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MARTIN SMITH, correspondent:
In July of 2021, China marked the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.
PRESIDENT XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Since its establishment, the party’s number one project has been the happiness of the Chinese other folks and the rebirth of the Chinese nation.
MARTIN SMITH:
In his speech, President Xi Jinping celebrated China’s emergence as one of the wealthiest countries on Earth.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] This is wonderful and excellent for the Chinese nation, for the Chinese people.
MARTIN SMITH:
By all accounts Xi is the most powerful Chinese leader since the founder of the People’s Republic, Mao Zedong. And like Mao he has immense ambitions for his country.
Promotional video in China
MARTIN SMITH:
During his first decade in power, Xi introduced the largest infrastructure allocation in history, building ports, roads and a vast virtual network linking China to around 150 countries. It has made China the world’s leading vehicle manufacturer.
EX-ROBOT VOICE:
[Speaking Mandarin] Nice to meet you.
FEMALE EX-ROBOT EMPLOYEE:
[Speaking Mandarin] This is our company’s next-generation robot.
MARTIN SMITH:
It has invested heavily in a race with the United States to dominate the advancement of synthetic intelligence. He plans to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And Xi has presided over an antagonistic relationship with the United States.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] The other Chinese will never allow a foreign force to intimidate, oppress, or enslave us. Anyone who tries will be hit in the head with blood in front of a wonderful metal wall forged by 1. 4 billion Chinese.
ORVILLE SCHELL, Asian Society:
Xi Jinping is different. He does not want to be part of the world as it is. What he wants is to be much more dominant in the way the world is run. He doesn’t want—
MARTIN SMITH:
Orville Schell is widely identified as the dean of China experts in the United States and served as a representative on this project. He traveled to China and watched closely the rise of Xi Jinping.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
You can read his speeches and it’s all there. He says what he’s going to do, and he does it.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Taiwan’s independence goes against history. It’s a dead end. We do not rule out the use of force.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
And we can’t quite believe it’s anything but propaganda which is just maybe nonsense, but it isn’t. He’s laid it all out there.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] [We must] achieve the goal of realistic combat education and actually master the skill of fighting and winning wars.
Video surveillance
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Xi Jinping talks about hostile foreign forces, didui shili. This is the center of his vision of US-China relations. It’s hostile.
MARTIN SMITH:
We seek to perceive the roots of this hostility, to perceive Xi himself and the China he leads. But China severely limited foreign media and we were allowed to report from inside the country. No existing manager would talk to us on the record.
China allows us to enter China. So that?
VICTOR GAO, Professor, Soochow University:
China faces all kinds of demanding situations in the world. You may or may not be on their radar.
MARTIN SMITH:
Victor Gao is a well-known figure who travels around the world to protect Xi’s China. We interviewed him in New York.
What is it about Xi Jinping’s presidency that has fomented this hostility between the U.S. and China?
VICTOR GAO:
I don’t agree with the way he characterizes the situation.
MARTIN SMITH:
But after 2012, when he came to power. . .
VICTOR GAO:
I would argue that, fundamentally, China and the United States treat each other as equals, but China-U. S. relations are moving in a direction that is proving complicated and dangerous.
The Prince
MARTIN SMITH:
To begin with, he wanted to know where Xi Jinping came from and how his afterlife had made him the man he is today. He grew up in a turbulent time in Chinese history, but he was a privileged child, with red roots. Xi’s father had fought alongside Mao Zedong, and after the Revolution he was a senior Communist Party official. Young Xi lived in a comfortable house and perhaps attended the most productive schools.
JOSEPH TORIGIAN, Author, The Party’s Interests Come First:
He was one of the so-called princelings, and there was a lot of privilege that he enjoyed. So Xi Jinping would have grown up—
MARTIN SMITH:
Joseph Torigian is a professor at American University.
JOSÉ TORIGIEN:
He attended a school attended primarily by descendants of high-ranking cadres, and they were told that they would be the ones to lead China into modernity, who would build on the heritage of the Chinese. Communist Party to society.
MARTIN SMITH:
Prior to the 1949 revolution, China was ruled by a U.S.-backed dictator, Chiang Kai-shek.
US NEWS:
Well known to every American is lean, keen Chiang Kai-shek, undisputed leader and idol of millions of Chinese.
MARTIN SMITH:
Mao Chiang, the “dog of imperialism”. He fought for 22 years to overthrow Chiang.
MALE READER:
Despite American assistance, Chiang’s forces were repulsed. The Revolution is now within Mao’s master and is the beginning of the greatest political and economic experiment the world has ever known.
MARTIN SMITH:
Before Mao’s victory, China was one of the poorest nations in the world. Inspired by communist theory, Mao blamed the nation’s ills on China’s wealthy elites.
CCP PROPAGANDA FILM:
[Speaking Mandarin] The Communist Party calls for radical change. Heaven and earth are upside down.
The Red Detachment of Women, 1961
MARTIN SMITH:
Mao followed communist propaganda like this film to unite the other people who opposed the landlords.
CCP PROPAGANDA FILM:
[Speaking Mandarin] Isn’t he the owner? An evil elite? Does a monster suck blood?
MARTIN SMITH:
Donkey caps, a common occurrence in Mao’s China, were used to publicly humiliate disloyal landowners, intellectuals, and politicians.
In 1962, when Xi Jinping was only nine years old, his father became an unlikely victim of these purges. Mao accused him of disloyalty. Xi’s father was subjected to so-called wrestling sessions, in which he was beaten and reported.
ALFRED CHAN, author, Xi Jinping:
His father accuses him of supporting a novel that could have called Mao’s leadership into question. It’s as undeniable as that.
MARTIN SMITH:
Professor Alfred Chan is author of an exhaustive biography of Xi Jinping that chronicles his life.
Alfredo Chan:
His father was dragged and paraded down the street. At that point, he put on a donkey cap and was subjected to mock trials. They were necessarily puppet courts.
MARTIN SMITH:
Here, a sign hanging around Xi’s father’s neck reads “Anti-Party Element Xi Zhongxun. “
JOSÉ TORIGIEN:
We know that this was an emotionally traumatizing experience for him. When you’re a member of the Chinese Communist Party, everything is the party. Your entire life is the party. So for the party to tell you that you oppose Mao, it’s hard to overestimate just how galling it is for a member of this kind of organization to hear that.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi’s father was sent to work in a factory and then imprisoned for 8 years.
Meanwhile, some members of the elite had doubts about Mao’s leadership. A famine, the result of the failure of Mao’s agricultural policy, had devastated the country.
AMERICAN NEWS:
They arrived with reports of people dead in the fields and starving farmers eating some of the seeds for next year’s planting.
MARTIN SMITH:
Undeterred, Mao introduced his so-called Cultural Revolution in 1966, expanding the categories of those who would be purged.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
So during the Cultural Revolution there was something known as the hei wu lei, the “black categories.” And these were the people who had no standing as human beings. They had no rights. They were considered unacceptable, or I guess you’d have to say evil. They had to be overturned and even possibly, in all too many cases, exterminated. And we saw millions killed. They were not fully human.
CHINESE RED GUARDS SONG:
[Singing in Mandarin] Red Guards, Red Guards, burning with revolutionary zeal.
MARTIN SMITH:
Mao encouraged bands of marauding youths, known as Red Guards, to help so-called black elements with a view to punishing them.
SONG OF THE CHINESE RED GUARDS:
[Singing in Mandarin] Rise, the direction is clear, our revolutionary spirit is strong. We stick to it with general dedication. We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards.
CAI XIA, Chinese Communist Party, 1982-2020:
[Speaking Mandarin] Our education taught us that Mao Zedong was our great savior.
MARTIN SMITH:
Cai Xia, a longtime party member, came of age in the midst of the Cultural Revolution.
You say he is the savior. What did he save you from?
CAI XIA:
[Speaking Mandarin] At that time, we believed that Mao Zedong led the Chinese people to overthrow what we called imperialism: the capitalists and landlords who oppressed the Chinese people. He led the Chinese people to rise up and take over the country.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
One of the most pernicious and harmful aspects of the whole Maoist revolution was that it distorted and made it impossible for people to be human and to have family loyalties, friendship loyalties—to keep any moral compass on whatsoever.
MARTIN SMITH:
When he was 13, Xi himself underwent wrestling sessions. She forced him to wear a donkey cap and publicly denounced him through his own mother.
Alfredo Chan:
According to Xi Jinping, he has gone through several such wrestling sessions. And his half-sister couldn’t stand it and committed suicide. The physical and mental violence is enormous.
MARTIN SMITH:
At 15, Xi Jinping was sent to the countryside to do manual labor—a so-called sent-down youth.
ALFRED CHAN:
At that time, 17 million young people were sent to the countryside to be re-educated by poor peasants. Mao’s idea was that this was the truth of China: a poor and underdeveloped countryside. Xi Jinping traveled to one of the poorest regions in China, where he stayed for seven years and portrayed himself primarily as a peasant. The paintings were difficult. So Xi Jinping, being a city boy, a prince, has never gotten used to the taste of farmers, like beasts of burden.
JOSÉ TORIGIEN:
At first it was something he couldn’t handle. He talked about the hard labor. He talked about living in a cave. He talked about how difficult it was to get along with the peasants.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
At one point, Xi Jinping simply left and tried to return home, and his family refused to accept him. Therefore, it is difficult to know what the consequences of such a thing are, but fundamentally we know that all human beings have close ties to their parents. And when those close ties deteriorate, it has consequences.
EDWARD WONG, author of Edge of Empire:
I controlled this domain where Xi had served in the Cultural Revolution, a village in Shaanxi province, so I think I was given an unvarnished view of life there.
MARTIN SMITH:
Until 2016, Edward Wong was the New York Times Beijing bureau chief.
