Xi Jinping in America: Give Him Face, But Do Not Give Him an Inch | Sasha Gong

[00:00:14] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. I have a special interview today with Sasha Gong, who is from China originally. She lives here in America and she is an American citizen now. She's going to be talking about President Xi Jinping's visit to America with President Trump this week. And I know that on Fridays we've been doing educational videos and we have one last episode of the series we're doing with the

[00:00:44] Lawrence Reed about economics. We will resume that next Friday instead of today. But since we have this expert on China here in our studio today, I thought it'd be great for her to give us her input on the visit. Sasha, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much. I really enjoy it. So give everyone just a brief bio of who you are. You write for American Greatness. You've been in charge of Voice of America over China.

[00:01:13] Tell people about you. Yeah, I'm a former political prisoner from China. Spent a whole year in jail. That's what we are going to talk about. Xi Jinping's father released me. And then I studied in China and came to America. I got a PhD from Harvard. And which was well, I always said I they spent seven years to get to give me a PhD. I spent three years to throw it out.

[00:01:40] Anyway, so later I worked for AFL-CIO and as the China expert and also worked for Voice of America as the China director. And now I'm writing and I'm writing books and I'm doing films. That is that is quite a life. Now, let me just and we're going to do a different series. I mean, a different interview where we really delve into a lot about your your background.

[00:02:08] But I think it's very important for people who just heard that to understand that for you to have a PhD from Harvard, it means that they need to go back and look at your life when you were nine years old and know that when you were nine years old, you were put into a forced labor camp. It's not a labor camp. It's just countryside, which is worse than labor camp in many ways.

[00:02:32] And you were put into forced child labor. Every child was a laborer at that time. So it's not forced or not. It's just common, you know, daily life. Right. Right. And that really would affect most American kids can't even imagine that. And it would affect education dramatically for American kids. And yet you've been able to.

[00:02:58] Well, I only have three years of education before college. That's amazing. It's just absolutely amazing. No, no, that's a blessing. I have to say before we talk about it later, but it's very simple. I escaped the brainwash. Yeah, you did. And you went on and got a PhD from Harvard. And that is whether it's a liberal university and completely woke right now or not, it's still quite an accomplishment to to do.

[00:03:26] So I wanted to highlight just the magnitude of being able to have a PhD with the with that childhood experience. OK, you just mentioned. Just tell us a little bit about what you think of Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping. It's hard to pronounce. I know that. And I have this week stumbled over several different foreign names and I apologize.

[00:03:53] Not only that, well, with that. The truth is that we're foreignness. When you came here, we got so used to people murdering our names. Oh, thank you. I think. OK. OK. But so he's here this week meeting with President Trump. What is the significance of that? What is it that you think people here in America should be paying attention to about that visit? And what is any kind of background you would want them to have?

[00:04:21] Well, first, for us, it's very important for us, for the Trump administration. And yesterday, the news just before Xi landed, the news came from Scott Besson. China did not get the deal. China wanted. They want to extend the cease of trade war to the end of Trump's turn. They did not get it. They got till next January.

[00:04:49] So that's something China most wanted. And what this for us, China, well, China took our jobs for so long and it will take a long time. I mean, decades for us to build our industrial base back.

[00:05:07] So I understand, you know, President Trump, I really appreciate he's the first president who said we need to be a producer again in the world. So China for the past three decades has built it to be the producer of the workshop of the world. And for this, we have to, like Marco Rubio said, we have to work with China, negotiate with China.

[00:05:37] And that's necessary and doesn't mean we surrender to China. Like many congressional democratic leaders are saying, I never see Trump surrender to anyone. Why do you think it's important not to surrender to China? Well, what surrender, what it means? Because surrender, we have been surrendering to China for decades.

[00:06:04] We have been surrendering our industrial base to China, just name all the companies. And then now someone wants us to surrender our AI to China, our data center to China, while China is building it up quickly.

[00:06:22] So at this point, right this point, not surrendering to China means not giving up our AI development and trying to build our base back, our industrial base back. That's not only not surrender, that's fight. That's a battle. That's as important as a world war. And I think Trump is doing that.

