helen raleigh is the epitome of the american dream. born and raised in communist china, she came to the u.s. as a college student. she didn't know anybody and had less than $100 in her pocket.

like millions of immigrants with a freedom, her pocket was light but her dreams were rich. through a combination of hard work into b scholarships, helen earned her masters degree in business economics from the state university of new york and the university of wyoming. describing her family's struggle to survive under the chinese socialist regime. a senior contributor to the federalist end writings have appeared in "the wall street journal," fox news, national review, "newsweek" and other national media. she's also served on several boards and commissions in metro denver where she lives. those include the colorado state advisory committee to the commission on civil rights and several others. but what impresses me most is her courage and her love of

america and our precious freedom. helen became a u.s. citizen in 2013. and she takes her oath to protect and defend the united states of america very seriously. by publishing her latest book which is of course for sale out here in the lobby and she will be signing after tonight's event, her book "backlash how china's aggression has backfired," helen is shining a r spotlight on the repressive tactics of the chinese communist party and is providing a wake-up call to americans who embrace socialist ideologies like those shela and her family painfully endured in china. for this display of courage, helen has been ruthlessly attacked on social media and regularly receives hate mail in her inbox, even including death threats. as helena says in backlash, i simply can't remain silent on the things that matter, because as martin luther king jr. once

said, our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. let's give a warm welcome to helen raleigh. [applause] good evening, everyone. can you hear me okay? great. so nice to be back to the institute and thank you jennifer and the institute. i'm a great admirer of the work you've done over the years and for those of you that are here that are supporters of this great institute, thank you and for those of you that are not yet and for those that are going to watch this sunday on the internet and social media, i encourage you to check this great institution out and give your support to help the institution to continue with

even self freedom. i want to keep my remarks short because one thing i love about the steamboat institute is that it always attracts the most educated audience, so every time i've spoken here, i get the most interesting and thoughtful questions. especially after we've been cooped up in our homes for more than a year, i'm hungry for interactions so i want to keep my remarks brief but i want to know what is on your mind in these policies and what you think we should do. so, i am only going to focus on three questions. these questions in my remarks will be why did i write this book into the second, what aggressions, the book talked about chinese aggressions. so what are these aggressions i'm talking about and also, the

title is backlash so i get a lot of questions is there backlash because i don't see it so i will explain where this comes from. the firstso question why did i write this book. the short answer is like all of you, i had tons of time. i couldn't go anywhere for more than a year but the serious question is what i wrote this book mostly out of frustration. i was frustrated because for four decades since presidento nixon visited, for four decades the u.s. foreign policy was largely a failure because based on illusion, based on this misunderstanding of what the communist party really is. i'm going to explain that. so, the misunderstanding is as

long as we engage in the party it means if there's a mcdonald's, people will change, the regime will change. foric the longest time, it's not just the united states, its almost all western democracies. it was disillusioned that as long as we engaged as a commerce party economically, eventually more like usome and become more open and will increase the democracy. opposite by now we realized that is an illusion. not all decision-makers or politicians recognize that. some of them and continue contig for the wrong kind of policies. i'm not saying economic engagement was a bad idea, because i myself was a

beneficiary of such economic engagement. i grew up with food rations. everything was rationed. there was limited supply. my parents use to have to get up at three or 4:00 in the morning to stand in lines outside a grocery store to get some cooking oil or sugar. the first time i went through mcdonald's for the opening of the economic engagement, first mcdonald's and opening beijing, i realized the only thing i got was an apple pie and it took me 20 minutes. it was only this big. the reason it took me 20 minutes, i savored every bite. i never had something so sweet and tasty. now i stay away from them because they want to stay fit. [laughter] but back then, i didn't care. and it was, you know, to me it was into the freedom or liberty, it was apple pie. it inspired me that someday i wanted to go to places where you can eat as much as you want.

it's a personal choice. so i'm a beneficiary of that economic engagement. so the economic engagement itself wasn't wrong. it's not a wrong policy. when i say we, i mean, american government and business. what we did wrong is we assumed that unconditioned economic engagement were somehow changed behaviors. we forgot who is the character of the communist party. so let me explain about the true characters of the communist party. the communist party is one that believes in overall power. it will do anything to take power and remain in power. power is the only justification for what they will do.

