China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi warned the Biden administration not to cross Beijing’s “red line” in a half-hour speech on the evening of Feb. 1.
“The United States should stop interference in the affairs of Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang,” Yang said, calling the issues regarding the three regions China’s “internal affairs.” He made the remarks while speaking at a virtual event hosted by New York-based nonprofit the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Yang added: “They constitute a red line that must not be crossed. Any trespassing would end up undermining China-U.S. relations and the United States’ own interests.”
He also told the United States that it should “strictly abide by the One China principle” with regards to Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims is part of its territory.
The Trump administration confronted China on its human rights violations against Falun Gong adherents, Hongkongers, Muslim minorities, Tibetans, and Uyghurs, by imposing visa restrictions and sanctions against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials responsible for the abuse.
Additionally, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated CCP’s persecution of Uyghurs and other majority-Muslim ethnic minorities as genocide and “crimes against humanity” last month.
The Chinese regime has often deflected international criticism against its own policies by claiming that certain issues, including its militarization efforts in the South China Sea and coercion tactics against Taiwan, are “internal affairs.”
Yang called on the Biden administration to “restore” the China-U.S. relationship to a “predictable and constructive track of development.”
He named areas in which he said the two countries could cooperate, including drug control and cybersecurity.
China is the largest source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl-like substances in the United States, according to a 2018 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
According to data from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, there were 70,630 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2019; the majority of the deaths related to the use of fentanyl.
Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more powerful than heroin. As little as two milligrams is considered a lethal dosage for most people.
In 2020, the United States sanctioned several Chinese nationals and a Chinese company for fentanyl trafficking.
Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department brought more indictments related to China’s trade secrets theft and related crimes in 2019 than during the eight years of the Obama administration.
Yang also criticized the Trump administration, saying that its “misguided policies” had led the bilateral relationship to “its most difficult period” since the two countries established diplomatic ties.
Washington ended its diplomatic ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing in 1979 but has maintained a robust relationship with the island based on the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). Under the Trump administration, the Taiwan-U.S. relationship warmed considerably, most evident by Pompeo’s decision to lift restrictions on how U.S. officials should interact with their Taiwanese counterparts.
Jacob Gunter, senior policy and communications manager at the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China took to Twitter to give his summary of Yang’s speech.
“Trump bad, it’s all his/your fault, and let’s just go back to the 2015 status quo,” he wrote. “The lack of even feigned introspection isn’t even surprising anymore.”
Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), also commented on Yang’s speech.
“Bottom line: Beijing is ready [to] cooperate only on China’s terms,” he wrote.
U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan said in a phone interview that the Chinese regime was using both soft and hard tactics to pressure the administration, in the hopes of restarting official talks with the United States.
Yang’s speech was an example of a soft approach, while recent incursions into Taiwan’s airspace and sanctions on former U.S. officials were hawkish tactics.
His speech could be read as an indication that the Chinese regime would be willing to make concessions if the United States would promise not to cross the “red lines.”
Ultimately, Tang believes the Chinese regime wants to “revert back to a time when human rights and commerce were decoupled from each other” during negotiations, so that the regime could continue to do business with the United States, while ignoring human rights issues.
I didn’t declare war on the establishment; it declared war on me.
It declared war on me when it supported energy policies that could enrich Saudi Arabia and Russia and would cost me more money at the gas pump or on my power bill.
It declared war on me when it told me my ideas weren’t worthy of debate and discussion or that they were even so dangerous they couldn’t be shared publicly.
It declared war on me when it used the police powers of the FBI and CIA to first spy on a presidential candidate and then worked to undermine the administration of that candidate after he was elected.
It declared war on me when it told me my religious beliefs did not deserve the protection of the First Amendment.
It declared war on me when it told me boys could compete against girls in high school sports and that they could shower together afterwards.
It declared war on me when it offered citizenship to illegal aliens and shipped American jobs to China.
It declared war on me when it mocked the usefulness of a wall on the Mexican border and simultaneously put up a razor-wire fence around the Capitol.
It declared war on me when it tried to defund the police so that millions of Americans would be left defenseless against mobs from antifa and Black Lives Matter.
It declared war on me when it said America was never great.
It declared war on me when it told my children they are not good enough because they are white.
It declared war on me when it said that defending the Constitution’s rules on federal elections is sedition.
It declared war on me when it told me that I was a domestic terrorist if I didn’t believe the government’s official pronouncements about elections, about free speech, and about right and wrong.
Let’s just say it plainly: The establishment declared war on me and on all conservative Americans when it decided that leftist orthodoxy was more important than the Constitution.
Don’t believe me? Fine, why should you believe a Trump supporter? You’ve been indoctrinated by the national media, Big Tech oligarchs, the Democratic Party, and academic elites to believe without questioning that people like me can’t be trusted. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Listen instead to John Brennan, the former CIA director under President Obama, who speaks authoritatively for the Deep State:
He said on MSNBC that “the members of the Biden team who have been nominated or have been appointed, are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”
This “guilt by labeling” is the antithesis of fair play or justice. It is a convenient mechanism for the ruling class to herd people into identity clusters so that individual rights can be supplanted by group responsibility. If this reminds you of China’s Cultural Revolution, you are not wrong. The ruling class wants you to conform, confirm and comply. If you step outside the lines, be prepared to be shamed, silenced and ostracized.
A shocking example was provided Wednesday when Douglass Mackey of Delray Beach, Fla., was arrested for creating memes that allegedly misled voters in 2016 to think they could vote by texting instead of by actually going to the polls. This is the equivalent of arresting Sacha Baron Cohen for exposing the gullibility of the rich and famous. The FBI offered no evidence that Mackey actually convinced anyone not to vote, but even if it did, so what? Would you rather live in a country where the FBI is hunting down pranksters — four years after the supposed transgression — or a country where voters are expected to be able to recognize a joke when they see one?
But nothing can be taken for granted any more. The people — and even their representatives and senators — are considered enemies of the state because they hold opinions that don’t meet the standards of Joe Biden or (this is even scarier!) Jake Tapper.
No wonder the people are starting to rise up and rebel against the plutocracy. It’s not “We the Oligarchs” who are the source of power in the Constitution, but “We the People,” yet the ruling establishment has forgotten that. If people like Donald Trump and Douglass Mackey are deemed to be “enemies of the state,” then those who would suppress them and their freedoms must be considered “enemies of the people.”
A house divided against itself cannot long stand, but if there is to be a truce it will not come from submission, but from a recognition that all people are created equal, that they all have certain inalienable rights, and that among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those words were worth fighting for once. Are they worth fighting for today?
I don’t know, but I do know this: If Americans can’t have liberty, we can’t have America either — at least not one that is distinguishable from China. The time has come to make a choice.
fox files 
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