American Thought Leaders - A Century of Misjudgment: How the US Helped the CCP Survive, and Become Its Greatest Adversary | Xi Van Fleet

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Xi Van Fleet grew up in China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. She was too young to be a real revolutionary Red Guard, but old enough to observe the astonishing scenes of violence and ideological fervor around her during those terrible years.I sat down with her to discuss her new book, “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.”She says she felt compelled to write this book to help Americans understand the true nature of communism. Over the past hundred years or so, the United States has made one grave mistake after another because of this major blind spot, she says.In our deep-dive interview, Van Fleet takes me on a tour of China’s history starting in the late 19th century and explains how America—over and over again—made decisions that helped the Chinese Communist Party: first to gain influence, then to defeat the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, and eventually to rescue the CCP from certain collapse in the 1970s.By visiting Beijing and re-opening US-China relations at a time when China’s economy was in shambles, President Richard Nixon effectively “saved the CCP from the ruins,” she says.The history of how the United States helped the CCP survive is “hidden history,” as she calls it, one that is not taught in the schools and not discussed publicly: “A lot of people want to hide it. But in order for us to understand, we have to learn this very, very important piece of history that my book is all about.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

I understand people going on the street today in Minneapolis, fighting, the eyes believing they're doing something noble. And that's exactly what happened to the Red Guard. So in the Cultural Revolution, which you lived through, you saw that in real time. When I was growing up, we were always told, our goal is to liberate the humanity. Shee Van Pleet is a survivor of Mao's Cultural Revolution and co-author of Made in America.

the hidden history of how the U.S. enabled communist China and created our greatest threat. Because they never understood communism, they made all the possible mistakes and eventually helped the CCP to take over China. From the founding of the CCP in 1921 to today, she breaks down how America aided the survival and rise of its greatest adversary.

CCP or communism is a snake. You can save it, you can help it, but it will fight you because it's nature. The nature is that it's going to destroy you. This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Yanya Kelluk. She Van Fleet, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Thank you so much for having me back for the third time. Well, and you always have incredibly important things to say and congratulations on your new book. on your new book, which I will also say is very important and kind of dovetails with the

book that I have coming out as well, so I find it particularly poignant. You mentioned something in there that a lot of people don't understand, but I also covered. Totalitarianism is distinct from just your run-of-the-mill authoritarian dictatorship. How is it different? Yeah, I think this is important because I think lot of people use it interchangeably and a lot of people use authoritarianism to describe the CCP. There is a big difference and I covered that in my book. And so the difference is that authoritarianism is of course dictatorship. They demand you do certain things and they demand that you obey and mostly leave you alone, not totalitarianism.

They demand not only you obey, but you have to believe in them. That means they have to control your mind. And it's like a religion. So I think that totalitarianism is more like theocracy, like in Iran, like in China. They absolutely demand that you change your mind. called thought reform and believe their lies. You have to believe. You can't even pretend you believe. They demand that. And that's my experience, my first 26 years experience in China. I think that's important to understand it. CCP and the people in Iran, they are totalitarianism.

You know, this is super interesting because I think that, you know, through pushing this mass propaganda into the system, right, this is something that was a huge lesson to me over the last 10 years, how powerful propaganda can be. But it will change the minds of people. I always thought that people never really accepted propaganda. It was just, it was kind of like people knew that it probably wasn't true, but just kind of were, okay, whatever. we'll run with it because they have all the guns. But no, it actually changes people, right? When it's pushed in so hard through the system. So in the cultural revolution, which you lived through,

you saw that in real time. Yeah, and I hear too. I think I want people to realize wokeism is also totalitarian in nature because it demand that you believe. The demand you believe, you can't just say, okay, women can be men, but you have to believe it.

And they have been very successful in changing people's mind. So it is totalitarian in nature. So that's why the underlying link is communism, Marxism. Interesting. Well, so a fine point here, okay? I think you're exactly right in that they demand that you believe. But I don't think a lot of people, I still think a lot of people don't quite believe,

but they performatively believe. They pretend they believe because, well, it's a lot more convenient. And, of course, again, they have all the guns. Yeah. Right? Or all of the social power, let's say, or a lot of the social powers is the case, say in the West. So it's an interesting distinction because they're demand that you have to believe. But of course, not everybody.

