Xi Jinping is in the United States this week for talks with President Trump, and Sasha Gong sees him in a way almost no American analyst can. She spent a year in a Chinese jail as a young dissident and was released by Xi's father. She grew up in the same Cultural Revolution generation, knows people who have known Xi for decades, and reads the Chinese press every day. In this interview she explains why a presidential greeting at the airport means so much in Beijing, why it costs America nothing, and why the real test of this visit is whether Washington gives up ground on trade, the industrial base, or artificial intelligence.
Guest: Sasha Gong, former China director at Voice of America, former political prisoner in China, Harvard PhD, and a writer for American Greatness.
Today's topics:
• China did not get the deal it wanted: a trade truce to the end of President Trump's term became a truce to January
• Give Xi face, do not give an inch: a presidential greeting at the airport costs nothing, a trade agreement costs plenty
• Xi has purged every top leader of China's military in the past few years: a sign of insecurity, not strength
• Xi's childhood: a father jailed for 16 years, five of them in shackles; paraded on a stage at 13 while his mother watched, then sent back by her
• Why an insecure leader needs the illusion of power more than the real thing, and why Trump the businessman is handing it to him
• China built a world AI organization in Shanghai with 26 countries: America has to lead its own table, not sit at China's
• Whoever controls AI controls production and daily life: the case for building the AI infrastructure here
• China's economy: youth unemployment near 19%, 300 to 400 million people "flexibly employed," a middle class 30% poorer after the real estate collapse
• U.S. imports from China down 25 to 30% last year and still falling: China is losing its largest market
• 1956 to 1969: more than 70% of the Communist Party's convention attendees were purged; under communism there are only survivors
• Is China arming Iran? Gong says Beijing uses Iran and will drop it the moment it stops being useful
• Jimmy Lai and the Hong Kong dissidents President Trump wants released: not yet
• "Now America is his company": why a former Trump skeptic came around on his industrial policy
• Does Xi even know how bad China's numbers are? The CIA's lesson from the Soviet archives
The Jenny Beth Show airs live Monday through Friday at 1:00 PM ET. Hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party movement and Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action. Subscribe for daily analysis of politics, policy, and the fight for constitutionally limited government. teapartypatriots.org
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