tv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing views. watch all our archive programming anytime at booktv.org >> welcome to our session on china. this is probably among the most distinguished panelists will have at this conference on the most important subject which is the people'srepublic of china and the communist party of china to look at the problems there .

and i'd like to first introduce our panelists including myself. doctor michael pillsbury is one of the foremost china experts in the world. he's currently a senior fellow and director of the chinese strategy at the hudson institution. he's a distinguished defense and policy advisor, former high-ranking governorofficial and author of numerous books and reports on china . i can tell you definitively that mike has really changed the us military's thinking back some number of years ago he was sent to china to collect chinese military writings and he was the first american official who revealed that what the chinese were telling themselves militarily behind the scenes was quite different than what they were saying in public about how they wanted to be friends with the world and it really had a tremendous impact on understanding the militaries

view of the people's republic ofchina . his book is a landmark book. his most recent mark is focused hundred year map marathon, china's hundred year strategy to replace america as a global superpower. this book is a fascinating look and it's one of the only places in public where you will findinformation about chinese defectors . people from within the chinese communist party system who revealed what's going on there. before mike speaks i want to introduce general robert spalding retired of the u.s. air force. he's a seniorfellow at the hudson institute and he too is a distinguished china expert . he spent time as a bomber pilot and also has been inside of china as a defense attachc, being chased and tracking down the insidestory of china .

his most recent book is called stealth war: how china took over while america's elite slept. a little bit about myself. as was mentioned i'm national security correspondent for the washington times, author of eight books. my most recent book is called seating the sky, inside, communist china's drive for global supremacy and it's a follow on to a book i wrote in 2020 years ago called the china threat and as a result of that i've gained quite a reputation. back in 2006, xinoa described me as the greatest chinese anti-chinese activist in the world. i'm very much pro-chinese people opposed to the communist party system in china. with that let's begin to our first panelist doctor michael

pillsbury. >> thank you bill. i thought i'd begin by revealing a new publication that's going to come out in about 2 weeks from the hudson institute. you'll be able toget it online . it's called a guide to the trump administrations china policy statements. and it has a link to everyone of about 200 statements or interviews or tweets by president trump and the top members of his team. the reason i put this together as i believe there's been a lot of misunderstanding and the left has also attacked president trump's time china policy in many ways to distort what he's done and what his team has said and done over the last 3 and a half years. as we begin the next hundred days of the election campaign i think we're goingto hear more of this , more attacks on the president either that

he's been who too soft on china. the buying team has already run several commercials where they imply that president trump is soft on china and vice president joe biden comes on and says if i'd been president i would have demanded xi jinping immediately tell us what happened in wuhan with the china's the virus and i'll save you against president trump. i believe the president's policy towards china, i call it the three c's. he's been clear, cohesive and cooperative so if you go through the documents which are organized according to subject matter although i've done a special section just for the presidents tweets and his spontaneous interviews you'll agree with me and i'll give you some examples to make sure you understand the range of debate among conservatives on china is actually very wide. not altogether clear where

we're going with china policy over the last three decades or what's going to happen in the next two decades. i'll give you one example. a conservative reporter who wrote a book called jesus in beijing. came out about 10 years ago. he forecast christianity will take over china and the leading largest nation in the world with christians will be china. totally wrong. he misunderstood some trends. it's a nice effort, it's a positive thought. completely false. another book called the coming collapse of china. vice president pence addressed this directly. the coming collapse of china for many months was the number one book in america on china. the coming collapse of china. very popular author. i like him very much. his name is gordon chang.

