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MARTIN SMITH, correspondent:
In July 2021, China celebrated the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.
PRESIDENT XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Since its inception, the party’s primary mission has been happiness for the Chinese people and the revival of the Chinese nation.
MARTIN SMITH:
In his speech, President Xi Jinping celebrated China’s emergence as one of the richest countries on the planet.
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, highways and a vast virtual network linking China to around 150 countries. It has turned China into 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 progression of synthetic intelligence. He plans to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And Xi has presided over an adverse courtship with the United States.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Chinese people will never allow any foreign power to bully, oppress or enslave us. Anyone who tries will have their heads bashed bloody against a great wall of steel that was forged by 1.4 billion Chinese people.
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 Chinese experts in the United States and has been a representative in this project. He has made many trips to China and has intensely observed the work of Xi Jinping.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
You can read his speeches and it’s all there. He says what he is going to do and he does it.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Taiwan’s independence goes against history. It’s a dead end. We rule out the use of force.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
And we can’t really say that this is anything other than propaganda, which may not make any sense, but it’s not. He laid it all out there.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] [We must] enhance the level of realistic combat training and truly master the ability to fight and win wars.
CCTV
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 set out to understand the roots of this hostility, to understand Xi himself and the China he is leading. But China has heavily restricted international media, and we were not allowed to report from inside the country. No current official would speak 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 the world protecting Xi’s China. We interviewed him in New York.
What is it about Xi Jinping’s presidency that has fostered this hostility between the United States and China?
VICTOR GAO:
I don’t agree with the way you characterize 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 should be treated as equals. Relationships are moving in a direction that is complicated and dangerous.
the prince
MARTIN SMITH:
To begin with, I wanted to know where Xi Jinping came from and how his afterlife transformed him into the man he is today. He grew up in a turbulent time in Chinese history, but he is a privileged child with red roots. Xi’s father had fought alongside Mao Zedong and, after the Revolution, became a senior official in the Communist Party. Young Xi lived in a comfortable house and could attend the most productive schools.
JOSEPH TORIGIAN, author, Party interests come first:
He was one of the so-called princes and enjoyed many privileges. Then Xi Jinping would have grown up. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
Joseph Torigian is a professor at American University.
JOSÉ TORIGIEN:
He attended a school attended mainly by descendants of high-ranking cadres, and they were told that they would be the ones who would lead China towards modernity, who would build on the heritage of the Chinese. Communist Party to society.
MARTIN SMITH:
Before the 1949 revolution, China ruled through a U. S. -backed dictator, Chiang Kai-shek.
NEWS FROM THE USA:
All Americans know well Chiang Kai-shek, a close and enthusiastic leader, 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 NEWSREADER:
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 a complete turnaround. Heaven and earth turned over.
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:
In Mao’s China, donkey caps were used to publicly humiliate disloyal landowners, intellectuals and politicians.
In 1962, when Xi Jinping was just 9 years old, his father became an unlikely victim of these purges. Mao accused him of being disloyal. Xi’s father was subjected to so-called struggle sessions where he was beaten and denounced.
ALFRED CHAN, author, Xi Jinping:
His father was framed by a trumped-up charge that he supported a novel that might have cast doubt on Mao’s leadership. That simple.
MARTIN SMITH:
Professor Alfred Chan is the author of a comprehensive biography of Xi Jinping chronicling his life.
ALFREDO CHAN:
They dragged his father out and paraded him down the street. At that point, he put on a donkey cap and was subjected to mock trials. These were necessarily puppet courts.
MARTIN SMITH:
Here a sign hangs around the neck of Xi’s father that reads “Anti-party element Xi Zhongxun.”
JOSÉ TORIGIEN:
We know it’s an emotionally traumatic experience for him. When you’re a member of the Chinese Communist Party, everything disappears. Your total life is a party. So when the Party tells you that you oppose Mao, it’s hard to overstate how infuriating it is for a member of that kind of organization to hear that.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi’s father was sent to work in a factory and was later incarcerated for eight years.
Meanwhile, some of the party elite were having doubts about Mao’s leadership. A famine, the result of Mao’s failed farm policies, had devastated the country.
US NEWS:
These other people came with reports of deaths in the fields and of starving farmers eating some of the seeds destined 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.
SONG OF THE CHINESE RED GUARDS:
[Singing in Mandarin] Red Guards, Red Guards, burning with zeal.
MARTIN SMITH:
Marauding bands of youth known as Red Guards were encouraged by Mao to help root out the so-called black elements for punishment.
SONG OF THE CHINESE RED GUARDS:
[Singing in Mandarin] Stand up, the leadership 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 is our wonderful savior.
MARTIN SMITH:
Cai Xia, a long-time party member, came of age in the midst of the Cultural Revolution.
You say he’s the savior. What did it save you from?
CAI XIA:
[Speaking Mandarin] At that time, we believed that Mao Zedong had led the Chinese people to overthrow what we called imperialism: the capitalists and landlords who oppressed the Chinese people. the country.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
One of the most pernicious and destructive aspects of the total Maoist revolution was that it distorted and forced people to be human and to have family loyalty, friendly loyalty – to maintain any ethical compass.
MARTIN SMITH:
As a 13-year-old boy, Xi himself was subjected to struggle sessions. He was forced to wear a dunce cap and was publicly denounced by his own mother.
Alfredo Chan:
According to Xi Jinping, he went through several such wrestling sessions. And her half-sister couldn’t stand it and committed suicide. The physical and mental violence is enormous.
MARTIN SMITH:
At the age of 15, Xi Jinping was sent to the countryside to do hard manual labor, what we call degraded 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 anything I couldn’t handle. He talked about hard work. He talked about living in a cave. He spoke of the difficulty of getting along with the peasants.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Xi Jinping did at one point just leave and try to go home. And his family refused to accept him. So it’s difficult to know what the consequences of something like that are, but we do know fundamentally that all human beings have close connections to parents. And when those close connections go awry, they have consequences.
EDWARD WONG, author of On the Frontiers 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, the New York Times’ bureau leader in Beijing.
EDUARDO WONG:
This region of China is one of the poorest regions in China. Back then, other people lived in those cave spaces, and Xi lived in a cave space at the back of the space of this old man I met, Mr. Lu. Mr. Lu told me that Xi had books with him and that his gentleman would arrive late at night while he read.
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 as he suffered to survive. making him the leader he will become.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Being sent to the field was an incredibly formative experience. Afterwards I felt like I had experienced a kind of purification. It was a feeling of reinvention, of transformation.