so they've been deeply hostile to the democratic values since its founding because we see they embrace such as free and open elections and rule of law and shave opposition parties, open debates on ideas. we see all these democratic values as a challenge to the party's ability to take power and stay in power. so that's why they will never change. they will never increase democracy. so we need to treat them who they really are and not who we wish them to be. so i wrote this book for the policymakers. they are welcome to read it, that i keep all of human mind yd because i think we the people need to become educated.

their incentive is to be smart when we look at a candidate and check out their policies and what they stand for because of the constitution, the people thate represent us to make the rules, laws and policy decisions so i think it's time that we educate ourselves to say here are the issues when it comes to foreign policy. then when it's time for elections. to see what is the foreign policy you advocate and is that the right policy for america. we need to do that because for the last four decades, we have given this unconditional

economic engagement at the same time that we a didn't take a national security consideration, especially we are also too willing to compromise over democratic values because again we think eventually they will change. that was especially obvious after 1989 after the tiananmen square. the gdp per capita was about $400 per person so we had a lot of leverage. some concessions. we didn't do that. instead, the u.s. was more or less the allies to pretend we didn't see them continually engaging in something will change. four decades later, now because of our unconditional economy and

engagement, now we are dealing with anhe authoritarian state that's empowered by our technology and/or investment at the expense of our own economic decline and another challenge that every friend they are seeking power not just regional power, but the real donation of how can the building an alternative world order that's different from the liberal world order that we enjoy to guarantee the peace and prosperity since world war ii. so, that's why i have even though there's a lot of companion books, it is very easy to understand. so that's the first question why did i write this book. a second, what are the aggressions we are talking about. the way that i approach it, i describe it as peeling an onion. therein are different layers.

the first layer of the aggression that i focus on, the human rights violations against the muslims and the persecution ofof the christians as well as mass surveillance assistance. i call it a digital prison the communist party is building to survey people under control. so that is the layer. my book gives a lot of historical content about how and why they decided to target the muslims and what the persecution of t christians and this fortres but i also wanted to focus on the soft tactic because too often we are focused on the hard tactics and it's true there are

a lot of brutalities of the tactics like imprisonment, forced abortion, organ harvesting but i also wanted to focus on the soft tactic. it's about this social contract. nobody else would agree with that basically in today's communist party, as long as i can guarantee that your standard ofof living is going to go up, u can have material wealth, then you shouldn't demand for freedom of political wealth. is that really enough because i can share with you that in this interview that i read of a tibetan businessman. he's pretty wealthy and told a foreign journalist yes my standard of living had improved. i have two cars, several houses.

i do not lack anything materially. but he said here's the challenge, i cannot worship whoever i want. i'm not allowed to open or display a picture of the dalai lama. my children do not know how to speak tibetan because the schools only teach them mandarin. they do not know the tibetan culture. he said i applied for a passport but i've been rejected multiple times. the government will not let me travel abroad. he basically concluded i have everything except freedom. that's why i'm saying it's important that we in the west besides care about what's going on with hard tactics we should also focus on the soft tactics. i describe the soft tactics as gatewaynk drugs because it's basically to sedate you to think just be happy you have a roof over your head, you have food on the table, don't think about anything else. that's not who we are as human

beings. we want more. we want agency to make decisions. so, we need to focus on hard tactics and soft tactics when it comes to oppression. layer number two is hot spots near mainland china. the second layer is about what's happened in hong kong, what's happening in taiwan and at the south china sea. so, i will be glad to talk about and answer questions about hong kong and taiwan because there's a lot of content in the book. but actually i want to direct your attention to the south china sea because we don't pay attention to what's going on there even though it's important. it also reflects a new tactic. that's the thing we are dealing with as a communist party. they constantly invent new tactics and it is playing a catchup game. what is happening at the south china sea is an example.

