Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D.
The liberal policy of dealing with the threat from communist China by opening up free trade and granting most favored nation status, like most leftist policies, is clearly not working. The idea was that if we treated the Chinese communist government like friends, they would see the error of their ways and become allies. China instead has become more belligerent and adversarial, and is clearly intent on becoming the world’s superpower and replacing American democracy with communism. They continue to take steps to weaken our influence and that of other democratic countries while aligning themselves with Russia and North Korea. China’s continuing support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is all the proof needed. Our economic policies have enabled China by to become the second largest economy in the world. The Chinese ever-expanding military is poised to exceed our military capability. We have been played for fools.
China believes in the concept of all-encompassing war, not just direct military action. For example, China continues to encourage and support the illegal flow of fentanyl into the U.S. which kills more people each year than died in the Korean and Vietnamese Wars combined. Another critical part of their plan is the war on cyber systems which are increasingly essential the operation of any modern society. Since Kevin Mandea, special cyber expert to the Air Force, several years ago detected and reported the Chinese cyber campaign that breached the security of 27 U.S. military bases with the aid of Chinese students at a west coast university, communist China continues to expand its hacking of essential cyber systems here in the U.S. While much of the hacking was initially directed towards private companies wanting to do business in China, the focus recently has been directed at critical infrastructure systems, such as transportation, oil pipelines, and the electrical grid. China’s goal is to develop the ability to shut down the internal systems essential to our country and thereby intimidate us into compliance with their objectives.
In 2015, when Xi Jinping assumed leadership in China, he pledged that China would become the superpower in cyber space. He has fulfilled that promise with expanded funding and training of enormous numbers of cyber experts far exceeding the number of such experts in the U.S. Paul Rosenzweig, a cyber expert and former assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, recently told the Epoch Times newspaper that even though our cyber experts may have greater capability, we have 100,000 and they have a million.
In 2023, Microsoft dubbed the communist Chinese campaign as the Volt Typhoon. They reported that since 2021 they have been increasingly active against critical U.S. infrastructure. In 2024, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before congress that Volt Typhoon was “pre-positioned for disruption.” It was also reported that China was using its manufactured consumer electronic devices, such as Wi-Fi routers, computer servers, and cameras, to create a network to carry out cyber espionage operations.
As we can see, the threat from China is abundantly clear. So, what do we do about it? Fortunately, we have in President Trump a leader who recognizes the threat. Shortly after his inauguration this year, he re-emphasized the need to “mitigate, deter and defeat foreign adversaries in cyber, including China.” He also made similar commitments during his first administration. Not responding to China (and Russia) will just encourage them to continue. For example, what was the response from the Biden administration when China sent a spy balloon across our country–silence. This is unacceptable. It just showed weakness.
So, we need to retaliate in kind. Let them know that we have a system to attack their cyber systems if we are attacked. This is called deterrence–a tactic that was used during the cold war with the Soviet Union. We also need to address the reality that China is using the over 300,000 Chinese students attending our universities as potential espionage agents. Do we seriously believe that communist China funds these students to attend our universities because they cannot obtain a quality education in China? Or, as the leftists would have us believe, that they want their students to learn how a free and democratic country operates? They are being, and will continue to be, used to obtain research and technical information that China can use against us. They should all be sent back to China, which would also permit the admission of over 300,000 Americans to these universities which we as taxpayers are funding in large part. Expanding the number of Chinese students as President Trump has mentioned should not be done.
Our lawmakers must get serious about the reality of the threat posed by China not only in the cyber area, but in other areas of concern. For example, China owning agricultural land in our country must be stopped and reclaimed. Also, allowing China to own the largest pork producing company in the U.S., Smithfield, is totally absurd and should also be undone. It is past time that we stand up and defend our interests before it is too late.