MARTIN SMITH:
Jianying Zha and his circle of relatives also slightly outlived Mao. She now lives in New York, is the author of eight books about China and contributes 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 red guards ransacked our space. They arrived here in the afternoon and our space was upside down. My parents were humiliated. You go from flowers of the country, young people of Mao, to suddenly we are black elements.
MARTIN SMITH:
How many people died as a result of the Cultural Revolution?
JIANYING ZHA:
There’s different estimates of that. Officially, one of the party elders said several millions of people died. But the figures are far from being accurate, because the government, whoever was the dominant regime, had always a tendency to cover up.
MARTIN SMITH:
Between the 1950s and the mid-1970s, China experienced between 25 and 45 million deaths, due to famine and the eradication of black elements.
JIANYINGZHA:
This is our Holocaust. And to this day, the world has not really come to realize that’s really what happened. And the same party responsible for it are still in power, and Mao is still an icon.
MARTIN SMITH:
Today, President Xi Jinping lives and works aside this familiar portrait of Mao overlooking Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Xi has embraced Mao.
LI YUAN, The New York Times:
It’s a mystery why those other people don’t hate Mao. Why don’t they think about why the Cultural Revolution happened, 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 talks a lot about his suffering when he was young.
MARTIN SMITH:
He says it was good 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 want to survive, you have to master the tools of the Maoist tool kit. You have to be Redder than anybody else. His education was one of surviving in a highly politicized environment of the Cultural Revolution, when his father was one of the anti-Christs and Xi had to find his way. And to do that, he had to become more politically correct than anybody else. Fundamentally, Xi Jinping drank the Kool-Aid of the Cultural Revolution. And those formative years really did cast the die.
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.
Alfredo Chan:
Yes, he was lucky enough to be accepted into Tsinghua University. This is the Chinese MIT.
MARTIN SMITH:
This is a boy who did not have a higher school education and was able to gain admission to the most prestigious university in China.
Alfredo Chan:
Yes. Very unusual. Mao destroyed the school formula. But in the early 1970s, Mao claimed that the school formula needed to be reformed. It does not favor the elite, but it welcomes the peasants, the staff, and the soldiers. And so Xi Jinping was admitted.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. But what interested him was partisan politics. In 1979, after graduating, he was appointed 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 and rise through the ranks of the 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!
PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY SOLDIERS:
[Speaking Mandarin] Hello, boss!
MARTIN SMITH:
He set out to reverse many of Mao’s policies.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
The 80s were a normal decade. Deng Xiaoping radically replaced the party’s relationship with society. He divided the popular communes and gave the peasants homes that they could exploit individually. And suddenly you go out into the countryside and 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 different and open, and that it was evolving 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 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 JOURNALIST:
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 perceived as a welcome development in the West and a policy of economic compromise maintained for the next four decades.
PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER:
We now share the perspective of a new commercial situation, concepts and people that will benefit our countries.
MARTIN SMITH:
In China, free trade and foreign investment helped lift millions out of poverty.
PROTESTERS:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Freedom of assembly. Freedom of the press.
MARTIN SMITH:
But many Chinese were not entirely won over, especially students. They were concerned about corruption and wanted democratic reform.
MALE PROTEST SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Democracy will be delayed!
PROTESTERS:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Democracy cannot be delayed!
MALE PROTEST SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] We want free speech!
PROTESTERS:
[Singing in Mandarin] We have freedom of speech!
MARTIN SMITH:
In the spring of 1989, pro-democracy demonstrations around the country were gathering momentum. While still a provincial official, Xi Jinping watched carefully.
Alfredo Chan:
Xi Jinping tried to gauge the political climate. What’s going on? Is the central government supporting this?
MALE PROTEST SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Severely punish corrupt officials!
PROTESTERS:
[Singing in Mandarin] Severely punish corrupt officials!
ALFRED CHAN:
And being a very cautious bureaucrat, back home he tried to prevent students from outside to come in and to link up with the local demonstrations.
PROTESTERS:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Long live freedom!
MARTIN SMITH:
By early June, the protest boiled over.
MALE JOURNALIST:
Right now, there are thousands of people here in Tiananmen Square.
MALE JOURNALIST:
Some observers say the current wave of unrest is the greatest challenge the Communist Party has had to face.
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:
[Sings in Mandarin] Dialogue! Dialogue!
ZHOU FENGSUO:
So we have the idea that there is freedom in the air in Tiananmen Square.
PROTESTERS:
[Singing in Mandarin] With our flesh and blood, let’s build a new Great Wall. We’re millions with one heart against the enemy’s fire.
JIANYINGZHA:
I was on Tiananmen Square at the night of June 4. We were all standing like clusters, talking to each other. And suddenly, there was a guy standing there, and he fell backwards. And we didn’t hear anything, so we’re all stunned. And everybody thought, “It must be rubber bullets.” Until we saw that he’s not waking up and there was a pool of blood or something from his neck.
MALE JOURNALIST:
The tanks arrive on the road in the direction of Tiananmen Square.
JIANYINGZHA:
As we retreated, I think at least a dozen people around me were shot.
MALE REPORTER:
There are sporadic shootings. Automatic weapons opened. People ran in search of shelter.
JIANYINGZHA:
That night was the worst in China. The monster raised 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 vehicle got stuck. And the 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 the way in which 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 JOURNALIST:
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 symbol of Tank Man, as he called it, went 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:
Just overnight, the optimism that Chinese felt for their own country, for this newly awakened, newly modernizing, newly reforming China came to a very abrupt halt.
MARTIN SMITH:
David Shambaugh is a professor of U. S. -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 serious. It was martial law. The city was occupied by army forces. There were roadblocks everywhere. Foreigners were constantly watched. The Chinese were constantly monitored and interrogated. So it was a repressive time.
MALE READER:
In the news this morning, the crackdown continues in China, where the government says it has arrested student leaders on its “most wanted” list.
MALE JOURNALIST:
One of those captured, Zhou Fengsuo, a 22-year-old physics student. He reportedly was turned in by his sister and brother-in-law.
MARTIN SMITH:
He reported that your sister reported you.
ZHOU FENGSUO:
That was government propaganda. I—
MARTIN SMITH:
It’s not true?
ZHOU FENGSUO:
This is true.
MARTIN SMITH:
Zhou says it was a party tactic to sow distrust among his family. Zhou Fengsuo was fifth on the party’s “most wanted” list and was thrown in prison 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 READER:
[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, those photographs were smuggled out of China, proof of what happened to many 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 never spoken publicly about the Tiananmen events.
Did he remain silent?
ALFRED CHAN, Prof. Emeritus, Huron University, Canada:
Yes. Nothing in the public record that I am aware of. In fact, it shows his cautious attitude as a provincial official. And it looks to the center for advice, trying to gauge the central government’s intentions.