Some of it is pretty crazy. So not everybody believes. It's okay to just pretend hard that you believe, right? It started that way. It's always in the Cultural Revolution, how many people really believe, but they have to pretend. Because not to believe or showing that you doubt and you end up in Gulux or even in execution side. And that is how they run their regime and how they have to do that in order to control your mind. Just very briefly, before we talk about the details of the book, how did the Cultural Revolution affect

you personally? I really start to think more and more that I understand, I really do. I understand people going on the street today in Minneapolis fighting, these eyes believing they're doing something noble. And that's exactly what happened to the Red Guards. You can't say they just totally just have no idea what they're doing. They believe in it. And the same thing like here.

radical left, they believed they thought it's something noble. And that's the power of indoctrination. I've seen that. I was one of them, even though I was not really, Red Guard was too young. But I believed in the lies I was told. I absolutely never doubt. I always believe that the party is always right. The party cannot be wrong. So what I do, believe in the party. And just very briefly, for those that might be uninitiated, the Red Guard, tell me about who they The Red Guards and the kids. Yeah, during the Cultural Revolution,

Mao need an army to carry out his revolution. And he can't use the army. That looked like a coup. Because his goal is to take down the CCP. What? CCP? Yes, his goal is to take down the CCP. Run this by me again.

The Mao's goal was to take down the CCP. I hadn't heard that before. Tell me more. Yeah. Because he believed that he was no longer in control. He believed that his party was somehow not listening to him. So what to do? Get rid of them, all of them, from the central government

all the down to the village level. And so he needs people to do it. He needs an army, and he has an army, and that is tens of millions of Red Guards, the young people. They know nothing, and they can't think critically, critically and they do one thing really well follow the water so they did what more want them to do to take down the CCP they did so what how did that look like in real life like what did that mean well what did these red guards

actually do 2020 that's what they did in the Cultural Revolution like what they had did here in in America it's destroyed destroy everything, destroy statues, destroy communities, because they're so emboldened, they were backed by people in power. In China, they were backed by Mao. Mao claimed himself to be the red commander in chief for the red guard. And here, the Democratic Party was behind those mobs, those rioters, those looters, everything. And so you don't have to imagine. You just think about 2020 in Minneapolis and 2026 in Minneapolis. That is what Red Guard looked like.

Well, except that the Red Guard took it to kind of a whole different level, right? Like we, I mean, I remember there was this three-body problem. Remember there's this series that came out recently not too long ago where they really kind of showed what these Red Guards were just. doing, right? And I was amazed that this, I landed on Netflix. I was too. Yeah. And I tweet about it because it's very true to life. That's very close to what happened. So my point is they were killing people, literally, right? They were. They were killing people. And the killing started with their professors, start with their teachers and principals. And so I would say we're not there yet.

Very close. Very close. If we don't stop it, it won't take long for us to get there. And so what you're saying is this, this is a combination of indoctrination and sort of the understanding that there's institutional power behind you, the combination of those two things. Absolutely. So I would think, I think most people probably were great that Renee Good did not prepare to die. I think he kind of like, many others probably believe that there's no consequences. So yeah, and they absolutely failed that they are empowered by the Democratic Party and by the people who urged them to go on the street, by the lieutenant governor who urged them to

put your body on the line. And many of them probably did not think there was any consequences. Because there's no consequences in 2020, after all this riots. What happened to those people? We don't know, nothing. So let's go back now to you make some really interesting, you did some really interesting research in your book. You're looking way back to even before the time

where the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949 in China, that already there were sort of, there were kind of American interests that were basically supporting it. I did not know. about this. Tell me more. This is I tried to do in my book to trace all the way back to the beginning. And so, and it really started in the 1800, in the middle of 1800, when a lot of American missionaries or Western missionaries went to China to spread the

gospel. At the same time, they also brought with them the idea, of democracy, the idea of constitutional government. And it's their work actually fueled the revolution of 1911, which overthrew the Qing dynasty. And in 1920, 1912 created the republic. And it's called Republic of China. 1912. And it's, they tried their best. It's imperfect. It's far from being perfect. But it's tried to follow the model of America style government. And it failed, but it survived. And it's still here today. People don't think about it. It's still here today. Republic of China,

Now it's in Taiwan, transitioned to a full democracy. So that was the beginning. But what happened? China was on the way to become a really potential, if I say, potential to be a really a republic and Asians first, but it was derailed. And that part of the history is just astonishing. And who played that? played that role to derail the whole potential Woodrow Wilson.

Well, but we know, I mean, let's go before Woodrow Wilson got involved, I mean, the Soviet common-turn was a little bit involved in here, okay? I mean, I say that glibly, right? But this was a project of the Soviet Union, right? No, actually it's the other way around. So the Western ideas came to China around the same time in the early 1900, late 1800 and early 1900. And the Enlightenment ideas, ideas of democracy, idea of freedom, and among them is also Marxism. But it did not make any interaction.