[00:06:49] You said that before we started this interview, that you really love using AI. And I do too. It's been, it's amazing to see the things that it can help one do, especially when, it just, it's amazing. There are a lot of things we could go into about this.

[00:07:11] But why is it so important that we have that AI infrastructure here in America? Not only not military security, of course, that everybody would know that. But think of it, production, industrial production. This is the new industrial revolution, AI revolution.

[00:07:36] And for this, whoever controlled it will control not only military and all the security, control everybody, everyday life. Think of it. Well, perhaps like in the 1980s, we say, okay, it's okay for other Japan, then later China, to give us chief goods. We live well. And look what happened. We can't live without them.

[00:08:04] And AI will very soon, sooner than we believe. Actually, it's already there. You can't live without it. So something you can't live without. AI is now your phone, your everyday, like my plan, I plan my whole trip with AI. AI, and I even book my hotels, which is the good hotel search for me. All that. You live with it.

[00:08:31] If something you have to live with, you better own it. That is a brilliant way to describe it. So we should be the ones owning it because we're going to be living with it no matter what. It's better for us to set the terms for that. As Americans for America than it is to live with whatever some other country, specifically China, forces upon us. Actually, that's some piece of news people may not even notice.

[00:09:01] I think it's last month or a few weeks early. China had a world AI organization built in Shanghai. 26 countries participated in that. And for that, it's trying to be the World Trade Organization kind of AI. I used to program computers.

[00:09:25] And one of the things that I learned since I've been involved in more of the national politics than just programming computers is that China wanted to get involved in the standards when it came to different kinds of computing, like for modems and for the way data would be transmitted across modem lines.

[00:09:50] And American companies wanted to make sure that it was still America controlling those standards. And not just that it's America controlling those standards, but it's American values controlling the standards. And I think that wound up being important. At the time, I didn't quite understand what China was doing with the social credit. But I think it wound up being important because we care about privacy. We care about the right to speech. We care about life.

[00:10:19] We care about values in America that are enshrined in our constitution, are given to us by our creator, that China doesn't have the same kind of respect for. So when you're building out standards that are going to control technology, you want those standards to also cover basic human rights in the way America would protect them

[00:10:42] and also leave them liberated rather than a communist country might do. So when it comes to AI standards and a world organization setting standards for AI, America should not just be at the table. We need to be leading that table. Exactly. We need to have another, not the one China started. That's very important. And the people, you know, I think sometimes you listen to politicians,

[00:11:11] they say, oh, gosh, our politicians, most of them, the main problem is what is lack of imagination and live the long life so far. And so many things, unimaginable things happen in our lives. And now with AI, where we never imagined it a few years ago, now imagine quantum computer.

[00:11:38] Imagine that hundreds of times more, you know, powerful than what we have. And imagine how they can do. If you think the current AI do harm to humans, think of that. And we never imagined, for example, nuclear weapon before that happened. We did not imagine. Lots of things happen.

[00:12:06] Going to space, satellite communications, landing on the moon. People didn't imagine airplanes or cars before they happened. Well, I'll just give one very interesting example. When first 1825, when railway first started in England, I read a very important report at that time. It said, well, railway we have to control it because when speed got to 60 miles,

[00:12:36] it will kill all human internal organs. And it was a scientific study. Think of it. Yeah. And we can laugh at it right now, but that's all they knew. And they couldn't imagine anything more. And that's what you're saying when it comes to quantum computing and whatever might be next after that. It's hard for us to imagine what that means. Yeah. It's hard to imagine even what happened in 10 years. Yes.

[00:13:05] So our politicians need to keep on, well, expand their imagination. I think one person, you know, President Trump may be very old, but he has a very vivid imagination. I think it's almost like animal instinct to smell. Well, you should put your hands down.

[00:13:29] What is it that you think are the most important things that should happen from this visit to America? To America, we don't give an inch. Okay. That's it. But we give Xi a lot of faces. Why is that important? Oh, in China, face is content. Face is the Xi actually.

[00:13:55] Because communist country, you never really know how stable or unstable they are. And everybody's guess, it's only a guess. I can say anything concrete. I have no internal information. But the guess is Xi is now not very, he cannot control that well. One sign is that he purged almost every, not almost, it's all top leaders of the military.

