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>> helen rolle is the ability of the american dream. born and raised in communist china helen came to the us as a college student. she didn't know anybody and had less than $100 in her pocket. like millions of immigrants with a craving for freedom helen's pocket was light but her dreams were rich. through accommodation of hard d work and scholarship helen earned her masters degree in business economics from the state university of new york and ba from the university of f wyoming. she's the author of several books including her first book confucius never said which if you haven'tread it i highly recommend . it's describes her families to survive under china's socialist regime. she's a senior contributor to the federalist and her swritings have also appeared in the wall street journal,

fox news, national review, newsweek and other national media helen has also served on several boards and commissions in metro denver where she lives with her husband mike. those include colorado state advisory committee to the us commission on civil rights and several others. but what impresses me most about helen is her courage and her love of america and our precious freedom. helen became a us 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 after out here in the lobby and she'll be signing after tonight's event . herbal backlash how china's aggression has backfired, helen is shining a spotlight on the repressive tactics of the chinese communist party and is providing a call to

americans who embrace socialist ideologies likeai those she and her family painfully endured in china . for this display of courage, helen has been ruthlessly attacked on social media and regularly receives emails in her inbox even including the death threats. yet as helen says in backlash, i simply can't remain silent on atthings 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 raleigh. >>. >> good evening everyone, can you hear me okay western mark it's so nice to be back to the stephen institute and thank you.

i'm a great admirer of all the work the steamboat institute has been doing over the years and for those of you who are here who are a supporter of this great institute thank you and for those of you who are not yet and especially for those of you or going to watch this someday on the internet and social media i encourage you to check this great institution out . give your support to help this institution to continue with iothe freedom for all americans. i want you to from my remarks keep up my remarks short because one thing i love about the steamboat institute is that steamboat institute always attracts the most educated so every time i spoke here i get the most interesting andthoughtful questions . especially after we all come back in our homes were more than a year, i want that interaction i'm hungry for interaction so i want to keep my remarks brief but i want anyou to tell me the questions, i want to know what's on your mind related to china

what you think we should do. so i'm only going to focus on three questions. i want toask three questions in my remarks . the three will be why did i write this book, and the second question will be what other aggressions, this book talks about aggressions and what are aggressions ioi'm talking about. and more so, the title of the book is called backlash so i get a lot of questions because i explain where the backlash comes from. the first question, why did i write this book?k? the short answer is like all of you i couldn't go anywhere for more than a year. but the real serious question is i wrote this book mostly out of frustration. i was frustrated because for four decades since nixon

visited china for four decades the us foreign-policy to china was largely a failure it was largely a failure because it was based on delusion, based on this need to understand what the communist party really is. i'm going to explain that. the misunderstanding is as long as we economically engage with the communist party, based on miss hamburger's theory means if there's a mcdonald's and people will change, the regime will change over the longest time it's not against the united sstates, is for almost all democracy. with this illusion as long as we engage the communist party economically eventually we're going to become more like us and they're going to be more open. they're going to be embrace democracy. this obviously by now we realize that's an illusion.

not all of us realize that, it's partof my frustration . there's evidence but still not even all our decision-makers orpoliticians recognize that . some of them continue advocating for the wrong candidate policies. i'm not saying economic engagement was a bad idea. because i myself was a beneficiary of such engagement. i grew up with food rations, i remember everything was rationed . there was limited supply and my parents had to get up three or 4:00 in the morning to go stand in long lines outside a grocery store in order to get some cooking oil or sugar. so i remember the first time i went through the mcdonald's thanks to the opening of economic engagement. but first i went through them first mcdonald's in opening in beijing i remember the only thing i got was an apple pie and it took me 20 minutes to eat apple pie that was only this big. the reason it took me 20 minutes i savored every bite.

i never had something so sweet and now i stay away from them because i want to stay fit but back then i didn't care. to me it was not the freedom of liberty, it was the apple pie inspired me to someday i want to go to the places where you can eat as much sugar as you want . so i'm a beneficiary of that economic engagement so economic engagement itself is not wrong. it's not a wrong policy. iwhat we did wrong when i say we, i mean american government and business, what we did wrong was we assumed that unconditioned economic engagement will somehowchange behaviors . we forgot who we are really dealing with. the truth caricature of the communistparty. let me explain about the true character of the communist

party . the communist party is a party that believes in raw power. it will do anything to attain power and will do anything to remain in power. power is the only justification for what they will do. so that's why the communist party has been deeply hostile to democratic values since its founding from 1949 because ac every democratic as a battle to embrace such as free and open elections. rule of law. you have opposition parties, open debate of ideas. they see all these democratic values as a challenge to both parties unity to take power and stay in power. so that's why the communist party has never been friendly.