i said gordon, don't. the year china will collapse. leave some flexibility. no, it's going to be 2012 and he put 2012 in the book. the book came out in 2001. vice president pence said since 2001 china's gdp, china's economic strength has grown by howmuch ? 10 times. was it coming collapse? no. so in 2012 foreign policy magazine asked gordon give us an article. when is china going to collapse? the feeling that china is going to collapse is very important because that means it's not going to be a problem very long so gordon wrote the article. he said give us when it will collapse. i would have said general spalding, i don't know, could have said 2050 or who knows

and gordon wrote 2013. one more year. this point of view infects a lot of thinking about china so looking at the trump administrations statements you begin to get an idea of what the president is saying. number one, he's said at least 10 times, i won't repeat it 10 times but i want to make sure everybody knows he's either tweeted or said this .10 times. if hillary clinton had won the election china would be surpassing us now. that's extremely important. the president and his team see china as coming close to us. the rate of economic growth, their military growth and other indicators are not to be trifled with and thought of as this is an easy challenge. i want to mention my own book . i made some mistakes throughout my career. i was one of the original panda huggers. i thought china would align with us notonly against the

soviet union but help us in the world as a whole . president next and thought that and bill in a recently declassified memorandum president nixon tells chairman mao and the premier, we need you to bear more of the burden of global governance . we need china to have more armaments so we can have less . that's 1972. see how this thinking as consequences over the years? i very much believed that myself . so when you turn back to the trump administrations statements, one of the points they're making is the scale of the challenge. this is not panama or even venezuela. this is not a smallcountry we're dealing with . nuclear weapons, a serious navy but most important of all a growth rate averaging more than 10 percent for 35 years and it now looks like,

nobody has an exact number. it looks like technology theft was one part of that rapid growth but there were two otherparts that are very important for what we do next . number one was american capital. we seem to have been the largest investor in china or 30 years. and no one seems to know how to undo that. there's not even an exact number. some people think it's several trillion. several trillion us dollars invested in china. companies, private equity, general spalding begins his wonderful book with a story . he puts in the grants,

wants to write a paper, he's fresh out ofthe air force and the grants turned down. he tells the story in the first few pages.the think tank president says we can't fund your projects. general spalding looks at the list of members of the board. correct me if i'm wrong. billionaires, various people who've made money from china. this is an enormous problem . if we arein some sense influenceddeeply about capital for china, how are we going to undo that ? it's going to take legislation which leads to my second point about where china's growth came from . technology, restricting us capital, restricting us investmentstakes legislation . i've counted more than 80 current examples of bills introduced by congressman or senators to impose costs on china. including being able to sue china legally for damages for the china virus. generally speaking all this legislation attracts four or six cosponsors.

i was a senate staffer for 10 years. i know how to count. i know when senators cared about something they would tell staff come find me cosponsors. when i introduced this bill i want 50 cosponsors and if you want a raise next year doctor pillsbury i want 50 cosponsors for my legislation . these bills are being introduced sometimes with zero cosponsors other than the one who drafted and they're going nowhere. there are no hearings. the leadership doesn't put them up for a vote. so we're in deep trouble. senators and congressmen come on television, they come on fox news. they see an audience of 4 million people.the host more and more the hosts are saying senator, how is your bill doing ? howmany cosponsors have you got ? that's extremely constructive that people don't get away with what is called sometimes

virtue signaling. i don't like china, i want to stop them somehow, here's my bill.i wash my hands and work on something else. that's another thing the chinese are laughing at us. i was last in china in august . lots of people in chinahave phd's from american universities and now advised the chinese government or they're in it . xi jinping's daughter, harvard graduate. they understand our system extremely well. my lastpoint would be how our american influenced operations inside china ? to our ambassadors to china always speak mandarin fluently? there's two who are somewhat good but i wouldn't call them television show fluent, neither with day. how about our programs inside china? they're blocked, they're jammed. how about our magazines being passed out by usia?

no more usia, no more magazine. if we made a list of what china does with influence operations inside the united states and said i'd like to do that inside china, it would be very difficult not to mention and by the way, some senators have proposed this. what happened to the legislation? like i said, instead, it goes nowhere. it stays alive on fox news, i've got a plan and then nothing happens. i haven't had time to promote my own book hundred year marathon but basically it's a history based on declassified documents of how we got here. how nacve and delusional american presidents and american policymakers including myself got here. and the book has now sold more than200,000 copies . it's been translated into eight languages, all of china's neighbors.