[00:14:24] Every single one. Put them in jail. Every single one in the past few years. And also so many, every day you see, okay, this governor, you know, Xi Jinping, what they call provincial leader. Anyway, got arrested. That person got arrested. And so many news. Every day you open the Chinese newspaper, you know that. So that's a sign of not having control.

[00:14:54] Buy more control. And so it's important for an American not to give an inch, but to allow him to have many faces. Yes. Yeah. He can brag about it when he went back to China. And the funny thing now in China is nobody, nobody can replace him. Nobody has the authority.

[00:15:17] Well, this is a very peculiar situation in any dictatorship. Remember the Soviet Union? They have Brezhnev. By the end of his days, two years, Brezhnev worked one hour a day and the rest of the day played cards with the guards. But nobody there to challenge anything. And then they have two old guys, Andrew Boff, Chernenko, died. So you got to pick a young one.

[00:15:48] That's how it changed. And in China now, Xi pushed everyone. Who's going to replace him? When someone replaces him, how do they handle the situation? There's nothing. No challenger, nothing. But everybody's a challenger. In that case, you mean. In history, I'm giving you a history. Well, Chinese history, one thing, you know, the last emperor of Ming Dynasty.

[00:16:19] When the rebel armies break to the city, he lived in the Forbidden City there. So that morning, he went to see, well, every morning meeting with his cabinet. Nobody showed up. So he didn't know what to do. Just find a piece of rope and hanged himself. Wow. History. History.

[00:16:50] President Trump met Xi Jinping at the airport, correct? Yes. And was that important? Very. To the Chinese. And is it OK that America did something that was important to the Chinese, like greeting at the airport? Yeah. That doesn't cause us a cent. OK. A trade agreement would cause, one way or another. But president takes one hour trip to the airport.

[00:17:19] President Trump, I mean. Doesn't cause a thing. But to the Chinese, it means a word. And why? Why? Well, let's talk a little bit back to Xi's history. Yeah. That's, well, take some time to explain why. Because basically, his insecurity. Xi is a very insecure person.

[00:17:45] And, well, I know his father a little bit. His father was the one who released my group from jail. And so we had long meetings with his father. In the first meeting, I remember we had like 20 people accused of being anti-communist. So he met with us. And the man is, I'm Cantonese. So that's what means most of us are short.

[00:18:14] He's a big man, very broad shoulder. You rarely see Cantonese that broad shoulders. So that's why I was like less than, well, less than seven feet away from him. So, well, we complained, we have been jailed, and we lost this other. He stood up and sighed. He said, I spent 16 years in the communist jail.

[00:18:44] For five years, I was in shackles. And that stunned all of us. We all know, but we didn't know he was in shackles. His best friend committed suicide and all the miserable stories. And at that time, his wife was very much an activist, remained a cadre. So Xi Jinping grew up in a very strange situation.

[00:19:14] He grew up in Beijing. I know people who know him for a long time. His father was in jail. His mother was still a party cadre. See, guess how careful his mother has to walk the line to keep that. You don't just keep that house. Not a house, an apartment. Just keep that status for everybody.

[00:19:41] So when she was, I think it's in 1968. In that time in China was in the worst time of the Cultural Revolution. So Xi was born in 1953. So I was a few years older than I am. So we grew up basically the same generations that we know, we understand that. And he loved fighting.

[00:20:09] He fought because many of his fightings, according to official record, because other kids bullied him because of his father. They bullied him. He fought. And so he was put into a detention center. In the detention center, well, good for him at that time. He taught his fellow cellmates a Russian song, a Russian love song.

[00:20:37] Well, at that time, you know, there was no love song in China and everything was illegal. So the Russian song was illegal. But you secretly sing the songs. And for that, he was accused of spreading Soviet revisionists. He was 13 years old, dragged on the stage and struggled against. Think of a 13 years old.

[00:21:04] And you'll have hundreds of people parade you around. Very brutal. I myself, being paraded many times, I know, even you look strong. It's just crushing your inside. And the worst thing is, his mother was there. His mother was right among the audience. That was...

