1 00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:21,320 We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinski, 2 00:00:21,399 --> 00:00:24,440 culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show 3 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:28,239 at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on ACXIT, FDR, 4 00:00:28,399 --> 00:00:32,159 LST, make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course 5 00:00:32,159 --> 00:00:36,479 to the premium version of our website as well. Today we are joined by 6 00:00:36,600 --> 00:00:40,920 Steven Moser. He's the author of the new book The Devil and Communist China 7 00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:45,600 From Maw Down to z and he's also the head of the Population Research Institute. 8 00:00:45,719 --> 00:00:48,479 Stephen, thank you for joining us. It's good to be here with 9 00:00:48,560 --> 00:00:51,280 you today. Before we dive in the book, could you tell us a 10 00:00:51,320 --> 00:00:55,280 little bit about the Population Research Institute. You have a very interesting career background, 11 00:00:55,280 --> 00:00:58,920 and maybe get into a bit about how you ended up where you are 12 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:03,400 right now. Well, I'm not sure it's a career path that many people 13 00:01:03,439 --> 00:01:10,599 would want to follow. Because I was overjoyed to be selected to be the 14 00:01:10,599 --> 00:01:15,760 first American social scientist in China back in nineteen seventy nine. I was first 15 00:01:15,840 --> 00:01:19,040 boots on the ground as it were selected by the State Department and the National 16 00:01:19,120 --> 00:01:23,000 Security Council. But I can read, write, and speak Chinese, and 17 00:01:23,079 --> 00:01:26,560 I became friends with the local Chinese people and got me in all kinds of 18 00:01:26,560 --> 00:01:30,680 trouble because they began telling me tales of woe. They began telling me about 19 00:01:30,719 --> 00:01:36,519 executions outside of the village during the land reform. They began telling me horror 20 00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:40,799 stories about the cultural revolution. And of course I was in the commune when 21 00:01:40,879 --> 00:01:46,920 the one child policy began in nineteen eighty and I saw friends of mine, 22 00:01:48,920 --> 00:01:53,319 men and women who were pregnant with their second child arrested for the crime of 23 00:01:53,359 --> 00:01:59,719 being pregnant. It had become a crime in March of nineteen eighty to be 24 00:02:00,079 --> 00:02:04,159 that was the second or third child or fourth child in Guangdong Province, the 25 00:02:04,239 --> 00:02:08,240 southern province near Hong Kong. And these women were actually arrested, taken away 26 00:02:08,240 --> 00:02:14,879 from the village, locked up in a commune dormitory, and subjected to morning 27 00:02:14,919 --> 00:02:20,199 tonight what would call study sessions, but they were propaganda. They were brainwashing 28 00:02:20,240 --> 00:02:25,759 sessions intended to compel these young women who were carrying wanted children, compelled them 29 00:02:25,759 --> 00:02:30,319 to go in for an abortion. And in fact I was there with them 30 00:02:30,479 --> 00:02:34,960 as they were in these meetings, and I heard senior Communist Party officials, 31 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:38,599 all male by the way, tell these young women that they had no choice, 32 00:02:38,639 --> 00:02:40,439 that they were going to be taken in for a forced abortion, and 33 00:02:40,479 --> 00:02:45,800 that they shouldn't simply think they should sit in this They could sit in the 34 00:02:45,800 --> 00:02:50,800 common dormitory and wait until they went into labor and give birth, because their 35 00:02:50,840 --> 00:02:53,439 babies would be killed at birth if they didn't agree to an abortion before then, 36 00:02:54,000 --> 00:03:00,280 So it was forced abortion. It was late term abortion. I went 37 00:03:00,319 --> 00:03:07,039 with these young women into the operating room as they were given cesarean section abortions 38 00:03:07,599 --> 00:03:10,879 in the seventh, eighth, and ninth month of pregnancy, and it was 39 00:03:13,039 --> 00:03:16,000 I mean, it was a shattering experience for me because I'd never really thought 40 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:23,759 about what happens during an abortion procedure, but there it was bigger than life, 41 00:03:23,759 --> 00:03:29,400 the death of a tiny son of Adam or daughter of Eve, perfectly 42 00:03:29,520 --> 00:03:34,719 capable of surviving outside the womb with modest medical care, and of course the 43 00:03:34,759 --> 00:03:39,759 grievest wounding of the mother. Suicide rates skyrocketed in China after the one Child 44 00:03:39,800 --> 00:03:45,479 policy began, as young women who had been forced into abortions and then sterilized 45 00:03:45,520 --> 00:03:50,919 subsequently so they couldn't have any more children took their own lives in despair. 46 00:03:52,479 --> 00:03:58,319 I began to write about all these things, and the Chinese Communist Party was 47 00:03:58,400 --> 00:04:02,360 not very happy, accused me of spying, which is perfectly ridiculous. I 48 00:04:02,439 --> 00:04:06,800 was simply there as a scholar. I was an anthropologist, I was a 49 00:04:06,840 --> 00:04:13,960 sinologist, and I was there to do my doctoralists station research. Well, 50 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:17,199 it turned out that not only the Chinese Communist Party was unhappy, but so 51 00:04:17,399 --> 00:04:23,800 was the National Security Council in the State Department and Stanford University. Stanford was 52 00:04:23,839 --> 00:04:29,600 actually told by senior Communist officials that unless I were severely punished, that no 53 00:04:29,839 --> 00:04:35,680 Stanford research who would ever be welcome in China again. And so after a 54 00:04:35,879 --> 00:04:44,040 cursory review of my research, Stanford and I parted company. And it was 55 00:04:44,079 --> 00:04:46,879 actually the best thing that ever happened to me, because if I had gotten 56 00:04:46,920 --> 00:04:49,040 tenure, I would have been shackled. I would have been throttled. I 57 00:04:49,079 --> 00:04:56,680 wouldn't have been able to speak the truth and freed from the demands of an 58 00:04:56,680 --> 00:05:00,439 institution. I've been able to read, write, and speak, you know, 59 00:05:00,959 --> 00:05:05,000 exercise my freedom of speech quite well. Over the last forty years. 60 00:05:05,040 --> 00:05:11,879 I've written a dozen books. I started a research institute called Population Research Institute 61 00:05:12,639 --> 00:05:17,720 to fight against coercive population control. Population control, of course, is always 62 00:05:17,800 --> 00:05:23,680 coercive. It's inherent in the very name right population control, even if it's 63 00:05:23,720 --> 00:05:30,040 sometimes disguised as family planning or reproductive health. And so that's what I do. 64 00:05:30,120 --> 00:05:32,560 We've been able to have some successes over the years. We cut funding 65 00:05:33,160 --> 00:05:40,800 to the UN Population Fund under the Reagan administration, and those funding cuts carried 66 00:05:40,800 --> 00:05:45,639 over into Bush one Bush too, and of course into Trump. We cut 67 00:05:45,639 --> 00:05:51,040 funding to the UN Population Fund because they were involved in supporting China's one child 68 00:05:51,160 --> 00:05:59,319 policy, although they denied the forced abortion for sterilization aspect in the name of 69 00:05:59,360 --> 00:06:02,839 controlling the growth of the world's population. And now, of course we all 70 00:06:02,879 --> 00:06:09,079 realize that overpopulation was a myth, and that our long term problem is not 71 00:06:09,120 --> 00:06:12,879 going to be too many people, too many babies. It's going to be 72 00:06:12,920 --> 00:06:16,079 too few people, the aging and dying of populations. Now not just in 73 00:06:16,160 --> 00:06:21,319 Western Europe, but North America, China, other countries are following suit, 74 00:06:21,399 --> 00:06:26,160 and the world's population is going to begin to decline in a few decades. 