“The Chinese Communist Party is actually a parasitic system that is exploiting the wealth created by the pioneering Chinese people. They want to replace the U.S.-led international order with their kind of dictatorial model of rule. But today many people still have illusions about the CCP.” Yu Maochun said.
The Chinese Communist Party has also set up many red lines for the international community, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang, and claims that “as the international community, we don’t allow you to say anything, otherwise you are disrespecting us, the Chinese Communist Party, and you are crossing our red line,” Yu said. We can’t actually endorse this kind of red line of the Chinese Communist Party.”
“This red line is not based on international law, it’s not based on international conventions, and China has actually signed on to all of these, but it never enforces them.”
The Trump administration has been continuously stepping on the CCP’s red lines, Yu Maochun said, “This is not an intervention in China’s internal affairs, not an intervention in China’s national sovereignty, because one cannot kill others and commit genocide in the name of sovereignty. Since 1940, the international community has set such rules. This is what I know about the red line of the Chinese Communist Party.”
“There should be red lines that the international community should have, and we must demand that the Chinese Communist Party go and abide by those red lines.”
Earlier, in his first foreign policy address, Biden called China (CCP) “the toughest competitor.” Yu Maochun said, “We have to realize that the other side is not going to compete with us in a peaceful way, and I think ‘severe competition’ means that sooner or later this system of the Chinese Communist Party will wipe us out forever, and the word we use is ‘survival competition. ‘ and I hope the Biden Administration will agree with this position that we had before and agree with this level of severity.”
Yu Maochun was Pompeo‘s senior China Policy staffer when he was U.S. Secretary of State. He was recently interviewed by the English-language Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders program.
Continued from above [Thought Leaders] Yu Maochun: Why the Chinese Communist Party is the primary threat (above)
Yang Jiekai: The Trump Administration‘s policy toward the Chinese Communist Party is summarized in a speech by Secretary Pompeo at the Nixon Library: “distrust and verify.” Using these three words, can you talk about the Trump administration’s policy toward the Chinese Communist Party and what is the core of it? What is the core of it?
Yu Maochun: Over the past 20 years, the most important thing is the phenomenon of globalization. Globalization is not only economic and technological, but also includes changes in national borders, people’s travel habits have changed, Europe has become closer than before, which is all well and good in theory, but one of the risks of globalization is the disappearance of individuality, especially the disappearance of the characteristics of each country.
Two main things are happening at the same Time, one is that countries have an instinct to preserve their own roots or fundamentals, and the Chinese Communist Party is doing this now, and so is the United States.
Xi Jinping‘s 8-year rule: Returning to the roots of Marxism-Leninism
Xi Jinping’s 8-year rule has been a return to his roots, so to speak, which is in contradiction to the current international globalization trend. Xi Jinping once said that he would “not forget the original intention”, which means to remember the original ideology, meaning not to forget that we are a communist country and that we have a mission to make the socialist system a success in the end.
So the main thing during Xi Jinping’s rule was to return China to its Marxist-Leninist ideological roots. You can say that now China, in every aspect, is moving in this direction.
So we see on the interwebs there are these apps of Xi Jinping’s ideas, they’re reintroducing political learning, ideological training and dogmatic indoctrination and so on. They put the Uyghurs in concentration camps, ostensibly to make them learn some business skills, which is a ruse, but mainly to make them learn Xi Jinping Thought, the Communist Party literature, the Marxist-Leninist stuff, to replace their own religious and cultural beliefs.
This is simply a back-to-basics movement as opposed to a globalization phenomenon. In the United States, we have gone through a similar process, and since the election of President Trump in 2016, we have also responded to the trend of globalization with a set of responses, because globalization threatens the uniqueness of nations, so President Trump has suggested that we need to return to our roots, and our roots are to put America first, and to put America’s interests first in everything that we do, whether it’s international or domestic policy.
Freedom against tyranny Trump has given America a huge boost in credibility
So we can’t continue to hurt the American job market, we can’t continue to hurt American sovereignty under the banner of globalization, and that’s the message that Trump wants to send, is America first, and Secretary Pompeo’s foreign policy actually carries out that message from President Trump.
Let’s say we create the Committee on the Undivided Rights, back to the fundamental driving force of American democracy that is freedom against tyranny.
This country was built on that, and that was the original blueprint for the founding of the country. Countries are going back to their roots, their spiritual roots, and China is doing that, and the United States is doing that.
That speech by Secretary Pompeo, which was a very good speech, he said we can’t continue to ignore the fundamental political and ideological differences between China and the United States, the values, the ideology and the governance model, which are fundamentally different.