[00:21:32] So later, he could not stand it anymore. He escaped back home. And his mother sent him back. She sent him back. She sent him back. She sent him back to prison. If your mother sends you to prison, how do you trust anyone in the rest of your life? See? That's my point. For your life, you feel whatever position you get, you feel insecure.

[00:22:02] And you are afraid. And that's the Xi Jinping we see. We grow up at the same time. That's the part America would never see you. It's hard to understand. But we do. And my whole generation grow up somewhat like that. And having your mother reporting you is the most unfortunate thing. But most people, most mothers would not do that. But that's what Xi Jinping experienced.

[00:22:37] So going and just allowing, showing up at the airport winds up meaning a lot to the people in China. Probably even means a lot to Xi Jinping. Yes. Especially because he's being welcomed in America. And he's really being paraded again in front of the whole world. But this time it isn't with the cruelty that he received as a child. Yes.

[00:23:06] And that's his triumph. That's also his way to show the entire China, not the world. The Chinese people. See, I am the boss. Even he's in power since 2012, you know, as the supreme leader. He's still that insecure. One thing the Chinese people laughed at him was everybody, every intellectual laughed at him.

[00:23:33] Because, you know, Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping only had five years education. I only have three. So my generation, same thing. Five years. And after that, 15 years old, he was sent to work in countryside. And hard labor. Same hard labor we all did. And later he came back as a selected one to go to university.

[00:23:58] But at that time, before 1977, university students were just activists. Didn't learn much because most professors were still in labor camps. So he got a degree, but not much. And that degree, everybody loved it. So in China, when you talk about Xi Jinping, people usually say,

[00:24:23] oh, that elementary school student or elementary school graduate. They just call him that. Did he go back and get education anywhere else? Well, later, supposed to have some PhD, something, but not worth nothing. It's really worth nothing. And whatever things they learned, they all learned from real life.

[00:24:48] And while many of us went back to get an education, he went into the government. And starting from very basic, like county level, and got up. So Xi is very good in pretending to be humble. That America also should know.

[00:25:10] Xi, from, you know, his political rival, one's political rival was my classmate, Bo Xilai. Long story. Anyway, so a lot of internal stories. Anyway, inside views. And the old party leaders picked him because he looked like harmless at that time.

[00:25:36] You see, for his life, he had to pretend and he was looked down upon. That's pretending is what he's good at. And he had to pretend because he really, the Chinese would say, he really doesn't know much. So he always had to pretend. But he also would pretend to like people, to be helpful to people. That he pretend.

[00:26:06] So that is the history of the man, the deep background. Yeah. Like the childhood history of the man. I think that, and we will discuss this part more in a different episode where we talk about communism. But the effects of your own family turning against you. Yeah. It's one thing if it's children turning against parents.

[00:26:35] It's one thing if it's siblings turning against siblings. Like you go back in the Bible and you've got Cain and Abel, a story almost as old as the Bible, with siblings turning on one another. But for a parent to turn on their child is, I can't even imagine what that does. I can't imagine what that does.

[00:27:01] And then being in government, it had to be very hard to want to be involved in the government that was putting you into prison. And that had to be hard too. Oh, well, you know, perhaps for communist leaders at that time, that generation, more than half, or if not 90%, experienced that. Think of the Soviet Union.

[00:27:30] How many, well, from Russia, think of Stalin killed 90% of the high command of the Red Army. And how many people he killed, he eliminated. Same thing. And if you count people got purged from, like, 1956, China had, the Communist Party had its convention,

[00:27:55] the central committee members, convention attendees even. By 1969, more than 70% of them were purged. Many died. From the convention. Yes. To the people who were trying to make communism happen. That's the core of communism. And just think of, in China's case, Mao's second-hand man.

[00:28:23] First, Liu Shaoqi, president of China, died in jail in 1969. And when he died, he, gosh, his naked body later, look, it's just, they even changed his name. Put his wife in jail for 10 years. And the children turned against him. And all these miserable stories.

[00:28:47] And the next Mao's second-hand man, Lin Biao, realized that might be the, well, might be his fate. So tried to escape to the Soviet Union and died in a plane crash. And everyone. So in communism, in that kind of dictatorship, in a way, you only have survivors. Yeah.