MALE BUYER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Once I have money, I’ll have this car.
CAR SELLER:
[Speaking Mandarin] I can put down the backseat.
MARTIN SMITH:
After Tiananmen, China moved on.
MALE BUYER:
[Speaking Mandarin] You will be able to adjust the back seat.
MARTIN SMITH:
Under Deng Xiaoping, China’s casual, unwritten social contract stipulated that if you retire from politics, we, the party, will make you rich.
FEMALE SHOPPER:
[Speaking Mandarin] See how wide this is?
MARTIN SMITH:
It’s a deal many Chinese accepted without protest.
The heir apparent
IAN JOHNSON, author of Sparks: China’s Underground Historians:
We deserve not to underestimate the scope of China’s domestic politics. But at the same time, it is also vital to recognize that over the more than 40 years the government has done an intelligent job in raising living standards.
MARTIN SMITH:
Ian Johnson is a journalist with a long history of reporting on China.
IAN JOHNSON:
And if you think that tomorrow will be a better day, that you just bought a house, that your child will be able to go to university, that you will be able to go abroad to travel, all those things that have never before been imaginable for the vast majority of the Chinese, so you’ll hold your nose or say, “Well, the party is rarely doing such a bad job overall,” and go with the flow.
MARTIN SMITH:
In the mid-1990s, the Chinese economy experienced historic growth.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON:
Supporting China’s accession to the WTO represents the greatest opportunity 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:
Lingling Wei, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, grew up the daughter of loyal Maoist parents. Her maternal grandfather was part of Mao’s inner circle. She remembers how under Deng, China became more open to Western culture.
LINGLING WEI:
We knew that China’s relationship with the United States was getting better.
MALE READER:
Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken has arrived in Beijing.
LINGLING WEI:
We were exposed to American pop culture. When I was growing up one of my favorite shows was this American TV series called “Growing Pains.” I just loved it, watching how kids could just talk back to their parents.
CLIP “GROWING PAINS”:
I’m just being friendly. What’s the matter?
LINGLING WEI:
I grew up with a lot of admiration for the United States. I wanted to stop by there. I was very curious about the United States. Not only me, many of my classmates, many of my friends, the entire reformist generation had that kind of mentality toward the United States.
MARTIN SMITH:
China was more 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?
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] They didn’t hold it against me. I think they understood I didn’t do this for myself, as I had nothing against them. I upheld justice.
MARTIN SMITH:
Beijing took notice, 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 marks a massive rise as leader of the Shanghai party that remains enthroned among the 25 members of China’s highest power. He chose it due to his long experience in the most open and most evolved coastal provinces.
MARTIN SMITH:
In Shanghai, Xi distinguished himself by eschewing lavish party perks such as a private chef, special doctors, luxury cars and palatial housing, and after just seven months he was brought to Beijing, where he was catapulted onto the Standing Committee of the Politburo. Suddenly, Xi Jinping became one of China’s nine top leaders. He was on his way.
At just 54, party leaders saw Xi as pliable and cooperative. They didn’t expect a strongman.
In one of his first assignments as a committee member, Xi was appointed to head the Central Party School in Beijing, a post once held by Chairman Mao. It’s where top party officials are trained, and for Xi, it was 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 READER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Vice President Xi Jinping, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, inspected the Olympic facilities in Beijing this morning, ensuring that the maritime transportation network and the Olympic Village are in line with foreign 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.
ALFRED CHAN:
The Olympics were a challenge for him in his trial period.
MARTIN SMITH:
To see if he qualified for the top position.
Alfredo Chan:
Exactly. The Beijing Olympics were China’s coming-out party and everything had 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 more than $40 billion, the Games were among the highs in history.
CHENJIAN LI, Prof., Peking University:
The year 2008 was an impressive Summer Olympics. How impressive.
MARTIN SMITH:
Professor Chenjian Li is a neurologist at Peking University. We interviewed him while he was a visiting scholar at Stanford.
You were in 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 stunt for the Chinese Communist Party saying, “Look, we’re here. We’re a global power lately. ” Memory-
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 considers the 2008 Games a key moment in which relations between the United States and China changed.
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
They coincided with the global monetary crisis, the first spark of which was lit in the United States.
MALE READER:
Incredible on Wall Street tonight.
MALE READER:
At one point the market fell as if down a well.
MALE READER:
The debt crisis and economic chaos could have a dangerous ripple effect.
MATEO POTTINGER:
So those two things juxtaposed in combination created a sense of elation about this idea that China was 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 second largest economy.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
These are normal times for the American economy. We have seen triple-digit fluctuations in the stock market. The main monetary establishments are on the verge of collapse and some have gone bankrupt.
MALE JOURNALIST:
The collapse of Lehman Brothers has caused turbulence in markets around the world.
ORVILLE SCHELL, Co-Editor, The China Reader: The Reform Era:
The economic crisis gave the impression to others like Xi Jinping that history was moving forward, that the United States was in decline, and that China was on the rise. They may do exactly the same thing that the wonderful powers had done: “This is our lane or the highway. “And it was a very vital moment that replaced dating between China and the rest of the world, especially the United States.
Papa Xi
MALE JOURNALIST:
The day had finally arrived. It was time to elect a president, the leader of the world’s most populous nation. But there was no discernible tension, no suspense. The election of the Chinese president had been decided months in advance.
MARTIN SMITH:
In 2012, Xi Jinping 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 became president.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] We will have to realize, maintain, and continually expand the basic interests of the greatest number.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi has attempted to outwardly domesticate a symbol of man from the rest of the world. His nickname: Papa Xi.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Who is it?
FEMALE SPEAKER:
[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:
The wishful thinking that existed I think was something that Westerners delude themselves with about all Chinese leaders. “Is this the next Gorbachev?”
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Continue to lose and insist on reform and opening up.
DAVID SHAMBAUGH:
Xi Jinping is a reformer. But no one has realized what a repressive, dictatorial, control-freak, insecure leader he has become. None of us saw that.
MARTIN SMITH:
A few months after he came to power, a secret memorandum, Document No. 9, appeared.
EDUARDO WONG:
Document number nine is an internal party document in which Xi talks about the other subversive bureaucracy that could take a stand in China. He points the finger at civil society groups or NGOs and says they are harmful and subversive elements in China.
JIANYING ZHA, contributor to The New Yorker:
It stipulates a comprehensive list of ideological constraints, 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 Mandarin] The news, four top officials removed for taking bribes, was announced on state TV.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi had fought against corruption in Shanghai and now, as an ideal leader, he has introduced a national anti-corruption campaign.
