Morning Wire - The U.S. China Cold War | 11.13.22

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

President Biden prepares to meet with China's President Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit on Monday. Experts have cautioned that the U-S and China are engaged in a cold war, warning that the communist nation of a billion people is more intent than ever on supplanting the United States as the dominant superpower on the world stage. And they’re getting more brazen in their efforts.  On this Sunday episode of Morning Wire, we look into the growing threat of China abroad and here at home. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Biden is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in person for the first time in his presidency at the Group of 20 Summit in Indonesia on Monday. The face-to-face meeting comes as relations between the U.S. and China grow increasingly strained. In light of this meeting, we're taking a look back at a previous Sunday edition of Morning Wire, where we discuss the growing threat of China and their espionage abroad. Hey there, producer Colton here. Do you like to be the first to know about trendy news and current events? If so, you've got to get the Daily Wire Plus. app. Not only will you receive mobile notifications whenever something's happening, but you'll also have access to the best commentary to break it all down. Download the DailyWire Plus app and keep up with

the facts no matter where your day takes you. Here to discuss the rising China threat is DailyWire senior editor Cabot Phillips. All right, Cabot, so you've talked to a host of experts on this topic. Give us some context on China in their efforts to replace the U.S. as the dominant global force. So by now most people are well aware of the fact that China is one of our leading adversaries from a foreign policy perspective. But most people would be shocked if they knew the lengths that the Chinese Communist Party or CCP is willing to go in their efforts at world domination. And just how close to home many of those efforts now are. Right now, the Chinese are actively spying on universities and paying American professors millions of dollars in exchange for their sensitive research. they're stealing billions of dollars worth of intellectual property through cyber attacks.

They're dispatching spies to observe our farming practices, and they're even expanding their reach in South and Central America to gain a foothold in areas that are close to the U.S. I'll get into the details on each of those points, but first I think it's helpful to understand how they view themselves on the global stage. Right, that's key. Tell us more there. Chinese leaders and their culture more broadly are deeply proud of their role throughout history is one of the oldest and most powerful civilizations on earth.

And after falling behind Western nations over the last few centuries, they're now intent on reviving a new golden age, as their president, Jijing Ping calls it. And they're willing to play the long game. That's key. I talked to Dean Chang, he's the Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Asian Studies Center. Here's how he put it.

So from China's perspective, all they're saying is, you know, we had this bad period, the so-called center of humiliation. We lost out to the West, but we're back, and we appreciate it. you, the West, keeping our seat warm, so to speak, but we'll take it from here. So what is it that they want to do? They want to be the absolute dominant power in Asia. They want to be first among equals, among the great powers. They seek to, by the mid-century, conveniently,

the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. They want by 2049 to be a superpower, realistically only rivaled by the United States, if even the U.S. Let's get to some of the specifics. What can you tell us about China's influence on American college campuses? Yeah, this is one of the areas where the CCP is especially brazen. Officials there have openly referred to American universities as soft targets for espionage, research theft, and the spreading of propaganda. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, China steals off.

$136 million worth of American intellectual property every single day. That amounts to about $50 billion a year, and much of that theft takes place on college campuses, where American academics are essentially paid off in exchange for sensitive research and other information. Over the last five years, there have been dozens of instances where professors, researchers, and even students have been caught secretly transmitting materials to the CCP, often in exchange for cash payments or grants. So this is a lot of money we're talking about here. Yeah.

What are some of the examples of what they're transmitting? So the most high-profile case came from Harvard University. In 2020, Charles Lieber was arrested after it was discovered that he'd been secretly sharing sensitive research with the Chinese in exchange for $50,000 a month. And it's worth pointing out, Lieber was not some random professor either. He was the chair of Harvard's chemistry department. And according to the FBI, he was even paid by the Chinese

to help their scientists open up a lab. at the Wuhan University of Technology. Wuhan. Yes. Niebuhr was eventually convicted on six felony charges after it was proven that he falsified IRS documents

to hide the money he was getting from the Chinese and that he also lied under oath multiple times regarding his affiliation. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. There was a professor at UCLA who was convicted of smuggling research on guided missiles and fighter jets to the Chinese.

Another at West Virginia University who was convicted after taking paid paternity leave, but instead of helping raise a child, traveling to China to share American research, and help develop the Chinese Academy of Sciences, all in exchange for a quarter million dollars. One professor at Ohio State had received a $4.1 million federal research grant for immunology, but it turns out he was employed by the Chinese all along

and was secretly transmitting all of that taxpayer-funded research over to the CCP. When a co-worker called on to what he was doing, that professor hopped on a chartered flight to Alaska with a series of Chinese passports, cash, hard drives, and ovens. other material, but thankfully he was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. The list really does go on and on. You can get into a bunch more cases, and unfortunately, students are often caught up in the espionage as well. Now, this is a touchy subject. It really is. What do we know about student involvement? So, look, it's no secret that many international

students on U.S. campuses come from China. In 2021, there were 317,000 Chinese students on campus, that accounts for 35% of all foreign students in America. Sadly, these students are often taken advantage of by their government. According to Human Rights Watch, the CCP will often force international students to return back to China with sensitive research or other intellectual property and threaten their families at home if they don't come back with it. Basically, if a student doesn't comply, then their parents could be thrown in jail, have their businesses shut down by the Communist Party, or face other forms of persecution. For example, one student who had been working as a research assistant at a hospital in Boston

was caught trying to smuggle 21 vials of sensitive cancer research on a flight to China, and he claimed he was forced to do so by the CCP. Wow. Now, you mentioned propaganda efforts on campus. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah. Back in 2004, the Chinese government began sponsoring so-called Confucius Institutes on hundreds of campuses around the world, including many here in the U.S.