75 00:06:26,199 --> 00:06:30,720 And I don't see anything that's going to stop that decline from accelerating and that's 76 00:06:30,839 --> 00:06:35,079 uncharted territory. This is the first time the world's population has declined since the 77 00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:43,199 Black Death in the Middle Ages. So that's my history of involvement in China. 78 00:06:43,560 --> 00:06:46,680 I've stayed involved in China. I used to go secretly across the border 79 00:06:46,399 --> 00:06:48,639 in the middle of the night with a new passport. I don't do that 80 00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:53,360 anymore. It's too dangerous. Well tell us about that. It sounds like 81 00:06:53,839 --> 00:06:58,600 a lot of incredible stories from that alone. Well, you know, I 82 00:06:58,639 --> 00:07:03,800 was not content simply to expose the abuses of women and children and families in 83 00:07:03,920 --> 00:07:09,639 China in the one Child policy and in other communist policies. I wanted to 84 00:07:09,639 --> 00:07:14,360 do what I could to help people in China, and so I've always encouraged 85 00:07:14,399 --> 00:07:16,800 adoption. I like to say I have a lot of little god Daughters around 86 00:07:16,839 --> 00:07:21,560 the United States, little girls who were adopted by couples here in this country 87 00:07:21,600 --> 00:07:28,680 after hearing, after hearing about the plight of abandoned little girls in massive numbers 88 00:07:28,720 --> 00:07:32,480 of abandoned little girls and orphanages in China, We've been able over the years 89 00:07:32,480 --> 00:07:38,879 to start a couple orphanages in China to take care of the abandoned baby girls. 90 00:07:39,199 --> 00:07:42,720 Those projects still continue today, and we've been able to do some other 91 00:07:42,839 --> 00:07:47,040 good work in China, including setting up a few safe houses for women who 92 00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:50,920 were fleeing forced abortion. Well, the one child policy is over, but 93 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:57,199 there are still young women in crisis pregnancies who've been abandoned by boyfriends or families, 94 00:07:57,800 --> 00:08:01,680 and we still have those safe houses and we take them in and care 95 00:08:01,759 --> 00:08:05,319 for them until they give birth. So we've been able to do what we 96 00:08:05,399 --> 00:08:09,319 can. It's a very modest effort, of course, but it's better to 97 00:08:09,399 --> 00:08:15,680 light a candle than to curse the darkness. Now, a big chunk of 98 00:08:15,720 --> 00:08:22,600 this new book is focused on Mao himself, and there's so much history that 99 00:08:24,040 --> 00:08:28,680 is just not told well or in depth in the United States. There's so 100 00:08:28,879 --> 00:08:33,480 much to know about Mao, especially as it pertains to the topic of this 101 00:08:33,519 --> 00:08:39,200 book, which again is titled The Devil and Communist China. So if you 102 00:08:39,240 --> 00:08:41,240 had to dig into, you know, some of the stuff you wanted to 103 00:08:41,240 --> 00:08:43,440 flesh out in the book, or if you had to give us an overview 104 00:08:43,440 --> 00:08:46,360 of some of the stuff you wanted to flesh out in the book, I 105 00:08:46,399 --> 00:08:50,240 think especially that stuff and a lot of it is not well known here in 106 00:08:50,279 --> 00:08:52,960 the States. Where would you start. You know, what do you think 107 00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:58,799 people in America need to know about the legacy and the history of Mao that 108 00:08:58,879 --> 00:09:03,840 perhaps they just don't well. I think that people in the United States, 109 00:09:05,039 --> 00:09:11,679 who are generally generous, understanding forgiving, and not eager to condemn other people, 110 00:09:11,879 --> 00:09:16,799 other cultures, other even other political systems, need to understand that the 111 00:09:16,799 --> 00:09:24,879 founding of the People's Republic of China by Mauzatoon and the structure of the Chinese 112 00:09:24,879 --> 00:09:31,240 Communist Party is diametrically opposed to the founding of the United States. I mean, 113 00:09:31,279 --> 00:09:35,759 you have the United States, which was founded on Judeo Christian principles by 114 00:09:35,879 --> 00:09:41,240 a group of quite frankly brilliant men who were interested in establishing a government that 115 00:09:41,440 --> 00:09:48,399 protected the rule of law and prevented overreached by the government. And the founding 116 00:09:48,440 --> 00:09:52,720 documents of our country are the most brilliant, brilliant documents I think ever struck 117 00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:58,240 off the mind of men in China. It's the opposite, I think, 118 00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:05,240 because you look at the the history of Mao Jatoon and the communist party structure 119 00:10:05,320 --> 00:10:09,480 that he put in place, modeled upon the Leninist structure of the Soviet Union, 120 00:10:09,159 --> 00:10:13,559 and you see the polar opposite of that. You see a man who 121 00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:20,600 at every turn chose an evil path. And you compare that to George Washington, 122 00:10:20,639 --> 00:10:24,440 who, even as a young man, had a whole book of rules 123 00:10:24,440 --> 00:10:28,480 that he followed. The man was a master of self control, and at 124 00:10:28,519 --> 00:10:31,000 every turn he asked what was good, not for him, but what was 125 00:10:31,039 --> 00:10:35,559 good for his fellow Americans and his country. At every turn, Mao asked 126 00:10:35,559 --> 00:10:39,759 the opposite. And he was quite frank about this, because he admitted, 127 00:10:39,799 --> 00:10:43,480 as a young man, he said, his view of things was that there 128 00:10:43,480 --> 00:10:48,200 were other people and things in the world, but they only existed for him 129 00:10:48,639 --> 00:10:52,679 and for his use, as if he who were some you know, Demi 130 00:10:52,720 --> 00:10:58,879 God come down from Mount Olympus to move the rest of us around the chessboard 131 00:10:58,879 --> 00:11:05,039 of the world in whatever fashion was to his own interest. And that's exactly 132 00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:09,600 what he did at every turn. And it's also interesting that every time he 133 00:11:09,679 --> 00:11:13,639 faced a moral choice, even in the case where he could accomplish some end 134 00:11:13,720 --> 00:11:20,440 by doing the right thing by being honest and forthright and open about his goals, 135 00:11:20,960 --> 00:11:26,399 or he could accomplish the same end by being deceitful and underhanded and deceptive, 136 00:11:26,679 --> 00:11:31,720 he would choose deception and count himself clever in the process. I should 137 00:11:31,759 --> 00:11:37,120 give you some examples of that. One is killing with a borrowed knife, 138 00:11:37,720 --> 00:11:43,080 and I refer to the fifth commandment, thou shalt not kill. Now delighted 139 00:11:43,159 --> 00:11:46,399 in killing, even as a leader of a gorilla band in the qing gang 140 00:11:46,399 --> 00:11:52,840 Shan Mountains early on in his career in the early nineteen thirties, when they 141 00:11:52,840 --> 00:11:58,440 were in the business of killing landlords and rich peasants and ransacking their homes and 142 00:11:58,480 --> 00:12:03,360 stealing their goods, mal took pleasure in being personally involved in those killings. 