Gordon Chang joined Alpha News reporter Liz Collin to provide insight into China’s latest schemes, from the Russia-Ukraine war, to fentanyl and COVID-19, and why Americans should be concerned, even from halfway around the world.
Chang is a U.S.-China expert, the author of several books on the topic, and a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He spoke at a First Conservatives event in White Bear Lake this week.
“The Chinese system has become less transparent over time, and people on the outside … we can only guess,” he said in an interview after the event with Collin.
While he believes the latest “coup” rumors are not true, “something extraordinary is happening,” Chang said, pointing to China cancelling 60% of its flights last week at the same time it cancelled high-speed rail and bus departures from Beijing.
The threat of China
Anything can happen when Communist Party leaders are engaged in a power struggle.
As the nation’s leader, Xi Jinping, runs for a third term as general secretary of the party, “the general consensus is that there’s high-level infighting at the top of the Communist Party,” Chang said.
China is behind “fentanyl gangs” and COVID-19 deaths, Chang explained, both good reasons to be extremely wary of the nation’s position with the U.S.
Fentanyl gangs launder their money through the Chinese state banking system, according to Chang. Fentanyl overdoses became the leading cause of death for 18-45-year-olds in the U.S. between 2020 and 2021.
“We should consider each of those deaths a murder,” Chang said.
He would also classify every COVID death in the U.S. as a “murder.”
“Xi Jinping deliberately spread [COVID] beyond China’s borders … he lied about contagiousness. He knew this disease was highly transmissible,” Chang said.
“This is the first time in history that one nation has attacked all the others,” he added. “I know it’s harsh, but those are murders. Those are the intentional taking of life without justification.”
COVID has made China a “biological weapon,” Chang said. The Chinese are working to create pathogens they call “specific ethnic genetic attacks,” or pathogens that will leave Chinese people immune but kill everyone else, he explained.
“We’ve imposed no costs on China for killing millions of Americans. What’s to stop [them] from spreading these specific ethnic genetic attacks when they develop them?” Chang asked.
China has also aligned itself with Russia in the Ukrainian war, Chang said. Commodity purchases from China, Chinese financial systems open to Russian institutions, Russian propaganda in China about the war, and almost 40 meetings between leaders of countries — these show “full support for the Russian war effort,” Chang said.
“A lot of people in our country just hope that China would back away from Russia, but we really haven’t seen any evidence of that,” he said.
What can Americans do?
“Stability in the world’s most populous state,” China, is an issue for the entire world, Chang said.
He sees China’s economic downturn, debt crisis, food shortages, and COVID outbreaks as factors slowing the nation’s “historic goals” — thus creating an urgency for America to defend itself now before China’s “window of opportunity” closes.
China has experienced the steepest decline in population in the absence of war or disease, Chang said. Experts predict the nation could lose two-thirds of its population by the end of the century.
“If your country is 1.4 billion people, as China claims, and you’re the world’s most populous society, yeah, you can intimidate others — but you can’t do so if your country is falling apart,” said Chang. “And that’s why I believe that the China threat is imminent and we’ve got to get through the next two or three years.”
However, he doesn’t believe the Biden administration sees this urgency.
To take a stand against China, American citizens can sell Chinese stocks, check their mutual funds for Chinese ownership, and avoid buying Chinese products, he said.
Chang believes U.S. leaders should sever all commercial investment and technological relations with China because “we know that the Chinese are working to destroy the United States.”
Rose Williams
Rose Williams is an assistant editor for Alpha News.