People are more drawn to the Western idea, and they call it Mr. Duh and Mr. Sai, meaning it. science and democracy. They believe that's what China needed and that's what we'll save China and help China to modernize and to be independent from the foreign influence or control of the imperial West. And then something happened. After World War and the foreign powers got together in Versailles and that was the Paris peace talk. So China was very hopeful thinking that they will get the land called the Sandong province back from the Germans. Instead, it went to Japan. And because

people are just so hopeful that Udo Wilson will help them with their demand. with their rightly cause of getting their land back from Germany. It did not happen. And that turned everything just upside down. Overnight, the sentiment from pro-America to anti-America. That paved the way for the red tie to sweep through China. that gave the opening to the Russians to come to China and eventually helped the radicals to form communist groups. And in 1921, officially funded the Communist Party.

So Russia came second. So. But it's a fine point, but they took advantage of an opening. Exactly. The opening was because Chinese disillusioned about Western-style democracy. That is really the key point. And so basically set the stage ready for the Russians to come to China and eventually take over.

So well trace that for me. So now, of course the Soviets came. They were doing their thing. But it didn't last that long in itself, right? Like basically the Mao and the Chinese took control of the Communist Party at some point pretty quickly, right? That is a long history. Actually, I think probably is better to read the book because there's a lot of history.

Actually the Russians not only took over the communists because they helped to fund the communists. They also took control of the nationalists. And so because the leader of a nationalist party, Xin Yang-san, who was considered the founder of a Chinese republic. And so he was looking for help from the West. And no one, everyone turned the back to him. So eventually he said, I have to go to Russia. So because no one would.

was willing to help us. And at that time, actually, the dominant thought in America's isolationism. It's China such a vast and a poor continent over there. It doesn't really matter to our national interests. It might be right, but they overlooked a very important factor. The Russians are ready to move in, and they did. Absolutely. So we have two ways now that you explain that America played a role in bringing us to today the way the Communist Party rules. There was very early on in America and frankly in the West were at large, right, a kind of love affair with communism and something that I've been increasingly learning more and more about as, as I'm a I guess you could call it Lenin's evil genius and ability to push very attractive narratives,

you know, out into the world, very, very, very, very, uh, warm and pleasant-sounding propaganda, which was very acceptable to, to all sorts of people that were, you know, kind of disillusioned with their countries, disillusioned with their governments. And so, you know, it created this whole kind of group of people that were just very sympathetic, even when atrocities started happening. So just kind of tell me about this whole picture. Yes, of course. They are very good at find out what is appealing.

At that time, what was appealing to the Chinese is nationalism, because they feel like humiliated by the West, by Woodrow Wilson, particularly, because they put so much faith in him, believing that he would help Chinese. China because it's a self-determination, right? It's just really encourage everyone. So what they say is that, look, the Western imperialists cannot be trust, but we'll help you, we'll help you with your struggle against it. And it was just sounds like music to the intellectuals ears of that time.

And so they absolutely said, this is our way out. And so they believe that the Russian Revolution gave them the hope for China's future. Explain to me how the nationalists were also somehow co-opted by the Soviets alongside the Communist Party itself, which was fighting them. Because Xinjiang could not get any help. And he wanted to... But like how did that manifest? Like what, I mean, it makes it sound like Soviets were fighting the Soviets or something?

This is very difficult to explain. This will be the first United Front. My book, I covered, there's a whole chapter, covered a lot about United Front, which is something that every American should know, a term that every American should be familiar with. But let's go to the beginning. It did not start it now. It started way back.

So when the Soviet Union helped to fund the Chinese Communist Party, it was very small. It was only 50 members. Guess who were the members? Do you think it's poor peasants or poor workers? The proletarian? No. They were intellectuals. Some professors of Beijing University and their students.

They're very small. while nationals is a mature party because they carried out the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty. So what they did is the Soviet, what they did is they helped the Nationalist Party. But there is a condition that you have to incorporate the communists. And so basically their plan was that they let the communists be part of the nationalists and eventually take over from within. And they were almost successful until later the new leader of the nationalist, Zhang

Kai Shik, realized the plan. They realized that the communists have been infiltrating the party from within. and had been really converted so many nationalists into communists. So in 1927, he made the decision to purge them. And he killed some 4,000 suspects because they did not know who was who. It was a very, very messed situation. So they killed 4,000, including communists. and also some leftist nationalists.

And that marked the split of this two. But for us to understand is that that's what Chinese communists. Or commoners in general, they are parasites. They absolutely attach themselves to a bigger political party or force and then grow from within and they are almost successful. So how does the United Front fit in and maybe explain what it is? Yeah. So you can see from the first try that they implemented is work from within,

undercover mostly. So it's an infiltration and influence operation. And a lot of the communists joined the Nationalists, but only a few on the top were known to the Nationalists. Mao was one of them, so they knew that the top leaders were communists. But other people they don't know. So it's really, it's like a work from within, and that's what going on in America is the work from within. You don't know who they are, and it's the influence and then they leave no trace. A lot of people who are played have no idea that this happened to them.

