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A Closer Look Into China (4)

Frank Gaffney

Mr. Frank Gaffney is recognized as a leading expert on foreign and defense policy and arms control. He was a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and is the founder and C.E.O. of the Center for Security Policy. He writes a regular column for the Washington Times, and is a contributing editor for the National Review online. His columns often appear in he Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New Republic, The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, and Newsday. Mr. Gaffney has been one of the strongest voices in trying to wake up the free world to the threat posed by Communist China.

This is Gaffney’s speech at forum “A Closer Look into China: Nine Commentaries Triggers Mass Resignations from the CCP” held Friday, July 22 at the National Press Club at Washington, D.C.
Thank you very much. It’s a real honor to be here. This is an audience from which, like my friend and mentor, in some respects Tom Tancredo, I expect I can learn more than I can teach. But I am very pleased to have a chance to talk to you about some of the things I am following with great concern and indeed increasing alarm, about the view from China that is being expressed in terms of a strategy.

I had an opportunity to speak about this last week before the House Arms Services Committee. In connection with one, sort of if you will, microcosmic manifestation of that strategy: Communist China’s effort to takeover an American oil company, Unocal. But the opportunity that was presented by the committee was to talk much more broadly about the strategy; and what it means for not only us and our friends and allies and interests in the Far East, to be sure, but elsewhere, but also for the people of China, both the people who currently enjoy freedom in Taiwan, and the people who do not, in the mainland, and increasingly in Hong Kong. So I thought I might just summarize some of the key points of that testimony, and share with you I hope, by so doing, this strategy that I think all of us have an interest in understanding and explicating to others. Because if we don¡¯t recognize the strategy, frankly, very little of what we see in China, let alone what we think is being seen from China is going be properly understood.

Several of my colleagues here have mentioned the growing unrest in China, I personally am among those who welcome it, this unrest, this ferment, this evidence that people are not happy with the suppression, with the repression that has been the hallmark of Chinese dictatorship for many years. It is clearly the case, as I think Congressman Tancredo suggested, that that ferment, that unrest, can be, as has been done many times in the past by totalitarian or authoritarian regimes, channeled into what is called social engineering. Utilizing the appeal to nationalism as an instrument for getting that unhappiness vectored away from the people responsible for it and on to some foreign foe, some enemy of the state, who must be defeated, must be countered in some way. I have a sneaking suspicion that whether this was the intent, and probably it was not, but the practical effect of China’s odious one-child policy, may be to reinforce some of this dynamic, because as those of you in this room know better than I, that has resulted in a disproportionate number of male children being chosen as the one child. History suggests that when you have large numbers of men without women that is a further ingredient for unrest and may well lend itself to the sort of external activities, the channeling of that unrest as I suggested could be the Chinese government’s way of managing its problems domestically. That turns those excess men into cannon fodder, or instruments of aggression in their neighborhood or perhaps further beyond. So that¡¯s backdrop for the strategy, what does the strategy look like?

I suggest to you it has as its purpose the displacement of the U.S. as the preeminent economic power it the world, and if necessary, the ability to defeat the United States, militarily. But as Sun Su taught millennia ago, it is much preferable to defeat your enemy without having to go to war with him. And I think that¡¯s what China is putting together, is the correlation of forces, that¡¯s what the Soviet’s called it, there is variation on the theme the communist Chinese use. Essentially trying to configure world affairs, or at least their role in them, in a way that will decisively dissuade or disable the United State from countering China, should it feel the need to do so, in the military sphere.

A relevant point in this regard, is that it has been an axiom of the Communist Party and military training for quite some time, that war with the United States is inevitable. This not something that we in the Unites States are imposing on China, that is the view from this dictatorship. It has been, as I say, for some time. This threat that has been noted by several of us this morning already, by a communist Chinese general to engage in nuclear attacks against two hundred cities in the United States is, I think probably, part of this strategy of disabling the United States. It is pretty clear that China, at least as of today, does not have the capacity to rain down on two hundred cities in the United States strategic ballistic missile warheads. Unfortunately, one of the things China could do, and I believe is intent on having us know it could do, is engage in an attack that would involve perhaps as few as a single nuclear weapon, but that might have the same catastrophic effect on this country. This is by using a phenomenon known as electromagnetic pulse.