EDUARDO WONG:
This region of China is one of the poorest in China. At that time, other people lived in those caves, and Xi lived in a cave at the back of the room of an old man I knew, Mr. Lu. M. . Lu told me that Xi had books with him and that his gentleman would stay up late at night, reading.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi’s time in exile is now part of his creation myth. The cave where he lived for seven years is now a tourist attraction. It is filled with books on Marxist philosophy and political theory, which Xi says he read at night while suffering to survive, making him the leader he will become.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Being sent to the field was an incredibly educational experience. Then I felt that I had experienced a kind of purification. In fact, it was a feeling of reinvention, of transformation.
MARTIN SMITH:
Jianying Zha and her family also barely survived Mao. She now lives in New York, the author of eight books on China and a contributor to The New Yorker.
JIANYING ZHA, author, Tide Players:
I was born in this so-called New China and grew up with this regime: “We live in a strong and satisfied country, and we will grow and not only build a bigger China, but at some point we will liberate humanity, adding Americans. “
This was my mother, with myself.
I was 6 years old and doing great that night when our space was ransacked by those Red Guards. They arrived here in the afternoon and our space was disrupted. My parents were humiliated. We go from the flowers of the country, from the children of Mao, to suddenly we are black elements.
MARTIN SMITH:
How many other people died because of the Cultural Revolution?
JIANYING ZHA:
There are other estimates on this subject. Officially, one of the party leaders said that several million more people had died. But the figures are far from accurate, because the government, regardless of the dominant regime, has tended to hide.
MARTIN SMITH:
Between the 1950s and the mid-1970s, China suffered an estimated 25 to 45 million deaths, from the famine and from the eradication of black elements.
JIANYINGZHA:
And to this day, the world has not found out that that is what happened. And the same guilty party is still in power, and Mao is still an icon.
MARTIN SMITH:
Today, President Xi Jinping lives and works next to this portrait of Mao overlooking Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Xi hugged Mao.
LI YUAN, The New York Times:
It is a mystery why these other people do not hate Mao. Why don’t they think about why the Cultural Revolution took place, why they endured so much suffering?
MARTIN SMITH:
Li Yuan, who grew up in China, now writes a column for the New York Times.
LI YUAN:
Xi Jinping himself speaks a lot about his sufferings when he was young.
MARTIN SMITH:
He said it was smart for him.
LI YUAN:
Yes. And now he’s telling the Chinese young people, “You should learn to eat bitterness. It will be good for you.”
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Xi Jinping learned as a teenager that if you need to survive, you will have to master the equipment in the Maoist toolbox. You will have to be redder than anyone. His upbringing consisted of surviving the highly politicized environment of the Cultural Revolution, when his father was one of the antichrists and Xi had to find his way. And to achieve this, he had to become more politically correct than anyone else. Basically, Xi Jinping has the Kool-Aid of the Cultural Revolution. And those formative years really rolled the dice.
Return From Exile
MARTIN SMITH:
At age 22, Xi Jinping returned from the countryside. He had missed years of schooling, but he would manage to gain entrance to one of China’s most elite universities.
ALFRED CHAN:
Yeah, he was lucky to be accepted into the Tsinghua University. It’s China’s MIT.
MARTIN SMITH:
This is a boy who did not attend high school and was able to gain admission to China’s most prestigious university.
ALFRED CHAN:
Yes. Very unusual. Mao destroyed the school formula. But in the early 1970s, Mao stated that the school formula needed to be reformed. He does not favor the elite, but is equally welcoming to peasants, staff and soldiers. And so Xi Jinping was admitted.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi graduated in chemical engineering. But what interested him was partisan politics. In 1979, after graduating, he appointed a junior assistant to a senior Communist Party official. But after three years in Beijing, Xi moved to the provinces to pursue his own political career. career and rise through the ranks of local government.
It is a time of wonderful reforms. Mao died in 1976 and China is now led by a new leader, Deng Xiaoping. Twice purged, Deng had witnessed the horrors of the Cultural Revolution.
DENG XIAOPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Hello, comrades!
SOLDIERS OF THE PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY:
[Speaking Mandarin] Hello, leader!
MARTIN SMITH:
He set out to reverse many of Mao’s policies.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
The 80s were a normal and ordinary decade. Deng Xiaoping radically replaced the party’s relationship with society. It divided the people’s communes and gave the peasants homes that they could exploit individually. And suddenly you go into the countryside and you see the most impressive open markets, where other people were selling what they had harvested. It was a huge change.
ANNE STEVENSON-YANG, Founder, J Capital Research:
It seemed that China was other and open, and was converting very quickly.
MARTIN SMITH:
Anne Stevenson-Yang worked for decades in China as a monetary analyst and businesswoman.
ANNE STEVENSON-YANG:
Since Deng Xiaoping told the Politburo that they deserved to upgrade their Mao jackets with sports jackets, all the major cities have built huge airports and had avenues leading directly to those five-star hotels. And those hotels were bigger than any other. If you stayed in a hotel in Europe you would think, “What about China? It’s fantastic. “
MALE JOURNALIST:
Today, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the attitude towards capitalism is changing. Not fast enough for some members of the new generation, who see nothing in mixing Marxism and market economics.
MALE REPORTER:
As one China scholar Deng said, such surprising things have happened that no one running in the Chinese field is willing to make predictions anymore.
MARTIN SMITH:
In 1979, Deng visited Washington. Deng’s opening was seen as a welcome development in the West, and a policy of economic engagement held for the next four decades.
PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER:
We now share the perspective of a new way of commerce, concepts and people, which will reap benefits for our countries.
MARTIN SMITH:
In China, flexible industry and foreign investment have helped lift millions of people out of poverty.
PROTESTERS:
[Singing in Mandarin] Freedom of assembly. Freedom of the press.
MARTIN SMITH:
But many Chinese, especially students, are not entirely convinced. They were involved in corruption and sought democratic reforms.
MALE PROTEST SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Democracy will be delayed!
PROTESTERS:
[Singing in Mandarin] Democracy is late!
MALE PROTEST SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] We have freedom of speech!
PROTESTERS:
[Sings in Mandarin] We have freedom of speech!
MARTIN SMITH:
By the spring of 1989, pro-democracy demonstrations were gaining momentum across the country. While a provincial official, Xi Jinping watched closely.
Alfredo Chan:
Xi Jinping attempted to assess the political climate. What is happening? Does the central government do this?
MALE PROTEST SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Severely punish corrupt officials!
PROTESTERS:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Severely punish corrupt officials!
ALFREDO CHAN:
And being a very careful bureaucrat, at home he tried to prevent out-of-town academics from coming and joining the local protests.
PROTESTERS:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Long live freedom!
MARTIN SMITH:
In early June, the protest erupted.
MALE JOURNALIST:
At this hour there are hundreds of thousands of people here in Tiananmen Square.
MALE JOURNALIST:
Some observers consider the current wave of unrest to be the biggest challenge the Communist Party has ever faced.
ZHOU FENGSUO, pro-democracy activist:
The momentum on Tiananmen Square was strong. For me, the most amazing experience is just hearing people’s voice from everywhere.
MARTIN SMITH:
Zhou Fengsuo was a student leader in the Tiananmen protests. He was one of the first to enter the square.
ZHOU FENGSUO:
We need to have a discussion with the communist government, and I think that at that time there was a real possibility, because the party had positioned itself after the Cultural Revolution on the path of opening up and reform.
PROTESTERS:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Dialogue! Dialogue!
ZHOU FENGSUO:
So it is understood that there is freedom in the air in Tiananmen Square.
PROTESTERS:
[Singing in Mandarin] With our flesh and blood, let us build a new Great Wall. We are millions with a center opposed to the enemy’s fire.
JIANYING ZHA:
I was in Tiananmen Square on the afternoon of June 4. We were all as a group, talking to each other. And suddenly there was a boy there, and he fell backwards. And we haven’t heard anything, so we’re all stunned. And everyone said, “Those will have to be rubber bullets. ” »Until we saw that he didn’t wake up and there was a pool of blood or anything on his neck.
MALE JOURNALIST:
Tanks are rolling in, down the main thoroughfare towards Tiananmen Square.
JIANYING ZHA:
As we retreated, I think at least a dozen people around me were shot.
MALE JOURNALIST:
There are sporadic shootings. Automatic weapons were opened. People went into hiding.
JIANYINGZHA:
That night it was the worst of China. The monster reared its head.
MALE JOURNALIST:
At one of the main intersections, an armored vehicle has just run over a young woman who was riding a bicycle. He lunged at everything and anything: the barricades, the people. And the protesters had put up metal barricades, and this armored vehicle got stuck. crowd gathered around, throwing insults, stones, sticks and everything.
CAI XIA:
[Speaking Mandarin] The Tiananmen incident gave me a wonderful surprise. The biggest surprise was how the Popular Army was able to fire on the population. I started to wonder: what is wrong with this country? With this match?
MALE VOICE 1:
Do you see this boy?
MALE VOICE 2:
No.
MALE VOICE 1:
There’s a guy running towards the tank.
MARTIN SMITH:
That day, a guy stood up defiantly and blocked a column of tanks.
MALE REPORTER:
It wasn’t a single tank that stopped. There were 18 tanks and armored vehicles in this convoy.
MALE VOICE 1:
He’s climbing it.
MARTIN SMITH:
The image of the Tank Man, as he was called, was carried around the world.
PETER JENNINGS, ABC News anchor:
At one point, protesters set fire to an ambulance and directed it toward troops, but the vehicle crashed into a traffic island, prompting infantrymen to open fire on the students again.
DAVID SHAMBAUGH, author, China’s Leaders: From Mao to Today:
Overnight, the Chinese people’s optimism about their own country, this newly awakened, newly modernized and reformed China, came to an abrupt halt.
MARTIN SMITH:
David Shambaugh is a professor of US-China relations at George Washington University. He worked at the State Department and the National Security Council during the Carter administration.