And so... So what happened to them? They absolutely took the stand and become the spokesperson for the CCP. And a lot of them were selling the or giving away the trade secrets. And a lot of them look at the Confucius Institute. What they did is that... So now we're going back to the present. Yeah.

Okay. Right. Yeah. So what they do is work from within. So how do people don't, a lot of people don't know. Okay, so for the Confucian Institute, money was such attractive offer. So a lot of universities let them in. Once you let them in.

Let me just qualify a little bit. So Confucius institutes, for those that might not be familiar, were basically from China, institutions connected themselves with university and other educational institutions of America, coming with generous money and also educational materials and basically creating a partnership ostensibly with no political orientation, but the reality was quite different. Yeah. One of the things, one of the few things is that you cannot talk about debate. You cannot talk about Uyghurs and you cannot criticize CCP.

So there goes free speech. But they embed themselves in almost all universities and high schools. And eventually now it's like everywhere. And so that's how they come in from within, because you want the money, you want the donation. You say, okay, it's okay. We don't talk about Hong Kong. We don't talk about Taiwan. But eventually you can talk about a lot of things.

And that's how they kill free speech. And that's how they influence the people's mind and think that our CCP is just another country and another party. And it's very interesting, right? Because there's this sort of, when there's this financial relationship, you're also sort of motivated to cover for it because you're getting this benefit, right? Even if you're a little, you know, you, if there wasn't the financial relationship, you might be a little more suspicious.

wouldn't have so much kind of invested, if you will. Of course. Great. And money and greed will blur people's, you know, people's view of what they're dealing with. And so, you know, but when the United Front was started, I absolutely had these because the goal of kind of creating basically a pro-communist United Front among all sorts of people that were not officially communist, right?

basically. I think that's where the name or the idea came from, right? And again, talking about the idea where it came from, from Lenin. Yeah, united front this idea and this tactic was created by Lenin. And of course, the Soviet taught their students well in China. So the nationalists purge the communists, but we still end up getting the CCP taking over in 1949. This story is so absolutely fascinating. So after the purge and the CCP have to withdraw and went to a mountain to become really bandits. That's what they are called, red bandits.

But they're not going to give up. And that's something we have to learn. Communists do not give up. And Mao famous said, a little spark will start prairie fire. So they have their little so-called Soviet Republic in the mountains in southern China. And they started to expand and call themselves basically opposition government. And so, and the Jiang Gai Shik was determined to, to get rid of them.

So he tried five encirclement campaign and tried to wipe them out. And the fifth time he was successful and drove the communists out of that area and started, what many people know, the long march to escape and they went westward and eventually landed in northern China, a place called Yan'an. So from there on, the fight continued because by then the Japanese started its aggression against China. Totally by accident, also by national demand, they have to start another United from, worked together supposedly, to fight against Japanese. That turned out to be another disaster.

And that turned out to be really the corporation that ended nationalists. And eventually after several war, drove them out of China to Taiwan. So twice they collaborated and twice the nationalists were deceived and eventually defeated. And sort of, you know, they had to escape to Taiwan, which is how the Republic of China ended up in Taiwan. Correct. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. So, you know, this enemy of the enemy as my friend approach, it doesn't work with communists. That's kind of the message I'm getting here. Yes. That was later, that was Nixon. But we still have a little important history to cover. And that was during the World War II. I guess just to qualify what I mean, right, in this situation, right, obviously the

nationalists and the communists were not friends, but they got together to fight the Japanese as the common enemy. And I wonder to myself, you know, shouldn't that already, after what happened, shouldn't that already have been the lesson? Exactly. But the enemy of the enemy is my friend, doesn't work with communists. Absolutely. But the history is very complicated.

It is not that simple. But my book explained why the nationalists were forced to collaborate with the CCP again. And the same thing happened. They were deceived and defeated. But this took us back to forward, actually, to the 30s. in late 30s and early 40s. And now the Americans come on the scene. Why? Because of the common enemy, the Japanese.

So now they took us to the late 1930s and early 1940s. And now the Americans reappeared on the scene, because now they're forced to engage with China, they had a shared enemy, Imperial Japan. And this period actually was a period that the Americans had a first-hand experience with the CCP. And CCP managed to deceive the Americans and manage to use the Americans and manage to utilize the Americans to defeat their enemy, the nationalists. So the lesson absolutely was never learned because after this, the same thing happened over

and over and over until even today. So this is why the book is so important to help people to understand we were there. And I said, wait, America was there and they did not understand communism. And because they never understood communism, they made all the possible mistakes and then help the CCP to take over China. So this is, you're saying even during this time period where the nationalists and the Chinese were working together, the nationalists and the communists were working together, the Americans were also kind of on the side of the CCP.

