Victory ships being fitted out at the Calship yard, Wilmington, Calif., between April 27 and May 30, 1944. (Public Domain)

If there’s one positive outcome from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus pandemic it may be that the United States finally summons the political will to begin serious disengagement from Chinese communism.

Led by the former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the United States made a major blunder in the early 1970s by opening political and economic relations with the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Kissinger sold President Richard Nixon on two lies. Firstly, that the United States could play the PRC off against the Soviet Union. Secondly, that U.S.–PRC trade could somehow entice the CCP into abandoning its own raison d’etre—communism.

Now under President Xi Jinping, the PRC is openly committed to the communist road and is in a formal economic, political, and military alliance with Russia—the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Kissinger was 100 percent wrong on both counts. Today, all of Kissinger’s grand ideas have turned to dust and the mighty United States stands on the brink of disaster.

I was told recently of an incident that happened at a conservative gathering in Washington, D.C. Several staffers of The Epoch Times turned up to network with local activists. It was clear that they weren’t welcomed by some people present. It was whispered that the presence of such journalists critical of the CCP could “damage our trade with China.”

Think about that. American “conservative” leaders spurned ties to journalists who report honestly on the CCP because it might upset economic ties with the world’s most-powerful communist nation. Before World War II, similar people bent over backward not to upset Herr Hitler.

When Nixon and Kissinger opened the doors to Beijing in the 1970s, the PRC was a backward rural country that could barely feed itself. The PRC had no significant military strength and was in no serious position to challenge the United States.

Now, thanks to 40 years of expanded U.S.–PRC trade, massive American investment, and technology transfer (much of it stolen), the PRC has the world’s second-largest economy, and, in partnership with its ally Russia, can challenge or surpass the United States in almost every military metric.

While Americans love the huge array of cheap PRC goods lining their department store shelves, they’re less enthused about the other side of the coin—the massive de-industrialization of their country and the huge loss of productive capacity and skilled workers.

During World War II, American factories could produce an entire “Victory Ship” in 24 hours. This country had the industrial capacity, the technological know-how, and the skilled workforce to supply not just its own armed forces but those of Britain and the Soviet Union as well—not to mention to feed the displaced and starving millions of Europe.

Many security-conscious Americans have been aware for some time that the PRC produces much of the United States’ steel and holds the majority of rare earth mineral stocks, which are vitally important in modern military technology. Now people are realizing that most of America’s drugs and medicines are manufactured in the PRC.

What will happen when China is finally strong enough to begin the shooting war it’s been planning for decades? Will American generals requisition the steel and minerals and medicines they need to fight from PRC-based companies?

And speaking of drugs, 67,000 Americans died of opiate overdoses in 2018—much of it attributed to the super-powerful fentanyl. That’s more people than the PRC-backed communists killed through the entire Vietnam War. It’s well known that the bulk of the fentanyl comes from China. Is it possible that the all-seeing CCP doesn’t know about this heinous trade? The PRC is already at war with the United States with every weapon it possesses short of guns and bombs. Trading with the enemy used to be called treason.

Common sense tells that the free market is by the far the most efficient way to build wealth at the local, national, and global levels. However, wealth is worth little if one can’t defend it. A great economy and poor national security are no match for a temporarily lower standard of living and a safe and secure nation. Free trade is a noble ideal, but it should never trump national security.

Right up to the outbreak of World War II, American companies were trading with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. All through the Vietnam War, American companies were trading with the Soviets, which then supplied the North Vietnamese military so they could kill more American soldiers. Is a slightly cheaper battery charger or fishing rod worth putting your son’s life more at risk in the next war?

A few years ago the U.S. government Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack estimated that if China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran detonated a single atomic weapon high in the atmosphere above the continental United States, the resulting EMP blast would destroy most of this country’s electrical infrastructure in seconds.

Most Americans are pretty sick of two weeks of CCP virus lockdown. Imagine extending that to a whole year with no electric power. The EMP commission hypothesized that within 12 months, 90 percent of the current U.S. population would be dead through disease, starvation, and social breakdown. Solar radiation surges (sunspots), which are inevitable and regular, could achieve the same disastrous result.

And what would the Chinese and Russians do with a de-populated, dis-armed, and chaotic America? What they have long dreamed of—invade.

That EMP threat could be thwarted for a few billion dollars spent “hardening” the U.S. electrical grid. This is a tiny fraction of the cost of combating the effects of the current CCP virus pandemic. The CCP has lulled America with cheap cellphones and underwear. The CCP is now costing this country trillions of dollars and maybe millions of lives. What a bargain.

