President Trump’s decision to destroy Iran’s nuclear program is being rightfully hailed as a dramatic success that demonstrated overwhelming yet disciplined U.S. military power and how that precision use of force can lead to the quelling of hostilities between combatants. The operation was the definition of peace through strength.
However, while our focus has again shifted to the Middle East and Putin’s deadly imperial designs continue unabated in Ukraine, the U.S. cannot neglect its simmering conflict with communist China. The mullahs and the old KGB warhorse in the Kremlin are ultimately a sideshow to the greatest threat to our national security.
The new Cold War that many policymakers have dismissed for years, is looking to be anything but and restoring our leverage in that conflict must be a top priority for the Trump Administration. It’s going to be a serious fight.
When Marxists set out to infiltrate our institutions, they started with higher education. It was a smart move. Today American universities are a bastion of anti-American ideologies that erode American identity and values.
Many of the global citizens they educate are leftists from Europe and children of China’s Communist Party leaders.
Students from communist China aren’t just flooding the halls of Harvard. While nearly one-quarter of foreign students at Harvard are from China, that number approaches 50 percent at Columbia, Cornell, UCLA and Duke, according to the Wall Street Journal’s analysis.
According to the Journal’s analysis, China remains the largest buyer of education-related services at $14.3 billion in 2023.
We are literally training the next generation of leaders of our greatest strategic adversary in our own country and denying Americans seats at those institutions to do it.
When you consider that the per capita annual income of the average Chinese citizen is less than $14,000, it becomes clear that these students – who pay full tuition at these schools – are being either subsidized heavily by the CCP or are members of the regime’s elite ruling class.
Every one of these students needs permission from the communist government to leave the country, and they all must accede to the government’s directives to provide information or conduct even subtle espionage operations.
Democrats say restrictions are horrible because we “want the best and the brightest” to come to the U.S. to study here. It is true, Chinese kids aren’t registering for gender studies classes. They leave that nonsense to us.
While we focus on teachers unions, protests and pronouns, the communists are teaching their kids English and push science and engineering to encourage stronger academic performance.
The Trump administration is right to ask what price we are paying. We would never allow the Soviets this kind of access to our universities, research centers, real estate markets and industries. It needs to stop Mr. President.
The idea that we will somehow convert these students, paid for by the CCP, into lovers of democracy may have been a noble dream decades ago, but our chasing it has undoubtedly made us significantly weaker as a nation.
Restoring our leverage over China must go beyond doing something about CCP “party schools.”
Today, communist China provides 88 percent of all the active ingredients in our pharmaceuticals. The industry that has a vested interest in keeping us sick or hooked on medications is beholden to a nation that has a vested interest in weakening our population.
Communist China is also a major source of food additives like citric acid, sorbic acid, vanillin, xylitol, monosodium glutamate and folic acid used in industrialized, processed foods that are making us sicker. Increases in food additive imports from China began in 1979 and have ballooned in recent years.
In 2013 China’s WH Group bought iconic American brand, Smithfield Foods, so that’s right, China owns your Nathan’s hotdogs now too.
Two alleged CCP operatives were recently captured attempting to smuggle an agroterrorism weapon into the U.S. that could wipe out crops and cause severe illness in humans. One the alleged spies received funding from the Chinese government for a fellowship at the University of Michigan.
Let’s be clear, every Chinese-linked company is connected to the CCP. The communist party has the absolute right to direct that company, appropriate its assets, and mine its data at will.
While left-wing Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs and other Democrats may not think it’s a problem, the Chinese now own such iconic properties like the Waldorf=Astoria and the landmark Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York, along with nearly 400,000 acres of farmland across the country.
A Chinese concern even recently purchased President Trump’s Alma Mater, the New York Military Academy, near West Point.
Restrictions on Chinese ownership of real property of any kind deserves serious consideration from the Trump Administration and Congress.
We should have no doubt that like the Soviets and the KGB before it, the CCP and its various intelligence services have infiltrated our government. Rooting out Chinese operatives in our government and among government contractors must be also a top priority for the administration.
Deep state thinking is in line with the communist statist philosophy, and it is incompatible with the maintenance of American freedom.
Drugs are the chemical weapon of choice for the CCP. The communist Chinese are behind illegal marijuana grows in a number of states and their collusion with the drug cartels to addict Americans with fentanyl is ongoing, shifting from the Southern Border to our northern border with Canada.
China’s tech war against the U.S. is massive and can reach every American. We also have limited capabilities to counter its EMP weapons.
Violent social unrest is likely being fueled by the CCP in some form, just as they used TikTok to drive a massive influence operation within the United States. The next time you see a Pro-Palestinian or anti-ICE riot, it’s all part of the CCP’s effort to conquer America from within.
China is at war with this country. It’s not a Cold War. It’s a multi tactical operation that is active, aggressive, broader and deeper than our competition with the Soviets. They are killing our people and trying to kill our spirit.
It must be countered move by move whether the markets, the media and weak-kneed politicians in Washington like it or not.
Success in anything in this life is about leverage. As a nation we’ve handed our leverage to our most lethal adversary. Of all legacies of President Trump’s remaining time in office, recapturing our leverage over communist China through our domestic policy, would be the most significant for our national security and our freedom.
Tom Basile is the Host of ‘America Right Now’ on Newsmax, conservative columnist, speaker, author of Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq and a former Bush Administration official. Follow him on X @Tom_Basile. Learn more at www.TomBasile.com
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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