China historically was an innovative country, bringing the world gunpowder, papermaking, printing and the compass. Current President Xi Jinping is seeking to Make China Great Again.
Its technological abilities are advancing rapidly and have resulted in China becoming a leader in quantum research. It just rolled out the world’s largest 5G network. It has created a floating solar power plant and the world’s most powerful high powered supercomputer. It is the first country to land a discovery probe on the far-side of the moon.
China’s President Xi Jinping
A trade agreement with the U.S. would help President Xi achieve his goal and would boost the economies of both countries — but can China be trusted to honor an agreement? Not based on its record.
In spite of a crackdown on corruption by President Xi, dishonesty is a way of life in China and other communist countries. Dishonesty is just one more tactic for China to use as it seeks to replace the United States as the world’s largest economy.
As a Communist country, China has stringent rules for its citizenry, but rules do not apply to party leaders. Consider just some of the evidence that China is not to be trusted.
Intellectual property theft. Technology theft and other unfair business practices originating in China are costing the American economy more than $57 billion a year, White House officials believe, and they expect that figure to grow.
It’s probably much worse than that estimate. A 2017 report by the National Bureau of Asian Research estimated that “the annual cost to the U.S. economy continues to exceed $225 billion in counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets and could be as high as $600 billion.”
A U.S. Department of Justice report to the Senate Intelligence Committee claimed that “from 2011-2018, more than 90% of cases alleging economic espionage by or to benefit a state involve China,” Forbes reported, “and more than two-thirds of the Department’s theft of trade secrets cases have had a nexus to China.”
China also steals research from American universities and has established “talent programs” to identify and recruit people who can steal technology for China.
Hacking. An investigation by NPR and the PBS news show “Frontline” found that three consecutive administrations have failed to stop cyber-hacking by China because the companies being hacked don’t want the government to interfere.
Chinese hackers “were really using a large rake — think of a rake [like] you rake leaves in the fall,” U.S. Attorney David Hickton said. “They were taking everything … personal information, strategic plans, organizational charts. Then they just figured out later how they were going to use it.”
But none of the companies wanted to investigate or take legal action, because they have too much money at stake in China.
Torture. The Chinese government, which does not tolerate religion, has created concentration camps for an estimated one million Uighur Muslims through a program led by President Xi.
“As evidence mounted and governments around the world started to find their voices, the Chinese Communist Party stopped denying the existence of the camps,” according to The Sydney Morning Herald. “Instead, this year it launched a sanitation and propaganda campaign to present the camps as cheerful vocational education centres where Uighur people could choose to go to study useful skills.”
In reality, though, Uighurs are imprisoned, forced to forgo their religious practices and their ethnic culture. Against their religious beliefs, they are forced to drink alcohol, eat pork and speak only in Chinese. Many are tortured or killed.
Organ harvesting. Both Uighurs and Falun Gong practitioners, as well as other political prisoners, are routinely executed “on demand” and their organs are harvested for transplant recipients.
“Several researchers — most notably Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, former parliamentarian David Kilgour and investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann — estimate that tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience have been killed to supply a lucrative trade in human organs and cadavers and that these abuses may be ongoing,” according to Wikipedia.
Lying. China’s Communist Party routinely blames Western powers for thwarting the peaceful rise of China. State media reports are filled with accusations blaming the “black hands” of the CIA and other Western intelligence services for causing unrest in Hong Kong.
Murder. President Xi “has purged countless bureaucrats and dispatched rivals in a broad anti-corruption campaign that has disciplined more than 1.5 million officials,” according to The Washington Post.
Enslaving Chinese people. President Xi has practically absolute power. He even removed term limits, so he can rule indefinitely.
China has the world’s largest and most sophisticated online censorship operation. President Xi is seeking to make China’s Internet separate from the Internet for the rest of the world, “with its content closely monitored and managed by the Communist party.”
China has become a leader in facial recognition software and is developing a system with the goal of being able to identify any of its 1.3 billion citizens within three seconds with about 90% accuracy.
And There’s More
We haven’t even mentioned the crackdown on Hong Kong, Tiananmen Square or China’s growing military strength.
While China publically suggests that it has only a small arsenal of nuclear weapons, Mark Helprin recently questioned in The Wall Street Journal why the country needs a 3,000 mile tunnel system to store them.
China has taken over control of the South China Sea by building out shoals and reefs into islands and locating military bases on them.
“Once, the West crippled China with the opium trade,” Helprin wrote. “Now China supplies American addicts with fentanyl. Once, the West sold China manufactured goods in exchange for commodities. Now China sells us manufactured goods in exchange for commodities. Once, Western military bases ringed the world. Now, as the West retreats, China is installing networks of bases in almost exact imitation.”
We hope the U.S. is able to reach a trade agreement with China that will benefit both countries. But we wouldn’t trust China to honor the terms of whatever agreement is reached.