MALE READER:
. . . from top bureaucrats to subordinate employees. China its nickname of Tigers and Flies.
MARTIN SMITH:
Corruption was a real problem, but the scope and scale of Xi’s campaign took many by surprise.
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
Xi Jinping has begun purges. And other people at the time, including Chinese officials, were saying, “Well, look, this is going to last six months. You’re going to have to consolidate your power. “
MALE JOURNALIST:
So far, more than 80,000 members of the Communist Party have been investigated.
MATTHIEU 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 JOURNALIST:
Xi Jinping has just sacked his foreign minister, just sacked his defense minister. He’s sacked a whole lot of other people at the top of the military establishment.
FEMALE JOURNALIST:
The former security czar has not been seen in public for more than a year. The investigation—
MATTHIEU POTTINGER:
These were other people carefully chosen, other people he had named. Historian Stephen Kotkin said, “Hitler killed his enemies and Stalin killed his friends. “Xi purges friends and foes. And that’s how 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:
Every street corner, there’s facial recognition. There’s digital recognition. There’s the social credit system.
MARTIN SMITH:
What is the social system?
ORVILLE SCHELL:
The social credit formula is, therefore, the highest aspiration of the Chinese Communist Party, which is that everything that each human being does is incorporated into a computer formula. And thanks to AI and all kinds of other complicated programs, you can find out exactly where a user is because they will have purchased anything with a credit car or a virtual payment formula. Your car will have driven on a highway. Every kilometer, a camera takes photographs of your license plate. They will know everything about each of them, in real time.
Software Demo
ORVILLE SCHELL:
This then creates a technoautocratic 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 Ministry of Public Security designated to track the Internet.
LI YUAN:
Xi Jinping came to power and created this agency to control the internet. We were all like, “Ha ha ha, how can you control the internet? Internet is so massive, so vast.”
MARTIN SMITH:
Good luck.
LI YUAN:
Oui. Et then did it. He Internet.
MARTIN SMITH:
It’s part of the Great Firewall, a combination of legislation and technology used to regulate and block huge swaths of the internet. In China, there is no Google, or YouTube, or Facebook. When a meme comparing Xi to Winnie the Pooh went viral on Chinese social media, Xi Jinping was not amused. Censors banned any such comparisons.
“Cannot get image”
CAI XIA:
[Speaking Mandarin] My articles and even my name were 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.
JIANYING ZHA:
There could be millions, tens of millions or hundreds of millions who have negative thoughts about Xi or the system, but it’s very hard for them to mobilize to act together. Any direct, more confrontational, organized political movement will be zapped. The fear is almost a subliminal air that you breathe in.
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 China in the 18th century, but was separated from it twice. Beijing has been seeking for decades to suppress Uyghur resistance to Chinese rule.
CHINESE NEWSREADER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Headline News brings you to yesterday’s incident inside Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Blame is pointing toward Uyghurs from Xinjiang region. Official statistics state that there were at least five deaths and 38 injured.
MARTIN SMITH:
In the months after Xi became president, China was rattled by a series of attacks the government said were carried out by Uyghurs.
CHINESE READER:
[Speaking Mandarin] The 9:20 p. m. news On March 1, 11 masked and uniformed rioters massacred other innocent people in Kunming Station Square, Price Ticket and other areas.
MARTIN SMITH:
The violence escalated in the spring of 2014, when dozens of people were killed at a railway station in southwestern China with machetes and long knives. The Chinese government blamed the attack on an organization of Uyghur separatists.
CHINESE NEWSREADER:
[Speaking Mandarin] By 6 a. m. on 2 March, 29 other folks had been killed and 130 injured.
MARTIN SMITH:
Several weeks after the incident, President Xi visited Xinjiang. At the conclusion of his visit, a suicide bombing and another stabbing occurred at an exercise station in the capital of Xinjiang.
CHINESE READER:
[Speaks Mandarin] Due to the bombing, about a hundred Uyghurs were arrested.
ORVILLE SCHELL, Asia Company:
This is a trigger. Xi decided: “That’s it. We are not going to coddle those people. We are not going to look for a solution. We are going to control. “And I think that refers to his toolbox, which he carried around with him since he was a teenager, which is, “How do you fix things?”Control. ” This is their main tool.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi would return to Beijing and enact what the party called called a “People’s War.” The idea was to curb 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 Uyghurs being arrested. It is estimated that more than one million have been arrested since 2017.
EDUARDO WONG:
Xi says we want to assimilate Uyghurs and other ethnic groups into the dominant Han culture. And this means in his brain that elements of Islam will have to be eliminated or seriously weakened. Not even more radical concepts that take root, but fundamental practices. such as not eating pork, fasting in Ramadan, seeking to make a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia for Hajj. Therefore, the very dominant Muslim practices will have to be withdrawn, this is what it says.
The central government is beginning to set up those internment camps to remove the wisdom on which Uyghur culture is based.
CHINESE CCTV ANNOUNCER:
[Speaking Mandarin] Witness the transformation.
UIGUR SPEAKER:
[Speaking Mandarin] I can’t imagine the consequences had I not studied here.
CHINESE CCTV ANNOUNCER:
[Speaking Mandarin] One after another.
Uyghur SPEAKER:
[Speaks Mandarin] My skills have improved, my mind has improved.
MARTIN SMITH:
The Chinese government presents the fields as a position for development. . .
CHINESE CCTV ANNOUNCER:
[Speaking 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 chance to change myself. I’m very thankful.
STUDENTS OF THE EDUCATIONAL CENTER [in unison]:
[Speaks Mandarin] I am a law-abiding citizen.
CHINESE CCTV ADVERTISER:
[Speaking Mandarin] In the education center, the main focus is learning the national language.
EDUARDO WONG:
They need them not to speak Uyghur. They need them to speak Mandarin Chinese. And families are separated. So this changes the foundation of Uyghur culture.
MARTIN SMITH:
Mihrigul Tursun was detained at the airport as she returned to Xinjiang from her adopted home in Egypt. She was coming back to introduce her newborn triplets to her parents. Mihrigul says they accused her of being a spy and separated her from her children.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
I asked them, “Where are my babies?” They are hungry. They have to replace diapers. The Chinese police never answered me. But they asked me for the details of my family’s touch. Where is my family? Who was who?I was writing and suddenly a guy on my butt taped my mouth and I can’t speak. Then they put their hands on me, handcuffed me, 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. Like ice. Like, you know you take ice from 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 at that moment, they answer the call, please, two police officers come and tell me, “Get out of here. Shut your mouth. Don’t scream. Don’t say anything. Just get out of here. ” “Then they kicked me out of the hospital.