One of the very important things that we are doing is to restore the prestige of the United States internationally and restore the trust of the world in the United States, and we are trying to show the world that what we are saying is not a joke, when President Obama said to Russia, what is our red line in Syria? If the red line is crossed, we have to take action. Putin didn’t take President Obama’s words seriously, and when they crossed the red line, the Obama administration didn’t do anything about it.
Unlike the Trump administration, we told Russia that our red line was ABCD and so on, and we meant it. When they crossed that red line, we would act, we actually stopped the Russian intervention in Syria, we did the same thing with the dictators in Syria, including Iraq, we said if you kill people with biochemical weapons, we’re going to act. We later bombed their military facilities.
When we said we’re going to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, something that has been said by many presidents before and not acted upon, it hurts the credibility of the United States, and the Trump administration did that, so when we say we do something, we keep our promises so that the reputation of the United States keeps going up.
Many people are different from what they know, many people don’t like President Trump’s personal style, which is understandable, but whatever we do, we actually gain the attention of the world because they are serious about us, and America’s credibility has been going up dramatically.
The Trump administration has spent a lot of energy building and forming international alliances
Some people feel that we are engaging in unilateralism and fighting alone and not gaining the support of the international community, which is untrue, because if you are going to engage in multilateralism, you actually need a goal, and if there is no common vision for everyone, then why engage in multilateralism, it is purposeless.
The Chinese Communist challenge is a global challenge that we face, the global challenge that we rank first, and we want our U.S. allies to be able to face that challenge in a multilateral and common way. Many of their countries were resistant at first, so we put a lot of effort into building and forming this multilateral alliance, which is arguably a hallmark of the Trump administration and its foreign policy, to form alliances to face the Chinese challenge together. Some people say we engage in unilateralism, which is not at all.
Jacky Yang: With the Trump administration leaving office, what is the state of the alliance now?
Yu Maochun: Now more than ever, you will now hear NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg say to consider the Chinese Communist challenge in the Indo-Pacific region, which is a very incredible statement, and it was us who convinced them. Three years ago it was unthinkable that he would say something like that, and last year he did.
When sending our warships to the Taiwan Strait, which is international waters, we did it to counter the absurd rhetoric of the Chinese Communist Party, which claimed it had to have its consent to go there. So we did, and after that, many of our allies followed us, France, Germany and Britain, and even Canada later sent warships over there, and that’s leadership.
You just have to abide by your own first principles, and I think we did that, and the United States has to lead the world, and when you lead the world, freedom-loving nations will follow you. It’s not because we’re arrogant, it’s because we’re a country that has the ability to do that, has that strength to confront the Chinese Communist Party, we have the strength to stop the global expansion of the Chinese Communist Party.
We are in such a position that we can do what many other countries cannot do, and I think more and more countries are starting to accept that, and we have many solid allies, like Australia, Japan, and some countries that may not share our ideology, but for geopolitical reasons, we also have common interests, so we are doing things together, like Vietnam. Now there is a global effort to work together to face the global challenge of the Chinese Communist Party.
We should be proud that we have done things for the Trump administration and accomplished so much and had so many good results.
Biden Administration’s China Policy Following Trump?
Jack Yang: Let’s look at the Biden administration, his approach to China, they’re also talking about holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable, making sure that, they’re using the term “extreme challenges,” and some people are saying that many of the Biden administration’s approaches will be different than the Trump administration’s. One of the last things that you did before you left the State Department, and you were involved in this, was you took the Chinese Communist Party to the Uyghur government. The last thing you did before you left the State Department, and you were involved in this, was you basically identified what the Chinese Communist Party did to the Uighurs as “genocide.
This is very significant. We know there’s the 1948 Genocide Convention and what that means. What do you think the Biden administration should do now? They have acknowledged that this is happening.
Biden’s endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party’s “genocide” should give him the courage to confront the Chinese regime
Maochun Yu: I think we should look at the implications of this in light of the law. When we confirm it as “genocide,” if we confirm it, a series of international and domestic legal policies should follow, and the 21st century should not repeat the terrible mistakes that were made in the 1930s and 1940s. There is now enough evidence for us to avoid mistakes and make the right decisions.
The only thing we need to focus on is the political level, whether this leadership will work and whether we have the courage to confront the Chinese Communist regime head on.
I think the best way to stop this “genocide” is to tell it directly that what you are doing is mass extermination.
Tell it the truth, and only when we do that will the international community be able to address the issue and prevent similar genocide tragedies from happening again in the future.