they will never change. they will never embrace democracy. so we need to treat them as who they really are, not who we wish them to be.so i wrote this book but i wrote this book not mainly for the opolicymakers or although it's obviously they're welcome to read it but i read it when i wrote this book i keep all of you in mind because i think we were we the people need to become educated electoral's. because politicians, we respond that and the best incentive is how they get elected so we need to be smart to when we look at the candidate, when we check out their policies because we're a constitutional republic we elect people to go make laws and policy decisions so i think it's time that we educate ourselves to say here's our own issues that we should care about when it comes to foreign policy with china. then we evaluate the candidates in time for the

election. we now say okay, let's look past the rhetoric to see what is your candidate, what is the foreign policies that you advocate. is that the right policy for america? t and we need to do that because it's for the lastfour decades , where giving this unconditional economic engagement at the same time we didn't take national security into consideration. we didn't express a longtime impact on security and also we are too willing to compromise our democratic values because atthe end we say we can make this compromise and eventually they will change .that would be obvious after the 1989 tm in squaremassacre . in 1989 china was a weak communist state with gdp per capita at 400 per person so

we had a lot of political leverage to effect political change with tthe communist party. wedidn't do that . instead the us for our western allies looked past this to pretend we don't see them and hopefully something will change. guess what? four decades later because of our unconditional economy engagement now we're dealing with an authoritarian state that's been reached, empowered by our technologies and our investment and at the expense of our own economic decline and now they challenge us at every front and they're seeking power in asia, not just the power in china but also world domination of how can they build an alternative order that's different from the world order that we enjoy that guarantees peace and prosperity since world war

ii. that's why i have this in mind even though there's a lot in the book that was easy to understand 's that's the first question, why did i write this book. the second question is what aggressions are we talking about about china so that we approach it as i structured this book and i described it as peeling an onion so there's different layers. the first layer of aggression i focused on the domestic aggression. i focused on human rights violations against the uighur muslims and persecution of christians as well as the mass surveillance systems that this is a digital fortress, i call itadditional present . there's a communist party and keeps it at 1.4 billion people so that's layer 1. and there was layer 1, even my book has a lot of historical

content about awhy did the communist party target the uyghur muslims and how do they build this digital fortress but i actually wanted to also focus on the soft tactics because too often focus on the hard tactics and is true there are a lot of brutalities and hard tactics like imprisonment, forced abortion , organ harvesting but i wanted to focus on the soft tactics. when i say soft tactics it's about this social contract, that nobody else agrees with. it's as long as i can guarantee that your standard of living is going to go up you can have, then you should not demand for freedom.

is that really enough? i can share with you this interview i read, he told this foreign journalist he said yes, mike's standard of living has improved. i have two cars,several houses . i do not lack of anything in material ways but i said ly here's the challenge. i cannot worship whoever i want. i am not allowed to open or display a picture of the dalai lama . children don't know how to speak to that . and he also said i applied for passports but i've been rejected multiple times and the government will not let me travel abroad i have everything except freedom. that's what i'm saying it's

very important that in the west besides what caring about what's going on we should focus on what's going on with soft tactics. i described soft tactics as helping because it's basically to think just be happy you have a roof over your head. you have food on the table. that's not who we are as a human being. we want more. we want to be able to have community stations so we need to focus on hard tactics as well as soft tactics when it comes to oppression domestically so that's layer 1. layer 2 is hotspots near mainland china so the second area is about what's happening in hong kong, what's happening intaiwan and what's happening in the south china sea . so i will be glad to talk about, answer questions about hong kong and taiwan because

there's a lot of content in t the book but i want to direct your attention to south china sea because we don't pay enoughattention to what's going oneven though it's important . it's also reflective of the new tactic . that's the thing we're dealing with the communist party. when it comes to making that new tactic we're playing a catch-up game so what's happening in the south china sea is an example. it's a trial run of what we gray zone tactic. what is a gray zone tactic? gray zone tactic we know it's about territorial expansion without using military so basically it enables a country to expand expanded territory without having to fight traditional war. that's what's called gray zone tactics. so south china sea is this very traditional body of

water in southeast asia. it's a major 9trade route so 90 percent of ntthe trade owing intent china goes through that and china in several countries including malaysia, philippines share claims on this body of water. sometimes their claim overlaps though there are historical disputes over what area is yours versus mine. this is also the area with huge minerals as well as oil and gas deposits. they're not extracting yet but it's a huge deposit of natural resources so you can understand why all the countries shares this body of water . this huge economic interest as well as national security interests s to maintain their claim or even expanded. what china did was and there the first obama administration china came up with this genius idea. the first bid on an island and use the reef and the