And, by the way, is it any coincidence that Italy and Iran—two nations heavily tied to the PRC’s Belt and Road economic strategy—are among the worst affected by the CCP virus? The CCP is a criminal enterprise. It cannot be trusted to act honorably in any situation where its interests are threatened. Clearly the CCP lied about the extent of the Wuhan outbreak. Consequently millions may unnecessarily die in this pandemic—but what’s a little more blood on their hands to the Chinese communists. And even now the CCP is poising itself to take economic and political advantage of the resulting global chaos.

Why would anyone want to deal with such dishonorable people?

The PRC and Russia are arming at breakneck speed. The United States hasn’t built a nuclear weapon since the beginning of the Clinton era. To his credit, President Donald Trump has been doing his best to increase defense spending and re-build the U.S. nuclear deterrent. How will the CCP virus affect those plans? How does the United States stand up to China’s and Russia’s war plans with a shattered economy?

American business makes billions trading with the PRC. American taxpayers spend trillions defending this country from a PRC–Russian war machine that American business helped to build.

How is that in any way rational?

Like quitting PRC heroin, going “cold turkey” from the CCP “economic opium” will bring some short-term pain. Prices for some consumer goods will rise, and some strategic commodities may be in short supply. However, I believe that inspired by a clear commitment to defending U.S. sovereignty and putting the American worker first, the American people will rise to the occasion.

Temporarily higher prices will spark massive new investment into the U.S. economy. American enterprise and technology will lift U.S. productivity to even higher levels. High-quality U.S. made goods will soon fill American and foreign shelves. American workers’ wages and salaries will climb steadily higher.

And deprived of U.S. investment and stolen technology, what will happen to the PRC?

If the United States keeps starving its own industrial base to feed the CCP war machine, two eventualities are likely—neither of them pleasant.

A weakened and friendless United States will capitulate to Beijing and become an economic and political vassal of the PRC and Russia. Americans will become slaves of the world’s cruelest masters. Or the United States will make a brave and futile military stand (all alone) against the combined forces of Beijing and Moscow and likely go down to a crushing defeat. The few surviving Americans will become slaves of the world’s cruelest masters.

Alternatively, if the United States de-couples from the CCP and works quickly to re-build a badly weakened U.S. military, this country might yet stand a chance. If America’s leaders are courageous enough to stare down the PRC, the Chinese communists will come under huge internal pressure to reform or face a mass revolt. American sanctions have emboldened the Iranian and Venezuelan peoples. If this strategy is maintained, someday those two nations will be free.

To have any hope of a free China and a secure America, the CCP must be sanctioned to the point of genuine reform or total collapse. President Ronald Reagan sanctioned the Soviet Bloc into a major retreat. Had subsequent U.S. presidents kept up the pressure we would not be witnessing the re-birth of the Soviet Union as we are today. Appeasement and engagement failed with Hitler and the Soviet Bloc. Only sanctions and disengagement have ever brought down a tyranny without having to resort to war.

President Trump must do to the CCP what Reagan did to the Soviet communists—on steroids.

A free China is a real hope for the world. Imagine a free Chinese people liberated from the evil tyranny of the CCP. Think of all that energy, intelligence, and culture working for good, rather than harnessed to evil. A free China, working as a responsible member of the international community, would be boon to every nation.

Already U.S. companies are disinvesting from the PRC. President Trump needs to speed that process along. He has the legal authority to do so. Major tariffs should be placed on Chinese products or they should be banned altogether. The PRC produces many of the products that Americans buy—from peeled garlic to Christmas decorations made with forced prison labor. Many of these prisoners aren’t even criminals—they’re Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, Muslims, and Buddhists, or political dissidents. This is illegal under current U.S. law. Those laws should be strictly enforced. This process is fortunately already underway.

Every CCP spy working in this country should be prosecuted and, if convicted, jailed or expelled. That would mean tens of thousands fewer enemy agents working in U.S. laboratories, businesses, and universities.

There should be one exception to this. Any CCP agent willing to expose what he or she knows about the communist networks in this country should be allowed to stay here and be placed under government protection. Any reports of retaliation against the informant’s family in the PRC should be met with further expulsions and sanctions.

The Justice Department should announce a one-month “foreign agent amnesty.” After that, any foreign spy still in the country should be subject to vigorous prosecution. CCP networks would crumble under that kind of pressure.

All PRC student visas should be canceled. The CCP’s Confucius Institutes, which are now established in many major universities, should be immediately closed down.