it's an initial trial run of what we call the gray zone tactic. what is a gray zone tactic? it means that it's about a territory expansion without using e military. so basically, it enables a country to expand its territory without having to fight a traditional war. that's why we call it a gray zone tactic. so that is how china expanded. it is this very strategic body of water in southeast asia. it's a major trade route, so 90% of the trade going in china goes through there and china and the several countries including malaysia, philippines and vietnam shareis claims on this strategic body of water. sometimes the claim overlaps, or were there are historical disputes of what area is yours versus mine. and this is also what area was

huge with mineral and oil and gas deposits. it's a huge deposit of natural resources. so you can understand why to other countries they share this body of water. there's a huge economic interest asme well as national security interest to maintain their claim or even expand it. so what china did was under the first obama administration, china came up with this genius idea. first, to build in island, an artificial island and use the reefs in the south china sea. in the united states did not object. in other countries nearby, they were not sure what is china doing. and when they asked china just said we want to make sure that we can have a station here so we canea help when fishermen get io trouble or report about whether or shipping things. so people are like okay that's fine.

so, from the first island was a -- within three years, china reclaimed 3,000 acres of land through building artificial island, within three years. once they built this island, they had runway hangers, radar, they stationed troops, and china also declared basically established the new administration district, basically tot, claim not only te islands are china's but also all the surrounding waters are china's territory. so, by doing that, china expanded its claim of the south china sea to 90%. so, basically that is supposed to be a shared international body of water, now it is china's own backyard. and now, any fishermen from other countries if they want to

have access to it or oil exploration ships, china will send its postcard, very aggressive coast guard and sometimes navy to drive them out in the name of protect china's territory. so it's this if i build it, it's mine strategy. so that's what we call gray zone tactic. and china, it's important that we understand that because now, based on its success in the south china sea, now china is using that exact same strategy of the land to expand the land order dispute with other countries. so the magazine foreign policy last month published a stunning discovery basically china had built three villages inside the border of a small buddhist country that shared borders with

china. even though it's built a border, for the longest time even in the 80s, china's own tourist map claimed those lands belonged to bouton. once they built it, it's theirs. and the reason china did that is really not for bouton's territory but basically it is adjacent also to india, and china and india v have been fighting border wars for decades. so china is playing a game they basically want to use the villages, which strategically in an area that is close to a holy land. so china wanted to use this to force bouton to make a land exchange with their own land, basically to say i can give up the three villages if you give me this other area that is right next to india.

china is really all i infer that other area. so far, bouton is a small country. all it could do was just pretend that it didn't know it's happened. but the foreign policies investigation today, the investigation report was totally shocking. the fact that this whole -- china continues expanding this gray zone tactic that so far received no objection, not from the united states with the western democracies. again, that adds frustration and shock. so those are the things we need to know, because we don't currently have a good strategy to push that back. so, that's the second layer. hotspots near china's mainland. so, this third layer is more close to all of us. it's about china's global expansion. and this is a big area, because it covers so many things. it's the economics come from the

economic standpoint. chinaui launched this huge masse infrastructure, infrastructure plan that some of you may have heard about. basically chinese bank will finance infrastructures like building roads and ports with ie airport and other countries using china's onus suppliers and workers. the hosting country borrowed money from china with a cheap rate. but for many of them if they couldn't pay back it is a death trap. if they couldn't pay back, they are going to have to let china lease their ports or land or let china use their resources. so it's really genius idea. and it's the idea actually the obama administration thought about. like so many other things, we thought about it, came up with

ideas, then we couldn't and we shift our attention and china grabbed it like that and expanded and put all these huge resources behind it. so that's the economic front. and the education front. we are familiar about the confucius institute. some of you are familiar less about is the program that is china is actively recruiting foreign scientists and researchers in the leading edge technology area. basically they say i'm going to pay you, give you tenure and moneyan in the research institue or universities. all you have to do is just bring your research that you are currently doing, share with us, but keep it quiet from your employers. if so last year, if you read "the wall street journal" last year for the first time, a u.s. department of justice actually charged a harvard chemistry professor that he has been

