IS THE MEXICAN BORDER THE AMERICAN TIENANMEN?

THE HUNDRED-YEAR MARATHON: CHINA'S SECRET STRATEGY TO

REPLACE AMERICA AS THE GLOBAL SUPERPOWER

(New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2015)

BY MICHAEL PILLSBURY

Rev. by Hugh Murray

Pillsbury has written an informative book about Sino-American relations from his youth in the 1960s up to the copyright date of the 2015 volume. Unfortunately, he fails to raise questions pertinent to his topic, and these I shall discuss later in my review. Because Pillsbury knows Mandarin and is seeped in Chinese culture, he writes about various Chinese texts on strategy, which the Chinese war-hawks often cite, but these ancient writings reveal no more about general strategy than applied by players of games Risk or Diplomacy and which are implicit in regular common sense.

At the outset of Pillsbury's career, he writes: “Throughout Mao's tenure, American intelligence...[generally] viewed the Chinese as a reclusive, almost primitive people being led by a collection of radicals.”(p. 20) It saw China as unable to challenge the Soviet Union, much less the United States.(20-21) Was there a possible split between the S.U. and China in the 1960s? Pillsbury describes the contradictory information coming from Soviet defectors, like Yuri Nosenko, who came to the West in 1964. Interestingly, Pillsbury never mentions how vibrations of that split were already evident in 1962 among the separate groups organizing to attend the World Youth Festival that summer in Helsinki (not just the pro-Westerners, but the pro-Chinese factions distinct from the pro-Moscow ones).

In 1969 while the 24-year-old Pillsbury was working for the UN Secretariat, he also agreed to work as a spy for the US government.(24) Thereafter, he would hold various posts and provide information, analysis, and opinion to American leaders. A Soviet representative at the UN told Pillsbury that “the Soviet Union had essentially built the modern Communist Chinese state,(25) but now China “planned to use the Americans as they had used the Soviets – as tools...while pledging cooperation against a 3^rd rival power.”(27)

Pillsbury contends that it was not Nixon who sought to open up China, but “...the Chinese military secretly designed China's opening to America.”(54) Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy was also quietly making overtures to Beijing, and Nixon, when told of his Democratic rival's initiative, the President felt pressured to finally plunge ahead with high-level meetings with the Chinese. Nixon also asked the Chinese not to invite any American politician to Beijing before him.(57) Because China was deemed a basket case, Nixon and Ford provided gifts to the Chinese, which were hidden from the American public for over 30 years. These included eliminating aid to the Dalai Lama and canceling naval patrols in the Taiwan Straight.(69) About this time, Pillsbury was advising to increase aid to China and to build Sino-American military ties against the USSR.(69) He writes that the Chinese were trying to use the US against its Soviet rival, but clearly the US was also attempting to use China against the same rival. In these types of agreements, each nation hopes to use the other for its own benefit.

After opening, the US and China cooperated, not only where the US provided China with early warning systems near the Soviet border, and help in nuclear affairs,(73) but in military operations: 1) against the Soviets in then-occupied Afghanistan, 2) in support of the anti-Vietnamese genocidal Communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and 3) against the joint Soviet-Cuban groups fighting in Angola.(72, 74) China, which had felt itself surrounded by an increasingly hostile USSR and its allies, even went to war against Vietnam in 1979, following that nation's long wars with France and the USA. Basically, Pillsbury, and most others, would agree that Chinese-American cooperation helped topple the Soviet Union, the Kremlin crumbling that might not have happened without such joined ventures.