south china sea and the united states did not object. they were not sure what china a is doing and that china just said oh, we want to make sure that we can have a station here so we can help with when fisherman gets into trouble or shipping so people are okay, that's fine. so from the first island maybe three years china reclaimed 3000 acres of land through building artificial land, islands. within three years. once they did this island , china enticed this island to have runway hangers. they are down radars and china also declared establishing new administrations districts. with their claim not on the silence or china because they felt it but also all the

surrounding waters are now china's territory to but by doing that china expanded its claim of the south china sea to 90percent . so basically it's supporting that shared international body of waterand now is in china's own backyard . now any fisherman from other country is going to access it or oil exploration trips that china will send its coast guard . sometimes china's neighbors to drive them out in the name of protect china's territory. so it's this if i build it, it's mine strategy. hathat's what we call gray zone tactics. and china it's important we understand that because now, based on its success in the south china sea now china is using the exact same strategy on the land to deal with

defending land border disputes with other countries . so foreign policy last month published a stunning discovery. basically china was building three villages inside the border of bhutan, a small country that shares borders with china. inside its border and even though it's historically and for the longest time even in the 80s china's own mac claimed this land belonged to bhutan but china build three villages there so once they build it it's theirs. and the reason that china did that is really not because it's bhutan's territory. it's basically bhutan is adjacent to india and china and india have been fighting border wars for the last decades so china is playing

the long game. they basically want to use bhutan three villages to strategically in an area that's is akin to a holy land . so china wants to use this to force bhutan to make a land exchange. with their own land. basically saying i can give up these three yvillages if you'll give me this other area that's right next to india. so china is eyeing for that other area. so far bhutan is a small country. all you can do is just pretend you didn't know what's happening but the foreign policy report it's just totally shocking and the fact that this whole china is continuously expanding this gray zone tactics but so far received no objections, not one objectionfrom the united states . again, that's the frustration and shocking so those are the things that we need to know .

we don't currently have a good strategy to push that back. so that's the second layer. hotspots near china's mainland. the third layer is more close to all of us. it's a doctrinal china's global expansion and this is a big area because it covers so many things. it's economics, from an economic standpoint, china is launched this huge massive infrastructure infrastructure plan called one belt white road so basically chinese banks will finance infrastructure, building ports with the airport and other countries. using china's own suppliers and many times china's own workers to host in country really just borrowing money from the chinese banks with cheap rates but for many of them they couldn't pay back

the track so they could not pay that they're going to have to find the time leave their support for let china use their resources. so it's really genius. the obama administration thought about it and now it's called the new silk road again, like so many other things we thought about it, came up with an idea and then we couldn't focus, we shift our attention and china expanded and put all these huge resources behind it. so that's on the economic front and that's on the education front where about the institute, something were not familiar about is the south telling program which is china's actively recruiting foreign scientists as well as research that in

that technology area china saying i'm going to pay you, give you 10 years of money in the chinese research institute for all you have to do is bring your research that they're currently doing, share with us . and so last year, if you read althe wall street journal last year for the first time the us department charged harvard chemistry professor that he'd been sharing his leading-edge technology with china. with a chinese university secretly with letting his employer noted by the way he's researching the united states was not only responded funded by harvard but also the department of defense so he's basically using our tax dollars to do his research and the they share the results with the chinese university and get paid back way to so that's something we did not know as very well so that's on the education

front. there's also information front. where there's huge with china wars in the media,especially on social media . oxford university had research that shows 50 percent of the retweets as well as lights of the chinese diplomat tweets spread information that's favorable to china or spread misinformation about the coronavirus . about 50 percent of the retweets and the likes came from troll accounts, paid actual accounts that made it in south china so the thing is our technology companies have been very slow to respond to that. so even though they are gradually finding those accounts out and losing them, but before they close them all these retweets and likes give the impression to

unknown foreigners that this maybe something somewhat legitimate. you're being influenced by those that information you don't even know because they do not identify the account owners is within the chinese estate. we see that information especially with the pandemic that's especially huge in terms of the information work between the united states and china. that's the third layer and its is a segue to obviously you cannot write a book in a pandemic without having a chapter about the pandemic so of course there's a chapter about the pandemic. i think the pandemic really is a wake-up call for a lot of us, not for all of us but a lot of us and it's really more so kind of the icing on the cake typed all this

