Right here is the next ‘mammoth thing’ the US has to maintain with China, educated says

The house Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to mark up and pass a bipartisan bill today which calls on bite dance to divest of Tik Tock or if not divest risk the US Banning it from App Stores here's what the Biden Administration said about it yesterday watch we welcome the welcome the steps that they've taken obviously you still.

Needs some work obviously we're providing technical support and once it gets to a place where we think to your point it's on legal standing and it's in a place where it can uh get out of the Congress then the president would sign but it needs we need to continue to work on it obviously meanwhile the president is still using Tik Tock for campaigning.

Jo me right now is hudston Institute senior fellow Atlas organization founder and the author of China's vision of Victory Jonathan DT Ward Jonathan good to see you thanks very much for being here uh your new book the decisive decade uh talks about what the United States should be doing in terms of uh addressing this incredible threat of.

Communist China uh in terms of Tik Tock how how uh dangerous do you see it and what about the hypocrisy of saying it's dangerous and yet this Administration is using it to reach young people during this campaign season well look I mean I think we know what Tik Tock is I mean nothing has been more extensively discussed by government.

By um you know sort of the the right sort of research institutes by um really the whole world now and we know what it is it's been banned by federal government it's been banned even by contractors to federal government um you know Cong profal members have called it malware which I think is accurate you know reporting from everywhere from.

Human Rights Watch to you know major reports from um from Australia and around the world have told us what Tik Tock is and it's just time to act on this um I mean I think Congress wrote a good bill it's got bipartisan support um you know the real test in my mind at this point for America I mean we're dealing with this Global uh Grand.

Strategy of the Chinese Communist party but if we're unable to Simply execute the important stuff right here in front of us um you know what kind of future have we really got in this grander contest and you know something like Tik Tock the problem as I've always said on your show Maria the problem is bite dance and you know that's where Congress.

Is going I mean bite dance is known to be at the very center at the heart of China's own surveillance um system you know the human rights abuses that they have undertaken have everything to do with um domestic roundups of dissent to suppression in Hong Kong um you know and and their Partnerships with all sorts of um other Chinese companies that are um.

You really constitute the the Chinese surveillance States and human rights um abuses and atrocities so that entire system that the world is aware of you know bite dance is part of that it's here and we need to get rid of it um so you know Congress has put something here that I think uh would move that forward and and you know another side to this of.

Course is the aggressive lobbying um and uh marketing campaigns Ian we see it every night we see it during um presidential debates we're probably going to see it tonight on the State of the Union there'll be Tik Tock ads I mean America's seen them everywhere so you know there was something else that I thought was interesting recently where.

Congressional members said that they would close the doors to any lobbying firms you know major lobbying firms um that were working with Chinese companies and a lot of those companies were you know things like DJI the drone company or um you know ones in the biotech sector but yeah does that does that include Tony pesta I wonder if that.

Includes Tony podesta's firm which is firm joh is a major American operation going on and I think that's something that that people need to focus on I want to get your take on this don't invest in China says Goldman sachs's wealth management CIO this was just this week the chief investment officer of Goldman is saying to clients our view is that.

One should not invest in China uh you know just a bit ago you had Larry fin pushing some of these Chinese stocks and finally now it looks like Goldman is getting religion uh even as China blames uh its poor economy on the United States and tensions the foreign minister of China blaming the United States for making bilateral tensions worse on the.

Sidelines of China's two sessions earlier today he's accused the US of failing to fulfill promises saying America is quote obsessed with suppressing China you know that the Nationals people's Congress is underway in China this week and the premier announced that Beijing will boost its military spending by seven and a quarter.

Percent this year Jonathan he also said China is vowing to resolutely oppose separatist activities aimed at Taiwan Independence and external interference I spoke with the state department uh former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortegas yesterday she was here on this program discussing the national uh uh progress uh underway right now in.

China watch this we don't believe dictators when they say what they're going to do right whether it's Putin clearly saying that he's going to invade Ukraine and the administration missed all the warning signs the same thing with China um and and xingping speaks very bosly what came out of the party Congress is that the language that they.

Used to use on Taiwan which talked about peaceful reunification is no longer there so Xi Jinping definitely uh has his sight set on I mean he wants Taiwan like he wants his next breath Jonathan your thoughts on what's going on in the people's Congress this week in China and and also uh Wall Street whether or not this is a Tipping.

Point do you hear Goldman Sachs say China is uninvestable well look I'm glad that uh someone at Goldman is is listening I mean very important um you know bank and and if if a few of the big Banks can lead on this and really uh get a grip in terms of what their risk exposure is and and what the sort of entire risk in the.

Economic system um is that then that's going to be a major step forward I mean the next thing the next big thing we have to do is um shut down as much investment as we can into China and meanwhile tur into um the national people's Congress and wangi and the the work report by Lee Chang which I think is actually very important to read in.

Depth um you know it's essentially an update um you know it's it's sort of the kpis of China's vision of Victory I mean they are talking directly about the great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation I mean they've laid out all the industries it's sort of an update on made in China 2025 and they're talking about the Aerospace industry the.

Shipping industry you know their domination of electric vehicles and Battery markets uh their tightening of Supply chains um you know it's the work report is to explain their progress on their General um strategy and it also shows us the entire battle space I mean if you're willing and able as I've laid out in the decisive decade to take apart.

Everything they are trying to do here we still have the power to do that um I mean this this really all can be stopped um they're telling us how they go about it and um you know I think we have all the targeting measures to start slowing down their economic growth you know bringing our supply chains back and what they're going to do next is focus on.

Increasing um ESP espcially investment into advanced manufacturing um so a lot of this depends really on whether or not we're able to rebuild the US industrial base do that with our allies and ensure that China um you know sort of diminishes its share of global output I mean that's going to be very important and I thought something else that was.

Interesting was they laid out their um you know their official estimate of their GDP in 2023 and it came in at about 17.5 trillion which is um significantly less than ours so we are winning the battle for GDP and the way I see it as long as we can maintain that Delta I mean if we can get them down to about 50% of US GDP I mean they're at 65.

Now but they're starting to drop for the first time that's going to be a big difference on the other hand what they're also talking about is taking down the barriers to foreign investment in specific sectors so they want to take Market access restrictions down from manufacturing and we can't um we can't prop that up I mean we're going to have.

To pull our Capital out of it's interesting they they want to have more foreign investment meanwhile they've got their companies trading here in the US even those that are sanctions investors need to understand it's not just that you're investing in companies that are tied to the Chinese military the number one adversary of the United.

States but you're also perhaps putting yourself in a money losing situation uh the economy there has uh declined and Chinese stocks are down in 2024 given those growth targets missed expectations Jonathan uh real quick before you so how bad is the Chinese economy right now do you think do you think people have a clear picture of how bad it is very very.

Quickly Jonathan we got to jump yeah I I think it's bad I mean I think they're headed into a structural crisis but a lot of that depends on our willingness to to absorb their exports and you know participate in their next strategy which is they they've been upfront in the work report about lack of domestic demand and lack of external demand but we can't.

Give them that I mean it's really our markets that that are going to drive their their salvation they are in the United States the the deepest and most liquid Capital markets in the world Jonathan thank you Jonathan DT Ward on China we'll be right back

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