China is Burying Us

By JOEL D. JOSEPH

In 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev warned, “We will bury you!” (Russian: “My vas pokhoronim!”). He was wrong about Russia burying us. But he was right that a communist nation, China, will bury us with drugs, espionage and soaring trade deficits.

The New Opium War

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 70,000 Americans died from drug overdoses deaths in 2017. This is more deaths than all the American who were killed during the entire Vietnam War.

More than 28,000 of those overdose deaths were caused by fentanyl, the highly addictive opioid drug that is 50 times more potent than heroin and far more deadly. The demand for this drug surges from the depths of despair afflicting too many individuals and communities across the United States. Some of that despair is rampant in rust-belt communities that have lost more than two million jobs to China. The supply of fentanyl comes mainly from the People’s Republic of China. A record seizure of the Chinese narcotic was seized in January of this year, enough to kill 115 million people.

Blatant Espionage

According to the Washington Post, “Chinese spies are increasingly recruiting US intelligence officers as part of a widening, sustained campaign to shake loose government secrets.”

While the Trump administration has focused on the damage of Beijing’s economic espionage—an area of focus in bilateral trade talks—current and former US officials say China has also grown bolder and more successful in traditional spy games, including targeting less conventional recruits.

“China cases historically have involved economic espionage, and specifically targeting former intel officers seems like a new trend,” said Jeff Asher, a former CIA officer. Asher said the trend might be linked to the 2015 theft of more than 20 million files from the US Office of Personnel Management, which included background-check records for government employees.

“No country poses a broader, more severe intelligence-collection threat than China,” warned Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “They’re doing it through Chinese intelligence services, through state-owned enterprises, through ostensibly private companies, through graduate students and researchers, through a variety of actors all working on behalf of China.”

For example, former CIA case officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, faces charges of conspiring to provide classified information to China and mishandling classified information. China is alleged to have given Lee a cash gift of $100,000 and promised it would “take care of him for life,” according to court documents. The Hong Kong-born Lee, who was a CIA officer between 1994 and 2007, is also alleged to have deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars more in illicit payments from his Chinese handlers into his personal HSBC accounts in Hong Kong.

Trade Gap with China Expands

China’s trade surplus with the US grew 17% from a year ago to hit $323.32 billion in 2018, nearly $1 billion per day. For the first time the trade deficit included automobiles shipped from China to the US. These vehicles included Buicks and Volvos. The Buick Envision is a sports utility vehicle made by General Motors in China. GM imported about 40,000 of these vehicles last year, adding about $1 billion to our trade deficit with China.

Negotiations with China

While we have been negotiating a new trade agreement with China our trade deficit with the Middle Kingdom has increased dramatically. Tens of thousands of Americans continue to die annually from drug overdoses from imported Chinese drugs. At the same time China is expanding its espionage campaign against the United States. Now is the time to get really tough with China and not to praise Xi Jinping, the president of China. We are under attack and need to recognize China as our enemy, not a friendly trading partner.

Joel Joseph is an attorney and chairman of the Made in the USA Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting American-made products. Email joeldjoseph@gmail.com. Phone 310 MADE-USA.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2019

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