Of course, Biden is a new administration, and they have the right to set their own policy guidelines, but in this area, to a large extent, they will continue the Trump administration’s policy of calling the atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang “genocide,” which is not a trivial thing, and this new administration agrees with us on that.
I’m glad to see that. My biggest hope is that Biden will not return to the previous state of U.S.-China relations, which was just interaction for the sake of interaction, to maintain the relationship between the two countries, I think the U.S.-China relationship must have a goal.
I think the U.S.-China relationship has to have a goal. The Chinese Communist Party will not compete in a peaceful way, and the U.S. is in a “competition for survival.
We have to realize that the other side is not going to compete with us in a peaceful way, and I think “severe competition” means that sooner or later the Chinese Communist system will wipe us out forever. I hope the Biden administration will agree with our previous position and agree with this level of severity.
I think it’s going to be challenging for the Biden administration to follow through on that. Recently, Yang Jiechi, the senior diplomat of the Chinese Communist Party, has said that we have these red lines, and the red lines of the Chinese Communist Party include the Hong Kong issue, the Tibet-Xinjiang issue, and of course the Taiwan issue, and they say that these are Beijing‘s internal affairs, and that the United States should stay out of them, and that the Chinese Communist Party makes itself look powerful and bullies others in this way, and this has become a habit for them.
They are in the habit of telling the Chinese people, “What can you do? What can’t you do? They’re experts at this now, and then they bring this habit to the international community, telling the world what you can do and what you can’t do. What can’t you do? What is acceptable to the Chinese Communist Party? What is acceptable to the Chinese Communist Party and what is unacceptable, and some of what they say is very absurd and ridiculous, they keep saying that international ships, especially these foreign warships, crossing the Taiwan Strait, this is the red line of the Chinese Communist Party, you should not step on the red line.
Bowing to the Chinese Communist Party Nixon withdrew the Seventh Fleet from patrolling the Taiwan Strait in 1969
Since 1969, when Nixon withdrew the Seventh Fleet from patrolling the Taiwan Strait, we actually gave up this right, we basically bowed down to this bullying practice of the Chinese Communist Party, and the Trump administration basically took a completely different approach, as long as it was legal and in accordance with international law, we had the right to go through that sea area, and we would not listen to this red line that the Chinese Communist Government told us, and we did so. We’ve done that.
So we’ve sent warships across the Taiwan Strait, dozens of times. Our allies have followed suit and done the same thing, and it makes sense.
It makes sense in two ways, one is that the CCP has its red lines, but the CCP’s red lines change frequently, and if it meets international resistance especially from the United States, if it is bullying others, then we are trying to uncover the other side’s bluff, and if you really care about the CCP’s feelings and don’t want to touch them, then this becomes a vicious circle, and the relationship between the two countries will deteriorate more and more, so in the past we have to some extent listened to their demands and went along with what the other side wanted to maintain bilateral relations between the two countries, ignoring international law and treaties.
Last year, we sent our warships, 13 times through the Taiwan Strait, and the year before that about 17 times through the Taiwan Strait. I don’t remember the exact number, it was very significant.
The Trump administration has repeatedly stepped on the red line of the Chinese Communist Party and asked them to comply with international law
Because we have complied with international law, we have complied with our own principles, and we have actually internationalized the Taiwan Strait issue, which is the best defense for Taiwan and the best way for us to carry out the bilateral treaty that the United States and China have signed since 1972 or 1979, which means that the United States and China have agreed to resolve the Taiwan issue in a peaceful manner, which has always been the position of the United States, that using force in the Taiwan Strait in any way is against our national interests. It is against our national interests to use force in the Taiwan Strait in any way, so this is how the United States restores its credibility internationally.
The Hong Kong issue is also a red line for the Chinese Communist Party, as is the Xinjiang issue, and what the Chinese Communist Party wants to tell the world is that we’re going to put millions of Uighurs in concentration camps, we’re going to abuse them, we’re going to suppress their freedom, and you as the international community, we’re not going to allow you to say anything, or you’re disrespecting us as the Chinese Communist Party, and you’re crossing our red line.
This is actually bullying, and the world has to wake up to the fact that we can’t actually endorse this kind of red line of the CCP.
So what I’m trying to tell you is that the CCP’s red line is actually the CCP’s red line, nothing more, and this red line is not based on international law, it’s not based on international conventions, and in fact China has signed on to all of these, but it never follows through.
This is not an intervention in China’s internal affairs, it is not an intervention in China’s national sovereignty, because one cannot kill others and commit genocide in the name of sovereignty. Since 1940, the international community has set such rules. This is what I know about the red line of the Chinese Communist Party.
