National Security Threat: China's Eyes in America

by Peter Schweizer
September 12, 2022 at 5:00 am

 https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18885/china-drones-dji-spying

• The Chinese company DJI controls nearly 90% of the world market for consumer and commercial grade drones.

• The excellent reporting on DJI by Kitchen tracks efforts by the company to lobby against passage of a bill called the American Security Drone Act (ASDA), now before Congress, to outlaw federal government use of DJI products entirely. What is the risk? Not only the data gathered by the drones themselves, but everything collected by the mobile app with which users control their drones and manage their DJI accounts. Like many other mobile applications, this includes a user's contacts, photos, GPS location, and online activities.

• Every DJI drone in the skies above America is as good as a hovering Chinese spy.

• DJI is engaged in a fierce lobbying effort to prevent passage of the ASDA bill. So fierce that they have enlisted police officers from local jurisdictions to come to Washington and lobby congressional staffers about how great DJI drones are for their cash-strapped local forces.... DJI lobbyists from firms like Squire Patton Boggs, Cassidy & Associates, and CLS Strategies are taking no chances. The company spent $2.2 million in lobbying efforts in 2020 and $1.4 million last year on lobbying activities, according to OpenSecrets.org.

• Much as they are doing with products such as solar panels, the Chinese realize that cornering the market in an area where reach equals access is critical to their long-term plans to dominate. Their pattern includes stealing technology they cannot create themselves and using any means available to aid in that theft. Therefore, every bit of access to information they can scour is of more value to them than the product used to get it.

• Understanding these patterns is central to recognizing that the Chinese do this to their own people as well.... [through] many different forms of what we may baldly call blackmail.

• The Wilson Center, a bipartisan think tank in Washington, reported in 2017 that a small community of PRC students and diplomats have engaged in intimidation tactics ranging from intelligence gathering to financial retaliation... It was just those sorts of concerns that led the Trump administration to create the "China Initiative" within the Justice Department in 2018. This effort generated plenty of convictions of Chinese nationals in the US for technology theft and other forms of industrial espionage. The Biden administration ended the program this year....

• China's strategy has for years hinged on infiltration by some Chinese scientists and researchers working abroad in the US and other western nations, with threats against their Chinese relatives as leverage for them to do so.

The consumer and commercial grade drones made by the Chinese company DJI account for nearly 90% of the market. These popular products are cost-effective, easy to fly and operate, and send every byte of data they gather to servers in China. Every DJI drone in the sky is as good as a hovering Chinese spy. Pictured: A police sergeant in Exeter, England pilots a DJI drone on May 25, 2021, as part of security preparations for the G7 Summit that was attended by US President Joe Biden and leaders of the other G7 countries. (Photo by Geoff Caddick/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese intelligence gathering in the US takes many forms and has different purposes. Most Americans are familiar with some of their means and tactics, but not with how widespread and persistent they are.

Americans may know about the malware contained in that infernal TikTok app that their children use. They may know the Chinese military's cyber-intelligence service was likely behind many of the largest hacks of Americans' personal data that have ever occurred. They may know from the news how US defense and intelligence policy have sanctioned Chinese telecom giant Huawei, and counseled America's allies to reject Chinese-architected implementations of 5G networking, due to evidence that China has planted backdoors in commercial networking equipment designed to allow the Communist regime in Beijing to conduct surveillance and cyber-espionage anywhere in the world.

Do they know it extends to consumer-level drones?

Cybersecurity expert Klon Kitchen, writing for The Dispatch, recently detailed the problem with DJI, the Chinese company whose consumer and commercial grade drones control nearly 90% of the market. These popular products are cost-effective, easy to fly and operate, and send every byte of data they gather to servers in China. For this reason, they are banned by the US military and Department of Homeland Security, though still used by the FBI and increasingly by local police as "eyes in the sky" during crime events. FBI use of DJI drones is especially ironic considering bureau director Christopher Wray has warned often of the dangers to western commerce posed by the Chinese, most recently in London.