MARTIN SMITH:
Later, she was arrested again. Mihrigul remembers spending time in three other camps.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
They don’t let me sleep. Then they shaved my head and gave me electrical devices. . .
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 story was reported by several Western media outlets and in 2018 she was invited to testify before the U. S. Congress.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
[Speaking Uyghur] The police beat and some died as a result.
MARTIN SMITH:
In 2019, a Chinese government television channel accused her of lying.
CGTN JOURNALIST:
Mihrigul Tursun says one of her triplets has died. Something that 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:
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. A Uyghur Human Rights Project investigation says the government is simply media-washing. Meanwhile, the so-called reeducation camps are still in operation. Chinese officials have maintained that there has been no terrorism in Xinjiang since 2016.
JIA QINGGUO, professor, Peking University:
Xinjiang is a factor that should be studied very carefully.
MARTIN SMITH:
Dr. Jia Qingguo is a prominent Chinese academic and political adviser to the government who often speaks out on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. I interviewed him at a China conference in San Diego.
We had an attack on 9/11, but all the Muslims in America were sent to re-education camps. Do you think this would have made sense in the United States?
JIA QINGGUO:
But you have fought two wars, against Iraq and against Afghanistan. How many more people died? In Xinjiang, China is launching a full-scale crusade against terrorists. The Chinese government said this was all it had to do.
MARTIN SMITH:
They were taken from their homes.
JIA QINGGUO:
Taken from their homes, yeah.
MARTIN SMITH:
Placed in those fields. But not all of those other people were terrorists.
JIA QINGGUO:
And they were not harmed in a physical way.
MARTIN SMITH:
But the families are devastated.
JIA QINGGUO:
Oh-
MARTIN SMITH:
We spoke to a woman who had her child taken from her when she was just a few months old and never returned.
JIA QINGGUO:
I don’t know, there are greater tactics to solve this problem. But by doing so, I am sure that human rights are being violated. This cannot 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 have been forced to paint in factories across China, with some supplying American brands. These companies have denied hard labor to Uyghurs, but forced hard labor continues for other manufacturers.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Xi decided, as he did after the economic crisis, that China did not need to bow to any Western demands. It’s none of our business what he does in Xinjiang. He has once again turned to control as the answer for 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 now a country.
MIHRIGUL TURSUN:
China is a rich country. But it is very weak. He just believes. . . He thinks he’s rich, his money, but no. Money can’t do everything.
The war of industry
MARTIN SMITH:
Over the past 40 years, China’s economic expansion has eclipsed that of the United States, developing on average four times faster. China dominates global supply chains and owns about $1 trillion in U. S. debt.
VICTOR GAO:
China is now a country comparable to the United States. If we use purchasing power parity, its economy is larger than that of the United States. And if you think they can impede China’s stable economic growth, it’s probably by indulging in fantasies.
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.
ACTIVE DONALD:
They’re taking our business. They’re taking our jobs. They’re making our product.
MARTIN SMITH:
But in 2016, Trump made China a major campaign issue.
Donald Trump:
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 tried to make sure the new president knew where he stood on trade. He issued a warning from his podium at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Carrying out a protectionist economic policy is like locking yourself in a dark room. Although wind and rain can stay outside, they also block light and air. No one will emerge victorious from 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 failed to compete with China, and I think because of his business background—
MARTIN SMITH:
Gen. H.R. McMaster served as President Trump’s National Security Advisor.
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 pursue this kind of misguided strategy of cooperation and compromise.
ASSET DONALD:
I don’t blame China, I blame our leadership. They should have never let that happen.
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
I wrote a lengthy, maybe a 12-page provisional strategy, in a sense, but it really started out by saying how many of our assumptions had been wrong.
MARTIN SMITH:
Matthew Pottinger, one of the architects of Trump’s China strategy.
MATEO POTTINGER:
One of the things I have learned over the years, first as a journalist and then working in national security in China, is that the more comfortable China becomes, the more comfortable the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party become, the more competitive and competitive are. . greater his ambitions. And I really think that a more confrontational approach, anything more reminiscent of the key periods of the Cold War, is what we deserve to look at now as an example. It is necessary for the enemy to worry about what one 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.
HR McMASTER:
The CEOs of our largest and most successful corporations would come to me and say, “Let me tell you, our company is a victim of the Chinese Communist Party’s economic aggression. ” And they would tell me the story of the forced transfer of intellectual properties.
MARTIN SMITH:
In other words, you can’t do business here without telling us your secrets.
HR McMASTER:
Exactly. 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 internal market. And then guess what? They throw these curtains and gadgets into the foreign market and put you out of business abroad.
MALE CHINESE OFFICIAL:
[Speaking Mandarin] This claim of generation has no foundation 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:
[Speaks Mandarin] [The United States] deserves to have more confidence in itself and compete with other countries.
JOHN BOLTON, National Security Advisor, 2018-19:
They were unleashing what they themselves called “wolf warrior” diplomacy. And, frankly, it was reprehensible.
MARTIN SMITH:
John Bolton, some other national security advisor during the Trump presidency.
JOHN BOLTON:
But, in a way, I think it was favorable that they did so. They took off their masks. It is no longer imaginable to hide his ambitions.
Donald Trump:
Sixty thousand factories in our country, closed, shuttered, gone. Six million jobs at least, gone.
MARTIN SMITH:
Trump was exaggerating, but less than a year after welcoming Xi to America, Trump was ready to take off his own mask.
DONALD TRUMP:
I spoke with China and we are in the middle of a very broad negotiation. We’ll see where that takes us. But in the meantime, we’ll send a Section 301 action. I’m going to point it out here and now.
MARTIN SMITH:
He fired the first shot in a coming war that would last for years.
DONALD TRUMP:
It’s number one, but it’s the first in a long series.
FEMALE READER:
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 NEWSREADER:
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 READER:
President Trump just imposed price lists on another $200 billion in Chinese exports. . .
MALE NEWSREADER:
—igniting the biggest trade war in economic history.
MARTIN SMITH:
Trump’s trade war would consume the remainder of his presidency.
FEMALE READER:
China is now retaliating by imposing price lists of a certain quantity on US 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:
Cost increases also led to a decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs.
MALE READER:
. . . destroyed the 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 price lists once he returns to power.
The price lists were set because China’s economic policies were hurting American factories and workers.
JIA QINGGUO:
This is a trust held through other people in the United States, specifically members of the Trump administration.
MARTIN SMITH:
Biden’s leadership even prolonged them.
JIA QINGGUO:
But speaking privately, many do agree with this kind of policy. For what? 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 Chinese dream
CHINESE NEWSREADER:
Our top story: For the very first time since taking office, all seven Standing Committee members of the Politburo have 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, which he revealed even before he became president. This just after being appointed secretary general of the party in 2012.
