“A California woman was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Oct. 4 on a charge of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government,” reportsThe Epoch Times. “The woman is accused of surveilling Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s U.S.-based son.”
Foreigners spying on Americans, and on other foreigners on American soil, goes back at least to 1798, when the Adams Administration kicked Constantin François Chassebœuf — that is, Volney, author of The Ruins (1791) — out of the country.
But it’s not just spying. “A Bronx man was convicted of the same charge in May, accused of operating a Chinese undercover police station in New York City for China’s Ministry of Public Security.” The Epoch Times’s article calls it “transnational repression.”
These “police stations” are all over the place. Four years ago, I quoted one source saying that there were at least “54 of these Chinese ‘service stations’ in 30 countries . . . including one in New York City.” While this all technically follows under the rubric of “rendition,” these fake cops don’t usually “arrest” and transport targets as prisoners. Instead, they threaten harm, often to relatives back home.
The Epoch Times quotes Attorney General Todd Blanche, who says the Department of Justice will keep investigating “as long as the conduct persists.” The AG admits, however, that it’s “hard to catch because once you catch one, there’s a lot of others.”
The problem, Blanche says, is not the lack of existing laws to counter transnational repression, but that there is just so much of it and it is inherently hard to sort out.
But worth the attempt, surely . . . if America is to continue to be the “land of the free” and a refuge for dissidents fleeing totalitarianism.
Back in 2019, I spent a beautiful September Sunday afternoon in Hong Kong…marching against totalitarianism…and getting tear-gassed.
For months, I had followed the protests against legislation introduced in Hong Kong that would allow authorities in Beijing to extradite Hongkongers from their own then-respected legal system into Beijing’s always abysmal and wicked black hole. Protests began with a March 15 sit-in at government headquarters followed by a June 9 rally attended by “hundreds of thousands.”
And then the protest continued for weeks. For months. They turned out to be “the largest series of demonstrations in the history of Hong Kong.” As many as one in four residents are estimated to have participated.
By agreement with Great Britain, China had recognized a different system in Hong Kong for 50 years after the 1997 “handover,” under “one country/two systems”—one system based on free speech, rule of law, civil rights, the other on…the opposite. China merely had to wait to inflict its fascistic totalitarian system…until 2047.
But the Chinazis couldn’t wait. I say “Chinazis”; it was at this march in Hong Kong that I first saw and heard that epithet.
And it fit. Because while hanging on to many stupid totalitarian aspects of communism, the CCP long ago instituted a much more fascist, mercantilist economic system. With some freedom to make money. Money is universally good, apparently.
Jack boots and tiger chairs and concentration camps are now only there if anybody forgets who is in charge. Or the CCP says so.
I had seen posters about a Global March Against Totalitarianism being held today. Hey, that I’m very much against. You?
But where was it going to be? I knew next to zero about the city.
And when? After all, I had a flight leaving Hong Kong in the early evening, headed to Taiwan for the 2019 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy being held in Taichung.
Somehow, watching young people and conversely observing police, I stumbled upon the march. Moments later I was handed a poster of Tankman from June 4, 1989, with the words: “CCP Evil Dictatorship Party.”
As I walked, a sense of peace came over me and I felt deeply honored to be with these heroes, mostly young people but of all ages, standing up to the largest evil on our Earth today. With their frail bodies. And gas masks. And their powerful goodness.
On September 29, as I marched, the Extradition Bill had still not been withdrawn. Chief Executive Carrie Lam, Beijing’s puppet, would not fully remove it until October 23.
I respect protesters who clearly state their demands for change, as did these Hong Kong protesters. Often chanting: “Five demands! Not one less!”
Five Demands of Hong Kong Protests
Complete withdrawal of the extradition bill from the legislative process.
Retraction of the “riot” characterization for protests.
Release and exoneration of arrested protesters.
Establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into police conduct and use of force during the protests.
Resignation of Carrie Lam and the implementation of universal suffrage for Legislative Council elections and for the election of the chief executive.
As afternoon shadows loomed longer, I had to grab my luggage and get to the airport for my flight. I walked back against the line of marchers for quite some time, until I entered an intersection without many protesters and with riot police standing across the street from me.
Moments later tear gas canisters were hitting all around me and gas was spraying out — oops! I’m not really prepared.