sharing his leading-edge technology with china. he was visiting the chinese university secretly without letting his employer know. by the way, he is researching not only funded by harvard but also by the department of defense. so, he's basically, you know, using our tax dollars through his research and sharing the result with the chinese university and getting paid that way also. so, that is something that we do not know very well. so that's the education front. there is also the information front. there's huge information wars that have been in the media especially social media. oxford university just did research basically that shows about 50% of tweets and the likf the chinese diplomats spread

information that is favorable, they spread misinformation about unthe coronavirus, about 50% of the tweets and likes came from troll accounts, paid accounts that originated from china. so, the thing is our technology company had been very slow to respond to that. so even though we are gradually finding those accounts out and closing them, but before they close them, all of these retweets and likes give the impression to the unknown of foreigners that say this may be something legitimate. you've been influenced by that misinformation you don't even know, because twitter doesn't always identify the account owners affiliated with a chinese estate. so especially we see the misinformation throughout the last year with the pandemic.

that is especially huge in terms of the information war between the united states and china. so, that's the third layer. and a great segue to obviously you cannot write a book in the year of a pandemic without a chapter about the pandemic. so yes, there is a chapter about the pandemic. and i think the pandemic really is a wake-up call for a lotet of us, not for all of us, but a lot of us. it's the icing on the cake that ties these aggressions together to explain why we should care about the chinese aggression especially its aggression in the domestic audience. because if you look at how do we become known about the pandemic, we look at how the chinese government and at the party reacted to the pandemic, there was a lot of cover-up in the early days.

now we knew that this supposed scientists and suppressed doctors, the whistleblowers and prevent the media from reporting about any of the citizen journalists from interviewing citizens to talk about what's going on, so the southhampton university basically put out a study last year that shows first of all for a pandemic, the early days of the pandemic was the most crucial times. the sooner you can take action in their early days, the sooner you could prevent the spread, limit the scope. so basically, according to the southhampton university study, half of the chinese government disclosed the get information they knew about six weeks earlier. the scope of the pandemic would be released by about 90% which

means it was more transparent. when people ask me why should we care about what beijing did. i said at the pandemic. now you realize the government doesn't care about the well-being of its own people. it was going to do anything to stay in power and then the pandemic showed you that eventually it would come out to impact our health and well-being. so that's about its aggressions. so i believe there are. i finished writing this book

last year probably around september. i see more backlash now compared to the time i was writing about it. but even back then i see several sources of the backlash. first was the public opinion. pew research did research last fall into the public opinion of china as well as the communist leader dropped to 75%. so because of the pandemic it had dropped to 75%. it's actually facing unprecedented political isolation because it impacted so many of us. then the trump administration.

trump administration. i assume this crowd is very friendly to the trump administration. we have to give him credit i think it was a failure of his campaign because i mentioned in the book it was the first administration you would have secretary pompeo talk and he is my favorite from the administration that understood the true nature and you heard of the secretary talk about it many times and for the first time

they brought this back to the foreign policy it was the first administration not afraid to bear costs its aggression especially domestic aggression because today china has one of the most powerful armies in the second largest economy. the cost is very high. there is no cost free approach. there are too many governments successors and allies that are afraid because they do not want to bear the cost about the first one was waiting and made it known so they signed the human rights act and blacklist the

companies and sanctioned senior communist party officials so i would call that a backlash from the u.s. administration at that standpointot you heard of the trump foreign policy was about going along, he didn't care. he's aided our allies. that's notot entirely true. there's this chinese company that is a even though they claimed a private company it's not really private it has a deep tie. it is a national champion

supported by the government and the administration had to warn the allies. it's been proven this year by several allies especially in australia so the trump administration had been telling our allies do not use 5g but one of the closest was the united kingdom and under the administration, boris johnson even last january was a strategy we are going to use it because it's cheap. the reason is because it was subsidized by the government and

as a business person i can tell you the prize was unreasonable. boris johnson said we are doing this because they are cheap. even after pompeo visited the united kingdom last january and said you'd do this we are going to stop sharing intelligence with you because we do not feel comfortable. johnson was still like know, we are going to do this because it's cheap and something we can afford. then the pandemic happened and the chinese government increased its crackdown on the hong kong. what's happening is tragic. but anyway, by may the johnson administration announced that it would not use them to build the 5g network, so again the pandemic became a wake-up call and the backlash continued this

