In their meeting in Peru, Xi Jinping laid out four red lines to President Joe Biden, detailing the issues where he expects the United States to avoid interference in the affairs of the Chinese Communist Party. Expert Miles Yu unpacks these red lines and what they mean for Donald Trump’s incoming administration. Next, Miles covers a brutal killing in mainland China and how it feeds into the larger surge of violent killings across China. Finally, we provide an update on the conflict in Ukraine, and why we might see a lot more North Korean troops on the front lines in the future.
China Insider is a weekly podcast project from Hudson Institute’s China Center, hosted by Miles Yu, who provides weekly news that mainstream American outlets often miss, as well as in-depth commentary and analysis on the China challenge and the free world’s future.
Episode Transcript
This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.
Miles Yu:
Welcome to China Insider, a podcast from the Hudson Institute's China Center. I am Miles Yu, senior fellow and director of the China Center. Join me each week for our analysis of the major events concerning China, China threat and their implications to the US and beyond. Hello, welcome to the China Insider. I'm Miles Yu. Today we have a very unique situation. My longtime co-host Phillip has a family situation, and he's not available for today's podcast. So for the first time in the history of this podcast, I'm going solo. Hopefully it'll work out. Okay. So as usual, we have three topics for this week. First, we're going to discuss the new four red lines Secretary General Xi Jinping (习近平) gave to President Biden in Lima, Peru over the weekend. Secondly, we're going to talk about the silent surge of violent crimes in China. And thirdly, if we have time, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the new situation in the war in Ukraine.
During the Asia Pacific economic Cooperation, also known as APEC Summit in Lima, Peru, the Chinese President Xi Jinping (习近平) outlined four red lines to the lame duck US President Joe Biden, emphasizing areas where China expects no interference or challenge. Those four red lines as outlined by Xi Jinping (习近平) to Biden are: Taiwan, democracy and human rights, China's political system, and China's development rights. Let me just talk about the last three first, because they're relatively easy. That is democracy and human rights, China's political system, and China's development rights. I think Xi Jin Ping brought up these three red lines as an indication that the CCP is living in paranoia and insecurity because all the three areas are related to the CCP's utmost fear of people's uprising. In other words, the people inside China, they were so fed up with the CCP regime that they want to make a change. And the regime now takes away all basic rights of the people and treats the Chinese people like animals and prisoners without any political rights to decide the shape, form and leaders of the government, central, provincial and local.
So the CCP is clearly aware of this fact that the people inside China want to change the regime, but would not want the United States to provide any inspirational assistance or a helping hand to the repressed people inside the dictatorship. And it will just allow the fully armed CCP regime to repress the freedom and the hope of the Chinese people and even massacre if necessary, just like the regime did 35 years ago in Tiananmen (天安门) Square, four years ago in Hong Kong and virtually every day in all big and small matters in all parts of the Chinese life. And this is the ultimate fear of the TCP and the only reason Xi Jinping (习近平) wants Biden to know. But I must say this is futile, because those areas were precisely CCP's Achilles heels. The US does not have to have a regime change plan, but it will force the CCP to stop repressing its people, massacring its people, and putting millions of the citizens in camps and prisons, subjecting one fifth of humans of the world to the most draconian surveillance and censorship systems.
So I know this is true because as many of the listeners know that I served during the Trump's first term, and I know from my experience I can tell you this, the most vitriol reaction toward any US government official was when the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on October 30th, 2019 in the speech utter the ultimate truth. And that is the CCP does not represent the Chinese people. The government of China went absolutely bananas over this statement. So, this is why these areas are a very sensitive issue for the Chinese government now about development rights. That's a code word for the CCP to continue the biggest scam of the millennium. That is the modern world of free trade and free enterprise embraces the biggest planned economy and non-market economy of the world and allows the non-marketing model of economic development to replace the global free trade and free market system.