All land, technology, or business purchases by PRC nationals and businesses should be halted. All existing businesses found cooperating in any way with the PRC regime or People’s Liberation Army should be forfeited. The Italian Mafia was severely damaged through the extensive cultivation of informants and the witness protection program, vigorous prosecution, and long jail sentences. The CCP Mafia networks operating in this country should be dealt with the same way.

All further immigration from the PRC (except for carefully vetted refugees or some family re-unifications) should be immediately halted. Any PRC-born American citizen found to be cooperating with the CCP or its representatives in any way should be stripped of his or her citizenship and deported or jailed.

To defeat the CCP virus, we must quarantine all who are infected. To defeat the CCP, we must apply the same strategy.

That’s my plan to start solving the CCP problem. I welcome any better ideas.

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden pauses while speaking at the SEIU Unions for All Summit in Los Angeles, Calif., on Oct. 4, 2019. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

While the nation is preoccupied with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, American “former” Maoists are trying to choose Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s running mate for him.

San Francisco lawyer Steve Phillips and his long-time collaborator Aimee Allison are pushing for a “woman of color” to round out Biden’s presidential ticket. More than that, Phillips and Allison are promoting a shortlist that consists entirely of radicals with direct ties to their own socialist clique.

At Stanford University for most of the 1980s, Phillips was a proud Marxist-Leninist and supporter of the pro-CCP League of Revolutionary Struggle. After finally leaving school, Phillips married into the mega-wealthy Sandler family of San Francisco and their $2.6 billion fortune. Phillips has used that wealth and influence to back far-left “candidates of color” for positions of high office through his organization’s PowerPAC and Democracy in Color. He is also a leader of the Democracy Alliance, a semi-secret cabal of the leftist mega-rich, which includes financier George Soros and former presidential candidate Tom Steyer.

Allison was a friend of Phillips at Stanford and was active in the same Maoist circles. She has worked closely with Phillips in PowerPAC and Democracy in Color, and now in the closely affiliated “She the People”—specifically established to elect hard-left “women of color” to high public office.

In 2008, Phillips raised an early $10 million to help Barack Obama get ahead of Hillary Clinton in that year’s presidential primaries.

In 2013, Phillips raised several million to elect his old Stanford classmate Cory Booker to the U.S. Senate from New Jersey. He also helped elect another close friend, Kamala Harris, first as California attorney general in 2010 and then to the U.S. Senate in 2016.

In 2018, Phillips heavily backed two long-time proteges and former PowerPAC+ board members Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum for the governorships of Georgia and Florida, respectively. Both lost by a whisker. Abrams and Gillum both worked closely with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and pro-China front groups such as Liberation Road and the New Florida Majority during their campaigns.

Phillips backed Booker in the latest presidential primary, but he failed to fire. His other hope, Kamala Harris (who I believed would be the Democratic candidate), also failed to perform.

So now Phillips and Allison are trying for a second bite at the cherry. They’re promoting the line that Biden must choose a “woman of color” for his running mate. Moreover, that candidate has to be either Abrams or Harris.

Phillips’ Democracy in Color website features an “Open Letter to Democratic Presidential Candidates: A Call for Committing to Choosing a Woman of Color as Candidate for Vice President.”

“Dear Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders.

“Here is a fact: the Democratic Party needs the leadership, vision, and expertise of women and people of color now more than ever. While you cannot change who you are, you can show us who you value by committing to choose a woman of color as your running mate for Vice President.

“The majority of Democratic voters are women, and nearly half of all Democratic voters are people of color. At the intersection of those communities—which make up 77% of all Democratic voters in the last two presidential elections—women of color have a unique and critical role to play in galvanizing the entire progressive coalition. …

“We strongly urge you to show the leadership this moment demands by publicly committing today to pick a woman of color to serve as your Vice President.”

The letter was co-signed by Phillips-affiliated groups She the People, PowerPAC+, Southern Elections Fund, and The Collective PAC, and the Abrams-linked New Georgia Project Action Fund.

Other groups signing on were Higher Heights for America, Indivisible, Latino Victory Project, and two fronts for the pro-China communist group Liberation Road—the New Florida Majority and the New Virginia Majority—plus the Communist Party USA-influenced Texas Organizing Project.

Phillips contributed a March 16 op-ed to The Nation, in which he laid out his instructions for Joe Biden:

“After months of dancing around the issue of diversifying the Democratic ticket, the remaining viable candidates finally got more specific on Sunday, with Joe Biden firmly pledging to choose a woman as his running mate, and Bernie Sanders saying that ‘in all likelihood’ he would follow suit.

“What neither of these septuagenarian white men could bring themselves to do, however, was to say that that woman would be a person of color.”