[00:29:13] You have to be a survivor to, because it, it's what we would call a dog-eat-dog world. Yeah. Because you're gonna, it's brutal and it's just survival of the fittest at that point. Survival of however you can. Yeah. So I think that all of this is extremely important as we talk about the faces and not costing anything to go to the airport.

[00:29:44] Because this is a man who knew, knew what he did about his mother. He knows this about the Chinese Party Convention from 1956 to 69. So 13 years later, more than 70% of them were purged. They turn against each other. He's seen this happen over and over in his entire life. He grew up with it. He grew up with it. He works his way to the top. The top military officials have now been purged, certainly at his direction.

[00:30:14] And he must know that everywhere he turns around at home, there's a chance that somebody is, is ready to stab him in the back. That's steady life. And now he comes here to America. And what is it that he wants from America? He wants to, well, he wants to gain power. Power of, you know, it's the illusion of power. Sometimes the illusion of power is more important than real power.

[00:30:44] That illusion, he wants that illusion. He's powerful. He's friends with the most powerful leaders in the world. He represents China. Without him, China could not survive and, you know, things like that. And he just wants that illusion. I think Trump as a businessman is giving him that illusion.

[00:31:09] And what do you think that President Trump is trying to get? Well, a ceasefire. I think mostly. Actually, China is in war with us for a long time. Economic war. And the ceasefire. I don't mean agreement of ceasefire. I think it's a full ceasefire. You have to, you know, deal with.

[00:31:39] In this war, it's different from the war we normally see where we fight each other. No, in this war, China used its enormous manpower to undermine everything. We actually undermined first our capacity of, our industrial capacity, and undermined our inferences around the world.

[00:32:10] And undermine us to shape the future of the world. And it's a war. And you have to have a war mentality to deal with that. That doesn't mean you don't smile. You always smile. That's what happens. And you give them red carpet. But don't give an inch. I don't think President Trump would give an inch on this front.

[00:32:38] But lots of Democratic leaders do. They speak like strong person. But they are working, you know, unknowingly perhaps, with the force to undermine us and which, you know, China desires. Do you think that President Trump will, well, Let me step back. A question before that. Is China helping Iran?

[00:33:07] Not that much, I would say. And yes, that's a yes or no question. China only has China's interest in its mind, honestly, for all these years. In Mao's time, it was not the case. Iran, Iran, I always think in a way, Iran is like a troubled orphan bully.

[00:33:31] Making trouble to the entire Middle East and making so much trouble to its own people and all that. Well, people say Russia and China are helping Iran. They're using Iran. But when time comes, I bet both China and Russia, they would have no hesitation to abandon Iran. When Iran became useless.

[00:33:59] Now Iran is somewhat useful. And China may supply it some, well, drone. I think not anymore. There's a report on Washington, no, on Wall Street Journal yesterday on this. It's very limited. But they are not Iran's friends. Okay.

[00:34:23] And then you are in touch with a lot of people still, I think, in China. You still have your connections in China. What do they say about this trip and the visit? Well, the Chinese people, different people would say different things. And dissidents, of course, always want to have, you know, give him less.

[00:34:51] And, you know, one thing I'm a little disappointed is some dissidents, especially, you know, like Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong. And President Trump wanted them to be released. And so far, it's not. Hasn't happened. I just hope it happens anyway. Anyway, and other people, actually, normal people just don't pay that much attention.

[00:35:18] The truth is that the Chinese economy is in bad shape these days. And China tried to cover it up as much as possible, of course. But if you talk to, especially private businessmen in China, everybody said it's hopeless now. Think of the numbers. The Chinese youth, well, under 24, almost 19% of them are unemployed.

[00:35:48] 19, 19? 19. Wow. And that was, that excludes the one in school. Then school doesn't count. And that's another very peculiar number people may not understand. What being, what you mean by employed? The Chinese is now recognized.

[00:36:11] Between 300 and 400 million, million people are flexibly employed. What is that? Food delivery, which is a very popular job among college graduates. You work for an hour, you're employed. So in China, if you want to order anything, I mean anything, two o'clock in the morning, you get it.

[00:36:41] Okay. People are desperate. Just think of, you know, if you think of the whole picture, it's very important for us to understand. China in the 1980s had 1.2 billion people. And 80% of them live in countryside, let's say rural people.