The excellent reporting on DJI by Kitchen tracks efforts by the company to lobby against passage of a bill called the American Security Drone Act (ASDA), now before Congress, to outlaw federal government use of DJI products entirely. What is the risk? Not only the data gathered by the drones themselves, but everything collected by the mobile app with which users control their drones and manage their DJI accounts. Like many other mobile applications, this includes a user's contacts, photos, GPS location, and online activities.

To repeat: Every DJI drone in the skies above America is as good as a hovering Chinese spy.

Like other Chinese government-controlled companies such as Huawei and Hikvision, makers of the artificial intelligence systems used in facial recognition and in the repression of China's Uyghur minority, DJI is adept at playing the Washington game. The company is engaged in a fierce lobbying effort to prevent passage of the ASDA bill. So fierce that they have enlisted police officers from local jurisdictions to come to Washington and lobby congressional staffers about how great DJI drones are for their cash-strapped local forces. As Kitchen points out, the ASDA bill is directed only towards a federal ban on these drones, but DJI lobbyists from firms like Squire Patton Boggs, Cassidy & Associates, and CLS Strategies are taking no chances. The company spent $2.2 million in lobbying efforts in 2020 and $1.4 million last year on lobbying activities, according to OpenSecrets.org.

These lobbyists are using the classic argument that it would be wrong to ban the federal government's use of our product because so many other people are using it. This is doubtless the dilemma currently facing the app stores of Apple and Google regarding the TikTok app, another Chinese product. The TikTok app has been identified by cybersecurity professionals as containing a keystroke logger, and both Apple and Google have been pressured by the Federal Communications Commission to remove it from their app stores. "Can we really ban something that so many people are happily using?" they must be asking themselves.

Therein lies the heart of the Chinese approach. TikTok was a mobile device application that no one was asking for, yet it became an overnight sensation in most western countries. We really must acknowledge, and grudgingly admire, the brilliant insight shown by the app's creator company, Chinese-government-controlled ByteDance, into the psyche of large numbers of young, western people. The TikTok app, pitched initially as a way to share and watch silly dance video clips, has been adopted by younger "woke" schoolteachers to "out" themselves as scheming, haranguing social justice warriors intent on smuggling sexual ideology into their classrooms and bragging about it.

This adds some context to Republican Sen. Rob Portman's (R-OH) exasperation at a Senate hearing about the ASDA legislation, where he said:

"Again, given what the FBI has told us, what the Commerce Department has told us, what we know from reports, I can't believe we have to write legislation to force US agencies to ban the use of Chinese-made drones, particularly where the servers are in China, where the Chinese government is a part owner and a supporter of this particular company."

The Chinese approach is to "capture" elite institutions and individuals in the US: politicians, leading universities, large pension funds, social media, and Hollywood among them. My latest book, Red Handed, documents this capture in the areas of politics, diplomatic and business consulting, Big Tech, academia, and on Wall Street. There is insight in the Soviet-era statement, attributed to Lenin, about capitalists "selling us the rope with which to hang them." Yet, it is the Chinese that understood how to sell the rope at a good price.

Much as they are doing with products such as solar panels, the Chinese realize that cornering the market in an area where reach equals access is critical to their long-term plans to dominate. Their pattern includes stealing technology they cannot create themselves and using any means available to aid in that theft. Therefore, every bit of access to information they can scour is of more value to them than the product used to get it.

Understanding these patterns is crucial to recognizing that the Chinese do this to their own people as well. As Gordon Chang's recent piece for the Gatestone Institute discusses, the Chinese Communist Party maintains tight control of Chinese people overseas through many different forms of what we may baldly call blackmail. The many stories of intimidation of Chinese students and academics in the US who speak up about human rights abuses by China, or in support for democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwanese independence, all demonstrate this.

Universities have put up with this in exchange for foreign funds for decades. They are only recently being confronted by the costs of this indulgence. For example, the former chairman of Harvard University's Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department was convicted by a federal jury for lying to federal authorities about his affiliation with the People's Republic of China's Thousand Talents Program and the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in Wuhan, China, as well as failing to report income he received from WUT.

