Gordon Chang
speaker
524 appearances
9 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 23 May
Gordon Chang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And remember, in the last couple of weeks, we have seen Chinese provocative activities in South Korea against Japan, against Taiwan, against the Philippines and against Australia. So something's going on here, which isn't very good. And one of these provocations could escalate into a war. I don't think Xi Jinping can control that escalation. He can't come to terms with whatever he's picked on.
So this is one of the more dangerous moments in history.
Yeah, because I think he needs to make sure that other senior Communist Party figures don't challenge him. This is what Mao Zedong, his hero, did. He did it during the Cultural Revolution. Mao couldn't start a war abroad, but he could start a war on elements in Chinese society. That's exactly what he did, shore up his position in the Communist Party leadership.
Xi Jinping, however, has the military to start a war, and that's what I'm really worried about. I don't think that he would start a hostilities with an invasion of the main island of Taiwan. I don't think the Chinese military is ready for that. I don't think that Xi Jinping is ready for it. And there's a lot there.
But the point is, Taiwan could easily get involved in a war that starts elsewhere, because once a war starts somewhere, it's going to spread throughout all of East Asia, and we're going to see conflict. It's just going to envelop all of these societies.
Yeah, that was Thursday from the foreign ministry, which was really quite extraordinary when you think about it, because it was over the top. It was a throwback to the Korean War. It was basically a threat that we'll go out and kill people if you don't come to terms. in our terms. So, I worry about that as a signal. It shows the mentality of the Chinese regime. And I think it shows desperation.
And a desperate communist party is a very dangerous entity. So, yeah, I mean, we can't stop doing what we're doing because we absolutely have to do it. But we got to recognize and we got to be prepared for some pretty bad outcomes.
I don't think it's tight at all. And let me give you an example. In the Communist Party's military, because the People's Liberation Army reports to the Communist Party. It's not a state army. There's been purges upon purges, especially since around July of 2023.
Most recently, the number three or the number two officer, depending on who you talk to, a guy named General He Wei Dong has been disappeared. He hasn't been seen in public since March 11th. And there have been reports that U.S. intelligence believes that he has in fact been taken out. This means, you know, a lot of people say, well, Oh, you know, Xi Jinping just sacked another senior officer.
I don't think that's the case. I think it's more likely that Xi Jinping's enemies at the top of the Chinese military took out a Xi Jinping loyalist, General He.
And the reason is that we have been seeing since July 9th of last year, these articles in PLA Daily, which is the main propaganda organ of the Chinese military, we've been seeing these articles praising collective leadership, quote unquote. That is a direct challenge to Xi Jinping.
And so these articles could not have been maintained without the support of the senior leadership of the PLA, which means the senior leadership of the PLA is in, you might say, open revolt or not open revolt, but it's in revolt against the Chinese leader. Now, if you've got the guys with the guns not happy with you, That means your control over the military is weakened.
And also, I believe that there's senior civilian party officials who are gunning for Xi Jinping, figuratively, not literally.
Well, Xi Jinping is taking the country off the cliff. The military can see it. I don't think that they're happy about that. The primary point of contention, though, would be that Xi Jinping has been purging people. They've been taking away their livelihoods. The other generals and admirals, they don't like that. And so they don't want this at all.
I think you have a military right now, which is very divided. So it is not the type of military that is actually prepared to go to war, even though they've got some pretty neat weapons. some of them which are better than ours. But the point here is that the military is a political military and now it's very politicized.
Yeah, everybody, basically. So, you've narrowed it down, Gordon. Yeah. I thought you were going to ask, is there a specific person, which is the reason why I was shaking my head. No. I don't know if there's a specific person, but there are a lot of people who are unhappy. And the reason is, when Xi Jinping became general party secretary in 2012,
The understanding and the norms and the guidelines in the party was that he was only going to get two five-year terms as general secretary of the party. And that means after the 10 years, there would be a whole new generation of leadership. People would get promoted. What Xi Jinping did by taking a third term was he was denying a whole generation of leadership the chances for promotion.
And that means these people are not happy. They may not have the power to challenge Xi Jinping openly, but I think that they're waiting for sea to fall so that they can rise. And that means he's got a lot of enemies within the political system, basically everybody.
Yeah. There are no rules in the party anymore. So, anything can happen. So, you know, in arts, you know, we always say, well, you know, in America, you know, the president has a short term because he's got midterms and then he's got four years, he's got to be reelected. And we say, you know, we Americans are short term thinking. But Xi Jinping, because he's jumped the roles,
I mean, he has an election every day. And so, he's got a really short-term thinking. He needs to get by hour by hour, because in that system, anything can happen. You know, if you go back to Mao Zedong, that was sort of supposed to be a collective leadership. Mao got rid of the rules. Mao was supreme, but it also meant there were no rules.
Showing 361–380 of 524 · page 19 of 27
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