progression together to explain why we should care about china's aggression especially this aggression in the domestic order. how do we know about the pandemic, how you look at the party reacted to the pandemic. there was a lot of cover up in the early days, now we knew that they suppressed, that the scientist suppressed the doctrines, the whistleblowers and prevented the media from reporting about it and prevented journalists from interviewing the citizens to talk about what'sreally going on . so hampton university came out and did a study last year that shows that first of all, for a pandemic the early days of the pandemic was the most crucial time.. the sooner you can take action in those early days,

the sooner you can prevent the spread, limit the scope. so basically according to the university study how did the chinese government disclose that information they knew about six weeks earlier? the pandemic, the scope of the pandemic needed to be reduced by 90 percent. 90, not 19, 90 percent which means the chinese had the chinese government been more transparent we wouldn't have to be locked up in our own homes for 12months . that is why when people ask me why should we care about what beijing did to leaders, why should we care about what they did, well, the pandemic. now you realize that the government doesn't care about the well-being of its own people and it's willing to do anything to stay in power and suppress information and the

pandemic shows you we've had our house andwell-being to, that's why we should care about it . now let's talk about the backlash. so is there a backlash? i believe there is. i believe around september i see more backlash now compared to the time when i was writing about it. and even back then i see several sources all of the backlash. first was the public opinion. so few research did research last fall and public opinion of china as well as the communist leader xi jinping dropped 75 percent so china because of thepandemic and what they did to chong kong ,

china opinion dropped 75 percent. .. and and i assume this crowd iy friendly. for those who are not friendly with, special with president, we have to give him credit. i think for impossible of one of his brightest spots. the fact he didn't talk about this office i think is a failure of his campaign for reelection. because i mentioned in my book his administration was the first american administration, you have secretary pompeo talk to

visit freedom counselors and he's my favorite from trump administration. the trump administration was the first hpe c american administran understood the true nature of the communist party. and you heard secretary pompeo talk about it many times that the trump administration treated communist party as who they really is, t not who they wish o be. so for the first time they brought really back foreign policy. not only that the trump administration also was a first administration not afraid to challenge communist party for integration especially domestic aggression. because today china has one of the worst most powerful armies. it has the second-largest economy. then the costs of confronting china on anything is very high. there is no cost of freedom for choice so we do not, that are

too many of us governments especially from u.s. administration are so afraid to confront china because they do not want to bear that cost. but the trump administration was the first one was waiting to bear the cost to con founding china. these are the things i don't think any other administration would do. they find human rights act for the home congress. they signed it for the uyghurs. the blacklisted chinese companies and they sanctioned they targeted sanctions senior senior communist party officials. this never happened before. never happened before. i would call that backlash. not only that the backlash from u.s. administration standpoint, you probably heard lots of media especially last year the trump foreign policy was always about going alone. he didn't care ifys nobody followed him. he aided our allies, know it

supported. that's not entirely true. let me give you an example. some of you heard about by 5g network. the something that would be pushing really hard. there's a big chinese companies called huawei. huawei one of the, even though they claimed at a private company, not really private, have very deep tie with chinese military and the government. anyway, so while weight is one of the national champion supported by the chinese government -- huawei -- chinese government wanted to succeed huawei build 5g networks throughout the world. the trump institution had to be warning a special our allies do not use while way to build your 5g network because it present future security risk. i either way the security risk has been proved this year by like several of our allies, especially in australia. anyway so the trump administration had to be telling

our allies do not use 5g. one of our closest allies was united kingdom, and boris johnson even last january no, we're going to use huawei because it's cheap. it wasua cheap because they were sabotaged by the government. as a business person i can tell you it was unreasonable. no basis can really sustain that. anyway so boris johnson said were going to use huawei to build is because they're cheap. after mike pompeo basically united kingdom last january say we are going to stop sharing intelligence with you because we don't feelf comfortable. john's was still like know, we're going to do this because it's cheap come something we can afford. then guess what. pandemic happened, right? and also the chinese government

increased crackdown on hong kong right in front of all of our eyes. something in in hong kong is really tragic. i make johnson administration announced that they will not use huawei to build its 5g network. so again again the pendantil became a wake up call and the backlash continued to this year. the biden administration has built, eucom nied kingdom and canada join together launched target of sanctions against chinese officials over the human rights violations in xinjiang. you see that backlash continued. it is not became calm has not become a big wave yet. that's where you come from, right, the electoral. because the administration, let me make a few comments about biden administration and encode and after my comments there. com.