CHINESE NEWSREADER:
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 presentation, the party leaders reviewed other ancient stages that the country has gone through.
MARTIN SMITH:
Six leaders had come and gone since Mao Zedong. But at the exhibition, Xi made clear his allegiance was to Mao.
SUSAN-CHIRK:
There were pictures of Deng Xiaoping and stuff, all of which he by and large 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 Chinese people never gave up, continued to fight—
MARTIN SMITH:
In the Great Hallway, he delivered a speech and laid out his vision––now known as the China Dream.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] – 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 tells everyone is that his highest calling is to lead China to a position of foreign greatness. It didn’t just mean advertising greatness. It meant a position of political greatness, of military greatness, to give substance to the old imperial empire that had occupied many peripheral territories, including Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, Mongolia and Taiwan. Xi needs to give China its greatest state back. This is, in fact, the roadmap of the Chinese dream.
MARTIN SMITH:
A key strategy to expand China’s strength is to expand it over the South China Sea. During his presidency, Xi has intensified those efforts.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
The South China Sea is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Japan and Korea completely depend on it. So it’s no small matter who controls this waterway. And China in effect is saying everything from the Straits of Malacca up around Taiwan to the Chinese coast is ours.
HR McMASTER:
These are the waters through which a third of the global 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 that Xi became president, China began building artificial islands on top of seven coral reefs in the South China Sea. The man-made islands covered almost five square miles.
HR McMASTER:
And then they dredge coral reefs to build islands, and then they claim that those islands were for research, for environmental research. And then, of course, the landing strips appeared, then the fortifications appeared, and then the missile batteries appeared.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] The islands in 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 many assurances, surveillance shows that there are only runways for fighter jets, but also deep-water ports capable of docking warships.
HR McMASTER:
The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of lies in its face and you can’t take what they say at face value. What they did was very promising and not only did they not fulfill anything, but they intensified their competitive actions.
MARTIN SMITH:
In addition to the Chinese coast guard and navy, giant fleets of civilian ships have been sent through Beijing to patrol the waters of the South China Sea. They surround and harass ships from other countries such as the Philippines, ramming and firing at them with high-speed water cannons.
FEMALE READER:
The water cannon attack lasted almost an hour, and the force of the water damaged the Philippine ship’s railing and top. The latest incident of Chinese aggression is expected to escalate tensions.
EDWARD WONG, author of On the Borders 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.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] Achieving the complete reunification of the motherland is the common aspiration of all Chinese sons and daughters. [We have] strengthened the national consciousness 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:
A major port on the South China Sea—one of the busiest in the world—Hong Kong has become the financial capital of Asia.
ANNA KWOK:
Hong Kong was the gateway for many corporations entering the Chinese market, and we were this foreign monetary center that essentially connected the Chinese market to the Western market. And much of that legacy still remains today.
MARTIN SMITH:
Anna Kwok grew up in Hong Kong. She was born in 1997, the year that Britain returned Hong Kong back to China.
What was the promise that was made to you?
ANNA KWOK:
The promise of wonderful autonomy in Hong Kong. That we would have what is essentially called “one country, two systems”, meaning that although we are intended to be part of China, Hong Kong would have its own system, its own government, its own autonomy and the rest of the people of Hong Kong it would have its own system, its own government, its own autonomy and its own way of life.
CARLOS, 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 live under another system, another structure of government.
MARTIN SMITH:
Joey Siu also grew up in Hong Kong. He came of age in the so-called Umbrella Revolution of 2014.
MALE READER:
In the streets, a sea of umbrellas, an image of a mass demonstration underway in Hong Kong.
FEMALE READER:
Protesters, mostly students, are demanding full democracy—
MARTIN SMITH:
Calling for free and fair elections, protesters used umbrellas to protect 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 only 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. I want to be free to criticize the government or the government.
MARTIN SMITH:
But in 2019 things will change. Local governments in Hong Kong began restricting 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:
[Speaking Cantonese] Run, run, run!
ANNA KWOK:
I think 2019 was the nail in the coffin. I think Xi Jinping. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
Anna Kwok became a leading underground activist that year, running operations from outside Hong Kong.
ANNA KWOK:
Although all Hong Kongers had taken to the streets, millions of them, even if the entire foreign network seemed to support him, Xi was not afraid to say, “No, we are not giving them the freedoms and rights they deserve. “We are not afraid to use police violence against us. The government simply doesn’t care about optics.
PROTESTERS:
[Speaking Cantonese] A water cannon truck is coming!Move, move!
ANNA KWOK:
They don’t care.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Now, Xi Jinping was very astute. Some thought that he might march soldiers over the border and take Hong Kong when it had all those demonstrations. He didn’t do that. He waited. And then he passed a national security law, and they locked everybody up slowly and quietly.
MARTIN SMITH:
Xi Jinping’s national security law gave China a broad legal framework to deal with protesters. The law criminalized collusion and subversion—and secession.
Joey Siu on the front lines, facing tear gas and daily arrest.
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 another mainland city. But I think what surprised Hong Kongers and foreign society was how temporary it happened.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] One county, two systems is a great innovation never seen before.
MARTIN SMITH:
Throughout his presidency, Xi has repeatedly made assurances that he is committed to Hong Kong’s autonomy.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] This is in Hong Kong’s interest. This will not change. Unswerving.
MATTHEW POTTINGER:
In 2020, Beijing subverted the 50-year guarantee it had made to honor Hong Kong’s, quote, “high degree of autonomy.” It completely kneecapped that agreement.
JOHN BOLTON:
I think Hong Kong is a good example of China’s lie. They have 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. Indeed, to see Hong Kong annihilated 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 a circle of relatives who are still in Hong Kong.
ANNA KWOK:
Yes.
MARTIN SMITH:
What will be your destiny?
ANNA KWOK:
One month after the bounty was released on me, in last August, they were taken into questioning by the police.
MARTIN SMITH:
What did they ask?
ANNA KWOK:
I have no idea, because I’m not in touch with them, and—
MARTIN SMITH:
Not in with your family?
ANNA KWOK:
No, and it suits them. Oh my god, I’m going to cry. Yeah.
MARTIN SMITH:
Can’t your mother?
ANNA KWOK:
No.
MARTIN SMITH:
Or your brothers and sisters?
ANNA KWOK:
I think this is the toughest strategy that the regime applies to the population. It’s about breaking down the acceptance as true and the human connections that one has with each other so that they can’t have that strength and connection that they desire. Keep fighting. Because at the end of the day, it’s about fighting for the other 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, to diverse communities that are seeking to fight for freedom.
