Brian Kennedy evaluates China’s grand strategy

Brian Kennedy, the Chairman of The Committee on the Present Danger: China, joins Secure Freedom Radio to explain how China engages, exploits and subverts America for the purposes of strengthening their own interests.

“China is going to pursue their strategic interests. They know that we are a democratic republic. They know they can influence public opinion here, they know they can influence elite opinion. For the better part of forty years, they have been working hard to manipulate public opinion about them. The main things they want to try to influence include the idea that we should be cooperative with them when it comes to economic growth, that their economic growth is good for the US, and that if they become more economically free they become more politically free. Therefore, openness, engagement- all of these things were going to be good for both the US and for China. This has been the message China has sold to American policy makers, on college campuses, among the economic and political elites of this country, etc.

China also wants to present to the world that they are no military threat, that they are entirely inward looking, and that they just want to make China a better place and have no interest looking abroad for building any kind of empire, the way we often thought of during the Cold War. China has literally spent billions and billions of dollars on propaganda and influence campaigns here in the US. They have nurtured this notion that we ought to simply keep on engaging with China, and that even though they steal our intellectual property and even though they have forced technology transfers and even though American corporations and businesses cannot have access to Chinese markets, that this is still benefitting, somehow, the American people and the world.

So, when you think about their economic warfare, it is built around this notion of an influence operation to try to persuade Americans that even though we are witnessing American jobs leaving, it’s okay because in the long run it will be great for us. A piece of their economic warfare is to engage in the theft of intellectual property, unfair trade practices, etc., while at the same time having this elaborate and sophisticated influence operation so that Americans don’t quite understand what’s going on.”

Listen to the full interview here