it's a bestseller so this is my challenge for general spalding, i read in a tweet his book has sold 30,000 copies so i'm six times more but that doesn't mean the quality of my book is higher. maybe his book is better. not to mention our moderator bill's book, i don't know the sales figures but i hate to be delivering bad news but it seems to me we are in for a long kind of cold war with china. this is just the early phases and so far president trump has turned things around. it's possible. he's got a successful formula but we are a long way to go before china becomes the kind of china that we all thought would happen before. how's thatfor an opening statements bill ? >> i would point out you mentioned legislation. all the best things that have been done regarding china have been in legislations because policies can be changed but if you look at the record, there's the taiwan relations act which

was passed basically after the us recognized beijing diplomatically. there's also the tenement sanctions which remain in place . and the military power report so it's important to codify these things and i think we're beginning to see that with the trump administration . let's turn out to general spalding for your remarks. >> thank you bill. so it's an interesting thing that michael pillsbury talks about. his book was the first one i read when i got to the pentagon in 2014 and what i would tell people is that just go read the concluding chapter and you get an understanding of a synopsis of what he was trying to say and essentially it was that we had bent over backwards to help the chinese communist party grow into the power that it already is.

when i got to the pentagon in 2014 i was very much, what i would say a panda hugger. and in fact, michael pillsbury taught me how to be what he would now say a superhot. but i don't sell myself to be hawkish. i really focus on defending the american people, the american way of life. the constitution and in fact you look at in the current national security strategy in addition to being clear, concise and comprehensive it is about how we turnthings around . and while it's been noted and lauded it hasn't been widely understood and my book still war is about the background and context behind the national security strategy and whatthe trump administration is attempting to do .

if you want to know about how successful the president's foreign policy has been i would refer you to the uk decision to reverse its decision with regards to allowing huawei to build its 5g network. the media would have you believe that decision was made overnight or maybe over a couple of months during this year as a result of the coronavirus but in fact it really demonstrates the power of the diplomatic efforts undertaken by the department of state and the national security council beginning in the first 1:45 thousand 18 after thenational security strategy was released . diplomatic effort is something that we described in the national security council in 2017 as forging a new consensus. and really before you can address any problems or have a plan or have astrategy you

really need to understand the problem . though the main problem we were addressing was the inability of the united states to get its interests promoted within international institutions and this lack of geopoliticalpower in those institutions .and the primary reason was because most of the nations in those institutions were beginning to look to china and china's model, its economic and political and social model as more beneficial to its furthering their own interests and being aligned with the american view of the world. about democracy, human rights, civil liberties, rule of law and free-trade. and the fact that the united states needed to forge a new consensus similar to the western consensus that sought to really bring democracy together again in a very

tight relationship economically, financially, through trade and information to match its already strong militaryalliances . and so that decision by the uk is emblematic of how successful that initiative and diplomacy has been. but we've also gotten a glimpse of china's response to that diplomatic initiative through the coronavirus and the aftermath. with regard to the coronavirus many people talk about what is the origin of the virus? and i say disregard that. really were not going to know because we're not goingto be able to get investigators into china , into the lab to talk to the researchers that were working there to understand the line of effort of the research. to understand what happened. was there any, even any relation between the lab and

the coronavirus? that's not something we're going to know. but what we can know with certainty is that the chinese communist party presided over the spread of the virus and it wasn't that they accidentally presided over the spread of the virus or it was a manifestation or secondary effect of its institution. it was that they directly spread the virus . on january 7, xi jinping says he's in charge of the wuhan crisis. on 13 january there's reports about human to human transition that come out in china and in fact on 14 january the world health organization to about limited human to human transmission. what was going on during this critical time during 7 january when xi jinping was in charge ofthe crisis and 23

january when they shut down wuhan ? what was happening is that not only was the chinese communist party putting pressure on the world health organization not to discuss human to human transmission, it was also locking down the spread of that information within china. and in fact at the same time, they were locking down ppe and masks in china and locking down masks outside of chinathrough their proxies . so over the course of a couple of weeks they began to turn into a net importer of masks where they had previously been a net exporter of ppe and masks. at the same time they shut down domestic travel from the wuhan allowed international travel to go forth. so this essentially has a net effect of putting them into the lead position with regard to the spread of the pandemic . they knew it was going to impact the chinese society