Unfinished Business
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] From Beijing, I extend my best New Year’s wishes to everyone.
MARTIN SMITH:
On the eve of the 2023 New Year, President Xi addressed the nation.
XI JINPING:
[Speaking Mandarin] We will consider this year as a year of hard work and perseverance.
MARTIN SMITH:
While he celebrated China’s many accomplishments that year, he also made a notable reference to Taiwan.
Xijinping:
[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 and continually reminded Xi that Taiwan is out of step with China. Today, Taiwan is a colorful democracy and its capital, Taipei, is one of the richest. Asian cities. But Xi has made clear that one of the central goals of his China Dream is to reunify Taiwan with mainland China. This is a position the party has maintained since it came to power 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:
Taiwan is the direct result of an unfinished civil war. Very simple. There is only one China, with 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:
Taiwan’s future should not depend on other Taiwanese.
MARTIN SMITH:
Why those other folks have the right to self-determination?
VICTOR GAO:
Taiwan’s prestige will eventually be transmitted only through the other peoples on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, adding up to Taiwan’s 23 million people as well as mainland China’s 1. 4 billion people.
MARTIN SMITH:
Taiwan was on the agenda when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made their groundbreaking 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 aide to Kissinger, Winston Lord, was on the trip. He found that Mao was willing to engage on Taiwan, but Mao was also wary of Soviet power and seemed more interested in exploring a U.S. alliance. Taiwan got pushed down the list.
MR. 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 Taiwan as officially a component of China. At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger defended Taiwan’s right to self-government. 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 arrangement has remained relatively stable. In 1979, President Carter attempted to strengthen America’s commitment to Taiwan, signing into law the Taiwan Relations Act, which stipulated that the U.S. promised to maintain the capacity to aid Taiwan.
PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER:
Taiwan citizens will be safe.
MARTIN SMITH:
But what does this mean exactly? The policy is intentionally and strategically ambiguous. because there have been incidents between the United States and China. The planes collided over the South China Sea in 2001, and both countries blamed the other.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
This accident has the potential of undermining our hopes for a fruitful and productive relationship between our two countries.
MARTIN SMITH:
But the extent of the current saber curse against Taiwan is new.
Translation of news from the sky
MALE VOICE [translating Xi]:
We will continue to make utmost efforts for peaceful reunification, but never promise to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option to taking all measures necessary. Complete reunification must be realized, and it can without a doubt be realized.
ORVILLE SCHELL, Asian 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 exercises over Taiwan airspace are a normal reminder of a genuine war. In early 2023, a memo from US Air Force General Mike Minihan to his subordinates circulated online, categorically giving a date for Xi’s invasion. “I hope I am wrong,” it reads. “My gut 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:
Ouais. Eh, well, first of all, anyone who says they know when Xi Jinping will invade Taiwan doesn’t know what they’re talking about, because Xi Jinping doesn’t know the date.
MARTIN SMITH:
Colin Kahl is a former National Security Advisor to Vice President Biden and former under secretary for policy at the Pentagon. While he disputes the 2025 date, Kahl and other U.S. military analysts, as well as the CIA, are wary of Xi’s near-term intentions.
Xi has made some statements about the urgency and. . .
COLIN KAHL:
He did it, and the date that top analysts comment on is 2027. This is the date that Xi Jinping gave his army to have the ability to do it. Now, this ability does not mean that they will manifest it. Just because he gives them the assignment doesn’t mean they will complete it.
MARTIN SMITH:
But Taiwan’s military doesn’t want to tempt fate.
ROC ARMY SPEAKER:
We have imagined several scenarios that the enemy would adopt and have plans to weaken those invading forces, if not them.
MARTIN SMITH:
In July 2023, I traveled here to watch Taiwan’s military rehearsing how to repel a possible Chinese invasion.
So this is one of the beaches where you expect the PLA to—
ROC ARMY SPEAKER:
Yes, that is correct. We hope that this position is the most sensible on the list for the EPL. As you can see, we’re here, and that’s where Taipei is to the east, and. . . That would be bad for us.
MARTIN SMITH:
So, Xi Jinping, see what you’re doing.
ROC ARMY SPEAKER:
Yes.
ROC 2 ARMY SPEAKER:
[Cantonese speaks] For our friends in the media, on the coast are our navy’s landing tanks.
MARTIN SMITH:
This beach is one of 14 landing sites that the Taiwanese military has potentially called for Chinese amphibious and air strikes.
LOVE. SAMUEL PAPARO, Commander, U. S. Forces, Indo-Pacific:
The Taiwan Strait is a complicated crossing: 20-foot tide, 3-mile mudflat, suitable for crossing only 3 or 4 months a year.
MARTIN SMITH:
I spoke with Admiral Sam Paparo, commander of all US forces in the Indo-Pacific, about the feasibility of a successful Chinese takeover.
SAMUEL PÁPARO:
It is difficult to reach population centers.
MARTIN SMITH:
It is mountainous.
SAMUEL PÁPARO:
Mountainous terrain and channeling, as we call it, which means very few steps, which can simply be closed without problems.
ROC ARMY SOLDIER:
[Speaking Cantonese] Each exercise is based on assessments and the most probable actions of the enemy. We’re showing that we will do everything we can to defend our country.
MARTIN SMITH:
Is it most likely that we will go to war with Taiwan?
SAMUEL PÁPARO:
The probability is low, but the consequences are so serious that I owe them all the urgency I can muster. The effect of a spiraling war would eclipse World War II, which is why we seek to maintain the prestige quo. We seek to save you conflicts.
Xi Jinping believes that the unification of Taiwan is a guarantee of legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule over China.
MARTIN SMITH:
They’ve gotten along for 70-plus years without reunification. So what makes this existential?
SAMUEL PÁPARO:
Don’t know. I hope he gives you an interview and tells you.
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 have no right to separate the land from your homeland. Just like in the United States, you don’t automatically have this right. You have to stick to the procedures, right? Like in Texas, if they need to become independent, you can’t just hold a plebiscite in Texas. You will need to download approval from other states. Alright? It’s provided for in 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, you’re talking about an island that is responsible for 70% of all the semiconductors in the world, and 90% of the highest-end chips that power the most advanced technologies that all of us have in our pockets with our iPhones and our laptops.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
The world wants this technology. Europe wants it, Japan, we all want it. And no one else does it like Taiwan.
MARTIN SMITH:
China also relies on Taiwanese chips. A war destroying 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 marks an anniversary of infamy: two years after Vladimir Putin launched 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 for Taiwan.