143 00:12:03,440 --> 00:12:07,480 Later on, of course, it became industrial sized killing and he could no 144 00:12:07,519 --> 00:12:15,000 longer personally participate, but he oversaw the death probably one hundred million Chinese over 145 00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:18,720 the course of his career. Killing with a barred knife, though, refers 146 00:12:18,759 --> 00:12:24,840 to using another force or using a foreign enemy to kill off your opponents, 147 00:12:26,039 --> 00:12:31,279 and that's what he did. He betrayed During the Civil War between the Communists 148 00:12:31,279 --> 00:12:35,559 and the Nationalists. There were different factions in the Chinese Communist Party, most 149 00:12:35,639 --> 00:12:41,559 of which were better armed and better equipped and more numerous than his. He 150 00:12:41,600 --> 00:12:46,000 would betray those factions to the Nationalists, to Shang Kai Chek's nationalists and allowed 151 00:12:46,039 --> 00:12:50,840 the nationalists to kill them to eliminate an enemy within the Communist party. Killing 152 00:12:50,840 --> 00:12:54,519 with a barred knife. Jed aoshouer and it's called in Chinese. But he 153 00:12:54,559 --> 00:13:00,840 also did that during the Korean War. It's sad to realize that most of 154 00:13:00,879 --> 00:13:05,000 the Communist troops, the two hundred and fifty thousand Communist troops that were committed 155 00:13:05,240 --> 00:13:13,279 to Korea during the Korean War were actually surrendered Nationalist troops which had come over 156 00:13:13,440 --> 00:13:16,840 in the late stages of the Civil War in nineteen forty nine, nineteen forty 157 00:13:16,840 --> 00:13:22,279 eight and nineteen forty nine, when whole Nationalist armies were surrendering en Moss, 158 00:13:22,559 --> 00:13:28,360 they were given new commanders and then sent in nineteen fifty into Korea where they 159 00:13:28,399 --> 00:13:35,360 were killed by us again killing with a barrow knife. So master of deceit 160 00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:41,159 and deception, who delighted in the same So the kind of the evil opposite 161 00:13:41,639 --> 00:13:48,639 of the kind of leader that we imagine we hope that our own country we 162 00:13:48,720 --> 00:13:52,080 know, has had in the past, and we hope we'll have again in 163 00:13:52,120 --> 00:14:01,000 the future. This is Molly Hemingway of the Federalist joined me, my husband, 164 00:14:01,039 --> 00:14:05,000 Mark of real clear investigations twelve time All American Swimmer, Riley Gaines, 165 00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:11,679 Aaron Wren of The American Conservative, and others for the twenty twenty four Making 166 00:14:11,720 --> 00:14:18,080 the Case Conference Friday July twelfth and Saturday July thirteenth at Concordia University, Chicago. 167 00:14:18,799 --> 00:14:24,080 Learn more at Issues Etc. Dot org. Making the Case July twelfth 168 00:14:24,120 --> 00:14:33,159 and thirteenth in Chicago, Issues Etc. Dot Org. I'm really fascinated by 169 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:43,399 how Mao came into this long history of Chinese culture and sort of slotted Leninism 170 00:14:45,039 --> 00:14:48,480 into all of that. Can you tell us about because now, of course 171 00:14:48,639 --> 00:14:52,840 Shedent Pang, and I'm sure you have many things to say about this. 172 00:14:52,960 --> 00:14:58,440 Talks about socialism with Chinese characteristics. That's what sort of that's that's the phrase, 173 00:14:58,240 --> 00:15:07,240 that's the the category, the title for the system. But how did 174 00:15:07,440 --> 00:15:11,399 now, just beginning with Leninism, how did he take that and adapt it 175 00:15:11,519 --> 00:15:20,840 to his country? Basically, well, here's a history for you. Twenty 176 00:15:20,840 --> 00:15:24,360 five hundred years ago, during what's called the Warring States period in China the 177 00:15:24,399 --> 00:15:30,159 fifth century, fourth or third century BC, there were in the beginning of 178 00:15:30,200 --> 00:15:37,320 the Warring States period, hundreds of little feudal lords ruling over small territories in 179 00:15:37,360 --> 00:15:41,360 northern China, and it was a war of all against all that went on 180 00:15:41,519 --> 00:15:50,720 literally for centuries. And the ruler who emerged triumphant from that centuries long war 181 00:15:50,600 --> 00:15:56,399 was a ruler who followed a philosophy called legalism. And legalism is an early 182 00:15:56,519 --> 00:16:02,320 kind of it's a kind of proto totalitarian, it's an early kind of Marxist 183 00:16:02,440 --> 00:16:07,960 Leninism. Why because in legalism you find a standing army. You find the 184 00:16:07,960 --> 00:16:15,360 government has control of important economic sectors like the production of iron for weapons, 185 00:16:15,799 --> 00:16:19,600 and agriculture, like the production of salt, which is a vital element of 186 00:16:19,639 --> 00:16:26,679 the human diet. You have concentration camps twenty five hundred years ago in China. 187 00:16:26,720 --> 00:16:30,879 The concentration camp inmates built the Great Wall and the Great Canals of China. 188 00:16:30,320 --> 00:16:37,240 You have propaganda troops going around the country singing the praises of the now 189 00:16:37,320 --> 00:16:42,279 emperor of the Qin dynasty started in two twenty one BC. And you have 190 00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:51,639 the killing of people who propagate competing philosophies, so that there were huge numbers 191 00:16:51,679 --> 00:16:56,039 of scholars killed by the first emperor of the Qin dynasty. Chan dynasty from 192 00:16:56,039 --> 00:17:03,720 which we get the word China. The Confucian scholars, the followers of Menshus, 193 00:17:03,160 --> 00:17:07,599 the Daoist scholars, all of the other scholars, all of them were 194 00:17:07,680 --> 00:17:12,440 killed. And the only works that were allowed to be promulgated were works by 195 00:17:12,480 --> 00:17:18,920 the legalists and works on agriculture. You needed crops, right, so they 196 00:17:18,920 --> 00:17:22,319 didn't burn the works on agriculture, but there was a great burning of the 197 00:17:22,319 --> 00:17:30,359 books in China. Well, that empire, based on pure brutal totalitarian control 198 00:17:30,400 --> 00:17:37,359 of the population collapsed after a few decades and was replaced by the Han dynasty. 199 00:17:37,839 --> 00:17:44,079 Now, the Han dynasty emperors did something very clever. They resurrected Confucianism, 200 00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:51,920 right, because the Confucian view of life and social order and political order 201 00:17:52,079 --> 00:17:56,880 is this that the people are the children and the emperor is the father. 202 00:17:56,960 --> 00:18:00,039 Figured all the children should obey the father, just as the younger brothers should 203 00:18:00,039 --> 00:18:04,720 obey the older brother. The students should obey the teacher, the wife should 204 00:18:04,720 --> 00:18:07,920 obey the husband, the young you know, and all of that. It 205 00:18:10,079 --> 00:18:17,480 was a philosophy of social order. So the Han dynasty emperors took this Confucianism, 206 00:18:17,640 --> 00:18:22,240 resurrected it as it were, and don the silken garb of Confucianism and 207 00:18:22,680 --> 00:18:26,400 pretended to be the father of all the Chinese people. But inside that Confucian 208 00:18:26,480 --> 00:18:33,599 garb, of that silk and garb of Confucianism was the iron scaffolding of legalism. 209 00:18:33,799 --> 00:18:38,519 And they said openly that we're Confucian on the outside, but we're legalist 210 00:18:38,599 --> 00:18:42,480 on the inside, which is the same as saying we're confusion on the outside. 211 00:18:42,559 --> 00:18:45,599 We pretend to be nice to you, but we will kill you if 212 00:18:45,640 --> 00:18:52,079 you object to our rule. We are totalitarian on the inside. That's the 213 00:18:52,119 --> 00:18:57,119 political culture of China for twenty five hundred years. Then we come to the 214 00:18:57,119 --> 00:19:03,160 twentieth century. We've got young Mao. And in the nineteen twenties, when 215 00:19:03,359 --> 00:19:08,799 Mao was getting involved in politics, there was a huge movement in China to 216 00:19:08,880 --> 00:19:15,839 become like the United States. But following the Soviet Union establishment, there was 217 00:19:15,880 --> 00:19:22,480 a counter movement to follow the Soviet Union. Lenin and then Stalin began to 218 00:19:22,480 --> 00:19:26,799 send agents to China to say, you don't want to follow the United States 219 00:19:26,799 --> 00:19:32,200 and the West, you want to follow our pattern. And that pattern matches 220 00:19:32,400 --> 00:19:37,559 almost perfectly the ancient structure of legalism. So what Malzadom did as a young 221 00:19:37,599 --> 00:19:44,799 man, he saw in communism a philosophy that enabled him to see total control 222 00:19:44,839 --> 00:19:49,519 of the country and institute the same totalitarian controls that the emperors had over the 223 00:19:49,559 --> 00:19:53,680 centuries. At the same time, it commands a respectable audience in the West. 224 00:19:53,799 --> 00:19:57,400 I mean, we have our own left that thinks Marxist Leninism is just 225 00:19:57,480 --> 00:20:03,400 wonderful. And he was able to get financial support from Stalin from the beginning. 