April 26, 2024 • 11 mins
George Noory and author Bradley Thayer discuss the growing threat of China as a global superpower, how America made a mistake by allowing China to enter the world's economic system, and if it was smart for President Nixon to attempt diplomacy with China during the Cold War.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norri with
you up next. Bradley Thayer one of two authors James
Fanelle is the other, who wrote the book Embracing Communist China.
Bradley is a PhD, founding member of the Committee on
Present Danger China and a former visiting fellow at the
Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Bradley one of the most
(00:26):
important books I've read in a long time. Welcome to
the program.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Well, thank you very much, and it's a great time
to join you today.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
How did China get to be so strong since they
took over in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, that's one of the key questions that we ask
in the book is how did this happen? And the
answer that we examined, particularly after the communist leader Dumshell
Pig executed a deliberate strategy of deception directed against the
United States in the wake of the nineteen eighty nine
(01:04):
Tenemen massacre, where he felt quite rightly that there was
the end of history moment, George, that you may recall
where there was the belief that democracy and free market
governments were the wave of the future. He felt under
direct threat. So what he did is devise a strategy
(01:26):
of deception, what's often called the hide and bide strategy,
where he recognized he could reach out to American manufacturers
and investors and have them invest in communist China, and
manufacturing then would shift from the United States, of course
to communist China, and he would make Wall Street, if
(01:50):
you will, the US Chamber of Commerce partners with the
Chinese Communist Party. And what Jim Fanel and I do
in our book is really firstly explain how that happened,
and then how Dung as well as of course the
greed of American of Wall Street, of course, the avarice,
(02:13):
and of course what they would say their sound business sense,
shifted American manufacturing and investment directly into China, greatly increasing
its economic might so that it rose from nineteen ninety
when it was about zero point six percent, so not
even one percent of world gross domestic product, to twenty
(02:37):
and nineteen when it's about nineteen percent, or about one
fifth of all world gross domestic product. So in thirty
years it rose from being a less developed country to
becoming an economic powerhouse, of course, and they use that
economic might, of course, to convert it into military power.
(03:00):
Is why we see the rise of this great threat,
existential threat to the United States today. So it took
one of a genius strategists like Dungshallping, the communist leader,
but he also took the United States investment, manufacturing, and
then ultimately the Clinton administration in the nineteen nineties put
(03:23):
communist China on the path to intrigue into the World
Trade Organization, and that just added rocket fuel to communist
China's growth, and the result is what we see today.
Embracing communist China led to its rapid rise to the
point where it's this threat today. And we examine in
(03:47):
the book additionally what we call the engagement school. Right,
there was not only that economic exchange with China, but
that converted into if you will, political power. China and
US business communities, Wall Street and then ultimately media universities,
(04:09):
even the military became invested in engaging with China, not
seeing it as an existential enemy of the United States,
but seeing it as a partner, and thus fundamentally became
a co optive We call this term threat deflation. Year
after year, the US military, the intelligence community, and even
(04:31):
national security strategists threat deflated the China threat. And again,
that is the story of the book in terms of
how we came to where we are, and then of
course we explore what we need to do about it.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
We have to admit, too, Bradley, that the growth of
China over this period was absolutely stunning, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
It was? Indeed, again, it moved from just a less
developed nation status, right for a country of about a
billion people in nineteen ninety, to where it is today
one point four billion people approximately and one fifth of
(05:17):
the world's economy.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
It went from less than one percent of the world's
economy to one fifth of the world's economy in thirty years.
That's a remarkable rise, and that happens very rarely in
international politics. What's fundamentally remarkable, what's unique is that the
US didn't do anything about it, to balance it, or
(05:41):
to try to check its rise. In fact, it it's reverse, right.
It continued to invest, it continued to trade, It continued
to if you will, add this rocket fuel to China's growth.
And that's a very strange thing to happen in the
international politics and the big part of what we do
(06:01):
in the book. Again, the engagement school is so powerful
from the Clinton administration, even in George W. Bush's administration,
the Obama administration, and only President Trump did anything to
reverse that. Before we see what we term a neo
engagement under President Joe Biden again, where Biden is attempting
(06:24):
to return to the Clinton, Bush and Obama strategies of
engagement with communist China, and we argue, of course, that's disastros.