but they wanted to make sure it impacted other societies as well and that they had the means to really profit fromit and to have advantage from . so what we're seeing today and michael pillsbury talks about it is the beginning of the second cold war and the pandemic spread by the chinese communist party's opening shots of the second cold war.interestingly, not only do they uncork this spreading pandemic but they also uncork a new form of diplomatic and information war. so if you go back to and michael pillsbury was a very good historian can talk all about how the chinese communist party overthrew the nationalist party but me as a strategist and as a war fighter can tell you the way

the chinese think about war, the way mao viewed within the chinese communist party the thinking about war is that as opposed to the way we look at it and specifically between the idea of peacetime and wartime and that war is politics by other means, in other words you use warfare to get to a political outcome , and in fact the chinese communist party thinks the opposite way. that politics is war by other means. in other words the entire war is about the political war and in fact the coronavirus is the beginning of a political offensive against the free world. how does it manifest itself in the diplomatic and information component? in the diplomatic effort they begin to have this what they call wolf warrior diplomacy and they begin to spread the idea this coronavirus didn't

manifest itself in china but in fact it was spread by the united states. the latest thing they've said is it's been spread by spain. on the informational efforts, 40 percent of the social media post with regard to the coronavirus turn out to be bought so this is state centered activity influencing our social media and in fact you see the same kind of activity follow the riots and looting that, on the tale of the coronavirus. and so you really are getting a glimpse of the manifestation in the 21st century of what two colonels called unrestricted warfare. or in another translation, world without rules and it is that there is no difference between peacetime and wartime and in fact we are always at war and in fact there are no rules and everything's within the bounds of the conflict. if you think about that in

the conflict context of world war ii the french built the maginot line to prevent the germans from conquering them and in fact the germans went around the maginot line and in fact conquered the french and in the case of the united states we built this wonderfulmachine for war , space for snout, marines, army, navy that really protects us the physical manifestation of our world from invasion when in fact the way that the chinese communist party takes to wage war is through information and politics. in other words they are trying to change the character of our society and our political process through the connections of the internet and globalization and in fact they've been very successful. this second cold war is going to be nothing like the first cold war and where america's strengths aligned very well

vis-c-vis the soviet union in the first cold war. our strength have been turned into vulnerabilities in the second cold war and in fact our strengths of openness actually become a vulnerability as the chinese communist party seeks to use innovation, technology counts and capital from free societies in essentially a comprehensive battle for hearts and minds of the free world they've been very successful. not just billionaires in the united states believe the chinese chinese communist party has a better system. many diplomats in the eu and the united nations believe so as well and in fact it is the constitution as i write in my book that has essentially given us a shot because in the constitution it says rather than the leaders of a country having dominion over the population, in fact the

people have dominion in the united states and in fact you can elect new leaders that think differently about the problem and bring forth new solutions so i think we're going to see what i would call political warfare at a hyper scale going forward. but it's important to note that here in the united states it need not become partisan . it's not necessarily between the right and the left. it is in fact between this idea of a constitutional democracy versus a more authoritarian system and in fact the more that we understand that it's not a partisan divide really but it's a divide about how we should govern ourselves and how people should govern their governments rather than governments governing people, that will really be the center of this bike going forward so i look forward to the discussion that follows.

>> that's a great point. general spalding was very instrumental in bringing about an awareness of the 5g issue which of course is really one of the most important technology confrontations that the country is facing right now and he was really hero at the white house inalerting the world to that problem . i'd like to spend a few minutes talking about what i call the china threat. i was going to show a powerpoint but i won't. it's too complex to be able to do that i'd like to start out my talk by talking about this matter of the china threat and it brings me back to the late 1990s when asked the reporter for the washington times i was doing a story on the pla, the people's liberation army and the defense intelligence agency had agreed to give me a background briefing so i went to the pentagon into their secure area and they gave me a fairly vanilla

