Excerpts:
Next
year marks half a century since Dr. Kissinger’s secret mission to China, and
the 50th anniversary of President Nixon’s trip isn’t too far away in 2022.
The world
was much different then.
We
imagined engagement with China would produce a future with bright promise of
comity and cooperation.
But today
– today we’re all still wearing masks and watching the pandemic’s body count
rise because the CCP failed in its promises to the world. We’re reading every
morning new headlines of repression in Hong Kong and in Xinjiang.
We’re
seeing staggering statistics of Chinese trade abuses that cost American jobs
and strike enormous blows to the economies all across America, including here
in southern California. And we’re watching a Chinese military that grows
stronger and stronger, and indeed more menacing.
I’ll echo
the questions ringing in the hearts and minds of Americans from here in
California to my home state of Kansas and beyond:
What do
the American people have to show now 50 years on from engagement with China?
Did the
theories of our leaders that proposed a Chinese evolution towards freedom and
democracy prove to be true?
Is this
China’s definition of a win-win situation?
And
indeed, centrally, from the Secretary of State’s perspective, is America safer?
Do we have a greater likelihood of peace for ourselves and peace for the
generations which will follow us?
Look, we
have to admit a hard truth. We must admit a hard truth that should guide us in
the years and decades to come, that if we want to have a free 21st century, and
not the Chinese century of which Xi Jinping dreams, the old paradigm of blind
engagement with China simply won’t get it done. We must not continue it and we
must not return to it.
As
President Trump has made very clear, we need a strategy that protects the
American economy, and indeed our way of life. The free world must triumph over
this new tyranny.
Now,
before I seem too eager to tear down President Nixon’s legacy, I want to be
clear that he did what he believed was best for the American people at the
time, and he may well have been right.
He was a
brilliant student of China, a fierce cold warrior, and a tremendous admirer of
the Chinese people, just as I think we all are.
He
deserves enormous credit for realizing that China was too important to be
ignored, even when the nation was weakened because of its own self-inflicted
communist brutality.
In 1967,
in a very famous Foreign
Affairs article, Nixon explained his future strategy. Here’s
what he said:
He said,
“Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside
of the family of nations…The world cannot be safe until China changes. Thus,
our aim – to the extent we can, we must influence events. Our goal should be to
induce change.”
And I
think that’s the key phrase from the entire article: “to induce change.”
So, with
that historic trip to Beijing, President Nixon kicked off our engagement
strategy. He nobly sought a freer and safer world, and he hoped that the
Chinese Communist Party would return that commitment.
As time
went on, American policymakers increasingly presumed that as China became more
prosperous, it would open up, it would become freer at home, and indeed present
less of a threat abroad, it’d be friendlier. It all seemed, I am sure, so
inevitable.
But that
age of inevitability is over. The kind of engagement we have been pursuing has
not brought the kind of change inside of China that President Nixon had hoped
to induce.
The truth
is that our policies – and those of other free nations – resurrected China’s
failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that were
feeding it.
We opened
our arms to Chinese citizens, only to see the Chinese Communist Party exploit
our free and open society. China sent propagandists into our press conferences,
our research centers, our high-schools, our colleges, and even into our PTA
meetings.
We
marginalized our friends in Taiwan, which later blossomed into a vigorous
democracy.
We gave
the Chinese Communist Party and the regime itself special economic treatment,
only to see the CCP insist on silence over its human rights abuses as the price
of admission for Western companies entering China.
Ambassador
O’Brien ticked off a few examples just the other day: Marriott, American
Airlines, Delta, United all removed references to Taiwan from their corporate
websites, so as not to anger Beijing.
In
Hollywood, not too far from here – the epicenter of American creative freedom,
and self-appointed arbiters of social justice – self-censors even the most
mildly unfavorable reference to China.
This
corporate acquiescence to the CCP happens all over the world, too.
And how
has this corporate fealty worked? Is its flattery rewarded? I’ll give you a
quote from the speech that General Barr gave, Attorney General Barr. In a
speech last week, he said that “The ultimate ambition of China’s rulers isn’t
to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States.”
China
ripped off our prized intellectual property and trade secrets, causing millions
of jobs[1] all
across America.
It sucked
supply chains away from America, and then added a widget made of slave labor.
It made
the world’s key waterways less safe for international commerce.
President
Nixon once said he feared he had created a “Frankenstein” by opening the world
to the CCP, and here we are.
Now,
people of good faith can debate why free nations allowed these bad things to
happen for all these years. Perhaps we were naive about China’s virulent strain
of communism, or triumphalist after our victory in the Cold War, or cravenly
capitalist, or hoodwinked by Beijing’s talk of a “peaceful rise.”
Whatever
the reason – whatever the reason, today China is increasingly authoritarian at
home, and more aggressive in its hostility to freedom everywhere else.
And
President Trump has said: enough.
I don’t
think many people on either side of the aisle dispute the facts that I have
laid out today. But even now, some are insisting that we preserve the model of
dialogue for dialogue’s sake.
Now, to be
clear, we’ll keep on talking. But the conversations are different these days. I
traveled to Honolulu now just a few weeks back to meet with Yang Jiechi.