DAVID SHAMBAUGH:
I lived in China right after Tiananmen, in Beijing. It was something serious. It was martial law. The city was occupied by army forces. There were roadblocks everywhere. The foreigners were constantly monitored. The Chinese were constantly monitored and interrogated. So it was a repressive period.
MALE READER:
As of this morning’s news, the crackdown continues in China, where the government says it has arrested student leaders on its “most wanted” list.
MALE JOURNALIST:
One of them captured Zhou Fengsuo, a 22-year-old physics student. He reportedly reported it through his sister and brother-in-law.
MARTIN SMITH:
He reported that your sister had reported you.
ZHOU FENGSUO:
That was government propaganda. I—
MARTIN SMITH:
It’s not true?
ZHOU FENGSUO:
That’s true.
MARTIN SMITH:
Zhou says it’s a party tactic to sow distrust in his family. Zhou Fengsuo is ranked fifth on the party’s “most wanted” list and was jailed for a year.
ZHOU FENGSUO:
When I was in prison, and later, for about five more years, the support for students, even after the massacre, was so strong. Even the policemen, the prison guards, they would acknowledge that the students were right in their demands.
CHINESE NEWSREADER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Today, the Beijing Intermediate Court publicly condemned the violent criminals who looted and vandalized the anti-revolutionary riots in Beijing.
MARTIN SMITH:
After the massacre, these photos were smuggled out of China––evidence of what happened to scores of protesters.
“Arsonist, executed by gunfire.”
MARTIN SMITH:
To date, there is no definitive assessment of the number of people executed.
Footnote: After the Tiananmen crackdown, those who opened fire on protesters were serenaded by a popular Chinese folk singer, Peng Liyuan. Two years earlier, Peng had married a young Communist Party official, Xi Jinping.
Xi has spoken publicly about the Tiananmen events.
He went silent?
ALFRED CHAN, professor emeritus, Huron University, Canada:
Yes. Nothing in the public record that I am aware of. That really shows his cautious demeanor as a provincial official. And he always look to the center for guidance, always trying to gauge what the central government intentions are.
MALE BUYER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Once I have money, I have to buy this car.
CAR SELLER:
[Speaking Mandarin] I can reduce the back seat.
MARTIN SMITH:
After Tiananmen, China has moved on.
MALE BUYER:
[Speaking Mandarin] You should be able to adjust the backseat.
MARTIN SMITH:
Under Deng Xiaoping, China’s informal, unwritten social contract stipulated that if you stay away from politics, we, the party, will make you rich.
FEMALE SHOPPER:
[Speaking Mandarin] See how wide this is?
MARTIN SMITH:
It is an agreement that many Chinese have accepted with protest.
The Heir Apparent
IAN JOHNSON, Author, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians:
We shouldn’t underestimate the amount of political control inside China. But at the same time, it’s also important to recognize that over the past 40 years, the government has done a good job in raising living standards.
MARTIN SMITH:
Ian Johnson is a journalist with a long journalistic career on China.
IAN JOHNSON:
And if you think that tomorrow is going to be a better day, that you’ve just bought a house, that your kid’s going to be able to go to college, that you’re going to be able to go abroad to travel, all of these things that have never been possible before for the vast majority of Chinese people, then you’ll hold your nose or say, “Well, the party isn’t doing such a bad job on balance,” and you’ll go with the flow.
MARTIN SMITH:
In the mid-1990s, the Chinese economy experienced historic growth.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON:
Supporting China’s entry into the WTO represents the most significant opportunity that we have had—
LINGLING WEI, The Wall Street Journal:
You know, after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, the Chinese economy has gained abundant new momentum and more opportunities for individuals. And at that moment. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
Wall Street Journal reporter Lingling Wei grew up the daughter of staunchly Maoist parents. His maternal grandfather was part of Mao’s inner circle. She recalls how, under Deng, China has become more open to Western culture.
LINGLING WEI:
We knew that China’s relationship with the United States was getting better.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken has arrived in Beijing.
LINGLING WEI:
We were exposed to American pop culture. When I was a kid, one of my favorite shows was this American TV series called “Growing Pains. ” I enjoyed watching the children simply respond to their parents.
“GROWING PAIN” CLIP:
I’m just friendly. What’s the matter?
LINGLING WEI:
I grew up with a lot of admiration for the United States. I really wanted to go there. I was very curious about the U.S. Not just me—a lot of my classmates, a lot of my friends, the entire reformed generation had that kind of mindset toward the United States.
MARTIN SMITH:
China was most open to Western influence in the coastal provinces, where Deng Xiaoping attracted foreign corporations to invest, offering them tax incentives, flexible work contracts, and reasonable real estate.
One of the fastest growing provinces is Fujian, where in 2000 Xi Jinping was provincial governor. He had earned a reputation for fighting corruption within the party.
MALE JOURNALIST:
[Speaking Mandarin] Did those who were punished hate you?
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] They didn’t blame me. I think they understood that I had not done this on my own, because I had nothing against them. I have defended justice.
MARTIN SMITH:
Beijing took note, and in 2007, Xi got his big break. A corruption scandal in Shanghai has led the Communist Party’s old guard to search for a new party leader in Shanghai. Shanghai the largest and richest city in China. Xi had to face the consequences of the theft of pension funds by a party secretary.
Alfredo Chan:
The move to Shanghai was a huge promotion because the party chief of Shanghai is always inducted in the 25 members of China’s apex of power. He was picked because of his long experiences in coastal provinces, which were the most open, most developed.
MARTIN SMITH:
In Shanghai, Xi prominent himself through eschewing lavish party perks such as a personal chef, special doctors, luxury cars, and lavish housing, and after just seven months he brought to Beijing, where he catapulted to the Politburo Standing Committee. Suddenly, Xi Jinping have become one of China’s most sensible nine leaders. He on his way.
At only 54 years old, Xi was seen by party leaders as flexible and cooperative. They didn’t expect a strong man.
In one of his first assignments as a committee member, Xi appointed director of the Central Party School in Beijing, a position he once held under Chairman Mao. This is where senior party officials are trained, and for Xi it is an early indicator of the leader he aspired to be.
CAI XIA:
[Speaking Mandarin] In July 2008, Xi Jinping issued a directive to teachers.
MARTIN SMITH:
Cai Xia training at the Central Party School at that time.
CAI XIA:
[Speaking Mandarin] Teachers must align their speech with the spirit of the party’s central leadership. He threatened the teachers, saying that if they wished to express themselves freely, they should leave the school and find other employment. Xi Jinping spoke like a mafia boss. For me, it was a harbinger of things to come.
MARTIN SMITH:
But few people in the West paid much attention, and in China, the country is preparing to celebrate its new riches. That year, China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics. The user who headed the Games preparation committee, Xi Jinping.
CHINESE NEWSREADER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, Vice Chairman Xi Jinping inspected the Olympics facilities in Beijing this morning, making sure the Olympic transportation network and the Olympic Village are up to international standards.
ALFRED CHAN, author, Xi Jinping:
Xi Jinping actually was named the coordinator for the Olympics. Now, he had very little central government experience, and that was fairly tough, because he had to coordinate with the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Defense.
CHINESE READER:
[Speaking Mandarin] During the Beijing Olympics, the People’s Liberation Army will mobilize parts of the army, navy and air force to participate in Olympic security operations.
ALFREDO CHAN:
The Olympics were a way to slow down his probationary period.
MARTIN SMITH:
To see if he qualified for the top position.
Alfredo Chan:
Exactly. The Beijing Olympics was China’s coming-out party, and everything has to be perfect.
CHINESE ANNOUNCER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Many years of anticipation and seven years of preparation. Despite everything, the 29th Summer Olympic Games opened at the National Stadium in Beijing.
MARTIN SMITH:
No expense would be spared. At over $40 billion, the Games were among the most expensive in history.
CHENJIAN LI, Professor, Peking University:
The year 2008 was an impressive Summer Olympics. It’s great.
MARTIN SMITH:
Professor Chenjian Li is a neurologist at Peking University. We interviewed him when he was a visiting scholar at Stanford.
Were you at the stadium?
CHENJIAN LI:
Oui. Je would say that it is the highlight. There is a genuine sense of joy, but not a nationalistic joy. He went beyond that. I think it is more like what only Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony can describe. It felt so good.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi Jinping got tested. Better yet, he inherited a country in its heyday.
MATTHEW POTTINGER, Dep. National Security Advisor, 2019-21:
The Olympics were a major propaganda coup for the Chinese Communist Party that said, “Look, we’ve arrived. Lately we are a global power. ” I remember-
MARTIN SMITH:
Between 1998 and 2005, Matthew Pottinger worked as a journalist in China for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. He also served on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.
Pottinger sees the 2008 Games as a key moment in which U. S. -China relations changed.
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
They coincided with the global monetary crisis, the first spark of which was lit in the United States.
MALE READER:
Amazing on Wall Street tonight.
MALE READER:
At one point, the market collapsed like a well.
MALE READER:
The debt crisis and economic chaos may just have a harmful ripple effect.
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
So those two things juxtaposed together created an incredible sense of jubilation in this idea that China was slingshotting ahead of the United States.
LINGLING WEI:
Chinese leaders realized: “Wow, their formula that we once sought to emulate, at least economically, are now no longer our masters. ” There is a feeling that we are now equivalent to the United States.
CHENJIAN LI:
By that time, China had overtaken Germany, overtaken the United Kingdom, and then overtaken Japan. And, of course, each year it continues to grow until it becomes the largest economy of the moment.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
This is an extraordinary period for America’s economy. We’ve seen triple-digit swings in the stock market. Major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse, and some have failed.
MALE JOURNALIST:
The collapse of Lehman Brothers caused turbulence in markets around the world.