Then, in spring/summer 1989 there were student demonstrations in China. Pillsbury contends that US intelligence at that time greatly misread events in China. American leaders thought that Deng Xiaoping led the reform faction among China's leaders, but Pillsbury now believes this was a critical mistake. The student protests began with the mourning and funeral of a real reformer Hu Yaobang, who died 15 April 1989, These collective gatherings grew in size and spread throughout the nation. In Tienanmen, it became a love fest of the young Chinese for America, with an imitation Statue of Liberty (Goddess of Democracy) in the huge square and ever more people joining the continuing demonstrations. Dan Rather, anchor of the CBS Evening News flew to Beijing's Tienanmen to focus America's attention on the faraway events. While Pillsbury and others usually portray these protests beneath a halo, there were reports at the time that elsewhere in the country the demonstrators were beating Black students studying in China. How widespread was this, I do not know, and it may have been a reaction to special privileges afforded to foreign students by the Communist government. Pillsbury writes that at the time America's China experts tended to dismiss the protests, concerned more that they might cause problems for the “reform” faction led by Deng Xiaoping. Pillsbury later admits one of the great failures of American intelligence was in misunderstanding that the real reformers then were Zhao Ziyang and the late Hu Yaobang, while dominant Deng prepared to throw his weight to lead the anti-reform faction.

Deng and his allies ordered the crackdown. 300,000 troops were ordered to Beijing. Most of us recall the student who stood alone against an advancing tank, halting the military occupation of Tienanmen – for a short time. And then more orders were given, shots were fired, and blood of students flowed through the square, and into the streets nearby, and even up in the neighboring balconies when troops shot up into onlookers. Many regular citizens of Beijing had been killed trying to stop the troops from entering the city. Some were run-over by military vehicles, others shot with bullets meant to expand in the victim and cause more damage, others simply beaten. And many were arrested. This was happening before the army got to Tienanmen.

According to Pillsbury, Deng was horrified that Chinese youths should look to America as a model for China's future. From the early 1970s, when Mao met Nixon, the Chinese had portrayed America favorably. Deng now determined: - that must stop. So, history was suddenly rewritten and the media would popularize the new “view” of the past. Beginning with US President John Tyler and the 1844 Treaty of Wanghia (which gave most favored nation status in tariffs to the US, and which provided extraterritoriality; the treaty would remain in effect until 1943), America sought to follow Britain's imperial path and exploit China. Lincoln, Wilson, on to Truman and beyond, America was out to undermine and exploit China.(104-05) That would be the new outline for presenting the role of the US in China's sphere.

After the crackdown, China hands, and even former Pres. Nixon, urged Pres. George H. W. Bush not to allow the Tienanmen suppression to disrupt the improving relations with the US. Those relations were not disrupted.

Missing from the Pillsbury volume is any discussion of another series of demonstrations that also began in 1989. Outside the St. Nickolas Church in Leipzig, the second largest city of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Monday night demos began quite peacefully asking for more democratic reforms and the right to travel. In nearby Hungary (also part of the Soviet bloc), some GDR citizens were allowed to cross into the West without obtaining permission of the GDR authorities. Dissatisfaction and protests were growing. GDR leader Erich Honecker asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to crack down. Instead, he demanded a softer approach, more in line with the Perestroika then unfolding in the USSR. Soon, he removed Honecker, and Egon Krenz was installed as the new leader of the GDR. Protests grew in size, and spread to the capital, East Berlin. But Leipzig remained the hub of the trouble. Special troops were called up to meet the crisis. What would they do? A repeat of the suppression in Germany that occurred in 1953? Would the authorities have the courage to do as the tanks in Tienanmen did to restore order, even if it meant mass killings? In the end, they did not fire on the crowds. The government sought to ease the situation by transmitting that the border would be open; but what did this mean, was the government really opening the wall? All was confused with masses suddenly gathering at Brandenburg Gate, and then, actually passing through the GDR barriers into West Berlin. The wall was eroding, and with it, the GDR. By 1991 the GDR had ceased to exist, and so had the USSR. If the troops had not brutally shot and killed and later imprisoned the protestors in Tienanmen and round that nation, would the People's Republic of China still exist? Pillsbury fails to ask this essential question.