226 00:20:03,880 --> 00:20:11,359 Stalin was sending him arms and a monthly subsidy to fund his rebellion. 227 00:20:11,039 --> 00:20:15,759 Shang Kai Shehek, of course, who had by then become Christian, was 228 00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:22,119 modeling his country on the United States. The nationalist Chinese today on the island 229 00:20:22,119 --> 00:20:26,480 of Taiwan. Their constitution is modeled on our constitution, quite frankly, but 230 00:20:26,680 --> 00:20:32,119 China went the other way. The Communist won the Civil War because of help 231 00:20:32,119 --> 00:20:37,200 from the Soviet Union. But that's where malk comes in. What he did 232 00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:42,640 was replace the Silk and Garbae Confucianism with the fantasy of communism that one day 233 00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:47,759 the government is going to fade away, everyone will be perfectly equal, all 234 00:20:47,839 --> 00:20:49,960 needs will be met, and no one will have a worry in the world. 235 00:20:51,359 --> 00:21:00,160 But underneath that fantasy of communism was the iron scaffolding of totalitarianism, which 236 00:21:00,160 --> 00:21:06,599 is almost perfectly with the ancient Chinese philosophy of government of legalism. So that's 237 00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:12,799 where Mao was coming from, and that's how he established the structure that remains 238 00:21:12,799 --> 00:21:18,279 in place today. And Mao was a very evil man, but the evil 239 00:21:18,359 --> 00:21:23,599 is not limited to him personally. It is kind of inherent in the structure 240 00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:30,200 of the Chinese Communist Party itself, which is organized like a war party. 241 00:21:30,720 --> 00:21:36,359 It is it is, it is organized in a fashion so that it is 242 00:21:36,480 --> 00:21:41,680 capable of waging war on its own people and waging war on the wider world. 243 00:21:41,680 --> 00:21:48,559 And it is that structure, especially the politbureau, that breeds Chairman Mao's 244 00:21:49,519 --> 00:21:56,160 like you know, McDonald's makes hamburgers. It's a creature like Chairman Mao. 245 00:21:56,240 --> 00:22:03,519 A megalomania is a natural outcome of the kind of factional warfare that is built 246 00:22:03,599 --> 00:22:11,359 into the communist power structure. So fascinating. You know, Paul Kanger wrote 247 00:22:11,359 --> 00:22:15,279 a book called The Devil and Karl Marx not long ago, and he sort 248 00:22:15,279 --> 00:22:19,240 of pulled out these examples even from Marx's poetry that some people might not be 249 00:22:19,319 --> 00:22:26,519 super familiar with, where it's dabbling in Satanism. Is there anything Stephen similar 250 00:22:26,720 --> 00:22:33,839 parallel with Mao? And you know, Satanism, devil admiration, anything like 251 00:22:33,839 --> 00:22:38,599 that. Well, let me let me say that The Devil and Communist China. 252 00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:45,559 My book has a forward written by Paul Kanker because he's the editor of 253 00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:49,960 the series The Devil, and you know Karl Marx The Devil and Bellad The 254 00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:56,079 Devil and Communist China. Serious, So Paul kicked this off with a very 255 00:22:56,279 --> 00:23:00,319 very good book. Uh and yeah Marx. Uh. Marx seems in his 256 00:23:00,519 --> 00:23:06,519 poems almost to have made a pact with the devil. We don't know that 257 00:23:06,880 --> 00:23:14,920 for certain, but Mao was a very different character. Mao described himself as 258 00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:21,039 lawless and godless, and those two sort of go together because if he reject 259 00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:23,759 God's law, the natural law, which is written in the human heart, 260 00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:32,160 you are fundamentally declaring that you're lawless, and you're rejecting God as well. 261 00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:36,799 So he did, from a very young age reject I don't think he was 262 00:23:36,799 --> 00:23:42,119 ever exposed to Christianity as a boy, but he was exposed to Buddhist beliefs, 263 00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:48,480 the respect for all life, the necessity for self control, the necessity 264 00:23:48,519 --> 00:23:52,319 to avoid evil. He rejected all that. As a young teenager he was 265 00:23:52,359 --> 00:23:56,759 exposed to Confucian ideas, the ideas, of course we talked about of social 266 00:23:56,920 --> 00:24:03,079 order, of obeying your parents, for example, he rejected that. Later 267 00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:06,839 in life he said that his father, who who was the origin land rich 268 00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:10,240 peasant, not a landlord at all, but someone who had a little extra 269 00:24:10,319 --> 00:24:17,119 land, should have been struggled and perhaps killed because he was exploiting the people. 270 00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:21,519 That was his own father. That he was able to that he wanted 271 00:24:21,519 --> 00:24:29,599 to throw into the into the dustment of history. So what he uh did 272 00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:33,240 though as a young boy, he was taken out at the age of three, 273 00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:38,400 he was barely more than a toddler by his mother, out to a 274 00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:44,680 stone monolith with a pool at the base of it that was thought by the 275 00:24:44,759 --> 00:24:48,160 villagers to be inhabited by a spirit. Certainly his mother believed that, and 276 00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:52,680 his mother made him kneel down and cowtow, that is, knocked his head 277 00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:59,920 on the ground nine times in the traditional cowtow, and she recon she consecrated 278 00:25:00,079 --> 00:25:03,240 him to the spirit of the monolith, and she in fact rebaptized him. 279 00:25:03,279 --> 00:25:07,440 She gave him a new name. She called him the third son of the 280 00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:14,599 Monolith. Or the third son of Stone Sirsanyadza in Chinese. He was very 281 00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:18,480 proud of that name, oddly enough, and he often referred to himself and 282 00:25:18,559 --> 00:25:25,880 the third person as the third son of the Monolith. And I wonder if 283 00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:30,880 that wasn't an exposure to a demonic spirit of a con of course, he 284 00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:34,400 was only a little boy, but the fact that he reflected on it later 285 00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:41,519 in life and he called himself by that name, he would have consciously rejected 286 00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:47,079 anything having to do with the supernatural. But if you look at his actions, 287 00:25:47,079 --> 00:25:49,599 and I look at them through the lens of the ten command But so 288 00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:55,279 I didn't want to write a traditional biography of malth that's been done before. 