Yeah. And here is another important thing, is that the Americans never understood the difference between totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Right, as we talked about it at the beginning. Yeah, exactly. Why? They never understood that Jiang Gai Shui government, the nationalist government, was indeed corrupt, was indeed ineffective, but it was an authoritarian regime. They, because they thought this government is so corrupt and then look on the other side, look at communism. They seem to be real organized, devoted.

They seem to be the one that we should collaborate with. And they have no understanding. Actually they should by then, because there is an example of what went on in Soviet Union, but they refused to really learn about it. They bet that it is communism, communists that will really help to achieve the goal, to defeat the Japanese. So they did, just as I said, they made all the possible mistakes and eventually help the CCP to take over China.

It seems like these mistakes basically continued for a very long time afterwards. It's kind of hard to imagine how that would be possible. I mean, you're saying this is like, you know, the turn of the century, not too long after the turn of the century. We've just, and by the way, it's not just the U.S., it's kind of the West at large, right, that we're really talking about here, but with, of course, the U.S. being the most influential. That is the key.

The lessons never learned. That's why the communist tactics of the United Front keep working. Keeps working. What's the tactic? Tactics is deception and influence and infiltration. So because of their tactic, the Americans, I'm talking about journalists, diplomats, American generals, American presidents, all bought into the lie that the Communist Party were really, really the one that is going to help to defeat the Japanese.

They believe all the lies, even though the lies were just so blatant. Well, Japanese first and then later the Soviets, right? Yeah. presidencies right like it was there was this whole hedge to try to stop the Soviet Union with the help of the Chinese which at this point that relationship had soured yeah yeah I can give you some example of this started with the journalists always you know like a year too the journalists so they went to China before the Americans started to have make alliances with the nationalist government

against Japan. One of them is called Edgar Snow. He is so well-knowing because he wrote a book called Red Star Over China and it's still in print today. He went to Yang An, the base of the Chinese Communist Party. And he did a glowing report of the communists and compare them basically to the early Christians. They are organized, they devoted, they are patriots, and they are the future. And of course he has influence.

He had direct influence to president like FDR and later Nixon. So his book absolutely changed the perception of Chinese Communist Party in the West. And he called them really, he called them reformers. They are agrarian reformers. You know, it's not really communist. They are not really communist. That perception lingered until today. And it's not only it's influential internationally because it's English.

Later it was translated into Chinese and used a different title because that title sounds a little bit like communist propaganda. So changing into another title, it's the Journey to the West using classic novels, Chinese classic novels title and published. That was absolutely the most influential book to really get so many young people to Yan'an, to join the revolution. And among them, two of my uncles, yeah, they read the book, they believed it. They believed that to defeat Japanese, we have to join the communists.

That is how powerful the propaganda is. Of course, Edgar Snow probably did not know that his book actually was propaganda, because all the information that put on in his book was offered to him by the CCP. So in many ways, that is the first United Front tactic that they implemented in the Americans, and he was the first. And then followed him. There are so many other journalists, and I mentioned many of them in the book. But later, the State Department, the diplomats, and the Christian educators, the missionary,

the people that are really missionaries, they also knowingly or unknowingly, mostly unknowingly, help to spread the propaganda. And a lot of them just helped so many young people, just like here, just like in America today, to believe in communism and to abandon their families. So a lot of them were well-educated from a well-to-do family, abandon everything, went to Yan'an, joined the revolution. Wow. That's amazing.

So these became the old friends of the Chinese people, as you call them. This is what the title, I would say, that is the title that the CCP gave to those foreigners who helped them with their cause. The old friend of the Chinese people. And the first one received this title is Edgar Snow. And then you will see along the line, many, many people, including our presidents, got that title. Good friend, old friend of Chinese. It has nothing to do with Chinese people.

It should be called old friend of the CCP or useful idiots. You know, and this also reminds me of the, you know, one of these biggest pieces of successful propaganda, I think, that the Chinese Communist Party has affected is just this idea that the communists actually represent the Chinese people. that the party is the people, in fact, right? When I would argue nothing could be further from the truth. This still, that lie is still being believed by so many Americans or people around the world. Even today. Even Chinese many.

Yes. Right? I mean, that's the craziest part, right? Yeah. So I would, not too long ago, and this guy called Victor Gao, he worked for some kind of a think tank. Beijing. So he had a video that went viral. He said, China, we have 5,000 years history, most of which there's no United States and we are expected to survive another 5,000 years. This is a lie. Chinese civilization lasted for thousands of years, but the CCP is not part of the Chinese civilization.