That's exactly what the United States should not do is
a work to engage communist China. But instead, what we
need to do is formulate a strategy of victory over
(06:47):
communist China, as Ronald Reagan developed very famously the remarks
he gave in March of nineteen eighty three in Orlando,
where he said that the United States saw that the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the centered evil
(07:07):
in the modern world, and what we were going to
do as the United States and more broadly the West
was defeat the Soviet Union. Right, we were going to
have victory over the Soviet Union. Well, that's what we
need to return to today.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
It was truly remarkable, Brad the way China has grown,
and we, as you have so accurately mentioned, played a
big part of it. Back in nineteen seventy one, I
was a young reporter in Detroit for radio station, and
I remember President Nixon at the time opening up the
doors with what was called Ping Pong diplomacy, where we
(07:44):
sent a ping pong team to China and it kind
of opened up relations. Was that a smart move or
a dumb move?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, in the context of the Cold War, that was
a smart move because what Nixon was trying to do
was balanced the Soviet Union. He was trying to use
the power of communist China, the military mind of communist China,
and exploit the tensions that existed between the two major
communist superpowers, the Soviet Union of course in Moscow, and
(08:16):
then of course Chinese the People's Republic of China and Beijing.
So what Nixon was trying to do was to use
those powers against one another. That's classic balance of power reasoning.
It makes a lot of sense to do that. What
we've seen in the book, of course, is that well,
(08:37):
the Cold War ended, didn't mint right? The Cold War
ended by nineteen eighty nine, and certainly by the death
of the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety one, but the
United States never recognized Communist China as the threat that
it was, and we, of course, in the book explored
why that was so. So Nixon's strategy he made a
(09:00):
lot of sense in the context of the Cold War,
but once the Cold War was ended, what the United
States should have done is say, hey, look, international politics
doesn't stop, right, You never get a time out in
this and if we help Communist China's rise, what we're
(09:20):
doing is just facilitating the rise of this new communist superpower,
having just defeated the communist superpower of the Soviet Union.
So that's a big part of the book is explaining
how that happened and the gross mistakes that we made. Right,
America's greatest strategic failure was to embrace communists China, leading
(09:41):
to the situation we have today where China's military, of course,
has grown so significantly and threatens the Americans. The spy
balloon that we saw in January of last year, it
floated over of course the United States, the American military institutions.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
The ongoing hacking of our resources. They're hacking like crazy,
aren't they.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yes, said Director Ray has warned, Right said that this
is they've been doing that for a long time and
it's gotten a lot worse. And Director FBI Director Ray
warned that well hacked, these guys are in our infrastructure
and could turn out the lights literally at any time,
(10:25):
as well as turning off the water supply. And they're
a tremendous danger to our interests globally but also to
Americans at home. And that takes an economic form, right,
that was lost jobs that left from Ohio, that left
from Pennsylvania, Illinois to communist China, but also the pandemic.
(10:50):
Of course, we all remember COVID nineteen and what happened
with that and what did we find, George Right, We
found that well, our personal protective equipment was made in China,
exactly tiny cut that off, Uh, we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norri with
you up next. Bradley Thayer one of two authors James
Fanelle is the other, who wrote the book Embracing Communist China.
Bradley is a PhD, founding member of the Committee on
Present Danger China and a former visiting fellow at the
Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Bradley one of the most
(00:26):
important books I've read in a long time. Welcome to
the program.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Well, thank you very much, and it's a great time
to join you today.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
How did China get to be so strong since they
took over in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, that's one of the key questions that we ask
in the book is how did this happen? And the
answer that we examined, particularly after the communist leader Dumshell
Pig executed a deliberate strategy of deception directed against the
United States in the wake of the nineteen eighty nine
(01:04):
Tenemen massacre, where he felt quite rightly that there was
the end of history moment, George, that you may recall
where there was the belief that democracy and free market
governments were the wave of the future. He felt under
direct threat. So what he did is devise a strategy
(01:26):
of deception, what's often called the hide and bide strategy,
where he recognized he could reach out to American manufacturers
and investors and have them invest in communist China, and
manufacturing then would shift from the United States, of course
to communist China, and he would make Wall Street, if
(01:50):
you will, the US Chamber of Commerce partners with the
Chinese Communist Party. And what Jim Fanel and I do
in our book is really firstly explain how that happened,
and then how Dung as well as of course the
greed of American of Wall Street, of course, the avarice,
(02:13):
and of course what they would say their sound business sense,
shifted American manufacturing and investment directly into China, greatly increasing
its economic might so that it rose from nineteen ninety
when it was about zero point six percent, so not
even one percent of world gross domestic product, to twenty
(02:37):
and nineteen when it's about nineteen percent, or about one
fifth of all world gross domestic product. So in thirty
years it rose from being a less developed country to
becoming an economic powerhouse, of course, and they use that
economic might, of course, to convert it into military power.
(03:00):
Is why we see the rise of this great threat,
existential threat to the United States today. So it took
one of a genius strategists like Dungshallping, the communist leader,
but he also took the United States investment, manufacturing, and
then ultimately the Clinton administration in the nineteen nineties put
(03:23):
communist China on the path to intrigue into the World
Trade Organization, and that just added rocket fuel to communist
China's growth, and the result is what we see today.
