I’ve been saying for some time now that Xi Xinping’s China is the Nazi Germany of the 21st century. It turns out that I’m not alone in drawing such a conclusion. None other than John Ratcliffe, the United States Director of National Intelligence, has proclaimed China the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II.
The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the US and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.
While its motto remains, “Without haste, without fear, we will conquer the world”, unlike the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, China is not attempting to impose its dictatorship through brute force. The iron fist is being hidden within the velvet glove of commerce. But, even at the commercial level, China behaves with all the subtlety of a robber-baron.
I call its approach of economic espionage “rob, replicate and replace.” China robs US companies of their intellectual property, replicates the technology, and then replaces the US firms in the global marketplace.
Take Sinovel. In 2018 a federal jury found the Chinese wind-turbine manufacturer guilty of stealing trade secrets from American Superconductor. Penalties were imposed but the damage was done. The theft resulted in the U.S. company losing more than $US1 billion in shareholder value and cutting 700 jobs. Today Sinovel sells wind turbines worldwide as if it built a legitimate business through ingenuity and hard work rather than theft.
The FBI frequently arrests Chinese nationals for stealing research-and-development secrets[…]The US government estimates that China’s intellectual-property theft costs America as much as $US500 billion a year, or between $US4,000 and $US6,000 per U.S. household.
China also steals sensitive US defence technology to fuel President Xi Jinping’s aggressive plan to make China the world’s foremost military power.
Australia experienced China’s ruthless theft of military information when troves of data – fortunately, non-classified – on the Joint Strike Fighter were stolen from a South Australian defence contractor in 2016. Chinese telcos like Huawei are weaponised by the regime to extend its spy web, particularly by hiding vulnerabilities in software and equipment. This explains China’s ruthless determination to force Western countries to allow Huawei to build their sensitive 5G networks.
But what truly puts China in the same league as the Nazis is its brutality at home. An international tribunal has been told that millions of prisoners and dissidents – notably, Falun Gong members – have been murdered in order to harvest their organs for commercial transplant trade. China is perpetrating a vicious genocide against its Uyghur minority, including massive gulags and forced sterilisation campaigns.
US intelligence shows that China has even conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities. There are no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.
But, as Orwell illustrated in 1984, it is by the control of information that totalitarian states most comprehensively cement their total control.
China already suppresses US web content that threatens the Communist Party’s ideological control, and it is developing offensive cyber capabilities against the US homeland. This year China engaged in a massive influence campaign that included targeting several dozen members of Congress and congressional aides.
Consider this scenario: A Chinese-owned manufacturing facility in the US employs several thousand Americans. One day, the plant’s union leader is approached by a representative of the Chinese firm. The businessman explains that the local congresswoman is taking a hard-line position on legislation that runs counter to Beijing’s interests — even though it has nothing to do with the industry the company is involved in — and says the union leader must urge her to shift positions or the plant and all its jobs will soon be gone.
The union leader contacts his congresswoman and indicates that his members won’t support her re-election without a change in position. He tells himself he’s protecting his members, but in that moment he’s doing China’s bidding, and the congresswoman is being influenced by China, whether she realises it or not.
Our intelligence shows that Beijing regularly directs this type of influence operation in the US.
And in Australia, where useful idiots in business and academia are only too willing to act as China’s puppets. Witness, for instance, mining billionaire Andrew Forrest sneaking a Chinese government spokesman into a government function in order to upstage a Commonwealth minister. Or winemakers like De Bortoli trying to pressure the Morrison government to back down and seek China’s forgiveness.
The time has come for all to decide which side they are on.
The world is being presented a choice between two wholly incompatible ideologies. China’s leaders seek to subordinate the rights of the individual to the will of the Communist Party. They exert government control over companies and subvert the privacy and freedom of their citizens with an authoritarian surveillance state.
We shouldn’t assume that Beijing’s efforts to drag the world back into the dark will fail just because the forces of good have triumphed before in modern times. China believes that a global order without it at the top is a historical aberration. It aims to change that and reverse the spread of liberty around the world[…]
This is our once-in-a-generation challenge. Americans have always risen to the moment, from defeating the scourge of fascism to bringing down the Iron Curtain. This generation will be judged by its response to China’s effort to reshape the world in its own image.
The Australian
