Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke recently about what U.S. politicians and the business community got wrong about China.
In a visit to the University of Southern California to promote his new book, ‘Trump vs. China: Facing America’s Greatest Threat,’ Gingrich said the Chinese regime didn’t partially open up its economy in order to embrace democracy, but to compete in economic might, with the hope that the West would tolerate its dictatorship.
“The Chinese Communist Party is today a Leninist authoritarian system,” Gingrich said.
He said there are stark examples, like the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
He said he once asked a senior Chinese official for comment on the persecuted ethnic minority, “And with a totally straight face, he said to me, he shouldn’t think of them as concentration camps. Think of them as boarding schools,” Gingrich said. “These are boarding schools with machine guns. We said we’re trying to educate Uyghurs to be good Chinese. So we’re doing them a favor.”
And then there’s the repression of all religious beliefs outside of state control, including the peaceful Buddha-school practice Falun Gong.
“Falun Gong was a mortal threat to the system because the number one characteristic of Falun Gong is the teaches honesty,” Gingrich said. “And if you are in a totalitarian state, what matters is what the state tells you, not what honesty tells you. So they literally for over a decade been hunting down and killing the Falun Gong, including killing them for organs that they could use for transplants.”
Gingrich said that America is now falling behind in terms of infrastructure, education, and more. All have to be fixed in order for the United States to fight the asymmetrical warfare directed at it by the Chinese regime.
“I hope what the book will do is start a serious conversation first, about the nature of China and second about what we have to do both because of China but also because of ourselves. Because we want to be a better country than we are right now,” Gingrich said.
The student organizer of the event echoed the Senator’s point.
“It’s important for people to understand what’s going on on a global level because America really is a global force for good,” said Maxwell Brandon, President of Young America’s Foundation USC.
“We need to realize when people are threatening that, [it] has done nothing but victimized people.”