year. the biden administration as well as the eu, the united kingdom and canada were joined together to launch a targeted sanction against a few chinese officials over the human rights violations. so you see the backlash continue. it has not become a big weight yet. that's where you come from. because the change in administration, let me make a few comments about the biden administration and i will end ad after my comments. so the biden administration came in and the general approach was anything the trump administration for or against except in an area of china so the biden administration actually continued a few trump policies such as the targeted sanctions against communist

party officials as well as blacklisting chinese companies affiliated with chinese militaries. but it was the biden administration my biggest concern is as the biden administration demonstrated there's two things i'm concerned about most. one is just like the previous administration there's a gap between what they say versus whate they do. trump had thehe same problem but it was opposite. with trump, he made us cringe when he spoke about us as dictators, no they are not a great. but you look at these policies with people that were really strong on national security so it was tough on russia and on china but the biden administration it's kind of

exactly the opposite. the biden administration will make tough talks about the adverse but even the policies are exactly the opposite. the policies have been very soft. even though the biden administration continued a few policies on china i think the evidenceto is what happened between the diplomatic meetings between the chinese diplomats and american diplomats in alaska. back in march keep in mind alaska was on our soil so the diplomats came but i don't know if you read any reports about what happened with that meeting basically the chinese diplomats used a talking point out of "the new york times," scolded our diplomats on u.s. soil talking

about the americasde have no right, no position to talk about any values because you know, your own failures and racial injustice. that's not surprising for a chinese diplomat to use our media the talking points to come and attack us. whatng was disappointing was the biden administration diplomats could not have a strong, powerful defense of our country because they were the ones that also use those as talking points during the campaigns and for years that's how they talk about america. so because to tell the talk about america by the chinese diplomats scolded them with that same language because our

diplomats had the same doubts of america's founding values and whether america is truly great or not. they couldn't have a strong powerful defense so if they couldn't do that on the diplomatic front, how could they do it on any other front. so that is what really troubles me most but i don't want to leave you depressed. so i'm going to end with a quote from winston churchill. winston churchill said america always knows come america will always do the right thing after they've tried everything else. [laughter] so we are probably at the state that we are trying everything else but i hope that with more effort we it would educate ourselves and nothing to go back to doing the right thing so thank you. [applause]

okay. we have received some good questions. let's dive right in. earlier this t year, helen, the chinese foreign ministry announced china is providing free vaccines to 69 countries and commercially exporting to 28 more. china's competitors are concerned that where the vaccines go its influence will follow. what are your thoughts on the vaccine diplomacy efforts? >> that's a really good question and definitely to use the vaccine to basically rebuild its reputation again likee i mentioned the reputation dropped last year but i can tell you the good news is so far the vaccination diplomacy is not very successful because the chinese vaccines, the efficiency

is only about 60% and we don't even know if that is accurate. so even the own cdc announced they are going to use american vaccine like pfizer or as a booster shot for their own citizens to increase the efficiency of the vaccine so so far the vaccine diplomacy is not successful but it does show the communist party that it's waiting to do anything it has the power and resources its geopolitical influence. >> do you think it's accurate to tsay that china has used the crisis to gain its influence across the globe?

>> i think the party tried to do that. that's why you see all this misinformation especially on social media from the chinese diplomats as well as because they control the who so the who investigation in china the origin wasn't very successful. it came back nothing. china tried to blame its the frozen food, the u.s. military who brought it. we've done enough research in china but because now it's no longer a series it's become a credible scenario because thanks to the researchers, by the individuals around the world it's truly an amazing story.