ORVILLE SCHELL, Co-editor, The China Reader: The Reform Era:
The economic crisis gave others like Xi Jinping the impression that history was moving forward, that the United States was in decline and China was rising. They may simply do what the wonder powers had done: “It’s our way or the highway. ” And it was a very vital moment that replaced the dating between China and the rest of the world, especially the United States.
Dad Xi
MALE JOURNALIST:
In spite of everything, the day had arrived. The time had come to elect a president, the leader of the world’s most populous nation. But there was no perceptible tension or suspense. The election of the Chinese president had been decided months in advance.
MARTIN SMITH:
By 2012, Xi Jinping had made the party elite perceive that he was the man who would lead China into the future. He was elected general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and, a few months later, assumed the presidency.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] We will have to continually realize, maintain, and expand the basic interests of as many other people as possible.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi tried to outwardly cultivate an image as a man of the people. His nickname: Papa Xi.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Who is it?
FEMALE TALKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Call him Grandpa!
YOUNG BOY:
[Speaking Mandarin] Hello, Grandpa.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Hello.
LI YUAN:
When he took office, he presented himself as a generalized person. He introduced an attack of charm. He went to a restaurant that sells steamed rolls. And he said that he would not have traffic for his car, for his caravan.
MARTIN SMITH:
At first, this charm offensive worked. Many think Xi would be moderate.
DAVID SHAMBAUGH:
I think the illusions that existed were all that Westerners had about all the Chinese leaders. “Is this the next Gorbachev?
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Continue to lose and insist on reform and opening-up.
DAVID SHAMBAUGH:
Xi Jinping is no reformer. But nobody saw the repressive, dictatorial, control-freak, insecure leader that he has become. None of us saw that.
MARTIN SMITH:
A few months after coming to power, a secret memo surfaced called Document No. 9.
EDUARDO WONG:
Document number nine is a vital internal party document in which Xi talks about the subversive bureaucracy that could take a position in China. He points the finger at civil society groups or NGOs and says that they are harmful and subversive elements in China.
JIANYING ZHA, contributor to The New Yorker:
It stipulates a comprehensive list of ideological constraints, the so-called universal values, which are a key word for the Western constitutional state and the rule of law.
MARTIN SMITH:
The document is explicit, instructing party members to forswear Western ideals like constitutional democracy, human rights, freedom of the press and civil society. Party members should stay true to the Revolution.
Shortly after, a 71-year-old journalist, Gao Yu, was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison after allegedly leaking the document.
Xi has just started.
MALE READER:
[Speaking in Mandarin] State television announced the news that 4 senior officials were fired for accepting bribes.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi had famously fought corruption in Shanghai, and now, as top leader, he launched a nationwide anti-corruption campaign.
MALE READER:
—from top bureaucrats to low-level clerks. China their nickname Tigers and Flies.
MARTIN SMITH:
Corruption is a genuine problem, but the scope and scale of Xi’s crusade surprised many.
MATTHIEU POTTINGER:
Xi Jinping has begun to carry out purges. And other people at the time, including Chinese officials, were saying, “Well, look, this is going to last six months. He will have to consolidate his power. “
MALE REPORTER:
So far, more than 80,000 members of the Communist Party have been investigated.
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
That was 12 years ago. The purges are not only continuing, but they’ve deepened in many respects. They’re now encompassing not only Xi’s enemies, but he’s actually also purging many of his loyalists.
MALE REPORTER:
Xi Jinping has just fired his Foreign Minister and his Defense Minister. He fired many other people at the most sensible levels of the military establishment.
FEMALE JOURNALIST:
The former security czar has been known in public for more than a year. The investigation. . .
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
Those were handpicked people by him—people that he had appointed. The historian Stephen Kotkin said, “Hitler used to kill his enemies, and Stalin killed his friends.” Xi is purging both his friends and his enemies. And that is the mode by which he governs.
MARTIN SMITH:
As Xi tightened his grip, he watched for other threats. Today in China, there are some 600 million surveillance cameras, one for every two citizens, able to track people’s movements down to the minute.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
There is facial recognition on each and every corner. There is virtual recognition. There is a social credit system.
MARTIN SMITH:
What is the social system?
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Therefore, the social credit formula is the highest aspiration of the Chinese Communist Party, which is that each and every thing that every human being does deserves to be incorporated into a computer formula. And thanks to AI and all kinds of complicated programs, you can precisely locate where a user is because they will have purchased anything with a credit or a virtual payment formula. Your car will have driven on a highway. Every kilometer, a camera takes photos of your license plate. They will know each and every thing about each of them, in real time.
Software demo
ORVILLE SCHELL:
This then creates a techno-autocratic formula that is unprecedented and with which we have no experience. This makes George Orwell look like something from the Stone Age.
MARTIN SMITH:
There is also a designated Ministry of Public Security tasked with monitoring the internet.
LI YUAN:
Xi Jinping came by force and created this company on the Internet. We were all thinking, “Ha, ha, ha, how can you access the internet?The internet is so huge, so vast. “
MARTIN SMITH:
Good luck.
LI YUAN:
Yes. And then he did. The Internet.
MARTIN SMITH:
It’s part of the Great Firewall, a mix of law and generation that’s used to blocking giant swaths of the Internet. In China, there is no Google, YouTube or Facebook. When a meme comparing Xi to Winnie the Pooh went viral on Chinese social media, Xi Jinping was not amused. The censors prohibited such comparisons.
“Unable to download image”
CAI XIA:
[Speaking Mandarin] My articles and even my own have been banned from the Internet.
MARTIN SMITH:
When Cai Xia published an op-ed calling for the protection of individual rights, she was purged from the party. She says she was already being monitored 24 hours a day.
CAI XIA:
[Speaking Mandarin] They can see everything, as if I live in a fish tank with a lid, where I am just a small goldfish or an insect, obviously visible. But all my sounds, everything I say outside, can’t come out. He knew everything he did. That’s how I lived.
JIANYINGZHA:
There may be millions, tens of millions, or lots of millions who have a negative view of Xi or the system, but they find it very difficult to mobilize to act together. Any direct, more confrontational and concerted political movement will be eliminated. Fear is almost a subliminal air that is breathed.
Repression
MARTIN SMITH:
There has been significant resistance to Xi’s rule among large groups of ethnic minorities. The resistance today is concentrated in Xinjiang, home to 15 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities, many of whom feel like they’re not even part of China, which is primarily Han.
EDWARD WONG, The New York Times:
Xinjiang becomes one of the first situations of great demand for Xi’s strength. Before Xi came to power in 2012, Xinjiang was a region where ethnic tensions had flared. The party has tried other controlling bureaucracy and, on rare occasions, very repressive measures, but has encountered resistance from other ethnic groups, namely Uyghur Muslims, who live in a belt of oasis cities basically across southern Xinjiang.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xinjiang first conquered through China in the 18th century, but broke away from it twice. Beijing has tried for decades to suppress Uyghur resistance to Chinese rule.
CHINESE READER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Headline News takes us to yesterday’s incident in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The blame lies with the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region. Official statistics imply at least deaths and 38 injuries.
MARTIN SMITH:
In the months since Xi was president, China has been rocked by a series of attacks that the government says were carried out through Uyghurs.
CHINESE READER:
[Speaking Mandarin] The news at 9:20 p.m. on March 1, 11 uniformly dressed, masked rioters slaughtered innocent people at Kunming’s train station plaza, ticket office and other areas.
MARTIN SMITH:
They intensified in the spring of 2014, when scores of people were killed at a railway station in southwest China by individuals wielding machetes and long knives. Chinese officials blamed the attack on a group of Uyghur separatists.
CHINESE READER:
[Speaking Mandarin] At 6 a. m. As of March 2, another 29 people had died and 130 had been injured.
MARTIN SMITH:
Several weeks after the incident, President Xi visited Xinjiang. At the end of his visit, there was a suicide bombing and some other stabbings at an exercise station in the capital of Xinjiang.
CHINESE READER:
[Speaks Mandarin] Due to the bombing, around a hundred Uyghurs were arrested.
ORVILLE SCHELL, Asia Company:
This was a trigger. Xi decided, “That’s it. We’re not going to coddle these people. We’re not going to try to work it out. We’re going to control.” And I think this bespoke of his toolbox, which he had carried with him ever since he was a teenager, which is, “How do you fix things? Control.” That’s his main tool.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi would return to Beijing and put into effect what the party called a “people’s war. “The concept of fighting is opposed to separatism and extremism.
A chilling directive was sent to the local Xinjiang government, telling them how to separate families and initiate mass arrests of Uyghurs. The directive is clear: use the “organs of the dictatorship” and not show “mercy. ”
These drone photos appear to show the arrest of Uyghurs. It is estimated that more than one million have been arrested since 2017.
EDUARDO WONG:
Xi says that we must assimilate the Uyghurs and other ethnic groups into the mainstream Han culture. And what that means in his mind is elements of Islam have to be eradicated or severely weakened. Not even more radical ideas that are taking root, but basic practices such as not eating pork, fasting during Ramadan, trying to make a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj. So, very mainstream Muslim practices must be pulled back, is what he’s saying.
The central government is starting to set up these internment camps in parts of Uigur.
CHINESE CCTV ANNOUNCER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Witness the transformation.
Uyghur SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] I can not believe the consequences if I hadn’t studied here.
CHINESE CCTV ANNOUNCER:
[Speaking Mandarin] One after the other.
Uyghur SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] My skills have improved, my thoughts have improved.
MARTIN SMITH:
The Chinese government presents the camps as a position for development. . .
CHINESE CCTV ANNOUNCER:
[Speaks Mandarin] Beautiful Xinjiang.
MARTIN SMITH:
—Promote peace in Xinjiang.
UIGUR MALE SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Society is stable. Ethnic groups are harmonious.
UIGUR SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] The Communist Party caught me just in time and gave me a position to replace me. I am very grateful.
EDUCATION CENTER STUDENTS [in unison]:
[Speaks Mandarin] I am a law-abiding citizen.
