Xi Jinping is trying reassert totalitarianism in China: Gordon Chang
Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang reacts to the State Department issuing a travel advisory against China on ''The Story.'
The United States has belatedly recognized the People’s Republic of China is a threat, and it’s trying to do something about it.
Washington is shoring up its defenses – aiming to rebuild the U.S. Navy, develop hypersonic weapons and improved missile defenses, replenish ammunition and missile stocks, and develop new operating locations and concepts for the Indo-Pacific. It’s trying to bring its allies and partners into the mix.
The U.S. is also trying to "de-risk" its economy by imposing narrow restrictions on the export of key dual use technologies that the PRC can use for military purposes – against us. And it’s trying to eliminate dangerous dependencies – think pharmaceuticals and rare earth and other strategic minerals.
The individual (and unexplainable) wealth of Xi Jinping and other top Chinese Communist Party officials is perhaps the PRC’s greatest vulnerability. (Jason Lee/Pool Photo via AP)
Congress and the administration are also talking of restricting outbound investment into the PRC – that provides the technology and, as importantly, the hard currency on which the Chinese Communist Party depends.
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Yes, strengthening the U.S. military is essential and economic sanctions (limited for now, but potentially expanded) are sensible.
But the pressure they create is "diffused" onto the entire PRC. Thus allowing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) top leaders to appeal to nationalism and claiming the Americans are bullying and unfairly "containing" China. This resonates widely.
Keep in mind that China’s leaders will gladly let regular Chinese citizens – "the people" – absorb any amount of misery and casualties – if it keeps the Party elite in power.
USINDOPACOM ought to keep this in mind when it talks of "imposing costs" on China to moderate the regime’s behavior.
Apply pressure where it hurts most
This means, alongside other approaches, the U.S. ought to make things personal for Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party’s top leadership. They will likely only be moved when they are threatened personally – and their lives, riches and well-being are at risk.
Where are they most vulnerable?
The individual (and unexplainable) wealth of politburo members and other top CCP officials is perhaps the PRC’s greatest vulnerability. In the cutthroat world of CCP politics, it can translate as personal safety, however at the same time wider knowledge about the amounts involved could fatally undermine position and credibility within wider society.
Yet, the U.S. government appears to pay no attention to this glaring CCP weakness – much less attempting to capitalize on it.
It’s an issue that terrifies Chinese leaders. They know that corruption was a major reason for the collapse of Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT and the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War.
Xi Jinping made a show of cracking down on official corruption when he came to power in 2013. He understood the dangers brazen corruption by CCP officials posed to the entire regime. However, Xi’s "crackdown" has largely – if not entirely – targeted his opponents. So the top leadership – and Xi and his faction in particular - are still open for attack over their immense and unexplainable wealth.
And this is particularly the case with their overseas holdings of cash, real estate, businesses and the like. Chinese citizens can only legally obtain and export the equivalent of U.S. $50,000 in foreign currency a year. Almost by definition, nearly all the money buying New York City condos and houses in Los Angeles is illegally exported.
The CCP even passed a law within the last year requiring CCP officials to liquidate any overseas assets and return them to China. How many of them did so is another question, but I'll bet not very many.
So if you want to make it personal for the CCP’s top dogs, put Xi and his associates in a position where they have to "explain themselves" and their fabulous wealth – much of which they’ve moved overseas, ironically beyond the reach of the CCP itself.
That will shake them up, feed internal factions and be a huge distraction. And the citizenry’s resentment will be immense. That’s never a healthy thing in dictatorships.
CHINA'S THREAT TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY THAT MIGHT SURPRISE YOU
It’s one thing to blame China’s problems on foreigners treating the PRC unfairly. But explaining away a CCP boss’ $20 million condo in New York City, the three relatives with U.S. green cards and the six "businesses" (even if they are in relatives’ names ) is a very different thing.
Any competent American propagandists – assuming there are some – could run wild with this. Or even just a competent journalist with the backing of a proper news agency.
There’s the personal corruption angle, and that’s bad enough. But there’s also the irony that the people supposedly most committed to the CCP and who are benefiting most from the system are putting their money and their assets – and ideally relatives – into the nations that are China’s main self-declared enemy.
So much for the CCP’s claims that the Chinese system is superior to the free world’s system.
Explain this wealth to the 1.39 billion Chinese who don’t have such opportunities – and who are expected to "eat grass" on behalf of Xi Jinping and the nation as he picks a fight with the free world.
It’s mystifying that the U.S. government has not moved on this front. Expose it and trumpet it to high-heaven – and don't stop.
It’s an easy win, costs next to nothing, and would back-foot the Chinese communists, while weakening their regime and undercutting much of their anti-Western propaganda.
WHAT CHINA IS DOING IN CUBA IS A BIG THREAT TO ALL OF US
How hard would it be for the U.S. government to uncover the details of CCP leadership’s wealth?
Not hard at all.
Around 2012, reporters from New York Times and Bloomberg dug up many details about top Party leaders’ wealth – and Xi Jinping’s family wealth as well.
The Chinese communists were furious and frightened – and they pressured the New York Times and Bloomberg. Bloomberg folded entirely and the Times to a lesser degree – although they haven’t really touched the topic since then.
Xi Jinping and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un meet in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province, in May 2023. (Xinhua/Ju Peng via Getty Images)
The CCP went to great lengths a few years later to suppress the Panama Papers reports that included evidence of leading CCP members’ families involvement in secret offshore companies.
If the U.S. media and a handful of investigative journalists could do this (at least once), certainly the U.S. intelligence community with its $80+ billion annual budget and Department of Treasury could do even more.
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But as noted, we’ve ignored this ace in the hole, as the PRC goes from strength to strength.
It’s about time somebody in Congress demands action and makes things personal for Xi Jinping and his friends. Hit ‘em where it hurts.