as our media, our established media as well as scientists basically rejected because they said if trump decided it must be a lie so they not only just stopped talking about it they censor anyone, any scientist or researcher who wants to talk about it. here's the free market, the power of individuals, the power of free market. so there's a group of individuals you've never met before, there's a really wonderful piece out of "newsweek" just a couple of weeks ago there's a group of individuals they organize themselves and call themselves drastic and it's basically researchers through open source information because none of them have classified access. so it's open source information. they post everything they found online through their research. they were able to find credible evidence to show it's very

likely the virus originated from the lab and they were able to convince some scientists which then lended the credibility to basically bring this whole theory backis to life. sentenced to death but this individual brought it back to life and because of that i don't think china is winning the pr war because now even countries hesitate to challenge china and organizations like the who i doubt the sincerity but even he said we need to do more investigation to find the origin of the virus. so they definitely are not winning the pr war on the. a. >> what do you think the u.s. should be doing diplomatically on the vaccine distribution to reinforce our allies and counter

china? >> the donation program announced a really good way. i'm so glad they finally decided they share the patents. to share the patents not only violates the property rights but it's very difficult to make a vaccine. many do not have the facilities to make the vaccines and if we force ourin drug companies to simply share the patent, guess who's going tom have it, the communist party will have it and use it for the vaccine diplomacy. so i think that it's a much better option. i'm so glad that president biden hopefully somebody talked him out of it and now he announced we are going to make a bigger donation and i think that's the right thing to do as more of us get vaccinated and we have extra

we should donate to be sure especially a country like india which is our ally and a huge very important ally in the geopolitical confidence especially asia as many of you heard india is facing a serious challenge so t we should help or allies and make extras available to other countries. a. >> as you know the party is made up of a number of factions. the major factions trading to control the party between so six years each. each faction had a different agenda. what group now controls the party today and why? >> i wouldn't call it a faction because again going back to the true nature of the communist party even the so-called liberal wing of the party the ultimate goal is still about power, about

how to remain in power oriented do anything it takes. so they may be a little more liberal on the economic front. they may be more willing to open up the markets. they may be a little more tolerant with the press but the bottom line is they are never going to come even the liberal wing they will never increase democracy again because the elements of democracy presents a serious challenge to the party. so, even the liberal wouldn't do that but before the current i do have to say before the current came to power in 2012 the previous two leaders of the party was the president of china they were relatively tolerant. they were less ambitious that

way so they basically followed the guidance. this paramount leader and successor was pragmatic and launched an economic reform. he was much more pragmatic and basically left his successor this guidance basically said we need western money, technology to help us build our state, so wait for your time and do not stick your head out. do not be aggressive on the international stage. so that's how his successors generally followed that guidance and that gave china time to not only build itself up economicallyll but also experienced a relatively little more open period politically.

but that's all changed when this current leader came into power in 2012. he modeled himself so if you go to china now you will see his portraitsr] everywhere and whatever he says. his book is the best seller because you can force 1.4 billion people to buy a copy and also he controlled all of the power so he was called the chair man of everything because he controlled everything under him so definitely china is going back to more totalitarian. that short period of the more political openness is gone and because the current leader is relatively young, he is going to be there and made himself president for life so he's going to be there a long time so china is not going back to openness

it's actually going the other way. it's looking more inward it's much more totalitarian compared to in the past. >> this is a a nice segue. there are 92 million communist party members out of 1.5 billion people in china. is there a backlash against any of these programs from their citizens? >> i guess if there is it hasn't been reported but there was a lot of anger about why didn't the communist party so basically the communist party members even though they are smaller in terms of the population they are less than 7% but the elites anybody

can apply to join the party but the party will not just take anyone so basically you have to first join and i mentioned in my book confucius never said so you have to be selected between six toto 14, from a good family and then you move from that to this other program for teenagers and young people and you have to demonstrate and have good grades and be smart, come from a good family. it's a very elite and the ones who are in this party you're going to be holding the key positions. the positions throughout the country so you were groomed to be the leaders so there was some

backlash against certain communist party members during a pandemic. there was a story about a hospital that is overrun by patients. the chief doctor was mad about the communist party member who didn't show up so one of the very rare for anybody to speak out in the press conference in china but he was so frustrated he spoke out in a presss conference and said where are the communist party members to report to me right now because we need everybody who can treat a patient to be on the front line and of course that story was takene down quickly. so nobody talks about that anymore. but i believe there's definitely some it's just it doesn't get

