In 1972, President Richard Nixon traveled to China to meet with Chairman Mao and Chinese Premier Zhau Enlai. This meeting began a new era in Chinese-American relations. Prior to Nixon’s visit, Communist China was isolated from the Western World, restricted from doing business with the West, but afterward, they were open, freely buying our products, and selling cheap goods to us.
In 2000, William Jefferson Clinton followed Nixon’s lead by allowing China into the World Trade Organization. All this was done, we were told, to benefit America, and our economy. We wanted to get our hands on the Chinese market filled with 1.4 billion people, 1.4 billion potential customers, 1.4 billion cheap/slave laborers. The big multinational corporations, who drive much of our politics, were poised to make billions, if not trillions, off the opening of China, and we would pay a couple dollars less for sneakers and electronics.
Our current administration is in lock step with the Chinese. John Kerry, Climate Czar, and former Obama-Secretary of State, is lobbying against legislation which would ban the importing of goods that is produced in China’s slave labor camps. Joe Biden has sided with Chinese solar manufacturers, denying a request to investigate them for evading U.S. tariffs. So, this multi-trillion dollar “green new deal” is poised to make the Chinese the richest country on the planet off our tax dollars.
Just over one hundred years ago, Vladimir Lenin infamously predicted, “Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” This is exactly what is happening to the United States with China. China is trying to overthrow America without having to fire a shot. For the past 49 years, we have been “selling” China the weapons they will use to destroy us. We are not buying from them; they are buying us. We are purchasing their cheap consumer goods, and making their government so rich that they can turn around and use that money to own us. China is second only to Japan in foreign countries who own our national debt.
The Chinese government understands and operates under the “golden rule” – Whoever has the gold, makes the rules. We are slowly but surely giving China so much gold that they will be making all the rules. We will be working at President Xi’s beck and call. We are dangerously too dependent on China. American consumers have become addicted to inexpensive Chinese goods, and American companies are too reliant on cheap Chinese sweatshop labor to increase their bottom lines. Every shoe we buy, every piece of useless consumer goods we purchase that is made in China is another thread in the rope that China will hang us with. We know it, but we are turning a blind eye to it because the cheap shiny goods are just too alluring. We need to stop buying “made in China”. Billion-dollar American companies, like Nike and Apple, need to bring their manufacturing home where workers are treated humanely.
Do not let their seemingly friendly demeanor fool us; China is not our friend. Communist China is our enemy. They are at war with us. They have always been at war with us. Communists not only hate capitalists and free markets; they want to destroy them. China is the real evil empire. The Chinese government steals our intellectual property and technology, as well as our military secrets. They manipulate their currency to hurt our economy. They pay large sums of money to American Universities to influence the curriculum to spread Chinese propaganda. They send over 300,000 Chinese nationals to the U.S. to get a college education, only to return to China, and use that education against American interests. The Chinese have been smuggling tons of fentanyl into our country which is killing tens of thousands of young Americans every year, destroying American families, and hollowing out our communities. Is this the country we want to have all the gold, and making all the rules?
We understood that China was Communist and totalitarian when we climbed in bed with them 49 years ago, but we operated under the delusion that opening China to the West would make China more “Western”, freer. But we have witnessed the exact opposite occurrence. China is not less totalitarian, 10-year-old girls are still forced to work in sweat shops. Chinese citizens still do not have basic human rights, such as free speech and free press. China still runs concentration camps which regularly tortures and kills people, like the Uighurs. They haven’t changed. Their new wealth polished up their outsides, but their insides are still just as evil and repressive as they were in 1972.
China has not become more like us; we, on the other hand, have become more like China. The United States and the Western world is becoming more and more repressive, and more and more socialist. Our government is mandating what medicine we must take, mandating we wear cloth over our mouths, employing big tech to censor and ban political speech it doesn’t like, weaponizing the intelligence agencies against citizens because of their political opinions, labeling citizens “domestic terrorists” because they object to a government sponsored narrative, weaponizing the IRS against American citizens, taking our guns. They have locked down businesses, schools and churches, and arrested pastors for conducting religious services outside.
All of these offenses, if they occurred 10 years ago, would have been met with almost universal outrage; people of both political parties would have pushed back hard. Yet, it is happening right in front of our faces, and there is nothing we can do about it because most people are on board with it. If these same repressive actions by our government were done in China or Cuba, we would openly criticize those countries, yet many Americans are fine with these totalitarian tactics as long as they are directed at another’s political speech, or business, or church. As long as their party is the totalitarians, then they have no problem with totalitarianism.
Not only are we acting like totalitarian China, we are allowing China to call the shots in our country for fear of being denied their cheap goods, and profits. Why can’t we say the “Chinese virus”, but we can say the “Spanish Flu”, “West Nile Virus”, “Ebola”, “Lyme Disease”, “Norovirus”, “Zika Fever”, “German Measles”, “Legionnaires Disease”; all diseases named after their place of origin. Yet, it only becomes racist when it is the “China Virus”? Who is calling the shots again? And why are we allowing them?
Our country is teeming with social justice warriors who are looking to point out even the smallest injustice in America, so they can judge and cancel others, yet all these social justice warriors are turning a blind eye to the oppression and slaughter of people in China by the CCP. Why? The fear of losing the all-important dollar. BLM has been a boon to many in the movement. They risked absolutely nothing by calling the cops and America racists. They’ve been heralded as hero’s and took in millions of dollars from corporations, but these same people are eerily silent on the injustices in China. Why? They are cowards. They don’t stand up for what is right. They stand up for what will get them paid and praised. That’s it. Their self-serving hypocrisy is embarrassing, and dangerous to this country, and a threat to all the good in the world.
Hollywood, and the NBA are taking their marching orders directly from China as well. China censors movies it doesn’t like, and uses Hollywood to push its narratives. Why hasn’t there been a movie about the Uighur concentration camps? It is the type of movie that Hollywood usually exploits. We have seen countless movies about the Nazi concentration camps, but none about the Uighurs? Why? Is their suffering not as painful as the Jews? Are their deaths any less tragic? Of course not. What about the Tiananmen Square massacre? Why has there never been a movie about the Chinese people risking everything to rise up, and fight for their basic human rights, only to be slaughtered by their government? That’s a true story line which is usually gold in Hollywood. But these movies will never be produced because China will not allow it.
The NBA tries to silence criticism of China as well, because China is the NBA’s meal ticket, providing hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for the league every year. When Boston Celtics’ Center Enes Kanter recently criticized China, the Chinese government banned the playing of his team’s games in China, costing millions to the NBA. Kanter said recently that the NBA threatened to ban him for wearing shoes with messages critical of China. During human rights protests in Hong Kong in 2019, when Houston Rockets General Manager simply texted, “I stand with Hong Kong”, he was excoriated by the commissioner and superstars like LeBron James, and was out of the league within a year. The message was clear and emphatic. No criticism of China. The NBA has social justice messages painted on their courts, stitched to their jersey, and scrawled on banners criticizing America, yet no one is allowed to use that messaging to say a negative word about the injustices in China. So, who do you think is calling the shots in the NBA?
Money is not the root of evil, the unabashed pursuit of money is. Our shameless worship of the all-important dollar has caused us to sell our souls to the devil himself, China. But when the noose is around our necks, and the CCP is tightening it, and poised to kick over the stool we are standing on, maybe then we will realize that the few extra bucks gained by sacrificing our principles by kowtowing to President Xi, probably wasn’t worth it. I just hope it doesn’t take that long to figure this out.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.