MALE JOURNALIST:
People thought that this invasion was going to last several weeks and that Russia would get its way. But the Ukrainians fought bravely. They continue fighting.
COLIN KAHL:
I don’t think Xi Jinping is happy about the war in Ukraine. Without question, he took notice of how good U.S. intelligence was on Russia. And he has to wonder, “Well, gosh, if they know this about Russia, what do they know about me?” So if he’s counting on surprise, vis-à-vis Taiwan or the South China Sea, I think he’s got to calculate the odds of him pulling off a strategic surprise are less than they were before because of the quality of U.S. 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.
Video surveillance
EDUARDO WONG:
One of the things that has been very consistent about Xi is his alignment of his identity with the Chinese military. I’m in the crowd across from him, and—
MARTIN SMITH:
Ed Wong witnessed several of these spectacles.
EDUARDO WONG:
It is very typical of this imperial occasion where 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, state off the sunroof, up and down those rows of troops.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Hello, comrades.
PLA SOLDIERS [in unison]:
[Speaking Mandarin] Hello, President!
EDUARDO WONG:
We see things like ICBMs on platforms. And all this shows the strength of the Chinese army.
Xijinping:
[Speaking Mandarin] Job done.
PLA SOLDIERS [in unison]:
[Speaking Mandarin] In full view 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, American 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 stated 4 times: “The United States will protect Taiwan. ” No American president has said that, and no American president has this responsibility. The Taiwan Relations Act says nothing about the United States defending Taiwan. It says that if coercive measures were used through mainland China as opposed to Taiwan would be, quote, of “serious concern” for the United States.
MARTIN SMITH:
Now the question is what will the incoming Trump administration do?
You worked for Donald Trump. Si China is invading Taiwan more, 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 I’m not sure would possibly be a bad thing, because as long as it’s ambiguous, as long as it doesn’t say, “Hey, no, I’m not sure. ” “I’m going to do something to Taiwan. ” And I think it’s also vital that we not make promises that we may not be able to stay if Congress does not authorize military action.
JIA QINGGUO:
I don’t think we deserve to fight until Taiwan becomes independent. But Taiwan is not separate from China. Why does China deserve to use force? If it is a national problem, we will solve it peacefully.
MARTIN SMITH:
As I take inventory of Xi—his ambitions, his deceptions, his human rights abuses, and his threats against Taiwan—I wonder what American policy will be. So far, 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, in the perhaps naïve hope that China would not transform into a Jeffersonian democracy, but would become less hostile. It was a smart diplomatic effort. Was it successful? Not yet. And the engagement is now over. Now can we start again? I think that with Xi Jinping this is probably impossible.
The future
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
For decades, the expansion of the Chinese economy has been described as a miracle, spurring the emergence of a large new middle class. But those are less safe days for most of China.
MARTIN SMITH:
Despite Xi Jinping’s grip on power, his China is invincible.
FEMALE READER:
And a giant of this middle class. . .
MARTIN SMITH:
In years, the economy has weakened. Growth has slowed.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—by a property crisis.
MARTIN SMITH:
A housing boom has morphed into a housing glut, with tens of millions of vacant units littering the country. The workforce is also aging, but as China’s youth attend job fairs, they face a staggering unemployment rate, estimated to be as high as 25%. Foreign investment is fleeing the country.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The Chinese economy faces a much sharper slowdown than the current one.
LINGLING WEI, author of Superpower Showdown:
It’s heartbreaking. Every time I talk to my friends in China, I have never felt this feeling of hopelessness before. People are simply very concerned about the direction the country is taking.
FEMALE READER:
The Chinese are having a gloomy month. . .
IAN JOHNSON:
I think Xi Jinping has taken economics for granted for most of the last ten years. I had the idea that it didn’t matter as much as ideology, but it controlled people’s thinking and suppressed dissent.
MARTIN SMITH:
When COVID hit China, Xi’s lockdown policy drew huge protests, becoming the largest anti-government demonstrations since Tiananmen Square.
PROTESTER:
[Speaking Mandarin] We want freedom, not COVID tests!
MALE NEWSREADER:
Citizens, millions of them, yearning to escape almost three years of intermittent lockdowns.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Containment has a type of lock. And it’s no secret, if you tell other people in Chinese cities that have been closed, what a nightmare it has been.
MALE READER:
In the central town of Wuhan they break the fence that kept them in quarantine.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
But it’s also a kind of metaphor for the best metaphor for how a Leninist formula does things: control.
MARTIN SMITH:
Because the government forbade overt messaging, protesters began holding up blank pieces of paper as symbols of China’s strict censorship.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The White Paper Movement is spreading. First it was all about opposition to China’s strict zero-COVID policy, but in recent days the message has morphed, touching the rawest of political nerves.
PROTESTER:
Freedom!
CREW:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Freedom of speech!
ZHOU FENGSUO, co-founder of Humanitarian China:
This White Paper motion has been a very exciting time. I heard those young people shout: “End the CCP. “
CREW:
[Chanting in Mandarin] Step down! Communist Party, step down!
ZHOU FENGSUO:
And this is the first time that public protests have forced the PCC to follow its policy.
DEMONSTRATOR:
Xi Jinping!
CREW:
[Singing in Mandarin] Crouch!
PROTESTER:
Xi Jinping!
CROWD:
[Sings in Mandarin] 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.
CROWD:
[Sings in Mandarin] Down! Give up! Give up!
LI YUAN:
The zero-COVID policy woke up many Chinese.
DEMONSTRATOR:
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.
DEMONSTRATOR:
[Speaking Mandarin] The Chinese have human rights.
CREW:
[Singing in Mandarin] The Chinese have human rights.
ORVILLE SCHELL:
Having watched China for so many decades, these forces are there and they keep coming up again and again and again, and they actually grow and multiply under repression. But right now, China has affected a kind of a techno-autocracy that makes it more difficult than ever to have these kinds of manifestations, because the cost is so high.
MARTIN SMITH:
Today, Xi is looking to find a way forward that balances with the desire to revive China’s economy.
IAN JOHNSON:
Xi Jinping thinks he could win on two fronts: cracking down while maintaining economic expansion. But the recipe for success, according to which society had to be freed to move things forward, has now been abandoned. If China continues with its policy, and I believe it will, expansion will be slower in the long run, leading to more internal tensions. So I think we are living in a more complicated time.
EDWARD 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 United States.
He has made several secret trips to China, in support of fellow activists.
Cai Xia now lives in exile in the United States.
She was expelled from the Communist Party after comparing Xi to a mafia boss.
In November 2024, a Hong Kong court convicted 45 pro-democracy activists for subversion of state authority.
He was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.
In 2018, Xi abolished term limits, allowing him to be president for life.