The Wilson Center, a bipartisan think tank in Washington, reported in 2017 that a small community of PRC students and diplomats have engaged in intimidation tactics ranging from intelligence gathering to financial retaliation. "A Preliminary Study of PRC Political Influence and Interference Activities in American Higher Education" examines PRC influence in American universities.

It was just those sorts of concerns that led the Trump administration to create the "China Initiative" within the Justice Department in 2018. This effort generated plenty of convictions of Chinese nationals in the US for technology theft and other forms of industrial espionage. The Biden administration ended the program this year, citing concerns that a broader approach was needed and in response to lobbying by Asian American groups that it unfairly targeted scientists with connections to China. Further, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen also said he heard concerns from the academic community that prosecutions of researchers for grant fraud and other charges was having a "chilling effect."

Be that as it may, China's strategy has for years hinged on infiltration by some Chinese scientists and researchers working abroad in the US and other western nations, with threats against their Chinese relatives as leverage for them to do so. This will remain a counter-intelligence problem regardless of what the effort to expose it is called.

It is all part of the pattern. Call it sabotage by remote control.

Peter Schweizer, President of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow and author of the new book, Red Handed: How American Elites are Helping China Win.

 

 

Iran and Russia: The New Alliance

by Judith Bergman
September 14, 2022 at 4:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18903/iran-russia-alliance

• Significantly, Russia and Iran's cooperation extends to the military and space fields, with Russia recently helping Iran to launch a new satellite into space.

• Iran's Khayyam satellite "will greatly enhance Tehran's ability to spy on military targets across the Middle East... [and give] Tehran "unprecedented capabilities, including near-continuous monitoring of sensitive facilities in Israel and the Persian Gulf." — The Washington Post, August 4, 2022.

• "Iran could share the imagery with pro-Iranian militia groups across the region, from the Houthi rebels battling Saudi-backed government forces in Yemen to Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria." — Unnamed Middle Eastern official, The Washington Post, June 10, 2021.

• "As Iran perfects its missile arsenal... alongside its growing UAV capability throughout the Middle East –being able to sync those capabilities with satellite capabilities and surveillance will only increase the lethality of the Iranian threat." — Richard Goldberg, former Iran analyst in the Trump administration's National Security Council, The Washington Post, August 4, 2022.

• Iran has also become a major developer and producer of drones.... Most recently, Iran claimed that it had developed a long-range suicide drone "designed to hit Israel's Tel Aviv, Haifa."

• Despite this acknowledged "profound threat" emanating from the mutually beneficial alliance between Russia and Iran, the Biden administration nevertheless has been making dangerous concessions to revive the nuclear deal, which would only deepen the threat and benefit not only Iran, but also Russia.

• Let us hope that the new "Iran nuclear deal," reportedly "off the table for the time being" is off the table for good.

Russia and Iran's cooperation extends to the military and space fields, with Russia recently helping Iran to launch a new satellite into space. Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi hold a meeting in Tehran on July 19, 2022. (Photo by Sergei Savostyanov/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Iran and Russia have been strengthening their alliance recently, growing it gradually to such an extent that the Wall Street Journal wrote on August 27 that the two countries were "forging tighter ties than ever," as both countries face continued international isolation.

In recent months, Russia and Iran have signed a multitude of agreements, especially in trade, oil and gas, and military cooperation.

In June, an agreement on the establishment of mutual trade centers in St. Petersburg and Tehran was signed, to generate further trade between the two countries in the sectors of energy, transportation, electronics, agriculture, food, pharmaceuticals and construction, by helping Iranian and Russian businessmen establish contacts and conduct financial transactions.

In May, Russia and Iran signed agreements on settling their trade and energy payments in their national currencies instead of the US dollar. In addition, they agreed to continue talks to connect their electronic payment systems as well as their financial messaging systems. Since then, Russia and Iran have gradually begun trading in their national currencies.