But I held my breath and ran to get away from the gas. My eyes burned like someone had hit them with a chemical agent, don’t you know! Luckily, I had a bottle of water and poured that into my eyes.
The few protesters who were around rushed to help me, telling me to “breathe,” in English, and providing yet more H2O for my pulsating pupils.
I rushed to get back to the hotel and then to the airport; wearing a very wet t-shirt I made my flight to Taipei.
But those Hong Kong protesters stay with me. The best people on the planet. Against the brutal and powerful CCP, they knew they stood little chance to prevail. But they refused to go down without speaking out, standing up and fighting back against the death of their freedom.
In November 2019, after months of protest and increasing violence in response to systematic police brutality, there were local elections in Hong Kong, where voters could express their views. The dramatic results showed Xi Jinping and the CCP just how infinitesimal their support was among Hongkongers.
“Pro-democracy candidates won almost 90 per cent of seats in local elections,” reported the BBC. “The result is being seen as an outright rejection of Carrie Lam’s leadership and a huge show of support for the anti-Beijing protests that have been going on for months.
“The Chinese government has responded to the landslide victory for pro-democracy candidates in the Hong Kong elections by emphasising that the city will always be ruled from Beijing,” the BBC noted, “and has warned against further protests.”
There were further protests, but soon COVID-19 would serve the CCP’s sinister interests by clearing the streets and undercutting the protest movement. Beijing, realizing they had no support in Hong Kong, decided on a total clampdown and passed a National Security Law — not through the Hong Kong legislature but in Beijing, with zero input from Hong Kong.
That law has murdered all political rights in one of the world’s most wonderful cities. Some day, let us hope and pray, Hongkongers will again be free.
Reprinted from StoptheCCP.org September 29, 2023. Stay tuned for an update, this weekend, on what’s happened since.
Chinese ruler Xi Jinping landed in Washington, DC, yesterday, to meet with President Donald Trump.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
I pray President Trump understands this foe: Mr. Xi, and more generally, the Chinese Communist Party . . . enemies to all freedom-loving people across the globe. China is engaged in the largest military build-up since World War II, if not of all time. It is a threat on the march.
Taiwan comes first to mind. China regularly threatens to invade the island nation, which has blossomed into Asia’s most free and democratic country, as well as a driver of the global high-tech economy, producing over 90 percent of the world’s high-end computer chips.
While the People’s Liberation Army circles the island in nearly constant military exercises, launches cyberattacks, and a range of gray-zone dirty tricks attempting to strong-arm the Taiwanese into joining their one big, happy commie family, Mr. Trump has held up a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan for months, suggesting it could be a useful bargaining chip with Xi.
“President Trump has sold more arms to Taiwan than any other president,” replied Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) when questioned. But he added, “It’s important to note that China’s aggression — whether it’s toward Japan or the Philippines or toward Taiwan — is really creating the instability. We have a responsibility to help Taiwan defend itself.”
China also continues to bully Philippine ships in Philippine waters of the South China Sea, just recently again causing injuries. The United States, a treaty ally of the Philippines, is committed to its military defense in the event of a Chinese attack.
And the Chinese are constantly attacking.
The Wall Street Journal just reported that China is funding the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are “rattling the global energy trade” by attacking Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. Part of a strategy to undermine the lawful international order.
There’s much more, but to sum up, Xi’s CCP is the biggest enemy to peace and freedom in the world. Mr. President, please act accordingly.
In all the talk of America First — and of the United States as the indispensable nation — we Americans sometimes forget this doesn’t mean “America Alone.”
“Ultimately, a strong, resolute, and capable network of allies and partners is our key strategic advantage,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently informed the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. “China envies what we have together. And it sees what we can collectively bring to bear on defense.”
Hegseth was speaking directly to Indo-Pacific allies, whom he reminded: “it’s up to all of us to ensure that we live up to that potential by investing” to “quickly upgrade [our] own defenses.”
Our alliances of free nations in Europe and Asia constitute a huge edge against a bullying, totalitarian China.
My entire life, these past six decades, Big Daddy America was by far the biggest, best military on the block. Still is the best. But it’s no longer the biggest: China now has a bigger navy, much greater shipbuilding capacity, and many more soldiers in uniform. Technological and other strategic advantages have been diminished as well.