It's an imported Western ideology. And they had a beginning. That was 1921. That is CCP. And they hijack China. Now they become, they call themselves China. It cannot be further from the truth. So this is very important for Americans to understand this.

CCP is absolutely a foreign implant. in China and I would say they were the colonizers of this ideology from Western Europe, from Germany, if we trace back to the beginning. And it has nothing to do with Chinese civilization. And during the Cultural Revolution, we saw that Mao want to destroy everything that's Chinese through the so-called four-olds, destroy the four-olds, old ideas, old tradition, old custom, and old habits. Anything Chinese, They want to destroy. They are not Chinese.

CCP is not Chinese. I think it's so important for people to understand this. Why are communists always so interested in destroying what Mao called the four-olds, all of this tradition? Yeah, we talk a little bit. I really consider communism a styleocracy. It's a religion. And it's absolutely a religion because it sought to control,

not just a system, not just property or economy. It really, really want to control people's mind. And so in many ways, it is a religion. So because it is a religion, it cannot put up with any other tradition, civilization, ideology, and of course religion. But with the coming of Deng Xiaoping, as the story goes, right, suddenly to be rich is to be glorious. So, you know, obviously China abandoned communism, right?

Well, then we have to go back a little bit to Nixon, don't you think? And so it was in 1972, and I was in high school that we learned Nixon was coming to China. We just could not believe if Americans were shocked, we were just imagine how shocked we were, because since childhood we were taught America is our deadly enemy because America want to destroy us and so we'll do everything to defend China against our enemy. And then you tell me President Nixon was going to visit us. just could not get our mind around it. And that was the height of the cultural revolution.

When everything was in ruins, absolutely in ruins, and there's no economy. And a few years after that, I was sent to the countryside. After I graduated from high school, why? There's no economy, no jobs, no nothing. We live in extreme poverty. But CCP was saved. saved by no other than the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. And Trump rightly called that was the biggest mistake he made.

Yes, that is true. He saved CCP from the ruins. How? He opened China up. At that time, it's even worse than just economic ruins in America. In the late 50s. In China. In China.

The time was just so crucial because China at that time was facing the absolute total collapse internally. There's no economy. Everyone was living in extreme poverty. But more than that. And in the late 1950s, there is a big split. between China and Soviet Union. And it gets worse. By the time of 1972, by the time that before Nixon visited China,

the two powers were almost at the blink of nuclear war. Can you imagine? Mao was like a threat both internally, externally. Only this time it was his former boss, Soviet Union. And he needed help. He absolutely needed help. Sure enough, the help was on the way. And there was no other than the president of the United States, Richard Nixon.

So it opened up. Open it up. And all the crisis eased. And soon after that, China got into the Security Council of United Nations. because the Americas did not do anything about it. So turned around and then absolutely was saved and escaped all the immediate threat of being bombed by a nuclear weapon.

And now safely on the side of the Americas, of the world superpower, United States of America. You know, it's a really, this story, and I want to encourage people to read because you flesh out so many of these details and nuances of how this all happened. But we go from this opening up where the Nixon administration, in effect, you know, kind of saves the CCP as opposed to having it collapse in something else forming there. Two, we, you know, there's this kind of line that goes all the way to today where the CCP, where the CCP, as opposed to having it collapse in something else forming there. all the way to today where the CCP has these deep, deep inroads in America itself. We're just, we're seeing another biolab that's was, that's been discovered. We have these, you know, police stations, as we say in quotes. We have, you know, all of this IP theft and,

you know, cyber theft and, I mean, and, and United Front, you know, compromised individuals across the whole country. And, I mean, it's not just America, but, of course, the focus always has been America. So, you know, just I would love to talk out through all the nuance, and that's something I think people should read your book through it, but just kind of give me a picture of how we went from the Nixon's opening up to today. Yeah, I think this, you're so right.

There's so much to cover, and it's almost impossible. but I try my best. So after Nixon opened the door to China and a lot of people have problems understanding it and just like me I was like a what but then of course I could not think critically the party must be right so yeah so party was right but a lot of Americans have trouble understanding it we just we're still in the midst of Cold War so So if we ally with the Chinese, which was communist country, and so then it's a cold war about communism, and so people have questions.