It was the
same old story – plenty of words, but literally no offer to change any of the
behaviors.
Yang’s
promises, like so many the CCP made before him, were empty. His expectations, I
surmise, were that I’d cave to their demands, because frankly this is what too
many prior administrations have done. I didn’t, and President Trump will not
either.
As
Ambassador O’Brien explained so well, we have to keep in mind that the CCP
regime is a Marxist-Leninist regime. General Secretary Xi Jinping is a true
believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology.
It’s this
ideology, it’s this ideology that informs his decades-long desire for global
hegemony of Chinese communism. America can no longer ignore the fundamental
political and ideological differences between our countries, just as the CCP
has never ignored them.
My
experience in the House Intelligence Committee, and then as director of the
Central Intelligence Agency, and my now two-plus years as America’s Secretary
of State have led me to this central understanding:
That the
only way
–
the only way to truly change communist China is to act not on the basis of what
Chinese leaders say, but how they behave. And you can see American policy
responding to this conclusion. President Reagan said that he dealt with the
Soviet Union on the basis of “trust but verify.” When it comes to the CCP, I
say we must distrust and verify. (Applause.)
We, the
freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change, just as
President Nixon wanted. We must induce China to change in more creative and
assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our
prosperity.
We must
start by changing how our people and our partners perceive the Chinese
Communist Party. We have to tell the truth. We can’t treat this incarnation of
China as a normal country, just like any other.
We know
that trading with China is not like trading with a normal, law-abiding nation.
Beijing threatens international agreements as – treats international
suggestions as – or agreements as suggestions, as conduits for global
dominance.
But by
insisting on fair terms, as our trade representative did when he secured our
phase one trade deal, we can force China to reckon with its intellectual
property theft and policies that harmed American workers.
We know
too that doing business with a CCP-backed company is not the same as doing
business with, say, a Canadian company. They don’t answer to independent
boards, and many of them are state-sponsored and so have no need to pursue
profits.
A good
example is Huawei. We stopped pretending Huawei is an innocent
telecommunications company that’s just showing up to make sure you can talk to
your friends. We’ve called it what it is – a true national security threat –
and we’ve taken action accordingly.
We know
too that if our companies invest in China, they may wittingly or unwittingly
support the Communist Party’s gross human rights violations.
Our
Departments of Treasury and Commerce have thus sanctioned and blacklisted
Chinese leaders and entities that are harming and abusing the most basic rights
for people all across the world. Several agencies have worked together on a
business advisory to make certain our CEOs are informed of how their supply
chains are behaving inside of China.
We know
too, we know too that not all Chinese students and employees are just normal
students and workers that are coming here to make a little bit of money and to
garner themselves some knowledge. Too many of them come here to steal our
intellectual property and to take this back to their country.
The
Department of Justice and other agencies have vigorously pursued punishment for
these crimes.
We know
that the People’s Liberation Army is not a normal army, too. Its purpose is to
uphold the absolute rule of the Chinese Communist Party elites and expand a
Chinese empire, not to protect the Chinese people.
And so our
Department of Defense has ramped up its efforts, freedom of navigation
operations out and throughout the East and South China Seas, and in the Taiwan
Strait as well. And we’ve created a Space Force to help deter China from
aggression on that final frontier.
And so
too, frankly, we’ve built out a new set of policies at the State Department
dealing with China, pushing President Trump’s goals for fairness and
reciprocity, to rewrite the imbalances that have grown over decades.
Just this
week, we announced the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston because it
was a hub of spying and intellectual property theft. (Applause.)
We
reversed, two weeks ago, eight years of cheek-turning with respect to
international law in the South China Sea.
We’ve
called on China to conform its nuclear capabilities to the strategic realities
of our time.
And the
State Department – at every level, all across the world – has engaged with our
Chinese counterparts simply to demand fairness and reciprocity.
But our
approach can’t just be about getting tough. That’s unlikely to achieve the
outcome that we desire. We must also engage and empower the Chinese people – a
dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese
Communist Party.
That
begins with in-person diplomacy. (Applause.) I’ve met Chinese men and women of
great talent and diligence wherever I go.
I’ve met
with Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs who escaped Xinjiang’s concentration camps.
I’ve talked with Hong Kong’s democracy leaders, from Cardinal Zen to Jimmy Lai.
Two days ago in London, I met with Hong Kong freedom fighter Nathan Law.
And last
month in my office, I heard the stories of Tiananmen Square survivors. One of
them is here today.
Wang Dan
was a key student who has never stopped fighting for freedom for the Chinese
people. Mr. Wang, will you please stand so that we may recognize you?
(Applause.)
Also with
us today is the father of the Chinese democracy movement, Wei Jingsheng. He
spent decades in Chinese labor camps for his advocacy. Mr. Wei, will you please
stand? (Applause.)
I grew up
and served my time in the Army during the Cold War. And if there is one thing I
learned, communists almost always lie. The biggest lie that they tell is to
think that they speak for 1.4 billion people who are surveilled, oppressed, and
scared to speak out.
Quite the
contrary. The CCP fears the Chinese people’s honest opinions more than any foe,
and save for losing their own grip on power, they have reason – no reason to.