CHINESE CCTV ADVERTISER:
[Speaks Mandarin] In the educational center, the main objective is the teaching of the national language.
EDUARDO WONG:
They don’t need you to speak Uyghur. They need them to speak Mandarin Chinese. And families are separated. It therefore changes the foundations of Uyghur culture.
MARTIN SMITH:
Mihrigul Tursun was arrested at the airport when she returned to Xinjiang from her home country, Egypt. She returns to give her newborn triplets to her parents. Mihrigul says she was accused of being a spy and separated from her children.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
I asked them, “Where is my babies? They are hungry. They need to change diapers.” The Chinese police never answered me. But they asked my family contact information. Where’s my family? Who was who? So I was writing, then one man coming from my backside suddenly taped my mouth, and I cannot speak. Then they put my hands backside, handcuff, and then put a black hood on my head. Then—
MARTIN SMITH:
Mihrigul was held for several months without her children. When she was reunited, there were only two.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
Then they gave me his corpse. Do you know that you get ice cream outside?His body, made of ice.
MARTIN SMITH:
Is it cold?
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
Yes, cold. Total ice. He said, “I’m sorry. He’s dead. You can take him now, his body. ” And then I said, “Wake up!Wake up!” And then I screamed. So this time the doctor answers the call, please, two policemen come and tell him: “Get out of here. Shut up. Don’t shout. Don’t say anything. Just get out of here. Then I was kicked out of the hospital.
MARTIN SMITH:
Later she was detained again. Mihrigul remembers spending time in three different camps.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
They don’t let me sleep. Then they shaved my head and gave me electrical appliances. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
Electric shocks?
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
Yes, an electric shock. I saw nine other people die with me, together, in the same prison.
MARTIN SMITH:
Mihrigul’s account has been carried by multiple Western news outlets, and in 2018 she was invited to testify before the U.S. Congress.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
[Speaking Uyghur] The officers beat women and some died from the beating.
MARTIN SMITH:
In 2019, a Chinese government television channel accused her of lying.
CGTN JOURNALIST:
Mihrigul Tursun claims that one of his triplets died, something the hospital categorically denies.
MARTIN SMITH:
They’re saying it’s all false. This is not true. You’ve seen these reports?
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
Yes, because they won’t tell. They’re always lying. This is 100% true.
CGTN JOURNALIST:
Both Mihrigul’s brother and mother say—
MARTIN SMITH:
In the state television report, Mihrigul’s brother denounced her.
BROTHER OF MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
[Speaks Mandarin] My sister has never been to school and school. She invented that. It’s a lie.
MARTIN SMITH:
In fact, many other Uyghur men and women who have reported abuse have had family members testify against them. An investigation by the Uyghur Human Rights Project shows that the government is simply whitewashing the media. Meanwhile, the so-called re-education camps continue to operate. The Chinese government says there has been no terrorism in Xinjiang since 2016.
JIA QINGGUO, Prof., Peking University:
Xinjiang is a factor that should be studied very carefully.
MARTIN SMITH:
Dr. Jia Qingguo is a prominent Chinese academic and government policy advisor who speaks on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. I interviewed him at a China convention in San Diego.
We had an attack on 9/11, but all Muslims in America were sent to re-education camps. In your opinion, would this have made sense in the United States?
JIA QINGGUO:
But you fought two wars, against Iraq and against Afghanistan. How many other people were killed? In Xinjiang, China launches a large-scale crusade against terrorists. The Chinese government said this was all they had to do.
MARTIN SMITH:
They were taken from their homes.
JIA QINGGUO:
Taken from home, yes.
MARTIN SMITH:
Placed in those fields. But not all of those other people were terrorists.
JIA QINGGUO:
And they were physically injured.
MARTIN SMITH:
But families were ripped apart.
JIA QINGGUO:
Oh-
MARTIN SMITH:
We spoke to a woman whose child was taken from her when he was just a few months old and never returned.
JIA QINGGUO:
I don’t know, possibly there would be greater tactics to solve this problem. But by doing so, I believe that human rights are surely being violated. This should be avoided.
CHINESE VIDEO NARRATOR:
[Speaks Mandarin] At the Vocational Training Centre there are courses in skills, such as making clothes, construction, food production. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
An estimated 80,000 detainees were forced to paint in factories across China, some of which supplied American brands. These corporations have denied Uyghurs hard labor, but forced hard labor continues for other manufacturers.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Xi decided, as he did after the economic crisis, that China did not want to give in to Western demands. What he is doing in Xinjiang is none of our business. Once he turned to it as a solution to a problem.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
Everyone knows what Xi Jinping is doing. It is a very strong and tough country in this world.
MARTIN SMITH:
China is a rich country now.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
China is a rich country. But it is very weak. He simply believes. . . He thinks he’s rich, his money, but he doesn’t. Money can’t do everything.
The industry war
MARTIN SMITH:
Over the past 40 years, China’s economic expansion has eclipsed that of the United States, with an average expansion 4 times faster. China dominates global origin chains and holds around $1 trillion in US debt.
VICTOR GAO:
China is a peer country with the United States today. If we use purchasing power parity, its economy is larger than the U.S. economy. And if anyone believes that they can stop China’s steady rise as an economy, it’s probably indulging in fantasy.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
One thing I have to do is economically take on China. Because China has been ripping us off for many years. Somebody had to do it. I am the chosen one. Somebody had to do it. So I’m taking on China.
MARTIN SMITH:
In fact, Donald Trump’s predecessors have employed measures to restrict China trade practices.
DONALD TRUMP:
They take our things. They are taking our jobs. They manufacture our product.
MARTIN SMITH:
But in 2016, Trump made China a major factor in his campaign.
ASSET DONALD:
Because we can’t continue to allow China to rape our country. And that’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.
MARTIN SMITH:
Days before Trump’s inauguration in 2017, Xi wanted to make sure the incoming president knew where he stood on trade. He sent a warning from his podium at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Following a protectionist economic policy is like locking yourself in a dark room. Although wind and rain can escape outside, they also block light and air. No one will win in an industrial war.
MARTIN SMITH:
Less than three months later, Xi would fly to Mar-a-Lago to visit the waters.
MALE READER:
President Trump’s most vital assembly to date, greeting the leader of the country he once called an enemy.
MARTIN SMITH:
Behind the scenes, Trump’s advisers were advocating bold new measures.
H. R. McMASTER, National Security Advisor, 2017-2018:
President Trump understood that we had not been able to compete with China, and I because of his business experience. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
General H. R. McMaster served as President Trump’s national security adviser.
HR McMASTER:
One of the words he used periodically with Xi Jinping was to say: “I don’t blame you, I blame us. “So I think this summit made it clear to a surprised Xi Jinping that the Trump administration was determined to compete and not to pursue this kind of misguided strategy of cooperation and engagement.
ACTIVE DONALD:
I don’t blame China, I blame our leaders. They have never allowed that to happen.
MATTHIEU POTTINGER:
I wrote a long draft strategy, maybe 12 pages, in a sense, but I started by saying how many of our assumptions were wrong.
MARTIN SMITH:
Matthew Pottinger was one of the architects of Trump’s China strategy.
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
One of the things that I’ve learned over the years, first as a reporter and later working on national security on China, is that the more comfortable China gets, the more comfortable that the Chinese Communist Party leaders are, the more aggressive and the grander their ambitions. And I actually think that a more confrontational approach, something more reminiscent of key periods of the Cold War, is what we should be looking to right now as examples. You always want the enemy to be worried about what you might do.
MARTIN SMITH:
The first item on the calendar is to crack down on China’s efforts to borrow intellectual assets from Western companies.
H.R. McMASTER:
The CEOs of our largest and most successful corporations would come to me and say, “Let me tell you that our company is a victim of the Chinese Communist Party’s economic aggression. And they would tell the story of the forced transfer of intellectual property.
MARTIN SMITH:
In other words, you can’t do business here without telling us your secrets.
H.R. McMASTER:
Exactement. Et and then also the false promises of access to the Chinese market. As soon as they adapt their intellectual assets and a champion state to produce those goods at an artificially low value due to subsidies, they exclude it from their domestic market. And then guess what?They launch these curtains and appliances into the overseas market and take you out of business overseas.
MALE CHINESE OFFICIAL:
[Speaking Mandarin] This claim of technology transfer has no basis in fact.
MARTIN SMITH:
The Chinese government has denied stealing intellectual property. And Xi Jinping ordered his diplomats to take advantage of, quote, “his fighting spirit,” adopting Trump’s more competitive style of communication.
MALE CHINESE OFFICIAL:
[Speaking Mandarin] [The U.S.] should have more confidence in itself and compete with other countries in a proper manner.
JOHN BOLTON, National Security Advisor, 2018-19:
They unleashed what they themselves called “wolf warrior” diplomacy. And, frankly, it’s pretty reprehensible.
MARTIN SMITH:
John Bolton, another national security adviser to President Trump.
JOHN BOLTON:
But, in a way, I think it was favorable that they did it. They took off their masks. It is no longer imaginable to hide your ambitions.
Donald Trump:
Sixty thousand factories in our country, closed, closed, disappeared. At least six million jobs have disappeared.
MARTIN SMITH:
Trump exaggerates, but less than a year after welcoming Xi to the United States, Trump is in a position to take off his own mask.
DONALD TRUMP:
We have spoken with China and we are in the middle of a negotiation. We’ll see where this takes us. But in the meantime, we will file a Section 301 action. I’m going to point it out here and right now.
MARTIN SMITH:
He fired the first shot in a coming war that would last for years.
Donald Trump:
He is number one, but he is the first of many.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Considerations about the trade war arose after the president signed the order imposing difficult price lists on China.
MARTIN SMITH:
It has price lists of 10% on Chinese aluminum, 30% on solar panels and electric vehicles, 25% on metal, and almost everything else made in China.