briefing on pla and at the end of the briefing a kernel came in and said with a stern look that the general would like to see you and the general was the director of the defense intelligence agency so we sat down in a conference room and he sat down at the end of the table and looked at me and said bill, you know china is not a threat and i was shocked and i said why do you think that? essentially his response was they tell us they're not a threat. this really informed me that the situation not just within the us government, within the private sector but within the intelligence community itself and even the subset of the intelligence committee which is responsible for informing our military leaders and wartime and then deeply influenced by the notion that china posed no threat. it was a short time after that in the early 2000 came to be public that one of the

top china analysts within the defense intelligence agency turned out to be a chinese spy. his name was ron month appeared. he was convicted of mishandling last five information. he was not convicted as a spy case revealed he had close ties to 2 chinese military attaches the chinese embassy in washington and there was a compromise of some serious classified information. so you could see that this issue of the china threat. so i titled my 2000 book the china threat which is a play on what the chinese communist party and the government call the chinese threat theory. in other words as mike notes the chinese diplomatic corps and intelligence personnel are cast to study around the world the level of opposition to the chinese communist party's modernization program and they take their actions accordingly .

so the play on it, it was the china threat. in my new book which came out 20 years later deceiving the sky i spent a lot of time looking at chinese communist ideology. and i'd like to spend my time talking about for recent speeches which have been given by senior trump administration officials and i've been fortunate enough to actually have traveled with white house national security adviser robert o'brien just last week secretary of state mike pompeo for their speeches. the first speech was given by robert o'brien in phoenix and it was a landmark speech. it was a high level of speech in the sense that it identified communistideology . for the first time a senior official and really come out and said we are facing not just an economically powerful communist party of china a communist party and the

chinese government to remain marxist-leninist. that is again the marxist leninist ideology is motivating their actions. i can remember actually it was mike and i many years ago we did a debate in new york on whether china was a threat and we were on the side that said that it was a threat but one of the businessmen on the other side said i've done business in china for 20 years and i've never met a communist. i said you need to go visit the pla museum in beijing which i was able to do on one of my visits . they have statues of all the communist leaders, even stalin is still revered in china. that was one of the key points of o'brien's speech was that china remains a stalinist state. they never rejected stalin. and we're seeing that more and more with the emergence of xi jinping who has assumed

more power in china in any leaders since now. the second major speech that was given was more recent was fbi director christopher ray and this again was another unprecedented speech. director ray said the information he provided in his speech about chinese intelligence and economic espionage was the most information at the fbi has ever made public on a threat from china. he talked in grand terms about the problem facing the country and again, this had earlier been highlighted by the white house which issued a report called finest economic aggression against the united states. peter navarro was instrumental in that who you heard earlier. this view that chinese are on the march, they are working nonstop.

director ray said on average the fbi opens a brand-new case related to chinese national security every 10 hours. and that of the 5000 cases that the fbi is investigating , half are related to chinese and this is an amazing story and is unfolding on a weekly basis. as a reporter whose cover these issues i can remember a decade would go by before administration would prosecute chinese spy case. under the trump administration chinese spying has taken amassive hit . just last week, as i was flying home from los angeles with secretary of state pompeo i was able to write a story about a chinese singaporean consultant who was indicted for being an unregistered chinese agent almost on a weekly basis, chinese agents are being uncovered.

in addition to that the fbi is now focused on what he calls chinese maligninfluence operations . it's what used to be known in cold war terms in terms of the soviet union as fellow travelers, those that are assisting china in its intelligence and influence operations . it was a monumental speech by the director. third speech was given by attorney general bill bar and bill bar took on the task of identifying these people that are supporting china, acting as agents of china. many of them are in the business community and the way china does it, they do it through coercion. they go to the top officials, bankers, businesspeople. you want to continue doing business in china, you lobby against the trump administration hard-line policy against china. it's aserious problem .