Just think
how much better off the world would be – not to mention the people inside of
China – if we had been able to hear from the doctors in Wuhan and they’d been
allowed to raise the alarm about the outbreak of a new and novel virus.
For too
many decades, our leaders have ignored, downplayed the words of brave Chinese
dissidents who warned us about the nature of the regime we’re facing.
And we
can’t ignore it any longer. They know as well as anyone that we can never go
back to the status quo.
But
changing the CCP’s behavior cannot be the mission of the Chinese people alone.
Free nations have to work to defend freedom. It’s the furthest thing from easy.
But I have
faith we can do it. I have faith because we’ve done it before. We know how this
goes.
I have
faith because the CCP is repeating some of the same mistakes that the Soviet
Union made – alienating potential allies, breaking trust at home and abroad,
rejecting property rights and predictable rule of law.
I have
faith. I have faith because of the awakening I see among other nations that
know we can’t go back to the past in the same way that we do here in America.
I’ve heard this from Brussels, to Sydney, to Hanoi.
And most
of all, I have faith we can defend freedom because of the sweet appeal of
freedom itself.
Look at
the Hong Kongers clamoring to emigrate abroad as the CCP tightens its grip on
that proud city. They wave American flags.
It’s true,
there are differences. Unlike the Soviet Union, China is deeply integrated into
the global economy. But Beijing is more dependent on us than we are on them.
(Applause.)
Look, I
reject the notion that we’re living in an age of inevitability, that some trap
is pre-ordained, that CCP supremacy is the future. Our approach isn’t destined
to fail because America is in decline. As I said in Munich earlier this year,
the free world is still winning. We just need to believe it and know it and be
proud of it. People from all over the world still want to come to open
societies. They come here to study, they come here to work, they come here to
build a life for their families. They’re not desperate to settle in China.
It’s time.
It’s great to be here today. The timing is perfect. It’s time for free nations
to act. Not every nation will approach China in the same way, nor should they.
Every nation will have to come to its own understanding of how to protect its
own sovereignty, how to protect its own economic prosperity, and how to protect
its ideals from the tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party.
But I call
on every leader of every nation to start by doing what America has done – to
simply insist on reciprocity, to insist on transparency and accountability from
the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a cadre of rulers that are far from
homogeneous.
And these
simple and powerful standards will achieve a great deal. For too long we let
the CCP set the terms of engagement, but no longer. Free nations must set the
tone. We must operate on the same principles.
We have to
draw common lines in the sand that cannot be washed away by the CCP’s bargains
or their blandishments. Indeed, this is what the United States did recently
when we rejected China’s unlawful claims in the South China Sea once and for
all, as we have urged countries to become Clean Countries so that their
citizens’ private information doesn’t end up in the hand of the Chinese
Communist Party. We did it by setting standards.
Now, it’s
true, it’s difficult. It’s difficult for some small countries. They fear being
picked off. Some of them for that reason simply don’t have the ability, the
courage to stand with us for the moment.
Indeed, we
have a NATO ally of ours that hasn’t stood up in the way that it needs to with
respect to Hong Kong because they fear Beijing will restrict access to China’s
market. This is the kind of timidity that will lead to historic failure, and we
can’t repeat it.
We cannot
repeat the mistakes of these past years. The challenge of China demands
exertion, energy from democracies – those in Europe, those in Africa, those in
South America, and especially those in the Indo-Pacific region.
And if we
don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the
rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build. If we bend
the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese
Communist Party, whose actions are the primary challenge today in the free
world.
General
Secretary Xi is not destined to tyrannize inside and outside of China forever,
unless we allow it.
Now, this
isn’t about containment. Don’t buy that. It’s about a complex new challenge
that we’ve never faced before. The USSR was closed off from the free world.
Communist China is already within our borders.
So we
can’t face this challenge alone. The United Nations, NATO, the G7 countries,
the G20, our combined economic, diplomatic, and military power is surely enough
to meet this challenge if we direct it clearly and with great courage.
Maybe it’s
time for a new grouping of like-minded nations, a new alliance of democracies.
We have
the tools. I know we can do it. Now we need the will. To quote scripture, I ask
is “our spirit willing but our flesh weak?”
If the
free world doesn’t change – doesn’t change, communist China will surely change
us. There can’t be a return to the past practices because they’re comfortable
or because they’re convenient.
Securing
our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time, and
America is perfectly positioned to lead it because our founding principles give
us that opportunity.
As I
explained in Philadelphia last week, standing, staring at Independence Hall,
our nation was founded on the premise that all human beings possess certain
rights that are unalienable.
And it’s
our government’s job to secure those rights. It is a simple and powerful truth.
It’s made us a beacon of freedom for people all around the world, including
people inside of China.
Indeed, Richard
Nixon was right when he wrote in 1967 that “the world cannot be safe until
China changes.” Now it’s up to us to heed his words.
Today the
danger is clear.
And today
the awakening is happening.
Today the
free world must respond.
We can
never go back to the past.
May God
bless each of you.
May God
bless the Chinese people.
And may
God bless the people of the United States of America.
Thank you
all.