FEMALE READER:
It is unexpected that China is satisfied and is already threatening retaliation.
FEMALE CHINESE OFFICIAL:
[Speaking Mandarin] This behavior by the United States is typical trade bullying. China will definitely take necessary countermeasures to resolutely protect its legitimate rights and interests.
ANNE STEVENSON-YANG:
What China has done is move its exports to other countries and also move its imports from other countries. Thus, the acquisition of soybeans, for example, from the United States has moved to Brazil. Therefore, it is not a useful policy.
MALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump just imposed price lists on another $200 billion in Chinese exports. . .
MALE READER:
– triggering the largest industrial war in economic history.
MARTIN SMITH:
Trump’s industrial war would consume the rest of his presidency.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
China is now retaliating by imposing price lists on American exports.
MARTIN SMITH:
After several tariff increases, the industrial war, which continued under the Biden administration, has widened the industrial deficit.
MALE READER:
The trade deficit has skyrocketed to $891 billion, the highest ever.
MARTIN SMITH:
The costs have also led to a decline in manufacturing jobs in the United States.
MALE READER:
—destroyed the industry in the United States—
MARTIN SMITH:
The theft of intellectual assets continued, and prices imposed through price lists were simply passed on to consumers of imported goods.
And now Trump has promised to impose even higher tariffs once he is back in office.
The tariffs were put in place because China’s economic policy hurt American factories and workers.
JIA QINGGUO:
This is a confidence on the part of other people in the United States, especially members of the Trump administration.
MARTIN SMITH:
The Biden administration has even extended those.
JIA QINGGUO:
But if you talk in private, many don’t agree with such kind of policy. Why? Because it hurts the U.S. economy.
MARTIN SMITH:
There’s the argument. . .
JIA QINGGUO:
You have maximum inflation. Where do you get it? Partly because of those prices.
Xi’s China Dream
CHINESE READER:
Headline: For the first time since taking office, all seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee appeared together at a cultural event led by Xi Jinping.
MARTIN SMITH:
Beyond his crackdowns and industrial wars with the United States, Xi has bigger ambitions for China’s standing in the world, all of which he revealed even before he took office, just after being named general secretary of the party in 2012.
CHINESE READER:
The seven party leaders took a tour of the grand exhibition “Road to Revival.”
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Remember, when Xi Jinping came to power, the first thing he did was lead the Politburo across Tiananmen Square to the National Museum, where there is an exhibition about the humiliations of China’s past.
CHINESE READER:
During the exhibition, the party leaders reviewed the different historical stages the nation has gone through.
MARTIN SMITH:
Six leaders have succeeded one another since Mao Zedong. But at the exhibition, Xi made clear his loyalty to Mao.
SUSAN-CHIRK:
There were shots of Deng Xiaoping and all that, which I normally ignored, and. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
Susan Shirk was Deputy Secretary of State during the Clinton administration.
SUSAN-CHIRK:
It’s as if he needs Deng’s legacy, which of course was to institutionalize a governing formula in China that would be more responsive as society modernized.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] The other Chinese never gave up and continued to fight. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
In the Great Corridor he gave a speech and defined his vision, today known as the Chinese Dream.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Array. . . and we despite everything take control of our own destiny. We are closer today than at any other time in history. The dream of the wonderful rejuvenation of the Chinese country will come true.
ORVILLE SCHELL, Author, Mandate of Heaven:
And what he told everyone was that his highest calling was to lead China to a position of external greatness. This didn’t just mean the greatness of advertising. This meant a position of political greatness, of military greatness, to give substance to the old imperial empire that had occupied many peripheral territories, adding Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, Mongolia and Taiwan. Xi needs to fix China into his greatest state. This, then, is the roadmap to the Chinese dream.
MARTIN SMITH:
A key strategy for increasing China’s might is expanding Chinese control of the South China Sea. During his presidency, Xi ramped up these efforts.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
The South China Sea is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Japan and Korea depend totally on it. Therefore, it is no small matter who controls this waterway. And China claims that everything from the Strait of Malacca to the Chinese coast to Taiwan is ours.
HR McMASTER:
These are waters through which a third of the world’s maritime industry passes. What China has done to make its claims true is commit a lot of ecological destruction and build those synthetic islands.
MARTIN SMITH:
The same year Xi became president, China began building synthetic islands on the largest of the South China Sea’s seven coral reefs. The synthetic islands covered approximately five square miles.
HR McMASTER:
And so they dredge coral reefs to build up islands, and then to claim that these islands were just for research purposes, environmental research purposes. And then of course landing strips appeared, and then fortifications appeared, and then missile batteries appeared.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] The islands of the South China Sea have been Chinese territory since ancient times.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi has repeatedly pledged he would not militarize the islands he had built.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] China’s structural activities in the Spratly Islands are destined to be militarized.
MARTIN SMITH:
But after assurances, monitoring shows that there are not only runways for fighter jets, but also deep-water ports capable of docking warships.
HR McMASTER:
The Chinese Communist Party has a really long record of just lying to our face, and you can’t take anything they say at face value. What they had done is promised a lot and not only delivered nothing, but actually intensified their aggressive actions.
MARTIN SMITH:
In addition to the Chinese coast guard and navy, large fleets of civilian vessels have been sent by Beijing to patrol the waters of the South China Sea. Frequently, they surround and harass vessels from other countries like the Philippines, ramming them and blasting them with high-velocity water canons.
FEMALE READER:
The water cannon attack lasted for almost an hour, with the force of the water causing damage to the railing and canopy of the Philippine vessel. The latest incident of Chinese aggression is expected to further escalate tensions—
EDWARD WONG, Author, At the Edge of Empire:
It is descending far away from China, in waters near the Philippines. There are warnings from Washington that say, “We are the Philippines’ best friend. We have a mutual defense clause in our treaty. You’ll have to stay away from this. ” But China is absolutely ignorant of this for the time being.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Achieving complete reunification of the motherland is the common aspiration of all Chinese sons and daughters. [We have] enhanced the national awareness and patriotic spirit of Hong Kong—
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi Jinping is also Hong Kong.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] — [so that Hong Kong] can share the glory, prosperity and strength of the motherland.
MARTIN SMITH:
Hong Kong, a major port on the South China Sea, one of the busiest in the world, has Asia’s monetary capital.
ANNA KWOK:
Hong Kong was the gateway of a lot of businesses entering the Chinese market, and we were that international financial hub essentially connecting the Chinese market with the Western market. And a lot of that legacy still stays today.
MARTIN SMITH:
Anna Kwok grew up in Hong Kong. She was born in 1997, the year Britain returned Hong Kong to China.
What is the promise they made to you?
ANNA KWOK:
The promise was high autonomy in Hong Kong. That we would have what is essentially called “one country, two systems,” meaning that even though we are supposedly part of China, Hong Kong would have its own system, its own governance, its own autonomy, and the people of Hong Kong have their own way of living.
CHARLES, PRINCE OF WALES:
Britain is proud of the rights and freedoms which Hong Kong people enjoy.
MARTIN SMITH:
In fact, China has promised that “one country, two systems” will be in place for part of a century.
JOEY SIU:
In Xi Jinping’s eyes you can’t be an obedient citizen, you can’t be an obedient people when you’re living under a different system, a different governance structure.
MARTIN SMITH:
Joey Siu also grew up in Hong Kong. He came of age in the so-called Umbrella Revolution of 2014.
MALE NEWSREADER:
On the streets, a sea of umbrellas, an image of a massive demonstration underway in Hong Kong.
FEMALE READER:
The protesters, mostly students, do not find democracy in general easy. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
Calling for free and fair elections, demonstrators used umbrellas to shield themselves from pepper spray and surveillance cameras.
FEMALE READER:
—fighting to maintain its freedom.
MARTIN SMITH:
For Joey Siu, protesting was part of being a Hong Konger.
JOEY SIU:
You may just see protests, other people fighting for other rights and freedoms in Hong Kong. Growing up, what the promise made to the other people of Hong Kong meant to me was this freedom of speech, this freedom to come together, to say what you want. To be free to criticize the government or the government.
MARTIN SMITH:
But in 2019 things will change. Hong Kong’s local government has begun to restrict civil liberties. Senior party officials approved the decision.
PROTESTERS:
[Singing in Cantonese] Fight for freedom. Support Hong Kong. Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution now.
MARTIN SMITH:
It began with legislation allowing authorities in Beijing to extradite Hong Kongers to China. Around a million poured out onto the streets, defying President Xi. It was a stunning display of public anger with his presidency.
PROTESTERS:
[Cantonese speaks] Run, run, run!
ANNA KWOK:
I think 2019 was the nail in the coffin. I think Xi Jinping. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
Anna Kwok became a prominent underground activist that year, leading operations out of Hong Kong.
ANNA KWOK:
Even though everyone in Hong Kong took to the streets, millions of them, even though the entire foreign network seemed supportive, Xi was not afraid to say, “No, we are not giving you the freedoms and rights you deserve. ” And he is not afraid to use police violence against us. The government simply doesn’t care about optics.
PROTESTERS:
[Speaking Cantonese] Water cannon truck is coming! Move, move!
ANNA KWOK:
They don’t care.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Now, Xi Jinping is very astute. Some idea that he could get his foot soldiers across the border and take Hong Kong when he had all those demonstrations. He didn’t do that. Wait. And then he passed a national security law and they locked everyone up slowly and quietly.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi Jinping’s national security gave China a broad legal framework to deal with protesters. Collusion, subversion, and secession are criminalized.
Joey Siu was on the front line, facing tear gas and risking arrest on a daily basis.
JOEY SIU:
I think there is almost a consensus among Hong Kongers that eventually the Chinese communist regime will try to take over Hong Kong and turn Hong Kong into just another mainland city. But I think what surprised Hong Kongers and foreign society was how temporary it happened.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] One County, Two Systems is an innovation never seen before.