So soon after the Chinese Communist Party reasserted its physical authority in China, rounding up reformers, keeping some reform leaders under house arrest for years, and for the small fry, prison, and possibly worse. The education/propaganda machine now portrayed America as an enemy of China's natural aspirations. And a most crucial point – the glue that held the Sino-American cooperation together, the fear of the mighty USSR, was removed with the disintegration of that Communist creation. Pillsbury maintains that while the China hands and experts in America continued to think that the cooperation would continue as before, the Chinese, freed from any renewed threat of Soviet encirclement, could now aim to grow and surpass the US, so that China could become the world's dominant power by 2049. But China would not show its true hand until ready, until sure it could defeat the Americans. Until then, it would play the part of the backward nation that required scientific, technical, and other assistance. And to win this assistance, China would continue to pretend to be moving toward democracy, toward a free market economy, while it announced its peaceful intentions to all other nations. To achieve these fine, acceptable goals, China might require America's help, in gaining admission to the World Trade Organization, and in dealings with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Thus, China needed America's help on these issues so it could continue progress toward a democratic and free-market economy, which would improve the standard of living for the average Chinese and make for a more peaceful world. So, American experts did indeed help China achieve WTO membership, which made China eligible for loans from the World Bank and the IMF. Experts from Goldman Sachs and other firms provided vital information to Chinese officials so they could present papers to international bodies promising to act like any other nation in international trade and finance. The Chinese were delighted to receive the memberships, but they had no intention of abiding by the terms of these treaties. Other Western experts were advising the Chinese on how to reform China's banks, so they could infuse funds into the stumbling state owned enterprises (SOEs), trimming them, making them financially muscular, rebuilding old state corporations and promoting new, promising ones.

However, there were also signs that China was testing a new policy with the US. In the wars that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia, the US, in alliance with Western Europe, sided with the opponents of Serbia. America flew planes in to bomb Serbian targets. On one mission, the night of 7 May 1999, apparently by mistake, US aircraft bombed the Chinese Embassy in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, killing 3 and injuring 20. The US quickly apologized. However, this was insufficient for the CCP nationalists and hawks. Massive demonstrations outside the American Embassy in Beijing basically entrapped the Ambassador in part of the enclave. Phone calls for help, both from the Embassy and from the US to authorities in Beijing were essentially evaded or ignored. At this point, no large demonstrations could occur in Beijing without the tacit support of the regime, especially when goaded to do so by the Chinese media to rouse the crowds. Deng had already begun the de-emphasis on Marx and the promotion of patriotism and nationalism; now he could combine that in an open way to test the reaction of the Americans to see how or if the superpower would respond to the humiliation of its Ambassador. The new China policy was not afraid to annoy or threaten the prestige of the USA.

Pillsbury contends that China's Marathon depends on the good-will of the US.(115) But China was now assuming it could retain that good-will even while holding the American Ambassador as a hostage. How would China keep good-will in America, and indeed throughout the world? In 2004 the Confucius Institute was created by CCP front groups. Like the British Council, and the Goethe Institute, the Confucius Institute's purpose is to make the homeland look good to the rest of the world. It would stress the pacific nature of Confucius, of Chinese culture and the Chinese nation. Pillsbury writes that it may also provide cover for “industrial and military espionage.”(125) The Confucius Institute will sign contracts with universities, and even high schools, to provide teachers of Mandarin and Chinese culture. But part of the agreements, - there can be no hostile research or discussion of Tienanmen, Tibet, or an independent Taiwan. A university with a Confucius Institute that allows a department to invite the Dalai Lama to lecture may find its funding cut. What most Westerners would deem “objective” research in “sensitive” areas is discouraged or rejected.