In 2021, the volume of bilateral trade between Russia and Iran increased by 81% from the previous year, rising to $3.3 billion. In January, after a two-day visit to Moscow, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that the two countries would increase trade even further.

"We agreed to remove trade barriers and boost the economic exchanges between the two countries. Currently, the level of mutual trade is not acceptable, so the two countries agreed to increase trade to $10 billion a year. The two countries can take steps to break the dominance of the dollar over monetary and banking relations and trade with the national currency."

During Raisi's visit, the two countries also signed agreements to deepen energy cooperation and in July, Russia announced that it would invest $40 billion in Iran's oil industry, Russia's largest ever investment in Iran. Russia announced the investment deal as Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting Iran for talks.

According to Iranian state news outlet IRNA, Putin and Raisi "discussed ways for expansion of bilateral relations in different areas, including energy, transit, trade exchanges and regional developments as well."

Significantly, Russia and Iran's cooperation extends to the military and space fields, with Russia recently helping Iran to launch a new satellite into space: On August 9, Russia launched Iran's new Khayyam surveillance satellite from the Baikonur space station in Kazakhstan.

The launch of the satellite is a telling example of the kind of dangers that a strengthened Russian-Iranian alliance poses to US interests.

Iran's Khayyam satellite "will greatly enhance Tehran's ability to spy on military targets across the Middle East," according to unnamed Western and Middle Eastern officials quoted by the Washington Post. The satellite's high-resolution camera apparently gives Tehran "unprecedented capabilities, including near-continuous monitoring of sensitive facilities in Israel and the Persian Gulf."

Iran will also be able to "task" the new satellite to spy on locations of its choosing, as often as it wishes, according to the officials.

"It's not the best in the world, but it's high resolution and very good for military aims," a Middle Eastern official familiar with the hardware of the satellite told the Washington Post in June 2021.

"Iran could share the imagery with pro-Iranian militia groups across the region, from the Houthi rebels battling Saudi-backed government forces in Yemen to Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria."

"This is obviously a clear and present danger to the United States and our allies in the Middle East and abroad," said Richard Goldberg, a former Iran analyst in the Trump administration's National Security Council.

"As Iran perfects its missile arsenal – from short-, medium- to longer-range missiles, alongside its growing UAV capability throughout the Middle East –being able to sync those capabilities with satellite capabilities and surveillance will only increase the lethality of the Iranian threat."

For the time being, however, the Iranian satellite is meant to be helping Russia's war effort in Ukraine, another example of the mutual benefits accruing to both Russia and Iran from their alliance.

"Russia, which has struggled to achieve its military objectives during its five-month-old assault on Ukraine, told Tehran that it plans to use the satellite for several months, or longer, to enhance its surveillance of military targets in that conflict," the Washington Post wrote.

Equally significantly, Iran is now actively helping Russia with its war effort in Ukraine, which puts on display the extremely negative effects of the new Russian-Iranian alliance.

Russia has ordered hundreds of Iranian military drones as Russia suffers from a severe lack of attack drones that are precision-capable. Russia has bought at least two kinds of drones from Iran, the Mohajer-6 and the Shahed-series drones. The first batch of drones, according to the Washington Post, was picked up by Russian cargo flights in late August. Iran reportedly has been training Russian soldiers in using them in Russia's war in Ukraine. On September 13, Ukraine said that it had shot down an Iranian-produced Shahed drone.

Iran has become a major developer and producer of drones. In October 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported the concern of defense officials from the United States, Israel and Europe that Iran's progress in developing, building and deploying drones was changing the security situation in the Middle East region.

"The drones themselves are often made with widely available components used in the ever-growing commercial drone market and by hobbyists, the officials say," the Wall Street Journal reported.

"Some mimic the designs of Israeli and American military drones... Tehran's engineers rely on imported components to create aerial vehicles that can accurately strike targets at long distance and rapidly change direction to avoid air defenses and radar, say European and Middle Eastern security officials who have studied wreckages of the drones."