So it just make no sense, right? And so what they did, the Nixon administration, they come up with a way that somehow worked. They said, yes, the enemy still communism, but the Chinese communists, they're not really communists. They are so-called communists. And that has been actually the way that they deceive Americans and still worked. Still today, people think that, oh, Chinese communism, it's kind of kind of. not like Confucius communism. It's not like, you know, the Soviet communism. It's still

today, Russia, Russia, Russia, and not many people call China, China, China. So they were, they were allowed to not be questioned. All this, his, the atrocity happened behind the so-called bamboo curtain was not taught. Eighty-some million Chinese died. under the Chinese regime. And later, more than 300 million babies were falsely boarded, not told. So the American people just say, okay, Chinese or communist, they're not really a threat, they're okay.

And so that is really a problem. And so later on, they call it, they're reformers. Remember, Deng Xiaoping, they're reformers. The reformer. Deng Xiaoping never, never planned to have political reform. All he wanted was economic reform. Why? Because China was absolutely in the blink of total collapse.

At that time, nobody believed in CCP. And so he has to do something. So that's why he got his doctrine, now a kind of famous black cat, white cat, as long as it catches mouse as a good cat. It's temporarily, we have to save this country. And what do we do? Get the foreign investment, get their technology. And that's how we started.

And Americans were told, you know, if we help China, first of all, it's not a real communist, it's a so-called communist country. If we help them to develop the economy, democracy will just naturally follow. Do we remember that? And I even, I have to say, I even kind of believe maybe, maybe, yeah, maybe if we help them to have a strong economy, people will naturally demand more freedom of speech, and they

will have a democracy in China. Wrong because, again, we're dealing with communists. And after all these decades of opening, and a reform. What happened when Xi Jinping took over in 2012? Reverse. Now going back to Mao era. Because to them, wealth is important, but nothing is more important than the control of power. Then the party. And the party. And the party. Absolutely. Because, yeah. Power and party is the same thing.

To save the party is more important than anything else. And this is something else I think it's important that I want to bring up is the rise of China. Now it's become the second largest economy. Who benefits? Okay, we'll say, okay, you know, Americans, we sacrificed, we lost millions of jobs. Maybe by doing so, we help the Chinese people to have a better future. That is not the case. We help the CCP elite to become rich.

Even today, I think 600 million Chinese only makes $5 a day. Why? Because that's not what the CCP doing all this for. It's for their power. So the CCP elites become billionaires, some even trillionaires. So the rise of China is bad for America, bad for the world, because they become really threat. Original threat now a world threat.

We can see their hands behind almost all the terrorist organization and also in America. We can almost see their hands behind all these radical organizations behind BMM and behind the protests for Hamas and today anti-ice. And there are people reporting the connection of their money coming to fund those radical organizations. But most of all, I think it is the Chinese people who are the victims of this powerful powerful party. Before I said, you know, after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, They really lost all their legitimacy.

People did not believe in the CCP. Not only that the CCP was, the whole country was in economic ruins, but also people just lost face in the Communist Party. But today, they absolutely have more power than ever. And so the democracy in China is full. further away from the horizon than ever. So the victims absolutely are the Chinese people. You know, I just came back from the International Religious Freedom Summit, which was here

in D.C., as we're filming, you know, the last couple of days. And I keep thinking about this, that religious freedom really is the litmus test. Like if you, because as you said, right, in these communist societies, it is this kind of quasi-fals religion character that communism takes on. And so of course they have to suppress any other form of anything that would compete with that. Because people, I mean, I believe that people naturally want to seek that connection, seek that connection, an actual connection to God, not with the Communist Party ideology or as an intermediary. And so it can never tolerate. religious freedom. And I think if we understood this and saw that and understood that this is the

red flag, right? Absolutely. You would, we would be in a very different situation, right? Yeah. And the other thing I can say is that during a cultural revolution, and they depend on people reporting each other. And I just absolutely remember that we're encouraged to report even our parents. If we hear they say something that is not political, political, correct or is that somehow against the party's party line? And they don't have to do that today. With this surveillance technology, they can absolutely control you before you even utter a word.

And with the social credit system, they absolutely enslave every Chinese. And if they suspect you, it's not even you want to do something against the government. If they suspect that you might have some. something against government. They can absolutely end your life. They can use the app. They can just have access to your bank account. You can even take train or playing or you're just basically, you are just disabled.

And so that was not like cultural revolution anymore because now they have the technology, they have the money thanks to the West and thanks specifically to the United States. Now they become more powerful than ever and more dangerous than ever. I mean, it's interesting because they're more powerful. They have a lot of power and they are dangerous. I think I agree with that. At the same time, they're in some ways, they're very fragile. Yeah. And you can see that just in the past two weeks, the news came out of China that Xi Jinping perched the number one in the military and a bunch of high-level military leaders. And this is not his first, but this is his biggest.