MARTIN SMITH:
Throughout his presidency, Xi has been confident of being committed to Hong Kong’s autonomy.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] This is in Hong Kong’s interest. This will not change. Unwavering.
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
In 2020, Beijing revoked the 50-year guarantee it had granted to honor Hong Kong’s “high degree of autonomy. “This destroyed this agreement.
JOHN BOLTON:
I think Hong Kong is an excellent example of how China is doing. They abandoned the politics of one country, two systems. They began to suppress economic and political freedom. And now they are blurring the difference between Hong Kong and mainland China. In fact, to see Hong Kong destroyed in this way is one of the greatest tragedies of our time.
JOEY SIU:
Since the implementation of the national security law, a 17-year-old student now faces between 10 years and prison.
MARTIN SMITH:
Since the 2019 protests, Joey Siu is now a dissident operating from the United States, as is Anna Kwok. In 2023, Hong Kong police held press meetings presenting rewards for the arrest of women.
You have family that’s still in Hong Kong.
ANNA KWOK:
Yeah.
MARTIN SMITH:
What will be your destiny?
ANNA KWOK:
A month after the bounty released against me, last August, they were interrogated by the police.
MARTIN SMITH:
What did they ask?
ANNA KWOK:
I have no idea, because I’m in contact with them, and. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
Are you in contact with your family?
ANNA KWOK:
No, and that is for their best interest. Oh, my God, I’m going to cry. Yeah.
MARTIN SMITH:
Can’t your mother?
ANNA KWOK:
No.
MARTIN SMITH:
Or your siblings?
ANNA KWOK:
No. And I believe that this is the harshest strategy that the regime applies to the population. It’s about breaking the acceptance and human connections that you have with each other so that you can’t have that strength and connection that you want to continue fighting. Because at the end of the day, it’s about fighting for the people you love, right? And once that connection disappears, you lose that motivation. So I think that’s what the Chinese Communist Party has been doing for decades with diverse communities seeking to fight for freedom.
Pending matters
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] From Beijing, I extend my New Year wishes to everyone.
MARTIN SMITH:
On New Year’s Eve 2023, President Xi addressed the nation.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] We will consider this year as a year of hard work and perseverance.
MARTIN SMITH:
While celebrating China’s many achievements that year, he made a notable reference to Taiwan.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] The reunification of the motherland is inevitable. Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait must join hands and share the great glory of national rejuvenation.
MARTIN SMITH:
His comments on Taiwan were more direct than in previous years. They intervened in Taiwan’s presidential election season, continually reminding Xi that Taiwan is out of sync with China. Today, Taiwan is a colorful democracy and its capital, Taipei, is one of the richest cities in Asia. But Xi has made clear that one of the central goals of his China Dream is to reunify Taiwan with mainland China. It is a position that the party has maintained since it gained strength in 1949.
MALE JOURNALIST:
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, now a bastion of nationalist China. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
It was in that year that America’s ally Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island and set up a separate government. For Beijing, this was unacceptable, and the problem has festered ever since.
VICTOR GAO, Prof., Soochow University:
The Taiwan issue is a direct result of an unfinished civil war. Very simple. There is only one China, Taiwan being part of China.
MARTIN SMITH:
The problem is that the Taiwanese people made it clear in their elections that they do not want reunification with mainland China.
VICTOR GAO:
The future of Taiwan should not depend on the other people of Taiwan.
MARTIN SMITH:
Why do these other people have the right to self-determination?
VICTOR GAO:
The status of Taiwan eventually will be decided only by the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, including the 23 million people in Taiwan, as well as the 1.4 billion people on China’s mainland.
MARTIN SMITH:
Taiwan was on the calendar when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made their revolutionary trip to China in 1972.
MALE JOURNALIST:
History in the making. The first American president to set foot on Chinese soil.
MARTIN SMITH:
But they were here primarily to explore how China could become an ally against America’s arch enemy, the Soviet Union.
WINSTON LORD, U.S. Ambassador to China, 1985-89:
Kissinger asked me to accompany him to the meeting. I had taken notes and this freed him from having to take notes.
MARTIN SMITH:
A young assistant of Kissinger’s, Winston Lord, on the trip. He found that Mao was willing to interact in Taiwan, but that he was also wary of Soviet force and seemed more interested in exploring an American alliance. Taiwan was relegated to the bottom of the list.
LORD OF WINSTON:
During the summit, Mao would outline the basic Chinese position. He said that the Taiwan issue could take 100 years. That’s another way of saying Taiwan’s important to us, we’ll maintain our principle, but we don’t have to solve it for a while.
MARTIN SMITH:
After a week of negotiations, Taiwan’s prestige was still up in the air. Nixon called Taiwan “irritating. ” His personal handwritten notes reveal that Nixon was in a position to compromise. “Our policy is one China,” he wrote. “Taiwan is part of China. I don’t want Taiwan independence.
This is called the one-China policy. Nixon identified that Taiwan is officially part of China. At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger defended Taiwan’s right to autonomy. It’s a commitment.
LORD OF WINSTON:
As for the Taiwan express factor, of course, we had to make a move, and we ended up with a one-China formula that is elastic and elusive and has served to this day. Both parties, over seven, eight or nine presidents, have used this formula to keep our relations with China ambiguous on a sensitive issue and, at the same time, to help protect Taiwan’s autonomy.
MARTIN SMITH:
The agreement has remained relatively stable. In 1979, President Carter attempted to achieve American engagement with Taiwan by signing into law the Taiwan Relations Act, which stipulated that the United States undertook to maintain the ability to lend a hand to Taiwan.
PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER:
Taiwan citizens will be safe.
MARTIN SMITH:
But what exactly does that mean? The policy is deliberately, strategically ambiguous. lea there have been incidents between the U.S. and China. Planes collided over the South China sea in 2001, with both countries blaming each other.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
This twist of fate threatens to undermine our hopes for a fruitful and productive relationship between our two countries.
MARTIN SMITH:
But the extent of the tug-of-war over Taiwan is new.
Translation of news from the sky
MALE VOICE [translating Xi]:
We will continue to make all our efforts for non-violent reunification, but we never promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option to take all mandatory measures. Full reunification will need to be achieved, and it certainly can be achieved.
ORVILLE SCHELL, Asia Society:
I think Taiwan is the next great danger in the world. Even in this era where the United Nations proclaims self-determination is a high principle, if Scotland wants to leave the U.K. or Quebec wants to leave Canada. But China has a more old-fashioned view of sovereignty. “We claim it. It’s ours. Get off our ranch. Don’t get in the way.”
MARTIN SMITH:
The Chinese military’s training over Taiwan’s airspace is a normal reminder of a full-blown war. In early 2023, a note from U. S. Air Force General S. S. S. U. S. Mike Minihan to his subordinates, in which a date for Xi’s invasion was categorically given. I am wrong,” it reads. My intuition tells me that we will fight in 2025. “
“My gut tells me we will reach China in 2025. ” You reacted negatively to this. Do you think. . .
COLIN KAHL, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, 2021-23:
Yeah. Well, so first of all, anybody who says they know the date that Xi Jinping is going to invade Taiwan doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Because Xi Jinping doesn’t know the date.
MARTIN SMITH:
Colin Kahl is Vice President Biden’s former national security advisor and former undersecretary for policy at the Pentagon. Although he questions the 2025 date, Kahl and other analysts in the US military, as well as the CIA, agree with Xi’s near-term intentions.
Xi made some statements about the urgency and. . .
COLIN KAHL:
He did it, and the maximum date that analysts are talking about is 2027. This is the date that Xi Jinping has given his military to have the ability to do it. Now, this ability does not mean that they will manifest it. Just because you give them homework doesn’t mean they will finish it.
MARTIN SMITH:
But the Taiwanese military needs to tempt fate.
ROC ARMY SPOKESPERSON:
We have several scenarios that we have imagined that the enemy will take, and we have plans to weaken those invading forces or even take them down.
MARTIN SMITH:
In July 2023, I traveled here to watch the Taiwanese military rehearse how to repel an imaginable Chinese invasion.
So this is one of the beaches where we expect the PLA. . .
ROC ARMY SPEAKER:
Yes, correct. We expect this place to be high on the list for PLA. As you can see, we’re basically right here, and this is where Taipei is sitting east, and––that would bad for us.
MARTIN SMITH:
So, Xi Jinping, see what you’re doing.
ROC ARMY SPEAKER:
Yeah.
ROC 2 ARMY SPEAKER:
[Speaks Cantonese] For our media friends, on the coast are the landing tanks of our navy.
MARTIN SMITH:
This beach is one of 14 landing sites that the Taiwanese military has potentially called in for Chinese amphibious and air strikes.
AME. SAMUEL PAPARO, Commander, US Forces, Indo-Pacific:
The Taiwan Strait is a difficult crossing: 20-feet tide, three-mile mud flat, really only conducive for a crossing three or four months out of the year.
MARTIN SMITH:
I spoke with Adm. Sam Paparo, commander of all U. S. forces in the Indo-Pacific, about the feasibility of a successful Chinese takeover.
SAMUEL PAPARO:
It is difficult to reach population centers.
MARTIN SMITH:
It’s mountainous.
SAMUEL PÁPARO:
Mountainous and canalizing terrain, as we call it, which means very few passes, which can simply be closed without problems.
ROC ARMY SOLDIER:
[Cantonese speaking] Each training is based on tests and the enemy’s maximum probable movements. We are showing that we will do everything imaginable to protect our country.
MARTIN SMITH:
Is it most likely that we will go to war with Taiwan?
SAMUEL PAPARO:
The probability is low, but the consequences are so serious that I owe you all the urgency possible. The effect of a war that has come out would eclipse World War II, so we seek to maintain the prestige quo. We look to save you conflicts.
Xi Jinping believes that the unification of Taiwan contributes to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule over China.
MARTIN SMITH:
They have been doing well for reunification for more than 70 years. So what makes this existential?