Embracing communist China led to its rapid rise to the
point where it's this threat today. And we examine in
(03:47):
the book additionally what we call the engagement school. Right,
there was not only that economic exchange with China, but
that converted into if you will, political power. China and
US business communities, Wall Street and then ultimately media universities,
(04:09):
even the military became invested in engaging with China, not
seeing it as an existential enemy of the United States,
but seeing it as a partner, and thus fundamentally became
a co optive We call this term threat deflation. Year
after year, the US military, the intelligence community, and even
(04:31):
national security strategists threat deflated the China threat. And again,
that is the story of the book in terms of
how we came to where we are, and then of
course we explore what we need to do about it.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
We have to admit, too, Bradley, that the growth of
China over this period was absolutely stunning, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
It was? Indeed, again, it moved from just a less
developed nation status, right for a country of about a
billion people in nineteen ninety, to where it is today
one point four billion people approximately and one fifth of
(05:17):
the world's economy.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
It went from less than one percent of the world's
economy to one fifth of the world's economy in thirty years.
That's a remarkable rise, and that happens very rarely in
international politics. What's fundamentally remarkable, what's unique is that the
US didn't do anything about it, to balance it, or
(05:41):
to try to check its rise. In fact, it it's reverse, right.
It continued to invest, it continued to trade, It continued
to if you will, add this rocket fuel to China's growth.
And that's a very strange thing to happen in the
international politics and the big part of what we do
(06:01):
in the book. Again, the engagement school is so powerful
from the Clinton administration, even in George W. Bush's administration,
the Obama administration, and only President Trump did anything to
reverse that. Before we see what we term a neo
engagement under President Joe Biden again, where Biden is attempting
(06:24):
to return to the Clinton, Bush and Obama strategies of
engagement with communist China, and we argue, of course, that's disastros.
That's exactly what the United States should not do is
a work to engage communist China. But instead, what we
need to do is formulate a strategy of victory over
(06:47):
communist China, as Ronald Reagan developed very famously the remarks
he gave in March of nineteen eighty three in Orlando,
where he said that the United States saw that the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the centered evil
(07:07):
in the modern world, and what we were going to
do as the United States and more broadly the West
was defeat the Soviet Union. Right, we were going to
have victory over the Soviet Union. Well, that's what we
need to return to today.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
It was truly remarkable, Brad the way China has grown,
and we, as you have so accurately mentioned, played a
big part of it. Back in nineteen seventy one, I
was a young reporter in Detroit for radio station, and
I remember President Nixon at the time opening up the
doors with what was called Ping Pong diplomacy, where we
(07:44):
sent a ping pong team to China and it kind
of opened up relations. Was that a smart move or
a dumb move?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, in the context of the Cold War, that was
a smart move because what Nixon was trying to do
was balanced the Soviet Union. He was trying to use
the power of communist China, the military mind of communist China,
and exploit the tensions that existed between the two major
communist superpowers, the Soviet Union of course in Moscow, and
(08:16):
then of course Chinese the People's Republic of China and Beijing.
So what Nixon was trying to do was to use
those powers against one another. That's classic balance of power reasoning.
It makes a lot of sense to do that. What
we've seen in the book, of course, is that well,
(08:37):
the Cold War ended, didn't mint right? The Cold War
ended by nineteen eighty nine, and certainly by the death
of the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety one, but the
United States never recognized Communist China as the threat that
it was, and we, of course, in the book explored
why that was so. So Nixon's strategy he made a
(09:00):
lot of sense in the context of the Cold War,
but once the Cold War was ended, what the United
States should have done is say, hey, look, international politics
doesn't stop, right, You never get a time out in
this and if we help Communist China's rise, what we're
(09:20):
doing is just facilitating the rise of this new communist superpower,
having just defeated the communist superpower of the Soviet Union.
So that's a big part of the book is explaining
how that happened and the gross mistakes that we made. Right,
America's greatest strategic failure was to embrace communists China, leading
(09:41):
to the situation we have today where China's military, of course,
has grown so significantly and threatens the Americans. The spy
balloon that we saw in January of last year, it
floated over of course the United States, the American military institutions.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
The ongoing hacking of our resources. They're hacking like crazy,
aren't they.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yes, said Director Ray has warned, Right said that this
is they've been doing that for a long time and
it's gotten a lot worse. And Director FBI Director Ray
warned that well hacked, these guys are in our infrastructure
and could turn out the lights literally at any time,
(10:25):
as well as turning off the water supply. And they're
a tremendous danger to our interests globally but also to
Americans at home. And that takes an economic form, right,
that was lost jobs that left from Ohio, that left
from Pennsylvania, Illinois to communist China, but also the pandemic.
(10:50):
Of course, we all remember COVID nineteen and what happened
with that and what did we find, George Right, We
found that well, our personal protective equipment was made in China,
exactly tiny cut that off, Uh, we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
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