reported and people are afraid generally to talk to the fore in the press especially they kicked many journalists out of china for that purpose. it's's difficult to get first-hd information out of china these days. >> how can we expect to control the invasions of china if they control the material for renewable energy and we don't want that supply to stop? >> that's a good question. i'm so glad to somebody asked about that. so, short answer is it can be done except we don't have the will to do it and we wouldn't want to bear the cost. lett me give you an example. it's not exactly renewable energy but it's related to. how many of you heard about the rare earth minerals. a lot of you have heard about that. for those that do not know what that is, rare earth minerals are

over 17 minerals that are crucial to the economy, they are widely used in like batteries and cars, just crucial even, solar panels so they are crucial. we, the united states have huge deposits of rare earth minerals and back in the 1980s we were the ones who knew how to get those minerals out of the ground and processed them. we had this technology. then what happened when china opened up with so many other businesses, the rare earth mineral industry decided we should go to china so it will be cheaper to c produce over thereo basically our businessmen went to china, taught them how to process the rare earth minerals and let them have it and then here back home it's been

expensive so we exited out of that industry so china now has controlled 90%, i should say not now but in recent years controlled 90% of the rare earth minerals applies not because they have the biggest deposit but the monopoly of the technology of how to extract the minerals and so china has been using its control because they play such an important role in the digital economy they've been using it to coerce otherso countries. one example is australia as well as japan. japan is very short. all kinds of natural resources. this is what japan did. i wrote this article for the national review recently and used this example.

japan when they used its monopoly of the rare earth minerals, japan realized it could not depend on china for the supply on rare earth minerals so we did two things. one the japanese government as well as the industry formed this task force. they expanded their supply sources out of china but many other countries that had rare earth minerals deposits they did not have the technology or the money to extract so there was a task force to invest in those countries to help them build factories to extract minerals and bring them to the market so to expand the diversified suppliers. another they encouraged their

car companies, solar panel companies, encouraged them to innovate to reduce their dependency on rare earth minerals like find an alternative that you can use so through those two efforts it isn't painless believe me it was painful but after that effort now they have 75% of the rare earth mineral market. it's still a lot but it's not 90s so this example showed it can be done. the thing is our businesses are so shortsighted including governments they simply lack the will to say we need to do this, we need to take some initial financial pain as well as maybe change our environmental laws or do whatever it takes because this is a national security

issue we a need to reduce our dependencies on the regime that is ideologically so different, polar opposite from us. we are not there. again it takes all of us to w select a representative who will put their foot down to say that's what we are going to do and not worry about the backlash to say we are going to do this because that is going to reduce the dependency. it's a national security issue. >> what doap you think has to happen to have corporations, sports leagues like the nba and the media join the backlash, can that even happen? >> i don't know. [laughter]ymi of the companies into sports leagues on the one hand we are all for social justice. for example today we are making

juneteenth a federal holiday. that's great in all the companies come out to say slavery is terrible, which is true, and we should celebrate the freedom of slaves. at the same time, none of the products if they use the supply chain from china none of the product supply chain was influenced by slave laborers and they were all silent on that so there's a huge hypocrisy and a speaking of an influence, how could we influence the chinese government or convince the chinese people the liberal value is good when we don't even want to support it and it's only going to add to come our behavior, especially the corporations behavior will only have done two things. one un power a regime. another thing is the enhanced

part two salak they don't even believe those things they try to sell us, why should we embrace them so it is a frustrating. i don't know the answer to it. i've been writing about of articles criticizing this. i think as consumers, again that's where weap come in. because our business community is dominated by isaiah the woke companies so it's a difficult for me to m ask you let's boycot all of them. we can't boycott all of them but i think because we are so twitter consciouse it's importat that we expose the hypocrisies, challenge them in any position we can and find an alternative

service. let's use alternative products and services and try not to support them. that's really the only thing i can think of that we can use the power of our wallet to let them know we are not happy with their hypocrisies. >> describe if you can how the chinese communist party directly monitors and controls the average chinese citizen by monitoring essentially all of their activities and literally applying a personal score that determines what a person can do. >> yes, so i talk about how china built a digital fortress i call it a digital prison to control and watch over 1.4 billion people, so this is a digital prison with several elements. one of them is a visual recognition technology, cameras. there's about a 600 million