but the general approach that they are for them they are against. and with those communist party officials. and they are accompanied with chinese military. so the biden administration it demonstrates just like the previous obama administration biden leaves the gap between what they say and what they do. trump had the same problem but it was opposite. he made us cringe when he

spoke to say oh he is great and he is my friend but he actually surrounded himself with people who are really strong the national security. but the biden administration wears like the opposite. like china and russia but then had a policy so even though it continued the policy on china and it was with what happened to be back in march and the

chinese diplomats came in our invitation and if you read any reports of what happened with that meeting that basically use the talking points to have no right in a position but dealing with your own failures dealing with racial injustice. and that is not surprising for chinese people with those talking points but what is disappointing is the biden administration could not mount

a strong powerful defense of our country because those were the talking points during the campaign and actually talk about america. so when they stole those numbers in that same language about whether america is truly greater not. they couldn't do that on the diplomatic front how can they do it any other front? that is what troubles me the most. so winston churchill americans

always do the right thing after they tried everything else. [laughter] we are probably at the state trying everything else but i think there is a lot of effort so thank you. [applause] >> okay. we received some good questions so let's dive right in. earlier this year the china foreign ministry announced china is providing free vaccines to 69 countries and commercially exporting them to 28 more. chinese. chinese competitors are concerned where china's covid vaccine go, influence will follow. what do you think the diplomacy

efforts? >> that's a really good question and definitely that's what china intend to do to use the vaccine to basically rebuild its reputation again that china -- but i can tell you the good news is so far the vaccination deplin -- diplomacy not very successful because the chinese vaccines, the efficiency, is only about 60%. we don't even know if that is accurate. even china's own cdc like cdc announced use american vaccine like pfizer or motorola or the one incident in france booster shots for the own citizens in china to increase the efficiency of the vaccine. so far the vaccine diplomacy is not successful. but it does show the relentless of the communist party that s

waiting to do again anything, and it has the power as well as resources for influence. >> do you think it's accurate to say that china has used the covid crisis to gain influence across the globe? >> i think china tried, communist party definitely tried to do that. that's why you see all of this misinformation especially in social media from chinese diplomats as well as because china early control that. w.h.o. investigation in china this whole fact-finding about origin, the origin of the coronavirus was not very successful. basically came back with nothing, right? so china try to blame it's the food, it's a military who brought ity but like we've done

enough research in china and we destroyed all the evidence. they want countries to look anywhere else. but because now the lab leaks theory is no longer there is has become a credible scenario now because thanks to the researchers by individuals around the world it's really truly amazing story. as our media, are established media as well as scientists, the scientific establishment basically rejected the whole lab leaks through because they thought if trump said it must be a lie. they not only stop talking about it they actually accurately sent to any scientist or research want to talk about it. guess what, here's the free market, the power of individual and the power of free market. so there's a group of individuals, they never met before, there's a really wonderful piece at the "newsweek" just a couple weeks

ago, a group of individuals organize themselves call themselves drastic and the basically researchers through open source information all open source information because not all haveti access. research to open source information and post everything they found online through their research. they were able to find credible evidence to show that it's very likely the virus is from lab. they were able to convince some scientists found establishment which then landed credibility to basically brought this whole lab leak conspiracy back to life. this group of individuals brought it back to life. doesn't that i don't think that china is winning the pr war because now even countries hesitate to challenge china, even organizations like w.h.o., even he hardly doubt his

sincerity but even he said well we need to do more investigation to find the origin of the coronavirus. so china is not winning the p war on that. >> thank you. >> what you think the u.s. should be doing diplomatically on vaccine distribution to reinforce our allies and counter china? >> i think the donation, the donation program the government biden administration mouse was really good way. i'm so glad president biden finally decided donation instead of force our drug company share the patents. to me forcing the patents not only violate theirir property rights but the thing is it's very difficult to make a vaccine. so many of the country simply do not have the facilities to make a vaccine. if we force our drug companies to share please share it

happened, guess it's good happen? communist party, right? they will have it for free and use it events, their vaccine diplomacy. i think it's muchth better optin i'm so glad the president, president biden hopefully somebody talks him out of it and that he announced we are going at g7 we're going to donate to make donation. i think a threat thing to do as more of us get vaccinated, we should donate to make sure especially a country like india which is our ally and huge for important ally in the geopolitical conflict with china especially in asia that as many of you heard india is facing a very serious challenge from covid. we should help our allies and make our extras available to other countries. >> as you know the chinese communist party is made up of a number of factions. the two major factions create and control of the party between