Most recently, Iran claimed that it had developed a long-range suicide drone "designed to hit Israel's Tel Aviv, Haifa."

In July, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan denounced the new cooperation between Russia and Iran:

"Russia deepening an alliance with Iran to kill Ukrainians is something that the whole world should look at and see as a profound threat."

Despite this acknowledged "profound threat" emanating from the mutually beneficial alliance between Russia and Iran, the Biden administration nevertheless has been making dangerous concessions to revive the nuclear deal, which would only deepen the threat and benefit not only Iran, but also Russia.

"Several of Russia's top state-controlled nuclear companies stand to gain billions of dollars in revenue as part of a new nuclear accord with Iran that will waive sanctions on these firms so that they can build up Tehran's nuclear infrastructure," the Washington Free Beacon reported in April.

"Russia's state-controlled Rosatom energy firm and at least four of its major subsidiaries will receive sanctions waivers under a new accord so that they can complete nuclear projects in Iran worth more than $10 billion, according to the 2019 document, which details all the Russian entities involved in these projects. With a new nuclear accord being finalized, the Biden administration has repeatedly guaranteed Russia that it will not face sanctions for its work on Iranian nuclear sites, even as Moscow faces a barrage of international penalties for its unprovoked war in Ukraine. The Biden administration renewed a series of sanctions waivers to permit Russia's nuclear work in Iran as part of a package of concessions meant to entice both countries into signing a new accord."

Let us hope that the new "Iran nuclear deal," reportedly "off the table for the time being" is off the table for good.

Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

• Follow Judith Bergman on Twitter

 

 

 

Europe's Energy Crisis

by Pete Hoekstra
September 16, 2022 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18907/europe-energy-crisis

• In response to Russia severely restricting or cutting off gas supplies, EU governments will take dramatic actions over the coming months. Germany recently announced it would keep two of the nuclear plants it was shuttering as backups, just in case. EU leaders will then go back to the voters and describe the amazing job they did while failing to mention they were the ones who made the decisions that put their countries in this crisis in the first place.

• The entire current crisis was avoidable if the EU had developed a rational plan instead of one based on a daydream, no matter how enticing.

• The U.S. needs urgently to examine what is happening in Europe and develop a rational energy transition plan. Any long-term solution must include strategies for reliable power production, affordable sustainable energy and a massively strengthened electrical grid.

• Europe's plan was built on the hope that consumers would accept higher prices, that Russia and Putin would be reliable, and that battery storage technology would be robust enough to cover the times when "the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine."

• This strategy, sadly always doomed to failure, provides a cautionary tale for "solutions" based solely on hope.

• The U.S. should not repeat the same mistakes as the EU by continuing down a path that cuts domestic fossil fuel production, bans gasoline-powered vehicles, and ignores that the power generation capacity and energy infrastructure are not in place to achieve an unrealistic and unfortunately unsustainable green agenda.

In response to Russia severely restricting or cutting off gas supplies, EU governments will take dramatic actions over the coming months. Germany recently announced it would keep two of the nuclear plants it was shuttering as backups, just in case. Pictured: The Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant, one of two that the German government plans to allow to continue running as a backup. (Photo by Thomas Niedermueller/Getty Images)

Europe is facing a growing energy crisis. Individuals and industries are being battered by rising energy costs. On August 31, Russia shut down the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to Germany for initially what was supposed to be 72 hours, but followed by an announcement of "technical difficulties" that would prevent a resumption. Russian energy giant Gazprom also announced that natural gas supplies to French energy company Engie SA would be immediately reduced. These actions have created significant uncertainty and the threat of much higher energy prices in Europe as the cold winter season approaches.

In the Netherlands last month, I had the opportunity to discuss the skyrocketing energy costs. Monthly utility bills of 400 to 600 euros are not unusual. One company said it was spending four times the amount for natural gas than a year ago. The company indicated because of these higher costs, it would be cutting its production by 50% this winter. Most European Union countries are experiencing an eight-fold increase in energy prices.