The Chinese can use the financial lever because of the enormous growth of the Chinese economy, and Pillsbury maintains the US is largely responsible for the Chinese economic miracle.(159) How can he assert this? The economy under Mao was a disaster, and Pillsbury relates that from 1958-61 some 30 million died of famine.(162) He provides no figure on how many were killed during the Cultural Revolution and other Maoist “reforms,” but under Mao's communism, consumerism was clearly another casualty. After Mao's death and the ensuing struggle for power with the Gang of 4 and others, Deng surfaced as the most powerful leader inside the CCP. He was determined to change the economic policies that he was convinced had held China back. Marx and the other saints of Communism would still be honored, but China would now aim for socialism with Chinese characteristics. And what did that mean precisely? The collapse of the Soviet Union witnessed a rush by the government to sell off the huge state operating enterprises (SOEs), operations that were usually heavy on bureaucracy and weak on producing quality goods. These dinosaurs were quickly bought by men with insider information, insider contacts, and skill who soon became known as the new Russian oligarchs. Should China follow the same path? Some suggested that this would be the fastest way to become a capitalist, free market economy, and China would then be prosperous. But Deng listened to alternative proposals. Some suggested that the CCP should rebuild, modernize, and innovate the old dinosaur SOEs. If this could be done, at least with some SOEs, then they could be subsidized by the state and Party in many ways. State banks could force mergers of stronger and weaker state corporations, force very weak ones into bankruptcy, aid others with tax incentives, with curbs to diminish and destroy foreign competition in the home market using ever more stringent regulations against the foreign companies; harassment. The objective of the CCP using these methods was for the dinosaurs to evolve into national champions, SOEs and new CCP-government favored corporations capable of competing with any foreign corporation. Pillsbury notes that in the 1960s, the only internationally known Chinese brand was Tsingtao Beer. Today, Huawei is only one of the most famous in the news.

Pillsbury presents a graphic example of how China's new wealth, accumulated in part by cheating, has influenced the globe. In the 2013 film “Gravity,” with Sandra Bullock, the star faces death in space because the Russians have, without any notification, blown up a satellite, and the fragments spinning through space, endanger anything in neighboring orbits including Bullock.(198) The film is fiction. The Russians had not exploded a satellite on purpose; but the Chinese had! And for the American film to gain access to the huge Chinese market, the film executives knew it had better not blame the villainy in the script on China. So they decided to assign that role to the Russians instead. Thus, the Russians became the bad guys. Money talks. And because of America's trade and other policies with China, that nation has gained lots of money

.

The People's Republic of China has used its newly acquired wealth to pressure nations to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan, as the PRC does not view the island as an independent nation but only a rogue breakaway province that must be returned to the mainland. It should be stressed that for over a century, Taiwan has been connected to Beijing for at most 5 years, and probably less. In 1895, as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan took the island calling it Formosa, and it remained Japanese until the end of WWII, 1945. It was then given to the officially recognized government of China, led by Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek. As his forces lost to the Communists on the mainland, Chiang had to evacuate his troops to the island where he continued as head of the Republic of China, recognized by the US and some other nations until the 1970s. Mao's government had no power over Taiwan, though the PRC claimed it. When the US finally recognized the PRC as the official government of China, it then recognized Taiwan as a separate Chinese entity, as did many other nations allied with the US.

In recent years, China uses it wealth to pressure smaller nations to cut ties with Taiwan. If they want Chinese investment, Chinese help in building roads, infrastructure, then they should rid their capitals of any Taiwan embassy. So, some African and Latin American nations have severed diplomatic relations with the island, tending to isolate it from the international community. The mainland has been offering both the carrot and stick to Taiwan, itself. Taiwanese were allowed to invest in mainland areas, hiring large numbers of mainland workers at low wages, and producing products for the international market. Firms like Foxconn built huge factories on the mainland with conditions so oppressive that nets had to be installed below workers' dormitory windows to reduce the suicide rate. Taiwanese business men have done well in the PRC. And the CCP has invested in Taiwan, not so much in factories, but in politicians. While some politicians speak of declaring Taiwan an independent nation, others openly promote reunion with the mainland. But the PRC policy is not all carrots. Thus 1 April 2019 ABC New reported: “ Taiwan said Monday its planes warned off Chinese military aircraft that crossed the center line in the Taiwan Strait, and called China's move a provocation that seeks to alter the status quo...”

