‘Committee on the Present Danger: China’ Threat Briefing Illuminates Recent Developments, Emerging Dangers

***PRESS RELEASE***

For Immediate Release

July 22, 2019

CONTACT: Hamilton Strategies, [email protected], Patrick Benner, 610.584.1096, ext. 104, or Deborah Hamilton, ext. 102

‘Committee on the Present Danger: China’ Threat Briefing Illuminates Recent Developments, Emerging Dangers

Former Senior Officials, Other Experts Address Hong Kong, Taiwan, Huawei, Chinese Medicines, Capital Markets and ‘Engagement’

WASHINGTON — On 18 July, the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC) conducted its seventh Threat Briefing, providing timely updates on several previously addressed topics and assessments of recent, ominous developments involving the present and growing danger posed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The program featured the following speakers and topics:

· The Committee’s Vice Chairman, Frank Gaffney, served as the program’s master of ceremonies. He also provided a response [hyperlink] to an Open Letter attacking President Trump’s approach to Communist China issued on July 3rd by 100 proponents of the policies that have enabled the threat posed by the CCP to metastasize. Mr. Gaffney described as insane the Engagers’ idea that persisting in the clearly failed practice of “engagement” with the PRC will produce better results in the future.

· Kyle Bass, a founding CPDC Member and Chief Investment Officer of Hayman Capital Management, spoke about the leverage the United States and other Western nations have to deter and, if necessary, punish a Tiananmen Square-style assault on Hong Kong: the ability to withdraw the Most Favored Nation status that greatly benefits not only the former British colony, but also the Chinese mainland.

· John Mills, a CPDC Member who formerly served as an Air Force Special Operator and a past Director of Cybersecurity Policy, Strategy, and International Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, discussed the U.S. statute that obligates the United States to help Taiwan preserve its security and freedom. In addition, he addressed the sorts of steps that should be taken now to fulfill that moral, as well as strategic, responsibility.

· Rosemary Gibson, a CPDC Member and Senior Advisor at the Hastings Center and Author, China Rx, gave a chilling presentation on America’s perilous dependence on Chinese manufactured medicines, including antibiotics, penicillin and Vitamin C. She warned that if the CCP decides to cut off supplies of such necessities of life, the repercussions could be disastrous for public health, the economy and national security. She also recommended corrective actions that the U.S. government and private sector must begin taking immediately.

· Roger Robinson, former Senior Director for International Economic Affairs on the Reagan National Security Council and founder and chairman of the Prague Security Studies Institute, laid out how U.S. and Western capital markets are helping to underwriting the CCP’s threats to America and the world. He described a number of Chinese companies who are engaged in human rights abuses, technology theft, illegal island-building in the South China Sea and other military-related activities inimical to our national security interests. Yet, their stocks and/or debt are, nonetheless now being held by large pension funds and other institutional investors in this country – and, therefore, in the portfolios of an ever-increasing number of individual Americans – without the sorts of disclosure and transparency required of U.S. enterprises. This is a formula for recruiting an ever-increasing “China Lobby” and propping up an ever-more-dangerous CCP.

· Chet Nagle, a founding CPDC member and a former naval aviator, Defense Department official and Director of the 2000s-era Committee on the Present Danger, spoke about the necessity of preventing the “Digital Imperialism” being pursued by the CCP/d.b.a. a telecommunications conglomerate called Huawei. He described the divisions within the U.S. government on whether and how to continue selling U.S. technology to or otherwise strengthening Huawei. He also established the imperative need not to do so.

· Capt. James Fanell, USN (Ret.), former Director for Intelligence, U.S. Pacific Fleet, described how China is using various means to penetrate Europe and subvert America’s alliance relationships with its nations. In addition to Huawei’s aggressive marketing of a prime tool for these purposes – its 5G (which might, more accurately be described as 5-Xi) networks and equipment, China recently sent armored military equipment to the heart of the European continent as part of a training exercise with Germany. The CCP and its People’s Liberation Army are thus being afforded an opportunity to develop and hone its power-projection capabilities in areas far removed from the PRC.

· In keeping with the Committee on the Present Danger: China’s focus on both elevating problems and recommending solutions, Dr. Anders Corr, the Co-editor of Great Powers, Grand Strategies: The New Game in the South China Sea and publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, briefly outlined five strategies for defeating the CCP’s ambitions. They are summarized in five words – defend, ally, divide, contain and democratize – each of which are explained in greater detail here.

Video of the Committee on the Present Danger: China’s seventh Threat Briefing is posted, together with those of all of the CPDC’s other events at its website, www.PresentDangerChina.org.

The CPDC’s mission statement:

The mission of the “Committee on the Present Danger: China” is to help defend America through public education and advocacy against the full array of conventional and non-conventional dangers posed by the People’s Republic of China. As with the Soviet Union in the past, Communist China represents an existential and ideological threat to the United States and to the idea of freedom—one that requires a new American consensus regarding the policies and priorities required to defeat this threat. And for this purpose, it is necessary to bring to bear the collective skills, expertise and energies of a diverse group of experts on China, national security practitioners, human rights and religious freedom activists and others who have joined forces under the umbrella of the “Committee on Present Danger: China.”

Founding members of the Committee on the Present Danger: China include: Brian Kennedy, chairman; Frank Gaffney, vice chairman; R. James Woolsey; Kyle Bass; Dr. William Bennett; Steve Bannon; Kyle Bass; Mark Helprin; Pastor Bob Fu; Kevin Freeman; Dr. Peter Pry; Dr. Sasha Gong; LTG William Boykin; Hon. Ed Timperlake; Dr. Mark Schneider; Richard Fisher; Amb. Hank Cooper; Lianchao Han; Dr. Michael Waller; Capt. James Fanell, USN (Ret.); Col./Dr. Lawrence Sellin, USA (Ret.); Dr. Stephen Mosher; and Dr. Bradley Thayer. The full CPDC membership roster can be found here.

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To interview a ‘Committee on the Present Danger: China’ representative, contact [email protected], Patrick Benner, 610.584.1096, ext. 104, or Deborah Hamilton, ext. 102.