Both Germany and the Netherlands have been seeing extreme energy price spikes. Germany's prices surged to 1,050 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) before falling to 610 euros in August. Last year, the approximate cost was only 85 euros per MWh.

This dramatic inflation in energy costs is resulting in predictable actions with unpredictable outcomes. The Dutch have reported demand destruction. This means that when the price for a product increases, the demand for it decreases. What we are seeing in Europe is significant decrease in demand for energy because of the huge price increases. An example is the business that will cut production by 50% because energy costs have significantly increased the costs of their end product, resulting in a 50% cut in demand for their product.

The Dutch used 25% less natural gas in the first six months of 2022 than they did in the comparable period in 2021 — primarily due to customers' responses to the higher prices and mercifully somewhat milder than expected temperatures.

The EU has already asked member states to cut energy use by 15% this winter. When it comes to Russian gas supplies, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned Europe to prepare for the "worst situation." Meanwhile, the Norwegian energy company Equinor estimates that European power companies will need to find 1.5 trillion euros to cover the costs of margin calls related to soaring energy prices. Europe and the West look as if they will be in for a rough, expensive winter.

Predictably, EU government leaders believe that the EU and its member states "must act." Several countries have already unilaterally implemented measures -- from imposing price caps to direct government handouts to deal with the immediate costs of the crisis. At the EU level, there now appears to be a consensus that the entire energy market structure must be redesigned, and quickly. They seem to be hoping that this might be completed by early 2023, but none of these actions is laying the foundation for a long-term, workable energy solution.

The reality, however, is that this situation did not develop overnight and will not be fixed overnight. Despite European politicians blaming all this on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the root causes go deeper. The EU made a commitment to sustainability and so-called green energy years ago. Germany, Austria, Italy and the Netherlands are now reportedly going back to coal-fired plants to save on natural gas usage. Experts in Germany say the coalition government is "trying to buy time with coal so that it can come up with a more sustainable long-term solution."

In January, Germany closed half of its six remaining nuclear power plants despite rising energy costs. Germany's lofty sustainable climate goals did not include plans on how to replace the energy that was being provided by its safe, clean and reliable nuclear power plants.

Instead, to achieve its climate utopia, Germany decided that it would become more dependent on Russian gas, that consumers willingly would pay higher prices, and that it could turn to power from far less reliable wind and solar energy. This fantasy became the model across the EU, and the EU has no one else to blame for the results.

The frustrating outcome is that businesses, families and individuals will be forced to shoulder the burden caused by unwise policy decisions by their leaders. As one Dutch farmer said, their governments are run by a bunch of bureaucrats who sit in chairs and have no real-world experience. It might be worth adding they also have no accountability.

In response to Russia severely restricting or cutting off gas supplies, EU governments will take dramatic actions over the coming months. Germany recently announced it would keep two of the nuclear plants it was shuttering as backups, just in case. EU leaders will then go back to the voters and describe the amazing job they did while failing to mention they were the ones who made the decisions that put their countries in this crisis in the first place.

The entire current crisis was avoidable if the EU had developed a rational plan instead of one based on a daydream, no matter how enticing.

The U.S. needs urgently to examine what is happening in Europe and develop a rational energy transition plan. Any long-term solution must include strategies for reliable power production, sustainable energy and a massively strengthened electrical grid.

Europe's plan was built on the hope that consumers would accept higher prices, that Russia and Putin would be reliable, and that battery storage technology would be robust enough to cover the times when "the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine."

This strategy, sadly always doomed to failure, provides a cautionary tale for "solutions" based solely on hope.

The U.S. should not repeat the same mistakes as the EU by continuing down a path that cuts domestic fossil fuel production, bans gasoline-powered vehicles, and ignores that the power generation capacity and energy infrastructure are not in place to achieve an unrealistic and unfortunately unsustainable green agenda.