The international community should have red lines as they should be and we must demand that the CCP go and abide by those red lines.
The Communist Party will use the Olympics to honor a dictatorship
Jacky Yang: Very interesting. 2022 Beijing will host the Olympics, what are your thoughts? It’s a government that committed genocide hosting the Olympics.
Yu Maochun: Of course, we always want to say that government and sports are not the same thing, and I support that.
But the Beijing authorities, for them policy and sports are not separate, they will use this international sporting event Olympic Games to promote, the CCP is great in all aspects, presenting China to the world, whatever it does, no one can criticize it, in fact the CCP it politicizes the international sporting event itself. Like the Olympic Games, as you said earlier, how can we live up to our conscience when we give such an honor as the Olympic Games to the Chinese Communist regime, and at the same time, this regime has committed such a crime as “genocide”?
Yang Jiekai: I think what I want to ask most is what kind of advice would you give to the Biden administration on the issue of the Olympics?
Yu Maochun: The Biden administration has not yet made any practical action, and there has been no change in policy.
Now international human rights bodies are calling on the whole world to pay attention to this issue. It is extremely ironic to have a regime that committed genocide hosting an international sporting event, and I think we as a government should take this opportunity to pressure the Chinese Communist Party to change its practices.
I think this is probably the safest and safest course of action, unless we cancel the U.S. delegation from the games and boycott the event, but I think it might be unfair to the athletes to cancel, so there’s a dilemma about who to let host the Olympic Games in the future.
We have to be very careful and cautious not to bestow this honor on a dictatorial regime.
History Lesson: The 2008 Beijing Olympics dramatically increased the international influence of the Chinese Communist Party
I think there is a historical lesson we can learn from this. The 2008 Beijing Olympics were also held in Beijing, which greatly enhanced China’s international prestige at the time, and actually gave the CCP an excellent opportunity to fantasize itself as the ultimate representative of the Chinese nation, and basically the 2008 Olympics legitimized the CCP regime, making it the regime of the Chinese nation instead of the Leninist regime, the legitimate A system. The international community was hoping that by hosting international events in Beijing, it would force the Beijing authorities, or at least the reformists within the CCP, to make reforms and changes, but that hope was dashed.
So I think this is a lesson from history that the international community was actually used by the CCP to let the dictatorial regime enhance its prestige through the event. In the future, we need to be more cautious and careful when granting the right to host such international events.
I think we got some hints from the editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times, a propaganda agency of the Chinese Communist Party, who said that if any country does not participate in the next Olympics, the Beijing authorities will sanction him or take similar measures.
I think this shows that the smooth running of the Olympics is particularly important to the Chinese Communist authorities, and it shows that the CCP has this paranoid character and persecution paranoia, and I think the world should get a good grip on that. One particularly unique and comical thing about the CCP is that it has actually committed many very horrible crimes against the Chinese people, but it still wants to maintain a good image and still wants to gain respect.
This may not necessarily be a bad thing, because we can use this to put pressure on it, and if you want to gain the respect of others, then you better behave well.
Trump designates Confucius Institute as a foreign mission
J.K. Yang: The Biden administration has also said that he will continue the Trump administration’s approach in terms of China policy, but in many ways he will do things differently, one of which is a recent event, whether U.S. educational institutions are required to disclose contracts and relationships with Chinese Communist propaganda organizations such as the Confucius Institute, there was a new rule last December, but the new rule was later withdrawn by the Biden administration in January.
My question is which aspects of the Trump administration’s China policy do you think will be retained and made permanent by the new administration, and which aspects may not necessarily be adopted by the new administration?
Yu Maochun: Let me start with this Confucius Institute issue. What you need to understand is that when we make a policy proposal, it is a policy proposal that has to go through a maze of complicated bureaucratic procedures before it can be formally adopted.
When we made a decision on the Confucius Institute, you had to go through all these bureaucratic procedures, all these procedures, before it could be formally adopted.
You just said this decision was cancelled, to announce the relationship with the Confucius Institute, and when Biden, the team, came to power on November 20, this set of bureaucratic procedures had not yet been completed, so from the point of view of bureaucratic procedures, why it was cancelled.
Of course if the leaders have the will to do that, they can certainly go ahead and get it passed, so in the end it’s up to the new leadership team.
One thing we did do was we recognized the Confucius Institute’s headquarters in the United States as a foreign mission, and that was not changed by the Biden administration. This is a very specific thing that we did, we recognized this headquarters of the Confucius Institute in Washington DC as a foreign mission because it reports directly to the Beijing authorities.