It was not only in Taiwanese politicians that the PRC was investing. In the 1996 Presidential campaign the Chinese indirectly funneled money to the campaign of then Pres. Bill Clinton. When the GOP sought to investigate, the pro-Democratic major media discounted Sen. Fred Thompson's efforts, but the Democratic National Committee would eventually be required to return $2.8 million in illegal and improper contributions from foreign nationals – some with connections to the Chinese military.(National Review, John Fund's piece, 16 July 2017). Pillsbury notes that the Chinese were caught paying into Democratic coffers in the 2000 Presidential campaign.(121) Since it was the Democrats, there was no years'-long investigation of collusion by a Mueller-type Special Counsel. We now know that the husband of Senator Diane Feinstein (Dem.-Cal.) won lucrative deals with Beijing, while she often voted for improved relations with the PRC. From 2009-2017 she chaired the Senate Committee on Intelligence, and was an important member of the committee even when the Democrats were not the majority. And at the time of the hearings for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh for the US Supreme Court before the Judiciary Committee, on which Feinstein is the leading Democrat, it was revealed that Feinstein's chauffeur of over 2 decades was a spy for the Chinese Communists.

Pillsbury notes that a Chinese spy inside the CIA was convicted in 1985, but he had been plying his trade since 1945.(p. 53) This is one of the weaknesses of Pillsbury's book. He writes that for most of his time working for the US government, he was a “panda huger,” sympathetic to the PRC and urging cooperation and aid to that nation. Their operatives described him as part of the Red Team. But by around 2000, he questioned his former positions. He was becoming a panda slugger. However, aside from a sentence about a Chinese spy in the CIA going back to 1945, Pillsbury ignores the earlier Red Teams in the US government, ones that were probably far more influential in promoting Chinese Communism and in changing the world. The pro-Red Teams long preceded Nixon and the opening of China. They were in place during WWII.

WWII began in Asia with the 2^nd Sino-Japanese War, an escalation of an incident on the Marco Polo Bridge between Chinese and Japanese soldiers just outside of Beijing on 7 July 1937. The Japanese pressed south, taking Shanghai, and then Chiang's capital, Nanjing. The Imperial forces were so brutal it was called “the rape of Nanking.” By December 1941 Chiang had retreated to a capital in the south west, Chungking (Chongqing). Manchukuo had been carved from several provinces of China that had been home to the minority Manchus. The Japanese satellite nation was established in the early 1930s and headed by Pu Yi, a Manchu, and the last emperor of China. By 1941 most of the northern and central coast of China had been conquered by the Japanese. Mao and his Communists had been thrust from the Nationalist coalition government in the 1920s, and after a long march, were located closer to the Mongolian border (with possible help coming from the USSR). After several years of retreat, Wang Jingwei and others who had been close to Dr. Sun Yat Sen (he had led the rebellion that overthrew the Chinese dynasty in 1911), decided the best role for the Nationalists was to stop the war, and join as junior partners with Japan. He left Chungking, flew to Hanoi, and thence to Japanese occupied areas. He would lead a Nationalist collaborationist government, which had 600,000 troops in its military, and under which many more Chinese lived than under Chiang's anti-Japanese Nationalist government, or in the small areas under Mao.

In summer 1939 the USSR and Japan had a short, undeclared war near the borders of their satellites – (Soviet) Mongolia vs. (Japanese) Manchukuo. The Japanese lost badly. But the 2 nations wanted peace so they could test their warriors elsewhere. The USSR was one of the few nations to recognize Manchukuo. And after June 1941 when Hitler invaded, Stalin had little time to aid Mao. Chiang hoped for American aid after Pearl Harbor. But his Nationalist forces were isolated. All the coast that was not Japanese, was Japanese waters. Indo-China was Vichy French, working with the Japanese, Thailand was soon a Japanese ally, as was Burma. Only by flights over the hump of Tibet with supplies from British India, or through the vulnerable Burma road, could Chiang get supplies. American advisor, General “Vinegar” Joe Stilwell treated Chiang as a “peanut,” the nickname he used to mock the Chinese leader. Stilwell also abused Nationalist China, treating it as a satellite rather than as an ally.

Initially, the media were sympathetic to Chiang, but as the war went on, his image changed. As did the image of Joseph Stalin. FDR's Administration asked Hollywood for films to portray the Soviets in a favorable light. One such film, “Mission to Moscow,” was dubbed by those who knew better as “Submission to Moscow.” In some segments of the media, Chiang was now seen as corrupt, unwilling to fight the Japanese, while the agrarian reformers under Mao Zedong seemed idealists and determined to oppose the Japanese invaders. Washington began to press for a coalition government, of Nationalist and Communist to oppose both the Japs and Wang's collaborationist Nationalism. Chiang kept finding ways to reject these proposals.