cameras throughout the country. they can even tell who you are when youou wear a mask so theres no way you can hide. they know where you are. they can easily tell so that's one component. another is what they call social credit system. the social credit system when you think about credit here it's about did i pay my bill on time, how much debt i carry. that's a small part of the system. the social credit system is assigned by the data points to each chinese citizens and it measures everything. it measures online activities, shopping activities whether you put your trash out correctly, have you ever crossed a red light because there are cameras everywhere, the social media

internet companies all feed into this social credit system so there's a lot of data about you. some of n those data points are innocent enough. like maybe that's not so bad if you cross a red light that's probably not a good idea but many of them are not for example if you complain about the chinese communist party or if you said something about the coronavirus that the government, different from the government narratives then your points will be deducted so what's the consequences? if your behavior is good, but the government likes and you can probably get a promotion, you may get a better rate when you apply for a mortgage. the kids may be able to go to a better school. but if your behavior is bad, again bad depends by the government's definition suddenly you will find out maybe you're

not getting that promotion even though you're the best employee of the company or somehow your kids were rejected from the good school or when you go to the bank to apply for a loan they are not going to give you the good rate. the worst part is you are not even going to be able to travel anywhere. you can't buy a plane ticket, airline ticket. if you drive or have your own license plate you will be stopped. you just can't go anywhere. you lose your ability to travel and it happened to many chinese dissidents that we found out just couldn't go to meet their comrades because they are not allowed to travel. soe this system is really this description being brought into reality. the sad part is a lot of the technologies for the digital

were provided by our company, our technology companies. our technology companies help china build this digital surveillance system. now china is exporting those systemswe to other authoritarian countries. again it's coming back to what have we done. just like the coronavirus. now we've learned we actually funded the lab to do those researches. where's the accountability. it's easy for us to blame the party but when you look at all these problems it's like every time it gets back to us so we need to educate ourselves and know what's going on, who's telling the truth, we need to demand transparency and accountability from our own

politicians and businesses before we point our fingers to the other side. a. >> final question this would be a good one to wrapct up on and u were just eluding to our own culpability in some of this with as we learned with doctor fauci and the funding of the gain of function research. it appears that there has been a cover-up. ..

the longer the gap is the harder it is to find out. so i and pessimistic about what we really find out. but i do think this is a wake-up call and then to go back to business as usual then we deserve that crisis in our government cover up will

>> so what happened with the coronavirus because again where people can claim so with the public pressure to keep that going so we need to keep that going we don't have to investigate. so he has the public have to keep the pressure to demand.

we have to. and as the g serving community then there is the announcement of the coronavirus but then that gap versus s what they say versus what they do. and then to put action behind this demand. so my biggest take away from the coronavirus is that we should never never n have surrendered our individual freedom. one of the founding fathers

the need of deserve either. it's not a fair trade. and then i think of the iedifficult that showed us the power of the individual the pretend to know more than we do. they lie to us. never surrender. we have to take the responsibility to keep the focus. >> that's a great note to end on. [applause] i like to remind all of you it

is for sale. signing copies of her book. on the c-span booktv series. if you enjoyed tonight's presentation we appreciate you going to steamboat with the charitable contributions to reach people all across colorado with those important messages and promoting individual liberty follow the steamboat institute on instagram we are always promoting things and thank you please go out and enjoy the reception and book signing.y [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> it's not a matter if there will be another economic crisis but when. so we want to set you up for the next crisis is not all about covid what recession will come down the road it may be long or short but life will happen and a need you to prepare now. i do a lot of financial seminars in my community. and it is so hard to get people to say when they are doing well. because they are doing well they don't think tomorrow will have an issue. and then you say let me get to it. but it's too late when you have the resources it's easy to cut when you can pay for anything or things are shut

down. so i want to say let's prepare to be the one who's ready for the next fire they hope it doesn't happen but they are prepared. >> thank you for joining the mccain institute. a series of discussionsc of authors of newly released books on politics and policy leadership. using his whole life with character driven leadership it's vitally important today to carry that legacy forward by any means necessary. award-winning journalist and author and humanitarian