SAMUEL PÁPARO:
Don’t know. I hope he gives you an interview and tells you that.
MARTIN SMITH:
Adm. Paparo says that in his view, Xi Jinping and China see Taiwan as an existential issue. That it must be unified. Why?
JIA QINGGUO:
You don’t have the right to separate the land from your motherland. Just like in the U.S., you don’t automatically have the right. You need to go through procedures, right? Like Texas, if they want to get independent, you cannot just have a plebiscite in Texas. You need to get other states to approve. Okay? This is by the constitution, okay? Taiwan is part of China. Taiwan has never been separated.
MARTIN SMITH:
More than ever, a successful Chinese takeover of Taiwan threatens global stability.
COLIN KAHL:
If China takes Taiwan, we are talking about an island that produces 70% of all the semiconductors in the world and 90% of the high-end chips that power the most complex technologies that we all have in our pockets. our iPhones and our laptops.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
The world wants this technology. Europe wants it, Japan, we all want it. And no one else likes Taiwan.
MARTIN SMITH:
China also depends on Taiwanese chips. A war that destroys Taiwan’s chip industry could give Xi pause.
Also in Ukraine. In 2022, when Putin invaded the country, President Xi took note.
FEMALE REPORTER:
Ukraine celebrates an anniversary of infamy: two years after Vladimir Putin introduced his war. . .
ORVILLE SCHELL:
I think Xi is watching Ukraine very closely, because the parallels with Taiwan, while not complete, are disturbing. And Ukraine will be the most productive deterrent to opposing Xi doing anything related to Taiwan.
MALE JOURNALIST:
People thought that this invasion would last several weeks and that Russia would be successful. But the Ukrainians fought bravely. They continue fighting.
COLIN KAHL:
I don’t think Xi Jinping is happy with the war in Ukraine. He certainly detected the quality of American intelligence on Russia. And you have to ask yourself, “Well, my goodness, if they know this about Russia, what do they know about me?” So if you’re counting on stun, off Taiwan or the South China Sea, I think you have to calculate that the chances of you achieving strategic stun are lower than before because of the quality of US intelligence.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi has denied that he is preparing to invade Taiwan any time soon. But every few years, he orders the military to Tiananmen Square for a display of China’s readiness and might.
CCTV
EDUARDO WONG:
One of the things that has been very consistent with Xi is the alignment of his identity with the Chinese military. I am among his crowd, and. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
Ed Wong witnessed several of these spectacles.
EDUARDO WONG:
It is very typical of this imperial occasion in which the leader of this wonderful nation, of this wonderful power, surrounds himself with other people who come to pay homage to him and to pay homage to China as a military power. And he goes out in a car, out of the sunroof, going up and down those lines of troops.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Good morning, comrades.
PLA SOLDIERS [in unison]:
[Speaking Mandarin] Hello, Chairman!
EDUARDO WONG:
We see things like intercontinental ballistic missiles on flatbeds. And this is all a signal of China’s military strength.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Job well done.
PLA SOLDIERS [in unison]:
[Speaking Mandarin] At the service of the people!
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi’s rapid buildup of China’s military capacity has prompted the U.S. to send more weapons to Taiwan. Given the stakes, President Biden has been consistent and straightforward.
SCOTT PELLEY, “60 Minutes”:
To be clear, sir, U. S. forces, men and women, would attack Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN:
Yeah.
DAVID SHAMBAUGH, author of Where the Great Powers Meet:
President Biden has unambiguously declared four times, “The United States will protect Taiwan. “No American president has ever said that, and no American president has this responsibility. The Taiwan Relations Act says nothing about the U. S. defense of Taiwan. He says that if coercive measures were used through mainland China in opposition to Taiwan, it would be, quote, “serious concern” for the United States.
MARTIN SMITH:
Now is what the new Trump administration will do?
You worked for Donald Trump. If China further invades Taiwan, will Donald Trump, who advocates “America First,” go to war against Taiwan?
H. R. McMASTER, author of At War with Ourselves:
You know, I’m not sure, and the fact that he’s not sure may not be a bad thing, because as long as it’s still ambiguous, as long as he doesn’t say, “Hey, I’m not going to do anything in Taiwan. And I think it’s also vital that we don’t make promises that we may not stay if Congress doesn’t authorize the military’s action.
JIA QINGGUO:
We do not deserve to fight until Taiwan becomes independent. But Taiwan is not separate from China. Why do we deserve China to use force? If it is a national problem, we can solve it peacefully.
MARTIN SMITH:
As I take stock of Xi – his ambitions, his deceptions, his human rights abuses, and his threats against Taiwan – I come to wonder what US policy will be. To date, little has been done to prevent China’s moves in the South China Sea or Hong Kong, or to reduce tension in Taiwan.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
I think the compromise was a smart thing to do, and it was a wonderful triyet for American international relations for nine presidential administrations, with the perhaps naïve hope that China would not become a Jeffersonian democracy, but would become less hostile. diplomatic effort. Was it successful? Not yet. And the engagement is now over. Now can we do it again? I think under Xi Jinping it’s probably impossible.
the future
FEMALE READER:
For decades, the growth of China’s economy was described as a miracle, fueling the rise of a new and massive middle class. But these are less confident days for most of China.
MARTIN SMITH:
Despite Xi Jinping’s grip on power, his China is not invincible.
FEMALE READER:
And a giant of this middle class. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
In years, the economy has weakened. Growth has slowed.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
. . . due to a real estate crisis.
MARTIN SMITH:
The housing boom has turned into a housing glut, with tens of millions of empty homes scattered across the country. It is also aging, but as more young Chinese attend job fairs, they face a staggering unemployment rate, estimated at 25%. Foreign investments are fleeing the country.
MALE READER:
The Chinese economy is headed down, for much more of a slowdown than we have today.
LINGLING WEI, author of Superpower Showdown:
It’s heartbreaking. Whenever I talk to my friends back in China, the sense of hopelessness is something I never felt before. People are just very worried about the direction the country is going.
FEMALE READER:
The Chinese are having a gloomy month. . .
IAN JOHNSON:
I think Xi Jinping has taken the economy for granted at a ten-year high. In his opinion, it did not matter as much as ideology, but it controlled the way people thought and suppressed dissent.
MARTIN SMITH:
When COVID-19 hit China, Xi’s lockdown policy sparked mass protests, the largest anti-government protests since Tiananmen Square.
PROTESTER:
[Speaking Mandarin] We need freedom, COVID testing!
MALE NEWSREADER:
Millions of citizens aspire to escape from just about 3 years of intermittent confinement.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
The confinement has a kind of blockage. And it’s no secret, if you tell other people in Chinese cities that have been under lockdown, what a nightmare it has been.
MALE READER:
In the central city of Wuhan, they break down the fence that kept them quarantined.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
But it also was a kind of a perfect metaphor for the way a Leninist system does things: control.
MARTIN SMITH:
Because the government banned certain messages, protesters began brandishing blank pieces of paper as symbols of China’s strict censorship.
MALE READER:
The White Paper movement is spreading. At first, he opposed China’s strict zero-Covid policy, but in recent days the message has transformed and touched the sharpest political nerves.
PROTESTER:
Freedom!
CROWD:
[Sings in Mandarin] Freedom of expression!
ZHOU FENGSUO, Co-founder, Humanitarian China:
This White Paper motion has been a very exciting time. I heard those young people shout: “End the CCP. “
CROWD:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Step down! Communist Party, step down!
ZHOU FENGSUO:
And this is the first time that public protests have forced the CCP to follow its policies.
DEMONSTRATOR:
Xi Jinping!
CROWD:
[Sings in Mandarin] Down!
PROTESTER:
Xi Jinping!
CROWD:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Step down!
LI YUAN:
But many of the protesters paid huge prices. And they were harassed and they were locked up. Because still for many Chinese, Xi Jinping is a name you cannot say. You cannot speak out.
CREW:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Step down! Step down! Step down!
LI YUAN:
COVID-0 has awakened many Chinese.
PROTESTER:
Xi Jinping!
CROWD:
[Singing in Mandarin] End of lockdown in Xinjiang!
ORVILLE SCHELL:
I think the White Paper protests suggested exactly the degree to which these forces, dissenting forces, are latent beneath the surface of things.
PROTESTER:
[Speaks Mandarin] The Chinese have human rights.
CROWD:
[Singing in Mandarin] The Chinese have human rights.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
After watching China for so many decades, those forces are there and continue to emerge again and again, and are developing and multiplying under repression. But right now, China is facing a kind of techno-autocracy that makes it easier than ever to do those things. types of protests, because the position is very high.
MARTIN SMITH:
Now, Xi is looking to find a way forward that balances with the desire to revive China’s economy.
IAN JOHNSON:
Xi Jinping’s idea that he can win only on two fronts: crack down and maintain economic expansion. But the recipe for success, according to which society had to be liberated for things to move forward, has now been abandoned. If China continues with its policy, and I believe it will, expansion will be slower in the long term, leading to more internal tensions. So I think we are living in a more complicated time.
EDUARDO WONG:
Even though Xi feels that engagement with the outside world might be necessary to jumpstart the economy again, I think at the current moment he has made the other choice. He has chosen to go down the route of consolidating power, the route of nationalism.
MARTIN SMITH:
Then take the darker path.
EDUARDO WONG:
For now, he’s taking the darkest path.
Mihrigul Tursun emigrated to the United States with her two children in 2018.
Her husband joined them in 2023.
Zhou Fengsuo now lives in the U.S.
He made several secret trips to China to visit fellow activists.
Cai Xia is now living in exile in the U.S.
She was expelled from the Communist Party after comparing Xi to a mafia boss.
In November 2024, a Hong Kong court convicted forty-five pro-democracy activists of subverting state authority.
He was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.
In 2018, Xi abolished term limits, allowing him to remain president for life.