Washington desperately wanted the Soviets to enter the war against Japan. Stalin promised to do so 3 months after the end of the war in Europe. Invasion of the Japanese home island might cost 2 million lives. The Japanese were ready to surrender and asked the Soviets to convey that message to the Americans. However, Stalin did not want the war to end until he could enter and receive the goodies Roosevelt had promised him. Stalin did not relay the Japanese message about surrender. Three months after the Nazis surrendered, the US dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, AND the Soviets entered the war, easily sweeping through Manchukuo (where much of China's industrial belt was located, and which was denuded of Japanese troops as they were still occupying vast territories). Japan sued for peace. Almost by chance, the Soviets and Americans were to share the Korean peninsula, divided about half for each. For one week's war, the Soviet's did extremely well.

The Soviets prevented the Chiang government soldiers from quickly occupying Manchuria. The Soviets took as much of the industrial hardware as it could, but what to do with the left-over Japanese weapons? Should these go to the official government of China led by Chiang? Chiang did make mistakes. He tended to treat many of those who lived under the occupation government as traitors. But soon there was fighting between Nationalists and Communists.

The civil war continued. When Chiang was finally getting the upper hand by the spring of 1946. American General George Marshall, a good friend of Gen. Stilwell, came to arrange for a cease fire between the conflicting camps. The cease fire halted Chiang's offensive. Meanwhile, the Japanese weapons confiscated by the Soviets were given to the Chinese Communists. For Chiang to receive weapons from the Americans, Marshall demanded that he bring the Communists into his government. Chiang refused. So while Mao was being supplied with Japanese weapons seized by the Soviets, Chiang was denied weapons by the Americans. Then, for some bewildering reason, events on the battlefield began to change. Chiang's Nationalists began to lose, and lose. With the election in the US of the heavily Republican 80^th Congress in November, it voted a large sum to help Chiang, but the Treasury Department included those sympathetic to the Communist cause like Harry Dexter White, who sabotaged these funds. The war kept getting worse for Chiang. When finally the Americans decided to restore military aid to Chiang, rifles would be received, but no bullets, and other means of cripple his efforts. Meanwhile, secrets from the State Department were published in a left-wing Asian journal. The Deep State had employed many whose sympathies and actions favored the communist cause. Eventually, Chiang had to flee to Taiwan to survive. And in October 1949 Mao in Beijing declared victory and the establishment of the PRC, Would he have been able to do so without the help of Stalin and the pro-communist elements in the US? When Republicans asked, “Who lost China?” there was more to this question than liberals cared to admit. The elite of both parties still decry McCarthyism and believe he was rightly censured by the US Senate. But McCarthy alleged there were Red Teams in the US government, Teams that were far more influential than the FDR crowd and its successors (the academedia complex) would ever admit.

While Pillsbury mentions the Korean War on a few pages of his book, he never tries to relate the antics of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to Chinese-American relations. Clearly, there were and are links between North Korea and the PRC. As Gen. MacArthur's UN troops approached the Yalu River, wiping the DPRK off the map, the PRC responded with masses of “volunteers” whose numbers overwhelmed the American-led armies. MacArthur was surprised by the Chinese intervention, and wanted to use nuclear bombs. Truman knew the UN, under whose flag we were fighting, would never agree. And Truman undoubtedly thought it a bad idea or he might have done it. So the UN troops fell back and the war continued with no sign of victory for either side. Truman's unwinnable war was one reason Republican Dwight Eisenhower ended a 20 year drought and brought the GOP back to the White House in 1952. He had promised to end the war, and a cease fire was concluded (though, still no peace treaty).

