I have enjoyed listening to Gordon Chang on cable news networks. He is an expert on China and speaks well. Chang has lived in Shanghai and Hong Kong for over twenty years. He is a columnist for Newsweek and a regular contributor to The Hill. This is a short book with just 108 pages, perhaps resembling an essay. Chang makes his points succinctly and does not waste words. At the back of the book is a sixteen page bibliography with hyperlinks and a ten page index.
Chang gives the U. S. many warnings that China plans to take over the U. S. He states that Chinese Premier Xi Jinping wants to shape the world in China’s image where there is no place for the United States. Xi Jinping believes he must destroy America in order for China to survive. Xi has not been trying hard to hide his intentions, talking alot about the “Chinese dream.” The “Chinese dream,” is the vision of China’s emperors, who believed they had both the right and the obligation to rule what they called tianxia, “all under heaven.”
Some of the main points in the book include:
- Xi is implementing the largest military buildup since the Second World War;
- He is trying to sanctions-proof the Chinese regime;
- He is stockpiling grain and other commodities;
- He is surveying America for strikes and sabotage;
- He is mobilizing China’s civilians for battle;
- He is purging China’s military of officers opposed to going to war;
- China’s Communist Party leaders has been able to kill Americans with impunity. Xi turned an in-country epidemic into a once-in-a-century pandemic and the peddling of fentanyl through the American southern border. Many Chinese are entering the U. S. at the southern border and are here as terrorist cells;
- The Chinese Communist Party is using all its resources to support criminal activity in America by exporting drugs, and Americans are dying as a direct result of those activities;
- The Chinese regime uses every point of contact against America, and at the moment the regime is overwhelming American institutions such as the FBI and state and local governments;
- The regime encourages it's citizens to discuss the mass murder of Americans. It's a frequent topic among the Chinese people;
- Chinese officials now consider outer space as part of the People’s Republic;
- The Communist Party of China, the CCP, views the United States as an existential threat not because of anything Americans have ever said or done but because of who they are and what they stand for. China is afraid of the inspirational impact of America’s ideals and form of governance on the Chinese people.
- China’s rulers, beginning with Mao Zedong, have plans to avenge a century of humiliation and aspired to replace the United States as the economic, military, and political leader of the world by the year 2049 (the one hundredth anniversary of the Communist Party). This plan became known as the Hundred-Year Marathon.
- The Communist Party’s subversion is not so public. In August 2020, Radio Free Asia reported that a People’s Liberation Army intelligence unit, working out of the now-closed Houston consulate, was using big data to identify Americans likely to participate in Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests and then created and sent them “tailor-made” videos on how to organize riots. Related reporting reveals that the videos were distributed by TikTok;
- The CCP operates “Overseas Chinese Service Centers," also known as prisons, in major cities. They are located in San Francisco, Houston, Omaha, St. Paul, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, and Charlotte. The New York Post believes there are other Chinese police stations in New York and Los Angelas;
- The 2017 edition of the Science of Military Strategy, mentioned a new kind of biological warfare of “specific ethnic genetic attacks." American officials are concerned that China's relentless efforts to collect the genetic profiles of foreigners while preventing the transfer from China of the profiles of Chinese are indications of sinister intentions. If Chinese scientists succeed in designing pathogens that leave Chinese people alone but sicken only foreigners, the next disease from China;
- Chinese war doctrine is to hit the United States on the first day of the war with nukes but only after weakening people with a virus;
- China cannot attack America without American money and technology. America should stop supplying them.
Chang's recommendation to America is to cut all ties with China. The president can exercise authority under either the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 or the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917.
I enjoyed reading this book. It is a fast read despite the seriousness of the topic. Chang's writing is quite straightforward. However, much of the information I already knew about from reading news reports. That said, I am not sure if this information was widely known at the time of publication in August 2024.
4 out of 5 stars.