it has not been fully rectified yet. they're beginning to identify these people that you could in fact be prosecuted under the foreign agents registration act which makes it a crime to lobby and be representing a foreign government's interest without first registering it so we've seen a few of those cases surface in recent months. last was the eye think of the four speeches was by terry upstate mike pompeo at the nixon library. a very poignant venue for that. before the speech pompeo was given a tour of the nixon library and they have a separate china exhibit their where they show this great opening to china it was done in the 1970s under nixon and kissinger. and yet the speech was informative because for the

first time, secretary of state pompeo was saying that the engagement policy, that is the policy of unfettered engagement of the people's republic of china had failed. the idea behind the engagement policy was that if we traded with china, if we engage them diplomatically, economically and politically on every level that this would have a moderating influence and it would lead to a changing of that system. that they would abandon communism and see that they should develop a free and open system. it was an utter failure. in fact, what i call in deceiving the sky as a forty-year gamble, this idea that if we trade with china they will become a moderate nonthreatening power has failed. so what we're seeing now is the early stages of a brand-new policy.

as general spalding said the national security strategy is an important first. it doesn't go far enough however in identifying china as the enemy and the reason for that is because china is engaged in unrestricted warfare against the united states. this is a cold war but the problem has been only one side has been fighting it and that it's china. the united states has been asleep at the wheel up until the trump administration and now they're beginning to recognize that we face a faux that is an existential threat . we have many different threats around the world. russia, iran, north korea in my view there is one supreme threat and that is dealing with china and it will take all of our energy as a nation to deal with that threat and counter that threat. i present some ideas and solutions for that. the first step is again to go beyond declaring china as a

strategic competitor declare them as an enemy, but they are working not just undermine our system to literally destroy it. xi jinping's notion of the china dream is really a chinese nightmare when china assumes a supreme role and in order for china to diminish that role they must defeat the united states . i would go back in summing up here on the intelligence issue and i focus chapter on this issue, the us intelligence community has been woefully deficient in understanding the threatfrom china . this has been a problem that has been going on foryears . it has been, little has been written about it. it's beginning to come to the four but for many years our intelligence agencies were giving us badinformation . that problem of analysis, of analyzing the collected information to a major hit

beginning in 2010. and that's when chinese intelligence or counterintelligence was able to begin unraveling the cia's recruited agent network inside china. as many as 27 of the cia's agents were caught. many of them were executed including one that was brought out into the central ministries and executed on the spot in front of a large number of chinese intelligence personnel. the message was unmistakable that they were going to aggressively pursue any efforts to learn what's going on . this is a problem because without understanding the nature of the chinese threat, without good intelligence we're never going to be able to formulate good policies. so to sum up i think the ultimate solution here is that the united states really needs to continue this policy of confronting china, of

making sure that we bring about a different kind of system there. you could call it regime change. i think the terms that pompeo used was to induce change in china. that is to use the levers of power, economic, political , military to bring about change. he pointed out the chinese leadership is not united. xi jinping since assuming power in 2012 as undertaken a massive purge and if you understand the nature of the communist party system in china it's very much like a mafia system. it's controlled by a powerful family. some of them in shanghai, some of them in beijing, other parts in chongdou and

extolling billions from the chinese people as part of thismodernization that's been underway and once again , i got a compliment the trump administration area i think they're very much following a policy ronald reagan followed in defeating the soviet union and that was going after china's ability, inability to develop technology and innovate. so we understood that they've been stealing us technology and intellectual property to the tune of 250 billion a year to as much as x hundred billion a year. the trump administration is trying to cut that off with the idea of let's see if the chinese miracle can survive without stealing american technology. at this point however they may have taken so much of our technology it may be difficult to really cut them off and see if they can survive. so i would at this point, we will be, i'll conclude there and we will accept any questions that anyone has right now. we've got about 15 minutes more.

