different. Although Secretary Pompeo didn’t utter the word “regime change”, he has called for the Chinese people to “change the CCP’s behavior”, and hinted that “free nations” should work together with Chinese people to “defend freedom”. He also mentioned that “We must also engage and empower the Chinese people.”
So, we should not be too surprised if one day there appear in China some other political parties or forces that openly declare that they don’t recognize the CCP’s legitimacy, and call for an election, the US may choose to support such a move.
A Choice Between Freedom and Tyranny
The third important aspect of Secretary Pompeo's speech is the declaration that “The free world must triumph over this new tyranny.” By saying this, Secretary Pompeo was asking nations and the public to make a choice between freedom and tyranny. The battle is indeed not a battle between two superpowers, or big countries, for their own interests. It is a battle between freedom and tyranny, justice and evil, humanity, and the devil. And every single human being needs to make a choice.
What Next?
So what next after the gloves are off? These are several possibilities:
Closing more consulates.
Both President Trump and US Senator Ted Cruz have said that it is possible to close more CCP’s consulates in the US.
2. Military confrontations in the South China Sea area. Territorial disputes in the South China Sea is a long-existing problem. But until very recently, the international world showed little willingness to push back against the CCP’s aggressive expansion in this area.
On July 13, Secretary Pompeo announced an important shift in U.S. declaratory policy on the South China Sea, which says “Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them.”
Australia followed the suit on July 23, and formally rejected CCP's territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea.
Since then the US, Australia, and Japan have conducted trilateral military exercises on the doorstep of the disputed South China Sea. US spy planes have edged “dangerously” close to CCP’s 'maritime empire'.
Will all these moves create military conflicts in this area? Perhaps we can say anything is possible at such a time.
3. More Sanctions
The US could also impose more sanctions on the CCP. A Chinese scholar even predicted that Trump could extend the sanction to his old “friend” Xi Jinping. As Trump already signed the Hong Kong sanctions bill, it is inevitable that more CCP leaders who were involved in the crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedom will be sanctioned. Will Xi Jinping be also on the list? We will have to wait and see.
4. Closer Ties with Taiwan
After the closure of CCP’s consulate in Houston, US Senator Ted Cruz tweeted: “With the State Department’s decision to close the Chinese consulate in Houston because it engaged in espionage and IP theft, the city now has a consulate for the free Republic of China (Taiwan) and no consulate for the tyrannical People’s Republic of China…as it should be.”
While the US is close to having an all-out confrontation with the CCP, we can surely expect that it will enhance and strengthen its relationship with Taiwan. Some Chinese netizens are saying that Taiwan, or the Republic of China, should take back China from the CCP.
CCP Preparing for War?
In the past few decades, whenever somebody did something that the CCP didn’t like, you could surely expect new titles such as “this would anger China”, or “China threatens retaliation”, etc, as if we should really be very fearful because “this would anger China”, or “China will retaliate.”
However, this time, when the US is close to calling the CCP an illegal government, what has the CCP done? Very little, or virtually nothing.
Sure enough, they have chopped the name of Secretary Pompeo’s China policy adviser Miles Yu’s name from the “Hall of Fame” of Yongchuan Middle School in Chongqing, China, as the top student of that year; they have put up posters in Beijing to teach people how to get into the underground air defense facilities after alarms go off; they have also put up a “Pre-combat Evacuation Drill” in Shanghai on July 27, etc, but the CCP was quick to say that the drill in Shanghai was just a routine drill that happens every year and that it had nothing to do with preparing for war.
So far, apart from some verbal threats, and a “reciprocal” move of closing the US' consulate in Chengdu, it seems the most substantial retaliation of the CCP so far was to remove the name of Secretary Pompeo’s China policy adviser from the “honorable list” of a middle school in China.
The latest action of the CCP is its foreign Minister Wang Yi’s call for “rational dialogue”, peace & cooperation. Obviously, the CCP is not ready for war. And they are just creating some kind of “atmosphere” of war inside China to terrify the public, to incite anti-American sentiment, and to divert public attention from the real problems.
Obstacles the US Has to Overcome
However, to really achieve the goal that “The free world must triumph over this new tyranny”, there are some serious obstacles or challenges for the US to overcome.
First of all, as Secretary Pompeo has put it, “Unlike the Soviet Union, China is deeply integrated into the global economy”, “The USSR was closed off from the free world. Communist China is already within our borders.”
I said something similar two years ago in my article “What Kind of Media Do We Need to Battle a Modern Day Trojan War?” I said, “Although the U. S. might not have a strategy about how to deal with the post-Cold War China, the CCP did have a strategy as to how to launch a modern-day Trojan War to ‘silently invade’ the world.”
How deeply has the CCP, as well as Communist ideology, infiltrated our society? One can hardly tell.
But just look at those politicians, scholars, China experts, lobbyists for Wall Street, for big companies, who always defend the CCP so eagerly when someone tries to criticize it, we should know that to cleanse the CCP elements from inside our societies is a very challenging task.
Another challenge is, as many young people in the West know very little of the CCP’s evil nature and its history of killing, they feel attracted by Socialist ideology without knowing that according to what the CCP has always been saying, that Socialism is the primary stage of Communism, and will inevitably lead to Communism.
So, for the free world to win this battle, it is very important to educate and inform our young generations. I highly recommend two books and my own memoir, which are all about exposing the evil nature and killing history of CCP, as well as worldwide Communist movements.
The two books are, “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party”, “How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World”.
The title of my memoir is “Witnessing History: One Woman’s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong”. When it was published in 2005, a Sydney Morning Herald book review said this book should be “compulsory reading” for “politicians and journalists”. Later the president of “the Society of Women Writers NSW” in Australia said that “I challenge you all to read this book. It should be compulsory reading for the younger generation.”
I am not here saying how wonderful my book is. I mention this because the authors of the book reviews must have also realized how important it was for politicians, journalists, and the younger generation to learn the truth, the ugly reality of living in a Communist country.
Unless enough people have been awakened from illusions about the CCP and socialism, it will be very difficult to win this battle, and the CCP could turn around and come back with some new tricks. Therefore, we must continue with our fight until we win.
That’s all for today. Truth can indeed save lives no matter how inconvenient it is. Please subscribe to my channel if you haven’t.
Thank you. See you next time!
7/29/2020
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