Peter Hoekstra was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the second district of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. He is currently Chairman of the Center for Security Policy Board of Advisors, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

 

 

China's Commentary on Mistakes of Gorbachev to Make Sure the Chinese Communist Party Endures

by Lawrence A. Franklin
September 15, 2022

 https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18899/communist-china-gorbachev

• Social commentary by Chinese Communist Party organs continue to urge members to be vigilant against the West's strategy of "peaceful evolution," meaning the eventual adoption by the Party of reforms that might sap it of its revolutionary aggressive stance against liberal democracies.

• Under Xi's tutelage, the CCP strengthened its role in the life of the ordinary Chinese citizen. President Xi galvanized CCP bureaucrats to accelerate a mass migration of China's rural peasantry to urbanized environments. Consequently, tens of millions of Chinese were forced to learn new skills in manufacturing jobs. This transformation helped lift many out of abject poverty, thereby expanding China's middle class as well as the domestic market for Chinese goods. The urbanization process also helped the CCP to better control China's huge population by concentrating people in cities.

• The USSR had failed to improve the quality of life of the Soviet citizenry. CCP leaders possibly reasoned that, because of this failure, Soviet citizens began to challenge Communist rule.... As openness became the norm, people in the USSR quickly saw that citizens in Western countries had freer and more comfortable lives.

• Instead of imitating Gorbachev's "Glasnost" (political openness) China constructed the "Great Firewall" which filters all traffic on the Chinese Internet. Chinese authorities also ban the citizenry access to Facebook and Wikipedia.

• China conducts its diplomatic relations even with foreign countries strictly on a transactional business basis. The CCP did not seek to export its revolution violently, as did Iran. Beijing also refused to allow its few allies, such as Pakistan, to drain its national resources. That was another self-inflicted burden that Moscow shouldered: its burden of bankrupt colonies in Eastern Europe.

• China, instead, is offering its own model of governance -- a one-party system, tight control, a controlled economy, social stability rather than individual freedoms, internet control, and "to protect the dominant role of the CPC" -- to the world as a viable alternative to the American system.... China remains resolute in its campaigns against any movement that might possess the energy to compete with the CCP, whether the Falun Gong movement or Christianity.

• China's leaders apparently still worry, otherwise they would not be investing such enormous resources in domestic espionage and repressing their own people.

China remains resolute in its campaigns against any movement that might possess the energy to compete with the Chinese Communist Party. China's leaders invest enormous resources in domestic espionage and repressing their own people. Pictured: China's President Xi Jinping (standing in vehicle) inspects People's Liberation Army soldiers at a military base in Hong Kong on June 30, 2017. (Photo by Dale de la Rey/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commentators reacting to the death of Mikhail Gorbachev blamed the former Soviet leader for the demise of the Soviet Union. Hu Xijin, former editor of the CCP's Global Times, wrote that Gorbachev garnered praise in the West "by selling out the interests of his homeland." Xiang Ligang, a hardline journalist on international relations, claimed that Gorbachev was responsible for the war in Ukraine and unspecified disasters to follow. State controlled academia echoed similar themes. Beijing-based Renmin University Political Science Professor Shi Yinhong said: "The Chinese Communist Party is very critical of [Gorbachev], believing that he betrayed the Soviet Union."

Although more than 30 years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CCP remains deeply troubled by the sudden disappearance of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Just this past July, the CCP re-issued a six part documentary detailing ideological "lessons learned" from the failure of the CPSU. The film, entitled "Silent Contest," is mandatory viewing for CCP members. Political training courses on "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union" are part of the curriculum in all Party schools. During President Xi Jinping's tenure as CCP leader, countless articles and Party-sponsored study groups on CPSU failures continue.

Xi, almost immediately upon his installment as CCP General Secretary in 2012, warned that "Our Party must never find itself afflicted with the poisonous mix of ideological heresy, military disloyalty, and corruption." Xi has repeatedly lectured CCP members that the Party "will never permit subversive heresies on fundamental issues." Social commentary by CCP organs continue to urge members to be vigilant against the West's strategy of "peaceful evolution," meaning the eventual adoption by the Party of reforms that might sap it of its revolutionary aggressive stance against liberal democracies. Xi seems to have expressed his personal regret at the expungement of the CPSU when he remarked, "In the end, nobody was a real man, nobody came out to resist."