289 00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:59,680 Most of them are fantasies, of course, not based on reality, a 290 00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:03,480 touch on the real mouth. What I want to do is I look want 291 00:26:03,519 --> 00:26:06,839 to look at mouth through the lens of the natural law written in every human 292 00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:11,319 heart and every commandment from the first. He rejected God, the first Commandment, 293 00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:18,759 He rejected his own parents. He rebelled against his father, especially the 294 00:26:18,759 --> 00:26:22,480 fourth commandment, the fifth commandment. My goodness, we already talked about that. 295 00:26:22,559 --> 00:26:26,599 He's the killingest man in human history. Bad grammar, but The point 296 00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:33,680 is he was responsible for the deaths of one hundred million Chinese during the Civil 297 00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:37,759 War and later on during the purges and persecutions and famines and Cultural Revolution and 298 00:26:37,839 --> 00:26:41,559 so forth. He's also kind of the spiritual father of the one child policy 299 00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:48,680 because he said in a nineteen fifty eight speech that we need to control reproduction 300 00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:51,799 in the same way we control production. The party should set up, he 301 00:26:51,839 --> 00:26:56,400 said, an Office of State Planning of reproduction. Well, that's exactly what 302 00:26:56,480 --> 00:27:00,680 happened. Twenty two years later, when I was in China Commandment, National 303 00:27:00,759 --> 00:27:07,240 Nut committed El three Boy. He was a serial polygamist. He married and 304 00:27:07,279 --> 00:27:11,000 then abandoned a series of wives. But the worst thing he did in the 305 00:27:11,079 --> 00:27:15,240 sexual arena was this. He was fond of reading Chinese history, and later 306 00:27:15,279 --> 00:27:19,039 in life he almost entirely quoted Chinese history. He didn't quote Marks and Lenin 307 00:27:19,079 --> 00:27:26,519 anymore. He quoted the ancient legalist scholars and emperors. And he read one 308 00:27:26,599 --> 00:27:32,200 time that the Yellow Emperor, who is a mythical figure, by the way, 309 00:27:32,319 --> 00:27:34,599 several thousand years ago in history, there's supposed to be a Yellow Emperor 310 00:27:34,759 --> 00:27:40,400 from whom all living Chinese are descended. It's made up story. But the 311 00:27:40,519 --> 00:27:48,359 Yellow Emperor supposedly achieved immortality by sleeping with a thousand virgins, and that gave 312 00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:52,839 now an idea. In his sixties, he decided he was going to do 313 00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:57,599 the same thing and achieve immortality the same way the Yellow Emperor had. And 314 00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:03,599 so he had his secret police Aren't going into villages around China and find the 315 00:28:03,599 --> 00:28:07,200 prettiest, most attractive twelve and thirteen and fourteen year old girls, innocent young 316 00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:11,920 girls, and had them brought to him. Every night there'd be a new 317 00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:18,519 girl or two or three, and this went on for years. And the 318 00:28:18,599 --> 00:28:23,680 other thing that he did, aside from, you know, destroying the innocence 319 00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:29,319 of these young village girls, he also had, as it turned out, 320 00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:34,559 and untreated sexually transmitted disease, which because it didn't bother him, he didn't 321 00:28:34,559 --> 00:28:38,559 want to have it treated. He was sort of afraid of different medications, 322 00:28:40,119 --> 00:28:47,160 so he left that STD untreated and probably infected hundreds of girls over the years. 323 00:28:48,559 --> 00:28:51,200 And the other thing that I should point out in that regard is he 324 00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:55,119 had no feeling for these girls. Call he would use them and then send 325 00:28:55,200 --> 00:29:00,440 them back to the village. And I compare that in the book to the 326 00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:06,119 way the emperor behaved. Now the emperor had the Forbidden City, he had 327 00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:10,680 the empress, and then he had concubines. And some of the empress had 328 00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:14,359 two concubines, and some had two hundred and one, or two had two 329 00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:18,240 thousand, many of whom he never even saw, didn't know their names, 330 00:29:18,279 --> 00:29:25,759 didn't sleep with They were merely political matches. But the fact is that concubinage 331 00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:30,039 was an officially gave you an officially recognized status. There was a ceremony, 332 00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,759 you entered the forbidden City, you were taken care of for the rest of 333 00:29:33,799 --> 00:29:37,119 your life. You had shelter, you had food, You were considered to 334 00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:41,880 be a minor wife, a little wife of the emperor. Mao didn't emulate 335 00:29:42,039 --> 00:29:48,960 that part of Chinese practice. He simply used these girls and then threw them 336 00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:52,759 away. Remember he said, there are other people and things in the world, 337 00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:56,839 but they're only there for my pleasure and my use. And he lived 338 00:29:57,519 --> 00:30:03,000 that statement, lived that belief. So that's the sixth commandment, seventh commandment, 339 00:30:04,279 --> 00:30:08,039 Thou shalt not steal. Basically, he stole the entire wealth of China. 340 00:30:08,799 --> 00:30:12,880 There were he had resorts, he had places to stay in every province, 341 00:30:14,599 --> 00:30:19,000 He was treated like the entire country was at his disposal, every material 342 00:30:19,039 --> 00:30:25,519 resource, every person answered to him, thou shalt not fair false witness. 343 00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:29,920 He was a master of deceit, as we've talked about, and just delighted 344 00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:34,240 in deceiving people and getting his way. Coveting. Well, we've already covered 345 00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:40,400 coveting, so just looked at from the standpoint of the natural law. He 346 00:30:40,559 --> 00:30:45,799 was one of the most evil people who ever lived. And I don't think 347 00:30:45,599 --> 00:30:49,119 he consciously, you know, made a pact with the devil, but I 348 00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:53,279 do think that if he had that, I can't imagine that he would have 349 00:30:53,359 --> 00:31:02,359 behaved any differently. That it keeps tossing and turning at night. You just 350 00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:04,759 can't get away from it. But the truth is the system is actually designed 351 00:31:04,759 --> 00:31:08,640 to trap you in debt. Insanely high interest credit cards and loans make it 352 00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:12,160 nearly impossible to pay off your debt. But there's a new way out of 353 00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:18,240 the debt trap Pivotal Debt Solutions. Pivotal Debt Solutions isn't like the old school 354 00:31:18,279 --> 00:31:22,000 debt relief companies that string your debt out for years. They have new aggressive 355 00:31:22,039 --> 00:31:27,680 strategies that can end your debt faster and easier than you thought possible. Pivotal 356 00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:33,000 Debt Solutions can cut or even eliminate interest, find programs to write off your 357 00:31:33,039 --> 00:31:37,720 