And this guy was his childhood friend. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Why? Because he feel not secure. So because of that, he has to purge everything, everyone that he feels suspicious of. But eventually he won't trust anyone. There's no one left to trust.

And how fragile is that kind of regime? Yes, while from the outside look very powerful. But inside, it's very fragile. You're absolutely right. Yeah, so, I mean, because it's kind of like a mixed message, right? Because on the one hand, you're saying, yes, there's a lot of power. I mean, yes, they have nuclear weapons. They had TikTok.

They have, you know. all of this, you know, biggest militarization in the history of the world, fastest, you know, arguably, you know, massive state security apparatus to repress the people of the country. At the same time, it's just always, I mean, some people would argue, and I think I would be one of them, that it's unusually fragile. Yeah. And, you know, I had Hung He, one of our kind of key analysts. Yes, yes, yeah.

I saw that in order to achieve what she achieved through these purges of the top top top military readers, in a way he's sort of reduced the overall power of the system because they don't, because you started breaking all of the unwritten rules that, that, of how that system worked. Yeah, the other thing I think a lot of Americans don't understand. Who do you think is the number one thread? to the CCP. Most people probably say United States because it is the superpower that CCP want to replace. Of course, it's considered United States as number one enemy.

It's kind of true, but there is another enemy. It's scared the most. It's the Chinese people. It spent more money than the military. and un-so, it's called security or public safety. It is really all this surveillance systems and all this police and to do what? To control the population because they are scared of the people that they rule over. So she, I'm really enjoying this conversation and I would love to to actually continue it for hours. But I think we'll let people read the, you read your book and, you know,

kind of figure out a lot of these details. Again, we looked at a situation where on the one hand, we do feel like the CCP has an unusual level of power, military, unusual level of influence in the West, in America. I mean, we can see variations of it all the time. really taken advantage of the openness of our system in the West. At the same time, there's this fragility inherent because there isn't that legitimacy and there's this sort of paranoia, right, to keep power at any cost. What do you see as the right approach, right, that would

be good for America, good for the Chinese people going forward? Yeah, it's a big question. But one thing I would say, is that the theme or the goal of my book is to really tell American people. We have threat, absolutely, over there, that's CCP. And also my first book, I addressed the threat within, that is the American Cultural Revolution, the woke ideology. And so, but where is the real, a source of all this problem, are they even connected and how do I address it?

And it's a big question, but I would say that my first book, Mouth America, I try to answer the question to the thread from within, that is the woke ideology, and that is not coming from somewhere else. It's homeborn. ideology was born here and made specifically for a country like America. And so, but after that, I still feel like there's a lot of questions unanswered. But also I want to make this very clear in my second book, Made in America, and as the title said, I believe that the reason that CCP, first of all, was successful in taking over China and later in challenge directly to America is because

we as Americans we failed to understand our leaders feel to understand the true nature of communism and we fail to understand the threat it poses to us to our way of life and And because of that, we made one mistake of another and history was never learned. And that's why, I mean, the problem is here. We have to look inside rather than look outside to have solutions. And this is a huge problem, but I say start with learning history. start to learn how we got here to begin with. And I think this book will help you really to understand a lot of things that you are not taught,

because this is, I call it, hidden history, because it's not taught in schools, and it's not talked in and discussed in public discourse, because a lot of people want to hide it. And in order for us to understand, we have to learn this very, very important piece of history and that my book is all about. And you mentioned that we really failed to understand the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party of Chinese communism. I think this is of critical importance. I actually make the same argument.

In a nutshell, how would you explain that nature in the shortest possible way? What is it that we don't understand? Okay, yeah. One way is to understand that communism, we talk a little bit, it's a religion. And it's really want to remake the world in its own image. And not only that, it want to remake human nature. And so it cannot be peaceful because in order to do that, they have to do that. They have to use power and they have to use violence.

And this is not what I'm saying. Okay, I think that's what they are. I live through it. And the history is there for us to learn. It happened in Soviet Union, happened to Poland, where your family is from. It happened to China happened in Cuba. What we do? We have to learn history.

The other thing I have to say, nowadays, a lot of people talk about the globalism. And I have to say communism is globalism. In its DNA, it wants not just change human nature, it wants to take over the world. When I was growing up, we were always told our goal is to liberate the humanity. So its goal is not just a China and then maybe some other country. No, the entire world.

That is the threat. a threat. You can treat it as a friend, but it always treat you as its mortal enemy. And I did use this story in the book, The Farmer and the Snake. A lot of people probably know that story. CCP or communism is a snake. You can save it, you can help it, but it will bite you because it's nature. The nature is is that it going to destroy you? Well, Shee van Fleet, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you so much as usual.

Thank you all for joining Shee Van Fleet and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Yekhe Kelek.