CCP leaders painfully remember that Gorbachev's visit to China in 1989 coincided with about a million Chinese demonstrators protesting in the streets of China's capital, Beijing. These protests were embarrassing to the regime, as protestors forced Gorbachev's motorcade to use the back entrance of the Great Hall of the People and made Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping alter his plans for celebrating the restoration of friendly party relations between the CCP and the CPSU. Two weeks later, on June 4, 1989, CCP leaders ordered a bloody crackdown by dispatching the Peoples' Liberation Army to fire on student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. The CCP clearly believes it made the correct decision to save both the Party and the Chinese state, an opinion echoed by China's Defense Minister Wei Fenghe during a 2019 visit to Singapore on the 30^th anniversary of the crackdown.

China, in its opening to the global market in the 1980s under Deng, unlike Gorbachev's "Perestroika" (economic restructuring), continued to protect state-owned enterprises with financial support. China established an economic model that Beijing calls "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics."

Beijing demanded a high price from Western companies investing in the Chinese domestic market. Foreign firms were forced to surrender trade and technological secrets, and no Western company was permitted to own a majority of stock in a Chinese company.

Under Xi's tutelage, the CCP strengthened its role in the life of the ordinary Chinese citizen. Xi galvanized CCP bureaucrats to accelerate a mass migration of China's rural peasantry to urbanized environments. Consequently, tens of millions of Chinese were forced to learn new skills in manufacturing jobs. This transformation helped lift many out of abject poverty, thereby expanding China's middle class as well as the domestic market for Chinese goods. The urbanization process also helped the CCP to better control China's huge population by concentrating people in cities.

Xi's governing strategy gamble is that by raising the individual's standard of living and quality of life, the Chinese people will continue to permit the Party to maintain its monopoly on political affairs. The USSR had failed to improve the quality of life of the Soviet citizenry. CCP leaders possibly reasoned that, because of this failure, Soviet citizens began to challenge Communist rule. The Chinese regime blamed Gorbachev's policy of "Glasnost" (political openness) for making matters in the Soviet Union even more unstable for the government. As openness became the norm, people in the USSR quickly realized that citizens in Western countries had freer and more comfortable lives.

China's Communist regime implemented several specific measures to guarantee that the People's Republic and the CCP did not suffer a similar fate as did the Soviet Union and the CPSU. Instead of imitating Gorbachev's "Glasnost," China constructed the "Great Firewall," which filters all traffic on the Chinese internet. Chinese authorities also ban the citizenry access to Facebook and Wikipedia.

For decades, China's "Consensus policy" decision makers avoided expensive foreign adventures like Moscow's 1979-1989 occupation of Afghanistan. The Chinese also steered clear of entanglements in proxy conflicts, as opposed to the Soviet Union in Africa, Asia, and Latin America during the Cold War.

China conducts its diplomatic relations even with foreign countries strictly on a transactional business basis. The CCP did not seek to export its revolution violently, as did Iran. Beijing also refused to allow its few allies, such as Pakistan, to drain its national resources. That was another self-inflicted burden that Moscow shouldered: its burden of bankrupt colonies in Eastern Europe.

China, instead, is offering its own model of governance -- a one-party system, tight control, a controlled economy, social stability rather than individual freedoms, internet control, and "to protect the dominant role of the CPC" -- to the world as a viable alternative to the American system. The Chinese Communist Party continues to study intensely the reasons for the Soviet Union's passage to oblivion, and seems to be implementing what it evidently believes to be a foolproof surveillance system that will prevent a similar collapse. China remains resolute in its campaigns against any movement that might possess the energy to compete with the CCP, whether the Falun Gong movement or Christianity.

China's leaders apparently still worry, otherwise they would not be investing such enormous resources in domestic espionage and repressing their own people.

Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.