balances so you owe less, stop those threatening phone calls without bankruptcy and without 358 00:31:37,759 --> 00:31:41,960 a loan. The bottom line is they find every solution possible to end your 359 00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:48,160 debt permanently. Before you do anything, contact Pivotal Debt Solutions first. Talk 360 00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:51,440 to them for free. Find out how fast they can help you get out 361 00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:57,160 of debt. Visit zapmdebt dot com. That's zapmdebt dot com. Zapmidebt dot 362 00:31:57,200 --> 00:32:05,039 com. Now can you sort of connect points A and B for us? 363 00:32:05,559 --> 00:32:09,440 Just from your subtitle? From quite literally from Mao to sheden Ping, what 364 00:32:09,559 --> 00:32:15,400 is the connective tissue? What legacy is Xi Jinping taking from Mao? Well, 365 00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:24,519 Mao is is the founding emperor of the Red Dynasty, and Xi Jinping 366 00:32:27,119 --> 00:32:32,319 has taken Mao as a model in all things. Ci jing Ping today has 367 00:32:34,039 --> 00:32:39,680 for example, a thriving personality cult, and in China there is now a 368 00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:45,440 ci gen Ping app that everyone has to download on their phones, which which 369 00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:51,200 gives you a daily reading from She's speeches and writings. That is the daily. 370 00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:54,680 Shei gen pink scripture reading. As it were, Mao had his little 371 00:32:54,680 --> 00:33:00,200 red book and his collective works with a little red book people got, you 372 00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:06,000 know, and carried around. It's become even easier today with c g Ping 373 00:33:06,079 --> 00:33:07,799 because it's on your phone, and yeah, you should read it every day. 374 00:33:10,119 --> 00:33:15,839 Basically, c ging Ping is following in the footsteps of Mao. In 375 00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:22,200 fact, I would argue that she has amassed even more power than Maoa did 376 00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:28,359 because she is not only the head of the Chinese Communist Party, he is 377 00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,240 the de facto head of government. He's the so called president of the country, 378 00:33:31,279 --> 00:33:37,519 although that position doesn't formally exist in the Chinese political system. He's also 379 00:33:37,559 --> 00:33:42,119 the chairman of the Central Military Commission. He's also the chairman of several what 380 00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:47,400 are called small groups within the Chinese governmental structure, and in China he's known 381 00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:53,559 as the chairman of everything. Now you don't say that very loudly because he 382 00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:58,200 gets you in trouble, but people whisper, yeah, the chairman of everything. 383 00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:02,480 In fact, so that the premiere in China, who used to be 384 00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:08,760 in charge of economic matters and and and run the actual governmental structure separate from 385 00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:15,960 the party structure, is basically now doing what the Chinese call laying flat time 386 00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:19,480 ping, which means he's just staying out of the way. He's not doing 387 00:34:19,599 --> 00:34:23,440 very much because he doesn't want to get in the way of the of the 388 00:34:23,599 --> 00:34:30,119 true ruler of China who holds all the reigns of power, that is shijen 389 00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:38,920 Ping, you know. So it's it's it's a system that the current occupant 390 00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:45,639 of the dragon throne in China is following, emulating Mao in all things, 391 00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:53,480 including in his desire to drive China down the road towards full blown communism. 392 00:34:54,119 --> 00:35:00,840 Uh. He has said in speech after speech that his goal is to achieve 393 00:35:01,199 --> 00:35:09,280 socialism with Chinese characteristics, which means that we are now seeing China go once 394 00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:16,000 more down the socialist road to ruin. The whole private sector of the economy 395 00:35:16,599 --> 00:35:22,320 that grew up in the eighties and nineties and in the first years of this 396 00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:29,559 century is now under threat by she because she is continuing to expand the state 397 00:35:29,679 --> 00:35:35,920 sector and bringing what was once nominally the private sector under state control. There 398 00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:40,639 are now political commissars sitting on the boards of directors of all the major companies 399 00:35:40,679 --> 00:35:45,360 in China, the private companies, and if you're the chairman of the board 400 00:35:45,559 --> 00:35:49,199 or the owner of the company, and sitting across from you is a political 401 00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:53,719 commissar representing the all powerful Chinese Communist Party. You no longer own your company. 402 00:35:54,199 --> 00:36:00,320 You take direction from the political commissar. And Sijping may have said he 403 00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:05,440 doesn't mind people getting wealthy as long as they use their wealth to serve the 404 00:36:05,519 --> 00:36:09,320 party, but the political commissars have taken that a step further. They think 405 00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:15,000 the best way to ensure that the CEOs and the billionaires use their wealth to 406 00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:19,840 support the party is to actually take the wealth from them. And so billionaires 407 00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:27,039 and CEOs are being arrested literally by the thousands in China today on true or 408 00:36:27,039 --> 00:36:30,199 false charges of corruption, we don't know, and their wealth is being stolen 409 00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:38,320 by Communist Party officials again because because Shi Jingping has put a target on their 410 00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:44,400 back by saying that he wants to move in the direction of state ownership of 411 00:36:44,519 --> 00:36:50,960 all the means of production. That's what the Chinese Communist Party name means in 412 00:36:51,079 --> 00:36:57,599 Chinese, the gong Chandan gong means public, Chan means property party Dong. 413 00:36:58,119 --> 00:37:02,639 So the public proper party, the party of state ownership of everything, is 414 00:37:04,159 --> 00:37:07,679 the gung Chan Daan the Communist Party, and that's the direction he's moving in. 415 00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:10,000 So he, like Mao, is a committed communist. He, like 416 00:37:10,079 --> 00:37:15,159 Mao, I think, will wind up destroying the Chinese economy because we know 417 00:37:15,199 --> 00:37:22,719 that socialism always succeeds in creating tyranny and not creating the goods it's supposed to. 418 00:37:23,639 --> 00:37:29,599 But in the process he will aggrandize his own power. And I'm afraid 419 00:37:29,639 --> 00:37:32,519 that, like Mao, as he gets older seventy, he's going to become 420 00:37:32,639 --> 00:37:39,320 even more paranoid and even more distrustful of people, even within the Chinese Communist 421 00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:44,480 Party. And you saw that at the last Party Congress, because his one 422 00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:51,079 faithful supporter from the very beginning when he took office in twenty twelve, was 423 00:37:51,119 --> 00:37:54,280 the previous President Hu Gene Tao. Well, what happened at the last meeting 424 00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:58,920 of the Party Congress on the final day of the Party Congress, who Gene 425 00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:02,400 Tao was lifted out of seat by security guards and escort it from the room. 426 00:38:02,559 --> 00:38:08,559 Why because he had opened the folder containing the names of the new Politbureau 427 00:38:08,639 --> 00:38:14,599 members and he had been told that he was going to be Shei gen Ping 428 00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:19,800 had agreed to let three members of the Houjen Tao faction serve on the polet 429 00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:22,800 bureau, and Ujen Tao opened the folder. This guy is the former president 430 00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:25,840 of China, the former leader of the Communist Party was for ten years. 