As to whether or not American colleges and universities colleges need to announce their contractual relationship with the Confucius Institute, I think the bureaucratic process of this matter has not gone through and is relatively minor.
Trump lays the groundwork for a major China policy that Biden will follow
Of course I personally remain cautiously optimistic that this new team will continue to continue these things that we have done before, and in fact, the major China policies, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang on these major issues, they agree with what we have done before.
On certain issues like trade, whether to use unilateral or multilateral, they don’t think quite the same as we do.
Give them some time and they’ll realize that we actually did something similar and they’ll realize how hard it is to get it done in a larger framework, but we tried our best.
JACKIE YOUNG: Going back to your earlier question about how much of the Trump administration’s foreign policy will be retained by the Biden administration, how much of it might be just temporary?
YU Maochun: I think how we in this administration have re-understood the Chinese Communist Party, we laid a foundation, that is, its intentions, its strengths and its opportunities. We won that debate.
In terms of policy direction, we’re not quite done, but the difference is not far, and this is the most important thing for me personally, and I don’t think this is something that the new administration is going to change it.
The way anyone looks at the CCP now in 2021 is absolutely different from the way they looked at it in 2012 in 2015. The Trump administration started with President Trump’s campaign team, so he has a unique perspective on the CCP and what it is that constitutes a threat to us.
His understanding of the Chinese Communist Party was based on this economic nationalist realm, but then under Secretary Pompeo, we slowly deepened our understanding of the nature of the Chinese Communist Party, not only limited to the economic realm, but the threat of the Chinese Communist Party also relates to the military, Culture, and every conceivable realm, so our understanding of the Chinese Communist Party is a comprehensive reorientation, and Secretary Pompeo has repeatedly reiterated that The challenge that the Chinese Communist Party poses to the world is the primary challenge and threat of our time, and I don’t think that’s going to change.
I actually heard President Biden once say that this challenge from China is at the top of the list, and now the entire U.S. government is thinking about this issue.
The most important thing: recognize the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and distinguish between the Chinese Communist Party and China
Jacky Yang: Before we close, we can talk a little bit more about the fact that the Chinese Communist Party is integrated to some extent into many international institutions, let’s say the World health Organization. Recently, the World Health Organization denied the claims of the U.S. intelligence community about the source of this new crown virus (CCP virus), and at the same time, the Biden administration has to work with the Chinese side on many issues that are in their own interest, such as climate issues, and of course this lobby group that helps lobby the Beijing authorities is a big threat and challenge to the Biden administration because they are very strong in this.
So the question I want to ask is, what is the biggest challenge for the Biden administration to maintain a clear stance against the Chinese Communist Party?
Yu Maochun: One very important thing now is a new understanding and view of China, a change in the view of the nature of the Chinese Communist authorities.
We are now able to distinguish between the Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party, we can recognize the Chinese Communist Party its intentions, its power capabilities and its opportunities, and it is very important and most important to be able to see these.
I think if you remember these important things, it doesn’t matter.
The important point is that the United States is actually an international power, and the United States has to deal with many big countries, not only China, but also Russia and Iran, and has to deal with these countries on many levels, so there are actually hundreds of rules and policies for one country.
The U.S.-China relationship is extremely complex, and it involves thousands of issues, treaties and rules, and thousands of policies to be decided.
But let’s never forget the most fundamental thing, and that is that we have to put the interests of the United States first, America first.
The Communist Party of China has put the long line to catch the big fish, treating the United States as its primary adversary for more than half a century.
We should not deal with China, we should not build a relationship with China because of political expediency, we should not deal with China to compromise with it, to build a relationship with China for the sake of building a relationship with China, we must understand in our hearts what we want to achieve, we must keep in mind this goal in our hearts, this is our first step to success.
By the way, one thing I have to admire about the CCP is that they have never forgotten their ultimate goal, they have always been putting in a long line to catch a big fish, from one government to the next, from Mao to Deng Xiaoping, to Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and even to Xi Jinping, this ideology has not changed all the way down the line, this is very shocking.
Their policy toward the United States has never changed, their internal policy of treating the United States as their primary adversary has never changed, because this positive incentive and influence of the American system on the Chinese people is so great that they feel panicked.
So we should have confidence in our strength, in our morality, in our merits, and we should face the CCP in the same way.
That is, not only treating the CCP as a primary opponent, but also understanding that it is such a regime built on oppressive oversight and deep fear of its own people.
Yang Jiekai: Mr. Yu Maochun, it’s a great honor to have you on our show.
Yu Maochun: It’s my pleasure, thank you!
Bye!
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