And this is basically what China wants to do, that China will continue its predatory economic policy and its unfair trade practice and it's all kinds of violation of free market principles. So those are the three of the four red lines. Lemme go back to the top of the four red lines that Xi Jinping (习近平) gave to Biden, which is a familiar one that is Taiwan. Now Taiwan, as Xi told President Biden, is a core interest for China. And any support for Taiwan's independence is a direct challenge to China's sovereignty, Xi Jinping (习近平) said. This frequently dramatized solemnity about the CCP's obsession with Taiwan is completely disingenuous in my opinion. The Taiwan issue has very little, if anything, to do with maintaining China's territorial integrity and sovereignty. Under the CCP rule. As I've written somewhere else, the Chinese government has voluntarily ceded what is considered the motherland's sacred territories, dozens of times bigger than Taiwan, to ideologically align and friendly dictator regimes such as the former Soviet Union and the former communist Mongolia, North Korea and military junta in Burma.
In addition, there is no such a thing called the “independence movement" in Taiwan, where numerous Taiwanese governments – freely and democratically elected – have repeatedly stated that there's no need for Taiwan to declare independence because Taiwan is already an independent country. Its name is Republic of China in Taiwan. As late as May, the newly elected president of Taiwan, president William Lai, has repeated this statement. So China basically used this so-called independence movement as a red herring, as a phony justification for its use of force to conquer Taiwan. In my view, the real source of the CCPs obsession with taking over Taiwan is to fulfill its communist ideological commitment to ending the communist revolution of 1949. The CCP, like all communists in the world, has a liberation ideology. Its armed forces, for example, are called the People's Liberation Army. The CCP leadership from Mao to Xi has always considered the communist revolution unfinished without subjugating Taiwan. Its decades-long inability to subsume Taiwan has caused serious doubts, the CCP fears about the CCP's claim of omnipotence and invisibility within this captive nation. So to take Taiwan, therefore, is to core a logical corollary to the CCP's communist DNA of aggression and conquest. Exactly the same force animating the Soviet Union's aggression after World War II as George Kennan so eloquently stated decades ago.
But this added urgency in recent years in Xi Jinping’s (习近平) message to Biden about Taiwan is caused by the CCP's winning persuasiveness in invading Taiwan, because few major countries in the world today purely look at the Taiwan issue from the point of view of whether Taiwan should be part of China or not, but rather from the point of view of tyranny and dictatorship versus freedom and democracy. Taiwan's remarkable transformation into the beacon of freedom, paragon of free enterprise, and model of democracy and global citizenship has gained tremendous support by a growing number of nations all over the world. This great triumph of freedom and free enterprise in a Chinese speaking community in Taiwan has also deeply impacted and inspired the mainland's Chinese speaking population. Aspiring to be free from the CCP's draconian rule and bankrupt ideology. All of this has spooked the CCP autocrats now eager to settle the Taiwan issue once and for all.
But this should never be allowed, not just because America's reputation is at stake or Taiwanese people's safety and the prosperity at stake, but more importantly Taiwan is China's true [inaudible]: the beginning of a long chain of aggression to be perpetrated by the CCP that has territorial ambitions over a huge swath of land and maritime domains claimed by most of its neighbors, including Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, the Philippines, and the list is growing. So finally the stake is even higher than this. China's ambition for Taiwan is part of the growing global alliance of aggression and the violence based upon complete denial of neighbors’ sovereign rights to exist and to prosper. Russia's war in Ukraine, Iran, and Hamas war on Israel, North Korea's vowed conquest of South Korea. And now, China's attempt to take over Taiwan militarily are all based upon one central logic of aggression, which is total disregard of the right of the neighbors to exist as sovereign nations of Ukraine, Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan.
If this logic of aggression shall prevail, the world order as we know it will perish with unimaginable carnage and disorder. So all things considered Xi Jinping’s (习近平) four red lines about Taiwan as told to Biden is not only a phony issues, but also a dangerous and contentious provocation against peace, humanity, freedom and prosperity. It must be defeated with alacrity. And I also believe that this is not a message for Biden who is a lame duck president, as I said earlier, because these four red lines are for the incoming new president, Donald Trump, who has had four years of trying to be cordial with Xi Jinping (习近平) . But now President elect Trump has assembled a national security team that understands nature and the playbook of the CCP better. This team includes nominees for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio and this National Security advisor, representative Mike Waltz who won't need Senate confirmation by the way.