431 00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:30,320 Before she opens a folder, a look of astonishment comes across his face as 432 00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:35,760 he realized that none of the members of his faction are even listed on the 433 00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:38,960 pollit bureau. They're all Sijing Ping's people. At that point, he begins 434 00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:43,639 to complain to c Gene Ping he's sitting next to, and that's when the 435 00:38:43,639 --> 00:38:47,079 security guards come and take him out of the room in full view of the 436 00:38:47,199 --> 00:38:53,519 hundreds of members and alternate members of the Chinese Communist Party, thus making it 437 00:38:53,519 --> 00:39:00,360 clear to everybody that you do not go against Cijen Ping in animatter at all, 438 00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:05,760 or you two can be removed from the room and put under house arrest, 439 00:39:07,599 --> 00:39:08,800 you know. And that sort of brings me to the next question I 440 00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:13,679 want to ask, which is how dark this could get? And you were 441 00:39:14,079 --> 00:39:16,480 talking about that just now. I want to add, you know, this 442 00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:21,920 question also about the Chinese middle class, which is much bigger now than it 443 00:39:22,039 --> 00:39:25,880 was obviously when when Mao stepped in and has different standards of living. You 444 00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:30,400 know, higher standards of living, but at the same time is a very 445 00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:35,039 fragile is in a very fragile position, and not all of China is middle 446 00:39:35,039 --> 00:39:37,760 class. Obviously, there's still a lot of abject poverty in China that they're 447 00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:44,039 allegedly trying to entirely eleven eight zero percent. We'll see how that goes for 448 00:39:44,079 --> 00:39:47,079 them. But how dark do you think this could get? Are we looking 449 00:39:47,119 --> 00:39:53,519 at potentially a more mass death in the vein of what happened with Mao sort 450 00:39:53,519 --> 00:39:59,199 of even in the era of high tech and social media. Where does this 451 00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:07,159 go? Well, It's important to realize that China has never successfully created a 452 00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:15,880 thriving domestic economy. Its economic growth has been disproportionally based on export growth. 453 00:40:15,519 --> 00:40:22,239 And so the export sector of the economy has thrived over the last forty years 454 00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:29,320 because of three things. Because we in the United States and the West funded 455 00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:32,559 it. We sent trillions of dollars of investment into China. We in the 456 00:40:32,599 --> 00:40:37,440 West, particularly in the United States, opened our markets to cheap Chinese made 457 00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:43,159 goods, thus giving them a ready made export market. And we in the 458 00:40:43,199 --> 00:40:47,960 West, particularly in the United States, either consciously transferred or allowed to be 459 00:40:49,039 --> 00:40:54,840 stolen trillions of dollars in intellectual property over the last few decades. Now, 460 00:40:55,360 --> 00:41:00,679 that's in other words, we enabled the rise of the country, the political 461 00:41:00,679 --> 00:41:04,320 system, the Communist party that wants to destroy us, which I think is 462 00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:09,079 probably the greatest strategic blunder in human history. But it may be that Chi 463 00:41:09,199 --> 00:41:16,559 gene pain destroys because he can't help himself. The only sector of the Chinese 464 00:41:16,639 --> 00:41:22,920 economy that actually operates at a profit, you see, because the state owned 465 00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:29,400 enterprises don't. They're dinosaurs, they are white elephants. They require state subsidies. 466 00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:34,800 And sure, China produces more times of steel every year than most of 467 00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:37,800 the rest of the world combined, which is far more than China now needs. 468 00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:43,719 So it overproduces products and then it dumps some overseas at prices that are 469 00:41:43,719 --> 00:41:49,199 sometimes below low market prices. But those those products produced by state factories are 470 00:41:49,239 --> 00:41:57,639 subsidized. So ultimately the Chinese people are losers in that particular game. If 471 00:41:57,679 --> 00:42:01,760 the if the entrepreneurs, if they're well creators of the last thirty years, 472 00:42:02,079 --> 00:42:07,320 are killed off. And I mean that literally, I mean there are the 473 00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:12,599 most dangerous place to be a billionaire in the world today is China, because 474 00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:21,559 literally you know, hundreds of people, billionaire CEOs, thousands have been arrested, 475 00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:25,000 They've been tortured, they're in prisoned for life, where they've been executed. 476 00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:30,480 In some cases they've been suicided, which means that they just happen to 477 00:42:30,559 --> 00:42:35,880 jump off the balcony of a twenty five story building and fall to their debts. 478 00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:39,039 So all of that is going on. So the wealth of the wealth 479 00:42:39,079 --> 00:42:45,280 creators is gradually being stolen by Communist Party officials, who in turn, you 480 00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:49,840 know, are not investing in the domestic economy because that's not where the money 481 00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:52,360 is. They're desperate to get their money out of China. There's a huge 482 00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:58,320 pool of money and people that are desperate to get out of China. So 483 00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:01,199 the domestic investment is not there, the domestic economy is not there. And 484 00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:08,000 if the United States would simply continue the policies that we had under President Trump 485 00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:16,320 of putting in tariffs in place that counterbalance the subsidies that the Chinese Communist Party 486 00:43:16,639 --> 00:43:23,119 is using to subsidize its exports, we could bring this system down. Unfortunately, 487 00:43:23,199 --> 00:43:27,840 under the current administration, we're not doing that. We're placating China. 