2000-2012, so six years each each faction had a different agenda. what group now controls the party today and why? >> i would not call it a fraction because again going back to the true nature of the communist party, even the so-called liberal wing of c the party, their ultimate goal is to still about power, about how to remain in power, do anything it takes. they may be a little more liberal in terms of the economic front. they may be more waiting to open up the market. they may be little more tolerant with press, but their bottom line, they're never going to even the liberal wing they're never going to embrace democracy again because the elements of democracy prevent serious challenge to communist party survival. their hold of power. even liberal wings will not do that. but before the current idea to

say before the current president a xi jinping before he can apart in 2012, the previous two leaders of the communist party were president of china, they were relatively tolerant. i would say they were less ambitious that way. they basically followed deng xiaoping guidance. deng xiaoping was this paramount leader successor of mouth and he was pragmatic picky launched economic reform. he was much more pragmatic and he picked alaska and his successor, the strategic guidance basically said we need western money technology to help us build our states. so wait for your time and do not stick your head out.

do not be aggressive international stage okay? so that's how he choose three successes generally pretty much followed that guidance. that actually gave china time to not only build itself economically but also chinese people experience are relatively ahe little more open period,pe politically, in china. but that all changed when career current leader came into power in 2012. he modeled himself after mao. so if you go to china now you will see his portraits everywhere, and whatever he says, his book is the bestseller, you know, because he can force 1.4 billion people to buy a copy. and also he power, , he control all power and self so he was called chairman of everything because he controlled everything under him.

actually china is going back more totalitarian. the honeymoon of that short period six years of more political openness, that's gone. because the current leader is relatively young, only around his 60s was going to be there and he will make an self president for life was going to be there for long time. so china is not going back to openness. it's actually going the other way. it's more looking inward even more, much more totalitarian compared to the past. >> this is a nice segue to the next question. there are 92 million communist party members out of 1.5 billion people in china. is there a backlash against any of these government programs own citizens? >> well, i don't know exact -- i guess if there is it's not being reported but i think if there was unofficial news, especially

during the pandemic, there were a lot of anger about why didn't communist party members not stop? a basically they communist party members even though they are small in terms of population, like less than 7% of the total population but they are kind of elite. anybody can apply to a joint the communist party but the party will not just take anyone. so basically you were groomed very young. i mentioned in my own book confucius never said about big experience, you first have to be selected and young pioneer program because six the 14th you have to really good grade and come from good family. and then you move from that to this other program that's our teenagers and for young people. once you are in that program then you have to demonstrate you would understand the reasons. you have to have good grades.

you have to be smart, come from a good family. so it's very elitist. the way to lead this party you'll can be put in key position in the economy, education, just every key position throughout the country. so you are really groomed to be the leaders, the successors. to carry the economy for. so there was some backlash against certain communist party members during the pandemic. there was a story about one of them, a hospital in shanghai that's overrun by patients that the doctor, the chief doctor was really mad about the communist party member who didn't show up. so very rare, it's very rare for anybody to speak up in press conference in china.

so but he was so frustrated this doctrine spoke up in a press conference, billy press conference. he said were other times party members? i want them all to report to me right now because we need everybody, anybody who can treat patients to be on frontline. of course our story was taken down quickly so nobody else talk about it anymore. i believe there's definitely some, it's just doesn't get reported. people are afraid to talk to foreign press especially china -- kick many journals at the china for the purpose. they don't get you to talk to people so it's very easy to get first-hand information out of china. >> how can we expect to control the ambitions of china if they control the raw materials for renewable energy and we don't want that supply? >> i'm so glad somebody asked about that.

short answer is it can be done except we don't have the will to do it. we do not want to bear the cost. let me give you an example. it's not exactly renewable energy but it is related. how many of you heard about rare earth minerals? a lot of you heard about that. so for those of you who did not know what that is the rare earth minerals are a group of 17 minerals. they are crucial to digital economy. there are widely used in like building batteries,it electronic cars, crucial crucial.. so they are crucial. and we united states have huge deposits of rare earth minerals. and back in the 1980s we were the ones who know how to get those minerals out of ground and process it. we have the technology. then what happened is when china opened up as so many other

businesses, the rare earth energy said we should go to china because it is cheaper there. our business been what to china taught the chinese how to process the rare earth minerals and let them have it. and then hear back home because of environmental laws and difficult, it become very expensive for mineral extraction so we gradually exit out of the industry. so china now has, control 90% what i should say say not now but in recent years china controlled 90% of the worldwide rare earth mineral supply. not because china has the biggest deposit. because china has a monopoly of the technology of how to extract the minerals, okay? so china has been using its control of the rare earth mineral because they play