And so all I'm saying is that America is ready, red lines or not, we shall prevail. The second issue, like discussed is the surge of the violent crimes in China. Now in the last several weeks, we've seen some of the horrific, meaningless and senseless killings of the extreme violence. First of all, on November 16th, just a few days ago, there was a stabbing at the Wuxi vocational College in Jiangsu (江苏) Province. A 21-year-old former student attacked individuals at the Wuxi (无锡) Vocational College of Arts and Technology and resulting in eight deaths and 17 injuries. The assailant was reportedly frustrated over academic failures and dissatisfaction with the internship compensation. And then I think the world must have known by now. On November 11th, a 63-year-old man drove an SUV into a crowd at a sports stadium in Zhuhai (珠海) Guangdong (广东) province, killing 35 people and injuring 43 others, the suspect identified as Mr. Fan was reportedly upset over divorce settlement. And then if you go back a little bit further, we have a lot of minor killings and suicidal homicide in virtually every province, every province in China across the nation. Just like a couple days ago on November 19th, 2024, a small white SUV struck numerous children and several adults at a gate in Yongan (永安）Elementary School in Changde (常德), Hunan (湖南) Province injuring multiple individuals and the cause of the incident remain under investigation. And then you go back a little bit, there's a stabbing incident. In October, 2024, a man attacked shoppers in a Shanghai supermarket. Three people were killed, 15 injured. The motivation behind the attack is still under investigation. And of course, in Jining (济宁）, in Sichuan (四川) province, in Shandong (山东) province, you have a lot of knife attacks. So many people were killed. And this is a problem for the regime because there are so many people who are disillusioned, they didn't find the meaning in our life.
On top of that, you have this tremendous unemployed people population in Guangdong (广东) province. Actually they have for the first time we see some real statistics. Over 30% of people reported as unemployed, 30%. That's a huge. So you have this kind of great social tension and it has something to do with the economic downturn. But also most importantly, I think there is a great amount of resentment against the way the CCP handle the governance of the nation. Corruption is very, very rampant. I think a lot of people actually have no other resorts to feel better and fair treated. So that's why the resort to violent crimes, this is a very big problem. And I think China is a country of high pressure and not high pressure might actually be exploding at some point and any moment.
So finally, I'd like to talk a little bit about the war in Ukraine. Now in the last 48 hours, we have seen some dramatic developments, first and foremost in order to create a pattern to their favor. And I think both Russia and Ukraine have intensified their military operations in various ways. For Ukrainians, president Biden has authorized the Ukrainian armed forces to use United States supply long range missiles to attack the interior of Russia. And this is huge. Vladmir Putin said this means that NATO countries are now in open war with Russia. So this is some kind of a very serious warning and we'll all be watchful over the development. Secondly, Vladmir Putin has formed a global alliance of some sort. North Korea reportedly had about 10,000 to 12,000 commando style operators in Ukraine for Russia. And now over the weekend we are told that the number could dramatically increase to about 100,000. Those Korean commandos to be used by Russia in a war against Ukraine.
Now, North Korea has the world's largest special operation force numbering as high as 200,000. Those are well-trained, well fed fanatics. So we should not take this new development very lightly. I think there will be a lot of changes about the war in Ukraine because the incoming president, president-elect, Donald Trump has vowed he's going to end the war the moment he enters the White House. So I think each side is trying to gain battlefield advantage before January 20th when the inauguration takes place. So those are the three reports I have for you this week, and I look forward to sharing more thoughts with you next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of China Insider. I'd also like to thank our executive producer, Philip Hegseth, who works tirelessly and professionally behind the scenes for every episode. To make sure we deliver the best quality podcast to you, the listeners, if you enjoyed the show, please spread the word for Chinese listeners. Please check our monthly review and analysis episode in Chinese. We'll see you next time.