488 00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:35,559 Janet Yellen, Secretary Treasury was recently in China trying to job own the Chinese 489 00:43:36,119 --> 00:43:43,679 into stopping overproducing goods, into stopping dumping goods on the international market, into 490 00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:47,519 starting to respect intellectual property rights, into doing all of the other things that 491 00:43:47,519 --> 00:43:52,360 we've been talking to China about to no avail for the last thirty years. 492 00:43:52,920 --> 00:44:00,199 And Chinese officials will listen polidely, they may even nod, but they will 493 00:44:00,199 --> 00:44:07,119 do nothing because the only thing they understand are actual, real consequences. Increased 494 00:44:07,199 --> 00:44:10,599 tariffs, for example, would get their attention. Anything short of that is 495 00:44:12,559 --> 00:44:16,519 just an empty promise, and you know, or an agreement where that's not 496 00:44:16,599 --> 00:44:22,840 worth the paper it's written on. In Given your background, I want to 497 00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:30,119 ask before I let you go, how the history of the one child policy 498 00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:34,800 still dogs China still dogs the Chinese economy, the people, the culture. 499 00:44:35,559 --> 00:44:38,920 What's your perspective, I mean, again, given your incredible history on this 500 00:44:39,079 --> 00:44:45,840 particular topic, with how the country is still affected by this today. Well, 501 00:44:45,920 --> 00:44:51,440 it turns out that that killing off four hundred million of the most productive, 502 00:44:51,639 --> 00:44:55,519 enterprising, and hardworking people on the planet over the last two generations is 503 00:44:55,559 --> 00:45:00,960 not a very smart idea, And I would argue it's an example of the 504 00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:08,079 typical kind of overreach you see whenever a government or political party engages in a 505 00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:15,559 kind of massive overreach. That's an understatement, but overreach that the Chinese Communist 506 00:45:15,559 --> 00:45:22,199 Party invariably does. And I think the one child policy has meant many things, 507 00:45:22,599 --> 00:45:27,800 but it is a at one level, it is a perfect reflection of 508 00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:34,679 the hate that I believe that that Mao and the Communist Party itself, the 509 00:45:34,760 --> 00:45:39,119 hate and the stain that he and the party has for their fellow human beings, 510 00:45:39,639 --> 00:45:45,440 even those who happen to be Chinese. Mao exalted in the destructive power 511 00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:50,639 of this hate. He said, once, communism is not love, it's 512 00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:52,639 communism is a hammer that we used to crush the enemy. It turns out 513 00:45:52,639 --> 00:45:57,559 most of those enemies who are crushed for Chinese, and some of them, 514 00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:00,480 four hundred million of them, turned out to be unborn baby who now would 515 00:46:00,519 --> 00:46:05,239 be twenty and thirty and forty years old. They would be educated, they 516 00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:08,199 would be entering the workforce, they would be starting businesses, they'd be buying 517 00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:15,400 homes and cars, they would be driving the economy forward. Instead, for 518 00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:22,119 the last few years, China's population has been shrinking. China's population has been 519 00:46:22,159 --> 00:46:25,199 aging for decades, of course, but now it is literally dying. They 520 00:46:25,199 --> 00:46:30,199 are filling more coffins than cradles each year in China, and I talked about 521 00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:35,920 the difficulty of that the domestic economy is having right now, there's sixty five 522 00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:39,360 million empty apartments in China. They're so overbuilt, they're not enough people to 523 00:46:39,440 --> 00:46:45,079 ever fill those apartments. The people who would have filled those apartments by marrying 524 00:46:45,119 --> 00:46:49,360 and having children were killed, and so in a very real sense, the 525 00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:57,639 Chinese Communist Party has killed off its future literally. And I don't see any 526 00:46:57,679 --> 00:47:07,159 combination of bribe incentives that could induce young women in China to marry in their 527 00:47:07,159 --> 00:47:12,119 early twenties and have three children, because that's what it would take to offset 528 00:47:12,159 --> 00:47:15,280 the population decline. It would take all young women in China to marry and 529 00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:22,400 have three children to offset the population decline. Why well, because there are 530 00:47:22,440 --> 00:47:25,559 so few young women in China. Remember under the one child policy, the 531 00:47:25,639 --> 00:47:32,039 preference for sons meant that millions of baby girls were selectively aborted or abandoned to 532 00:47:32,159 --> 00:47:37,280 die after birth for decades, and so now we have so few women in 533 00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:43,119 the child bearing years that everyone would have to marry and have three children. 534 00:47:43,199 --> 00:47:45,519 I don't see any way the government can persuade young women to do that. 535 00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:52,880 But I do think that the Communist Party would not hesitate as things get worse 536 00:47:52,960 --> 00:48:00,840 in China demographically, as the population aging increases, not hesitate to force young 537 00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:06,800 women to become pregnant. And so I hope that no one gives she gen 538 00:48:06,880 --> 00:48:09,440 Ping a copy of the handmade sale, because he will bring it to life. 539 00:48:09,639 --> 00:48:13,880 He will bring it to life. He will. He will order young 540 00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:16,039 women to get married, he will order them to conceive children. He will 541 00:48:16,159 --> 00:48:21,320 order them men for helving examinations to make sure they're pregnant, and he will 542 00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:25,440 punish anyone who dares aboard a child that he has ordered conceived. There will 543 00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:30,840 be I'm afraid before the end forced pregnancy. Why it's it's the mere image 544 00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:36,280 of forced abortion, isn't it. Why would a government that forced women to 545 00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:42,400 get aborted at nine months of pregnancy hesitate to force young women to get pregnant 546 00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:46,559 and carry a pregnancy for nine months. They would have no moral compunctions whatsoever 547 00:48:46,599 --> 00:48:52,679 about doing that. That is it is chilling. Steve Moser, the author 548 00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:57,000 of The Devil and Communist China from Maw down to Sheet Thank you so much 549 00:48:57,039 --> 00:49:01,000 for joining us and for all your INSIGHTSKS. Thank you you've been listening to 550 00:49:01,039 --> 00:49:05,760 another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm I'm Elisashinsky, culture editor here 551 00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:07,400 at The Federalist. Will be back soon with more. Until then, be 552 00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:17,400 the lovers of freedom. I'm anxious for the fray. I heard the fame, 553 00:49:17,599 --> 00:49:28,480 voice the reason, and then it faded away.