[inaudible] >> you said the only way to fix this problem of our underwriting china military expansion is through legislation . it is a matter of statute that the president has the authority to stop chinese companies that are here in some number, the pentagon has said more than 20 from doing business in thiscountry . we talked about this before whether it's statutorily authorized explicitly or implicitly but i believe it's under the international

emergency economic powers act , he has the authority on his own without having to get anybody in congress to do anything to shut down those countries and frankly i can't imagine a more powerful signal to the chinese communist party. i think you're right. has contempt for us. hascome to the conclusion that we are paper tigers . and it's absolutely certain they're not going to get any legislation later on . only do they get a vote here, [inaudible] >> my question to you is as a guy who has thepresident here , [inaudible]

>> let me summarize the question, not sure the audience was able to hear that. he asked about the president. >> he asked a question about does the president at current authority to prevent pla linked companies fromdoing business in the united states ? i would say frank gaffney's correction of me is correct. the president does have the power to declare emergencies and conduct punishment or costs imposing strategies towards china. he did that in the case of the hong kong executive order . a lot of people are astonished because the press did not actually cover that emergency declaration. it's actually on the first page of the executive order so yes, the president can do that. but presidents i have known

hesitate to get out in front of the congress on controversial issues. so you're right to defend myself, i would say the president probably looks at how very few cosponsors there are for all these bills i mentioned. actually, they're not 80,it's 120 . the white house can see that yes, we have rob spalding's great book, bill gates is many great books on the china threat. we have my comments, we have bill buckley in 1972 opposing nixon's trip while he was there in beijing with nixon saying these are nazis so we have unlimited, 50 years of conservative warnings but presidents tend to look at consensus or the majority view or how much will i be attacked so i think my view is still correct frank legislation, maybe it's not

totally necessary but it will surehelp a lot . by the way, you sound like you're a former senate staffer . is that correct? >> any comment on that? >> i believe the president has many authorities and i think the answer that michael proffers is onlypartially correct . the political consensus within washington dc is very much driven by where the corporate sector in wall street donates their money and in fact they have all been incentivized by the chinese communist party because of the profits they've earned on behalf of the chinesecommunist party . it is not just politics, it's also about the money trail and if you follow the money trail you'll find it leads through corporate america and wall street directly to the

chinese communist party in that sense what the party does is essentially curry favor in our political system through these connections. >> i would add on the issue of decoupling, one of the suggestions that's been raised is we need to decouple our economy from china and that's part of the problem. we're so integrated, the figures and trillions of dollars in investment in china, the united states can't just walk away from china. they need to do it in a way that's responsible and careful and protects american interests . my view is president trump is a very transactional figure. he's not a career politician. he works through things that have happened and doesn't want to foreclose his way of doing a deal with someone so he's not an ideological person and therefore i think

legislation is really needed on a lot of these issues because all the best things that have happened as i mentioned earlier were related to legislation. and despite hyper partisanship in washington these days one area of emerging bipartisanship is the issue of the china threat and i think that needs to be developed and we need to find a way to really build up a bipartisan consensus and i think we can get some legislation will fix a lot of these problems. >> there is the challenge here and that is the fundamental misunderstanding of the chinese communist party . there's a belief on behalf of wall street and corporate money is be available to be brought back in fact that money is gone and none of them want to take a haircut so there's a famous saying that says if you find yourself at the bottom of the hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. the problem is the chinese communist party has convinced

wall street and corporate america that they should keep digging, somehow they're going to getthis money back and this is the challenge that we face . >> other questions? >> somebody should add the committee on endangerment in china, thiscommittee's website and its activities, its meetings , this is sending a message that this is not really a small minority of people are worried about china. it's a broader group than that and i think the membership is growing from the beginning so that's really a plus that we should praise the creationand activities of the community on the presentdanger in china . >> questions ? you want to have a few, we have a few minutes left, you want to make final comments? >> my book in 1999 2000, the china threat, that's very important but before that in 2005 there were other quite

eloquent warnings about china. i just mentioned to frank the columns of bill buckley. i listened to a tape recently from my next book. it's kissinger talking to nixon. shall we bring buckley along with us to beijing? and kissinger says no, he'll disrupt everything and cause trouble and nixon says we need him because he's themost famous conservative of the time . another example is constantine mingus. in a book i think you wrote forward to, constantine mingus wrote along 700 pages or so book called the gathering storm about the china threat. very detailed, specific ideas . the us should sponsor and fund the chinese government or parliament in exile that meets annually and talked about ideas to induce change in china. nothing happened.