Now, according to the Chinese, Confucius institutes are simply centers of cultural exchange. They offer Mandarin courses, Chinese cooking lessons, and other harmless-sounding events. But according to our DOD and intelligence community, these centers are actually CCP hubs designed for spreading Chinese propaganda, engaging in academic espionage, and monitoring the activities of Chinese students on campus. By 2018, there were over 100 of these institutes here in America. A hundred. Yeah, they were quite widespread.

Now, the Chinese often reserve the right to handpick the teachers used in these centers, meaning American students are learning about Chinese history and culture from professors chosen by the CCP. And those faculty are also typically used to influence the curriculum regarding China to shape what students are learning in other departments. And the CCP doesn't really make an effort to hide the true intention of these centers, which is to spread propaganda. For example, in 2011, Li Cheng Chun, who was at the time the leader of China's propaganda department said this,

quote, The Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for expanding our culture abroad. It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power. The Confucius brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical. Now, he mentioned soft power there. How was their approach in the U.S. different from other countries?

Yeah, it's really important to understand how the Chinese are expanding. their efforts in the Western Hemisphere to gain a foothold closer to the U.S. They've invested billions of dollars into what they call the Belt and Road Initiative, which is really just a clever way of getting developing countries deeply in debt to the Chinese Communist Party. Essentially, China will go to a country and offer to build a highway system or power plant on credit so that governments in developing countries will take out billions of dollars in loans from the Chinese Export-Import Bank to pay for these projects, which they've been promised will pay for themselves.

through commercial profit and economic growth. So a similar quid pro quo like they offer on American campuses. Exactly. But what usually ends up happening is that the projects fail to offer a return on investment and leave these small countries hugely in debt to the Chinese government. For example, Kurdistan, which shares a border with China, took part in the Belt and Road initiative in exchange for a railway system that stretches across the entire country. They took out billions in loans for the project, and when it wasn't as profitable as they'd been promised, they're now unable to pay for it. As a result, 42% of their national debt is now owed to China. 42%. And if they default on payments, by the way, the Chinese government gets to seize control of that railroad and in turn

gain a key spot of territory in the region. So basically a trap posing as a jobs program. Essentially, yes, the Chinese government and other supporters tout the initiative as a means of quickly building out the infrastructure of developing nations and expanding their trade opportunities. but if you look closer, it's actually a form of what experts call debt-trap diplomacy. Here's how Dean Chang described the origins of the Belt and Road Initiative and how it's being used today. It started as a giant jobs program for China's steel and cement industries. They had built pretty much everything they wanted to build in China. They had all this industrial capacity.

What to do with that? Answer, export it. Go abroad, sign contracts, build power plants, highways, fiber optic, kit. cable lines, railways in other countries using Chinese steel, Chinese cement, and, importantly, Chinese labor. And as Chang describes, that's when they spring the trap. As they started doing that, what they realized was that a lot of these countries weren't particularly well off, so they'd have to finance. So the Chinese said, hey, we have huge capital account surpluses because of our trade surpluses. So we'll use that money to fund you, Kenya, you, Nigeria, you, Nigeria, you.

Kazakhstan to buy our steel and cement, etc. At some point, they also realize, you know, if they owe us money, we have huge influence over them. We've also heard a great deal about intellectual property theft. China's notorious for that. What more can you tell us about that issue? Well, this is another area where they are extremely brazen. The Chinese government has employed a literal army of hackers to steal as much technology and information as possible from governments and businesses worldwide. One hacker group there, known as Double Dragon, has close ties to the Chinese Ministry of State Security and has reportedly stolen get this over a trillion dollars worth of intellectual property, including military blueprints, pharmaceutical formulas, and other

sensitive material, much of which, by the way, has not yet been patented. And that's just one group. Keep in mind, there are many of these groups throughout China, most of which are getting funding and support from the CCP itself. According to FBI director Christopher Ray, China is far and away the bigger cyber threat we face. I have a bigger hacking program than that of every other major nation combined. They have stolen more of Americans' personal and corporate data than every nation combined. So as the war in Ukraine continues and Putin looks to expand his influence, do not forget China. They are more than happy to go into the radar,

but they are still the largest threat that America faces on the global stage. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That's Daily Wire Senior Editor, Cabot Phillips. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. From all of us here at Morning Wire, we hope you're enjoying the show.

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