important role in digital economy china has used it to course of the countries. australia as well as to japan as you know japan is very short of all kinds of natural resources. but this is what japan did. actually about an article for the "national review" recently on this example. what japan did was when china use monopoly of rare earth minerals threaten japan, japan realized that it cannot it could not depend on china for its supply on rare earth minerals. so it did two things. one was japanese government as well as japanese private industry formed this task force. they invest, they spend their supply sources outside of china. but because many of the countries that have rare earth mineral deposits, they do not have the technology or money to

extract to build the factories to extract it. so the japanese got this task force in those other countries, help them build factories to extract minerals and to bring them onto market. so that's one thing they did. expand their diversify theiro suppliers. another thing theyy did was true innovation. they encouraged their car companies, you know, solar panel companies, , encourage them to innovate through innovation to reduce their dependency on rare earth mineral, like finding alternatives. so through those two efforts. it's not paying less, it was painful but after that effort, because a japanese effort, now china controlled 75% of worldwide rare earth mineral market. not 90. still a lot but it's not 90, right? so this example just shows you

that it can be done. the thing is our businesses are so shortsighted, even our governments, they are so shortsighted 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 are do whatever it p takes becae it's a nationals could issue that we need to reduce our dependencies on on a regime s ideologically so different for us, from us. we are not there. again, it takes all of us to select representative who will put their foot down to say that's what we're going to do. and not worry about electoral backlash to say we're going to do this because that's how it's going to reduce our dependency. >> what do you think has to happen to have corporations, sports leagues like the nba and

the media join the backlash? cannot even happen? >> i don't know. i've been very frustrated with them. so yes, we are understand the hypocrisies of our companies in sports leagues. on the one hand, they are all for social justice here. for example, like today biden administration make juneteenth a federal holiday. that's great and give all the companies came out and say slavery is terrible, which is true, and we should celebrate free of slaves. at the same time many of these products, that they you sun from china. many of the products supply chain was influenced by slave labors of the uyghurs.re there is huge hypocrisy. speaking of influence, how could we influence the chinese government or convinced the chinese people that -- when we

don't even want to support it, right? it's only going to add our behavior especially corporation behavior will only have done two things. one is again you enrich, you about a regime who doesn't do anything we embrace and try to dominate us when the times come. that's one thing. another thing is the enhanced part communist party to say look, they don't even believe those things they try to sell us why should we embrace them? it is frustrating. i don't know what the answer to it. i've been writing a lot of articles criticizing about it. i think as consumers again, that's where we come in. because our business, business community are dominated by i say the bulk companies, so it's very difficult to ask you, , for me o

ask youfi oh, let's just what caught all of them. we can't boycott all of them. i think because they're so, many of them live and die on twitter or social media i think it's important that we constantly expose their hypocrisy. challenge them on any position they can and we can have alternative products and services but use alternative products and services and try not to support them. vote with our dollars. that's only thing i think we can use power of our wallet to let them know we are not happy with their hypocrisy. >> describe you can have chinese communist party directly monitors and controls the average chinese citizen by monitoring a century all the activities and literally applying a personal score that determines what a person can do.

>> yes. so i talk aboutt had china will this digital fortresslike all-digital prison in china to control, watch over 1.4 billion people. so this is a digital prison has several elements. one of them is digital cam, facial recognition technology, facial recognition camera. china has a 600 billion cameras throughout the country. they can even tell who you are when you wear a mask so there's no way to hide. i know where you are because they can tell you are. so that's one component. another component is this question referred to for the call social credit system. the social credit system when you think about credit here you think about about that i pay my bills on time? how much debt i carry or part of the system. the social credit system assigned about 1000 points to

each chinese citizen. it measures everything. it measures yourci activities. the measure shop activities. it measures with your putting her trash out correctly. have you ever crossed a red light because he can cameras are everywhere so that y all feed io social media, even companies in china all feed into this giant social credit system. so there's a lot of data about you. and some of those, some are innocent enough. maybe that's not so bad like if you cross a red light at a time you shouldn't, right? 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 coronavirus that is different from the government narrative, then your points will be deducted, right?