A Blue Ribbon commission was charged by the Congress last year to evaluate this danger, not just from China but from perhaps others as well, and they found, frighteningly, that a single, and not necessarily very large or very sophisticated nuclear device, launched high over the United states, outside the atmosphere, optimized to create this phenomenon known as electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, could send a devastating electronic charge that would neutralize this country¡¯s electrical grid and destroy most pieces of electronic equipment that had not been protected against it. In short, in the blink of an eye or maybe less than a blink of an eye transforming this country from twenty first century society to a pre-industrial one. I believe that China understands and is in fact working a way at having this kind of capability, and unfortunately they may well be helping others acquire it as well. And there are a number of things which if you care to, we can discuss, about what we do about that. But I wanted to mention it because it is I think it is part of a strategy that is intended to make sure we do not interfere with China¡¯s global ambitions. It is one of many other military developments — I think Congressman Tancredo mentioned this study, it is available online from the Defense Department now, I commend it to.

It was released just a couple of days ago. And it is the annual report of the Defense Department about China’s military power. It is overdue. It took longer than it was supposed to because it was the subject of intense inter-agency wrangling, designed to, well, water it down, if not actually dumb it down, by those in our government who feel very strongly that we mustn’t give offense to China and we mustn’t alarm the American people about what China is doing. Even so, this is a very troubling report, in terms of what it says about China’s strategy and in terms of what it says about the building of military capabilities. Not only of the unconventional or weapons of mass destruction kind I alluded to, but also very conventional kinds, bent on transforming the Chinese military from an obsolete People’s Army, of very little value in the modern world, into one that is capable of projecting power decisively, certainly in the Far East, and possibly, especially over time, far beyond. But this strategy extends well beyond the military. I mentioned the Unocal transaction. That is, I suggest to you, one of but the most recent of many strategic purchases the China has been engaged in using, as Congressman Tancredo noted, our money. You can categorize them as strategic energy resources, strategic minerals, some of which Unocal also has by the way, strategic materials, strategic technologies, strategic economic assets, American treasury bills, for example, strategic choke points around the world, and strategically significant regions that China is anxious to develop a relationship with and influence over, and in most cases, a presence, presence which can serve both espionage purposes, military purposes, and strategic purposes.

Let me just conclude by saying that, as we look at a China that is immensely wealthy, and China will continue to amass incalculable sums, as long as it is enabled to engage in unfair trade practices, exploiting its work force, while demeaning and denying them freedom, even if some of them at least are bought off with marginal improvements in the quality of their lives, it will continue to amass this wealth and it will continue to use this wealth in a very systematic and strategically calculated way.

Deng Xiaoping is noted, among other things, for having fashioned his twenty four-character conjunction to the Chinese people, one aspect of which is particularly relevant to this commentary. And I believe it’s translated: “Hide our capacities and bide our time.” There is of course a point at which it is no longer possible for China, engaged as it is in all these sorts of activities to hide its capacities. Except behind a smoke screen of disinformation and strategic deception. And I fear that is what we will increasingly encounter as we peer into China and try to perceive correctly how it’s looking back at us, at least its government, is looking back at us. And to the extent that that strategic deception is enabled by those in the West who stand to benefit, or at least think they stand to benefit, from one deal or another in one area or another of the sorts of strategic activities that I’ve just talked about, we will be less cognizant of this strategic purpose, and less able to engage in the kinds of appropriate and indeed increasingly necessary strategies of our own. And at the core of that necessary strategy, I submit, is bringing about regime change in Communist China.

No I am not suggesting for a moment that we should go and try to do it as we found ourselves compelled to do it, I think properly, in Iraq. But I believe and I think the people in this room and the millions of people with whom you are in touch and whom you represent and certainly with whom you stand in solidarity, are engines for that kind of change. And I would just say to Mr. Farris and to others who believe that that change is desirable, I do not think it will come about by enriching those who repress their people, I think it will come about because we are helping those people obtain their freedom out from under this repressive regime. And those are two very strategically different choices, and I don¡¯t think we have spent nearly enough time thinking about them, let alone acting upon them. And I hope that this conversation will be a catalyst to that because it is long overdue, and frankly, if we don’t get about it quickly our choices will be much reduced. Thank you very much.

Courtesy of the Epoch Times