The defense secretary acknowledged that — after “a lot of ongoing conversations with our military leadership in the Indo-Pacific” — “there is something to be said for the fact that China calculates the possibility and does not appreciate the presence of other countries . . . as part of the dynamics or decision-making process, and, if that is reflected in their calculus, then that’s useful.”
We cannot afford to squander our “ally advantage.” We need each other.
“Shen Yun Performing Arts completed its 18th global tour earlier this month,” a May 24th press release informs, “a historic run of 799 shows in 199 cities in 26 countries in front of over a million people.”
This notice, entitled “Triumphant 2025 Shen Yun Season Concludes,” may look like the usual glowing corporate self-congratulatory exercise in unwarranted hype. But it isn’t. “Shen Yun’s eight touring groups and hundreds of performers overcame tornadoes and fires as well as sabotage attempts from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its allies. And yet, not a single performance was missed.”
That is an accomplishment, indeed, for the theater troupe did face back-room political pressure from that great foe of freedom, the CCP.
I had seen several news reports of their troubles. It took a court order, for example, to enforce a venue contract with South Korea’s Kangwon National University. University officials had “greenlit the New York classical Chinese dance company’s application to perform at its Baekryeong Art Center on April 1,” explainsThe Epoch Times, “only to walk back on the agreement after the Chinese embassy voiced a complaint.”
The university “stated that its decision to cancel the show had to do with the public interests of the school,” of course. But while“escalating the matter into a ‘diplomatic issue’” obviously loomed large, the center also mentioned the danger from “the roughly 500 Chinese-national students studying at the center who it claimed could stage protests, potentially leading to clashes, should the performance go on as scheduled.”
The Shen Yun Performing Arts organization is made up of many artists who have fled communist China. The communists in China do not like defectors, and their reach is alarming.
Retired Chinese soccer superstar Hao Haidong “stunned his country,” The Washington Postreported last week, “after he called for the downfall of the ruling Communist Party and the formation of a new government.”
Certainly, Hao — “the Chinese national team’s all-time top goal scorer and an idol in the 1990s and early 2000s” — startled the country’s rulers, not to mention their multitudes of censors. Hard to say, however, how much information reached the average citizen before silence was enforced.
“The Communist Party’s totalitarian rule in China has caused horrific atrocities against humanity,” the expatriate declared in a YouTube video released on the 31st anniversary of China’s brutal Tiananmen Square massacre.
The Butchers of Beijing are a tad sensitive about that.
Working with “fugitive billionaire Guo Wengui, one of the Chinese government’s most reviled opponents,”* Hao and his wife, Ye Zhaoying, once an Olympic medalist and badminton champion, offered that their dangerous stand against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was “the biggest and most correct decision in our lives.”
“It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented,” noted CNN, “for a successful Chinese sports star to unleash such a blistering public denunciation of the Communist Party and openly call for its downfall.” Adding, of course, that, “Dissidents who publicly criticize the party or demand democratic reforms often face lengthy prison sentences.”
Though China blocks YouTube, news of Hao saying the CCP should be “kicked out of humanity” was spreading on Chinese social media. Hao’s account has since been deleted.
“Hao Haidong has made a speech that subverts the government and harms national sovereignty and uses the coronavirus epidemic to smear the Chinese government and spread falsehoods about Hong Kong,” said a statement by a popular sports website. “We strongly condemn this behavior.”
Soon, the statement replaced Hao’s name with only the Roman letter “H.” Hours later, the entire statement and all mention of the incident had been erased. Poof!
“Within 24 hours,” The Post disclosed, “Hao’s name had become the most heavily censored term on Weibo.”
It didn’t stop there. “Following his father Hao Haidong’s public criticism of the Chinese Communist Party,” informedTaiwan News, “Chinese soccer player Hao Runze has reportedly been released by his Serbian team due to heavy pressure from Beijing.”
The firing came “after an impressive debut performance,” in which the young Hao scored a goal. So “all Chinese news agencies have now removed any mention of the young rookie.”
This is the dystopian world with which 1.4 billion Chinese are stuck.
For now.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Billionaire Guo Wengui has hired former Trump advisor Steve Bannon to assist in the effort.