[00:37:03] And by 2019, like it's about 30 years later, 69% of people are urban people. So what we see is that China experienced the largest urbanization movement in the world, in human history. And we may not never experience the same thing again.

[00:37:32] So for that, China changed, changed itself, also changed the world. And now, if you look at the number, last year, where China, US used to be China's biggest market. Last year, our import from China reduced by 25, 30%. This year, the reduction keeps going.

[00:37:59] China lost a very large portion of its largest market. And the Chinese industry, well, industries moved out of China. And China, it's quite amazing, you know, in the 90s, for a long time, China relied on labor-intensive industry for export.

[00:38:29] Now, the labor-intensive industry, like textile, shoes. Oh, gee, one shoe factory I saw 20 years ago. Just think of the number. One factory produced for Nike, 110,000 workers. Wow. It's a city itself. Wow. Wow. Amazing. And now it's gone.

[00:38:58] So China is experiencing this transformation. China put heavily its resources and industry, heavy industry, not so labor-intensive. Yeah. So that's what we are seeing. China perhaps have 300 million extra people who need a job but can't find one.

[00:39:23] That seems like an environment that's ripe to take out their leader. We don't know because China has, but there are 2 million human kind of robots working in the industry. It's very interesting. So that's why China is now desperately wanting to export its cars and machinery around the world.

[00:39:49] But that, those industry does not produce that much job opportunities. So China is now facing lots of problems. And the fun part, as a historian, you know, I'm reading it. The fun part is that, well, the Chinese leaders may not know.

[00:40:18] I was writing, you know, I published an article yesterday on American greatness. Remember the Soviet Union, 1996, CIA had a meeting in Texas. And the CIA, Turner was there. And the deputy CIA director who was in charge of the Soviet Union said,

[00:40:43] we sent a whole team to check, after 1991, send a whole team to check the Soviet archive. This is what we realized. We spent so much time to understand what the Soviet leaders know. Finally, we realized they don't know much. This leader likes apple or pear or whatever. They did not know their country is about to collapse. Right. Same thing.

[00:41:12] Does Xi Jinping know? And that's a good question. And everything is so tightly censored that knowledge that's out beyond China may never be making its way up to him. Yeah. We don't know. So, well, I don't think our leaders know much. The Chinese leaders, maybe a Chinese normal businessman would know, say, oh, it's not right.

[00:41:38] And yet in the past three years with China's real estate collapse and the new middle class Chinese, their wealth shrinks by 30%. I don't know what happens. I think Xi Jinping desperately needs some faces to save his reign. Got it.

[00:42:06] What is it that you want Americans to know about this visit and to think about this visit? Well, I want Americans to understand. I have to confess, I wasn't a Trump fan many years ago. I followed him for more than a year as a reporter from July 2015 to later to the end of the election.

[00:42:33] And he actually convinced me for not liking him, to supporting him because, well, I, well, that's a long story. But let me cut it short is that I, President Trump, it's, if I had him as a business rival, I would hate his guts.

[00:42:58] Because he always wants the benefit of his own company. He always wants to undermine you and the benefit of his company. Now America is his company. Right. That's very basic. It's very basic. He wants you, what, that's what America first means. That's your company. This is my home.

[00:43:27] This is his home. This is our company. So in a lot of time, you know, I still don't like the way he speaks in many ways. Yeah. Well, I think that's my bias as a over-educated person. But I do like his policy. Industrial especially. Well, and he, I think that he understands industry.

[00:43:57] And in this, China is a major part of it. Yeah. And how we get our industrial base back, how we get some Chinese technology back. And when we have super technology, don't get me wrong, but China in many productions, it's not, say, electric cook and cars and something.

[00:44:21] And you say, oh, the Chinese may not be so good in space. But they are very good in producing electric cars. And something like that. I want, I want something back. I want something from China. China took a lot from us. Yes. Time for us to take it back. Well, let's hope that we can do that from this visit. Yes.

[00:44:47] Sasha Gong, thank you so much for this insight into Xi Jinping and what you think about the visit that's happening this week. Thank you. I really enjoy it. If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform.

[00:45:17] The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit TeaPartyPatriots.org.