but the idea still kicks around and in hundred year marathon i tracked down how much money do we spend as a federal government on democracy, rule of law, information operations inside china? i'd say it's at most $50 million a year department of justice has a program, usaid , most of our departments haveprograms inside china . $50 million is nothing. this is a 14, $15 trillion economy. they're going to surpass us if we don't do the right thing so we can't afford more than a few million dollars or democracy and human rights and the rule of law projects in china? it's just ridiculous so i don't want to be pessimistic. i know dave brett is an optimist by nature but we've got to turn things around before it's too late . >> the book was called china

the gathering threat . >> it's important to understand the power of silicon valley in our information space today and the power they let to the chinese communist party. the ability to influence individuals using their own data and i think this is achieved challenge of 5g. it's not just about huawei, it's also about alibaba , the chinese version of facebook and amazon and google that seeks to dominate facebook, amazon and google and dominate the world of data. the chinese strategy or artificial intelligence dominance is to become the saudi arabia of data and that's really whatthey're doing today . >> i think that the model for defeating the communist party of china needs to be adapted from the model that mikael gorbachev used to bring down the soviet union that is glasnost and perestroika .

we need to break through the firewall in china and get information into the chinese people and if we do that, the chinese people will get rid of the communist party of china so thank you all . >> i want to say a special thanks to this panel . i like moderating but i know whenthe panel is above my pay grade . so i asked bill to moderate this panel . and liberty students are watching out there. we got a ton of folks streaming to different channels across the country. i want to let you know whoyou just heard from. these are the three best book authors in the country by far . all the titles are not exactly rosy. i'm an optimisticcalvinist if there is such a thing . so michael built very on hundred year marathon, it's a war. and then the general on stealth war, and then bill gertz on deceiving thesky ,

to be so deceptive offenses on the clouds, your number doesn't know what's going on and we don't know what's going on all three of these gentlemen , please google them. learn from them. look at their bios, see who they are because what they just said to you is profound more than i can put in 30 seconds but it's an honor to be on stage with these three gentlemen. and i'll just personalize it. their books at the message they deliver is risky for them to be out there putting out the truth the way they do it. so i want to thank them on behalf of the kirk center, president falwell, charlie kirk and ryan helton who put this book together but let's give them a bigwarm round of liberty applause . thank you gentlemen, thanks for all you do .

>> tonight on book tv in prime time michael anton, former national security official in the trump administration offers his thoughts on america's political divide. although also this evening journalist carl hoffman reports on the impact of trumps political rallies. foxbusiness host lou dobbs assesses president trumps agenda and america's future and at 10 eastern it's an interview with harvard university professor jill lepore about popular and lesser-known stories from american history and that all starts tonight at seven eastern . i've more schedule information online at booktv.org or consult your program guide.

>> during a virtual event hosted by st. louis is left bank books mccarthy sellers recalled his childhood as the son of the civil rights activist and his experience as south carolina's youngest state representative. here's a portion of this conversation. >> when you knock on doors you have this result you're going to knock on every single door. i'm not going to do it to get goals, because i really want to meet people where they are. i have this firm belief that no matter white, black, democrat or republican that you want to have a grocery store in yourcommunity . you didn't want your grandparents having to choose to whether or not they were going to pay their utility bills or get their pharmaceutical drugs . we went through, i went through these steps in my mind that i could change the lives of people i wasn't yet jaded by reality.

i was that agitators son, i was walking into a statehouse where you know, it's the same state that my family through so much trauma. i was there to help change that, putting the face on tearing down the systems from within. i don't know how successful i was at that but i tried my damnedest. so there was a sense of being young but everybody looked at me so that was 21, 23 years old. i was the youngest by a decade so everybody's staring at you and the first time you open your mouth they want to see what you're about, who is this young black guy who is, what does he have to say and i don't think people really remember but when i was elected, every day i went outside when i was having a rough day and i did so under

the auspices of the confederate flag. that's still displayed prominently in front of our capital . >> visit our website and searchfor bacardi sellers using the we continue to bring authors in the works to our community and our new digital community drink is unprecedented times. we will be hosting events on our zumba count. our events schedule appears on her website at harvard.com/events we can sign up for our news these