so what are the consequences? if your behavior is good with the government likes and you can probably get a promotion, you may get a better rate when you go to apply more goods. the kids may go to better school. but if your behavior is bad, again that is by governments definition come someday you will find out maybe you're not getting that promotion even though you are the best employee in that company, or somehow your kids were rejected from the good school, or when you go to bank they will not give you good rate. that's probably not even the worst are the worst part you in even be able to travel. you cannot buy train tickets or airline tickets. the license plate if you drive if you own your own car license plate you will be stopped. you just cannot go anywhere. it is a liability to travel and it's happened to many chinese dissidents that they found that they just couldn't go attend

conference or meet their congress because are not allowed to travel. so the social credit system is really this 1984 really a description been brought to reality. the really bad part is that a lot of the technologies that china is using now were provided by our companies, our technology companies. our technology companies help china build this digital surveillance system. now china has asked for digital system to other authoritarian countries. again coming back to what have we done, right, just like the coronavirus, right? now we learned we actually funded the wuhan lab to do those researchers. like, where is the

accountability? is easy for us to blame the communist party but when you look at all its problems, it's like every time you traced back to us. so we, again we need to educate ourselves. we need to know what's going on. we need to know who is telling the truth. we need to demand transparency and accountability from our own politicians and the businesses before we point our fingers to outside. >> final question, this would be a a good one to wrap up on. and you which is alluding to our own culpability in some of this as we learned with dr. fauci and the funding of the research. it appears there has been a cover-up. do you believe the world, countries, the united states, our allies, other countries will eventually come together for

some type of effective response, backlash if you want to call it asthat, against china? where do you see the ultimate in game once all the truth finally comes out? >> first of all i'm pessimistic about it all the truth will, especially related to the origin of the coronavirus because the chinese government that had destroyed a lot of evidence. they told the scientist and glad to take downn the database, all the data information. when w.h.o. investigation team was in china so they were in china for two weeks. they spent one week quarantined, another week they spent a couple of days sightseeing here and so when you went to the wuhan lab all they did was reading the report from the lab. they didn't even get to examine the database. they didn't even get to really walk around the lab. and the longer time lapse

between when this first happened versus our research investigation now, the longer the gap is, the harder it is for us to find out what truly happened. i'm pessimistic about what we were really find out what truly happened. i do think this is a wake up call. it has to become a wake-up call for all of us. seriously if we let this gone by and go back to business will come that hate to say this, then we deserve it. we deserve thees next crisis. our government and the cover-up it's going to happen all over again. many of us are going to surrender our liberty again in exchange for safety that doesn't exist. this needs to be a wake-up call for all of us. and i think that as long as we keep pressure on politicians to continue to investigate to continue to hold china accountable for what happened

with the coronavirus, because again this is such a worldwide event, very few people can claim they walk out of this without a scratch like this could impact their at all. there is a public pressure to keep this in the news, to keep the investigation going. so we need to keep that going. you cannot write off, because even politicians that our country what they love the most is this to go away. we don't have to investigate because when you investigate it comes back and point at us. so we as public have to keep pressure to demand an answer, even answers hard to find. we have to. the policy at the g7 communiqué that the g77 had, he did make announcement about on coronavirus origin that they demand answers from china. the problem with g7 including our own government is how much again the gap between what they say versus what they do. are they really going to put actions behind a those demands?

again, only actions behind us that is because all of us demand it. so really my take is take away from the coronavirus when writing the book is we should, our biggest take away from the coronavirus is we should have never, never surrendered our liberty, our individual freedom to demand the truth seeking answers, you know? one of the founding father i forgot who said for those of you who exchanger liberty for safety, you know, you're going to end up with neither. you don't deserve either because there's no, it's not a fair trade. f i think we learned that painful lesson in the last 12 months this whole experience of how the lab was brought back to life really showed us again the power of the individual. it also showed how many of of

our emperors have been working naked. they really don't know more than we do. they pretend. they lie to us and so never, never surrender our liberty and freedom again when next crisis hits. we have to take the responsibility and keep our focus on our politicians. >> great note to end on. can we have a round of applause for helen? [applause] >> i would like to remind all of you that helen's book "backlash" is for sale out in the foyer. she will be signing copies of her book. please also watch for announcements about the area of the nice presentation on c-span's booktv series in the coming days and weeks. if you enjoy tonight presentation of course we appreciate you going to steamboat institution.org to support us with your charitable contributions of the nonprofit we do depend on your support to

reach people all across colorado and throughout the country with important messages like helen's here tonight and promoting individual liberty and free enterprise. be sure to follow the steamboat institute on instagram twitter facebook. we are always promoting great things like helen's work and thank you and now please go out and enjoy the reception and book signing. thank you for coming. [applause] >> if you're enjoying booktv then sign-up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive a scheduled upcoming programs, author discussions, book festivals and more. booktv every sunday on c-span2 or anytime online at booktv.org. online at booktv.org. television for serious readers.

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