Foreign policy is not a high priority for the average American. But an international storm has broken that requires immediate attention. Wyoming’s lone representative, Liz Cheney, took to the airwaves last Wednesday to say that “the Chinese Communist Party [CCP], the Chinese government, is on the attack against the United States of America.”
Earlier John Ratcliffe, the U.S. director of national intelligence (DNI), wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “If I could communicate one thing to the American people from this unique vantage point [as DNI], it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.”
“The intelligence is clear,” Ratcliffe continued, “Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. 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.”
Only days later, video surfaced showing a professor from Beijing bragging to a November 28 conference of approving communists that “we have people at the top” of American institutions. Embarrassed by the candor, the CCP immediately censored the video.
Most recently, documents unmasking millions of CCP members embedded in corporations and governments around the world were leaked to the public. According to the New York Post, each has sworn to, “fight for communism throughout my life, be ready at all times to sacrifice my all for the party and the people, and never betray the party [and] guard party secrets, be loyal to the party.” Nearly two million of these oath-takers sit in positions of power in international corporations from Boeing to Pfizer, communication giants and governments around the world.
All of this should put into perspective the recent revelations about Eric Swalwell and the Chinese spy who helped fund his meteoric rise to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. It should be borne in mind as the Department of Justice investigations into James and Hunter Biden’s China deals are reported.
Everybody knows that graft and corruption are crimes. But fewer people consider how selling one’s influence for financial gain harms anyone. After all, if some politician or corporate huckster can leverage his position to earn a few million bucks, isn’t that the American dream? How does that hurt me?
For starters, remember that bribes are money with strings attached. Those who give lucrative deals to American corporations and politicians want something in return—and they have ways of making sure they get it. What they want are domestic and foreign policies that favor them and disadvantage their enemies.
Here's the rub. Anyone who speaks, assembles and worships freely is considered an enemy by the CCP. The recent arrest and imprisonment of Agnus Chow, Joshua Wong and Ivan Lam demonstrate this point. They were betrayed by the globalist corporations and politicians that should have fought alongside of them.
These young heroes led the citizens of Hong Kong to stand up for the rights that the CCP guaranteed to them in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. Beijing made a promise to the world and the world should have held them to that promise.
Instead, through money and power lavished on private individuals and corporations, the CCP persuaded the world to turn their backs on the Chinese people. The civil rights of Hongkongers, protected by international treaty, evaporated in the span of a single decade. Now these young people are in prison for legal activities that were deemed “crimes” retroactively.
International corporations and corrupt politicians sold the human rights of seven million Hong Kong citizens for personal enrichment. We who support these corporations and politicians are complicit in the betrayal. And unless America acts with resolve today, still more human beings will be sold into slavery tomorrow. The 24 million people of Taiwan are next in the crosshairs of the CCP.
America fought a bloody war to end slavery. And yet, the Apple corporation recently lobbied congress against the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” which is designed to stop the CCP from using the slave labor of three million citizens to make products for American corporations. This is shameful.
All Americans—across the political spectrum—must demand the vigorous investigation and prosecution of graft and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington, in Silicon Valley and wherever it may be found. We must not allow political considerations to shield one party or another. We must not give in to corporate greed that would protect our favorite name-brands from investigation and prosecution.
Ratcliffe is right. The CCP poses “the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.” The hour is late. The time to act is now.
Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, December 19, 2020.
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