Phillips, of course, knows exactly what “people of color” want—because his friend Aimee Allison and her She the People group told him so:

“People of color are also eager to see a Democratic ticket that reflects electoral reality. As my research has found, nearly half of Democratic voters are people of color; it is certainly relevant that the last time the Democrats won the White House was when an African American topped the ticket. Groups such as She the People, a national network of women of color in politics, have crystallized the demands for gender and racial diversity into a call for a woman of color as the vice presidential nominee.”

Then Phillips rolled out the “facts” to bolster his argument:

“The math of the moment lends empirical support to choosing a woman of color. The 2008 exit polls showed that it was women who made Barack Obama president, with 56 percent voting for him. My research has found that 46 percent of his coalition consisted of people of color; just 23 percent of Obama voters that year were white men.

“Clinton was defeated in 2016 in part because of two key shortcomings: a dramatic drop-off in black voter turnout (the first decline in 20 years) and the fact that a meaningful number of white women decided to give Trump a chance. As the Democrats seek to unseat Trump, a running mate who appeals to women and inspires voters of color seems like the obvious electoral strategy to pursue.”

Then Phillips gives Biden his list of approved candidates—with his proteges Abrams and Harris right at the top:

“The list of women of color who could strengthen a Biden or Sanders ticket is long and impressive. Stacey Abrams received more votes statewide than any Democrat had before during her gubernatorial run in Georgia, and was popular with young voters. As a 40-something leader tapped into popular culture, she could help Biden with the youth vote that he has failed to excite. Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley, Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham are some of the other talented women of color who could significantly enhance the Democratic ticket this year.”

Ayanna Pressley has a history with Liberation Road and the DSA. Michelle Lujan Grisham benefited from Phillips/PowerPAC+ support in the 2014 election cycle.

But really, Phillips is just using Pressley, Lujan Grisham, and Duckworth for camouflage. It’s Abrams or Harris that he really wants. 

Aimee Allison was equally explicit in a March 11 article in Newsweek:

“Only a historic increase in the number of voters of color, especially women of color, will deliver the swing states that Democrats must carry to win. This is what we saw in 2018 when Democrats took back the House of Representatives with a 37 percent rise in turnout among women of color from the 2014 midterms. This is what we are hoping for in 2020.

“So how do we get there? How do we motivate voters of color and ensure that 2020 can still be a year of positive political transformation? We get there with a woman of color vice president on the Democratic ticket. …

“Women of color have the numbers to generate a Democratic victory—if we show up at the polls. In swing states across the country, women of color dominate Democratic voter rolls. We are a third of Democratic voters in Florida, North Carolina, and Texas. In Georgia, we’re 44 percent. For us to show up as we did in 2018, we need Democrats to prove that they still care about us, see us and value us. …

“Women of color are already leaders in statewide and local organizations that register and turn out communities of color and white progressives alike. In 2018, high turnout from women of color flipped seats and secured the House for Democrats. Candidates like Lucy McBath in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District flipped seats that white male Democrats previously spent millions to lose. Meanwhile, candidates like Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez inspired millions of voters beyond the borders of their own districts—even crossing over into pop culture—with their history-making races and bold leadership.

“Let’s keep the strategy that led us to victory in 2018. A shortlist of vice presidential candidates can begin with Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris and Deb Haaland. Any one of these extraordinary leaders would genuinely excite women of color voters.”

Deb Haaland is a Native American congresswoman from New Mexico with close ties to Allison and She the People. Haaland is also close to the Communist Party USA’s main Native American organizer Judith LeBlanc. But again, she’s just camouflage for Abrams and Harris.

The efforts of Phillips and Allison should not be dismissed or under-emphasized. These people helped their friend Barack Obama to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary. They helped elect Senators Cory Booker in New Jersey, Kamala Harris in California, Mazie Hirono in Hawaii, and Doug Jones in Alabama.

They almost elected far-left governors in Georgia and Florida in 2018.

Phillips and Allison have access to huge amounts of money and extensive networks inside the Democracy Alliance, Democratic Party, and the U.S. far left. They have a track record of electing their friends and comrades to high public office.

To those who believe in socialism and identity politics, rather than the Constitution and individual liberty, they also have a certain logic on their side.

The Democrats are almost certainly going to run with Joe Biden. The next question is, will Abrams or Harris stand at his side? Or, even more likely, behind him pointing him toward the audience and whispering in his ear what to say next and when to stop talking.

If Biden wins, Phillips and Allison will not just choose his running mate — they will effectively be deciding your president.