What is the relation between North Korea and China today? When North Korea does something the US dislikes, the US may ask for diplomatic help from the PRC. If China does intervene on behalf of the American request, what does China get in return from the US. Might China ever goad North Korea to do something it knows will upset Washington in order to gain a concession? But if China is not involved at the time, and American diplomats come for help because of some outrageous act by North Korea, China can plead impotence, or refer the US to another nation bordering the DPRK, the USSR (or later Russia). China-Korea can play a low-level extortion game with the US. What is Pillsbury view of this? He never alludes to it in his book.

Finally, one of the many disasters of the Obama Administration was to allow the PRC to build up tiny islands in the South China Sea, and then militarize them. The Chinese claims to the area were denied by the International Court in the Hague, but the new aggressive Chinese leadership cares nothing for such court rulings. Instead, it proclaims it has old maps showing the waters were once Chinese. Of course, it might also have maps laying claim to Siberia, but this is not the time to dust those off. The Chinese military presence in the South China Sea is a threat to Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and indirectly, Singapore. It is also a threat to all shipping nations. By taking such a surprise and powerful stand, and with no real opposition from Obama's appeasing White House, China shows it is aiming for bigger things, just as Pillsbury has written.

Pillsbury contends that the Chinese Communist leadership plans to become the dominant world power by 2049, the anniversary of Mao's victory in their civil war. Mao came to power with the help of the Soviets, AND with help from American Communist sympathizers in high-level posts, who may have given bad advice to some non-Communists like Gen. Marshall. The result was to effectively disarm Chiang Kai Shek and allow Mao's forces to defeat him. Within a year, Mao was strong enough militarily to snatch victory from the US in Korea. However, Mao's internal economic “reforms” set China back 30 years, in Deng's view. Many millions starved, and then thousands or millions were killed. The military pushed for an opening with the USA which occurred under Nixon. China, fearing encirclement by the Soviets, and the US, still in a Cold War against the Soviets, had a common foe in Moscow. The US and China worked together in Afghanistan, Angola, and Cambodia. But beginning in 1989 with protests, nations took different paths. The Soviet East Bloc chose not to crack down, and their systems collapsed. The Chinese under Deng did crack down and determined that never again would Chinese youths look to America for inspiration. Chinese history was rewritten, making America into just another imperialist nation intent on distorting and exploiting Chinese aspirations. China would pretend to be moving to democracy and a free-market economy, while building SOEs into national champion industries in a mercantilist trade system of cheating and stealing.

China had altered the result of the Korean “police action” in 1950. It won a short war with India in 1962, and an undeclared one with the Soviets in 1969. A decade later it had another one with Vietnam. Now it tries to isolate, strangle, and bribe Taiwan. Its new presence in the South China Sea makes it the bully of the neighborhood. Pillsbury writes that the US is still aiding the Chinese.(216) Whether this is true under Trump, is questionable. Pres. Trump has surely sought to shed the image (and reality) of Obamappeasement. Pillsbury makes a strong case that the US is now in a competitive race with China for world leadership, and that the freedoms we take for granted in the West may disappear in a “harmonized” world under Chinese leadership. Most Westerners still reject the harmony of the ant hill, preferring instead to retain the freedom, to fall or soar, instead.

There is another point, not directly related to China but to the competition Pillsbury describes between China and the US in the Middle Kingdom's marathon of the century. When protests rose in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the GDR leader asked Gorbachev to crack down, the Soviet leader declined. He wanted a softer approach, and more reform. The crowds in Germany grew, as did tensions. The troops were there with weapons. But they did not fire. The TV indicated the government would open the border. Masses went to the border points in Berlin, and they were permitted to leave the GDR for West Berlin! Suddenly, everything was in flux. In two years, the GDR ceased to exist; and so had the USSR. Somewhat earlier in 1989, in Tienanmen Square, growing masses of demonstrators demanded a more democratic China, symbolized by the students' version of the Statue of Liberty. Days went by, with the demonstrators growing in number. Finally the CCP leadership decided to end it. Like the GDR, where guards for the wall in Berlin were usually Saxons, not natives Berliners, Deng brought in Chinese troops from outside Beijing to shoot to kill those protesting against the nation's Communist leadership. And the crack-down continued, so that even today discussion of Tienanmen is blocked on the Chinese internet. Deng was brutal, but the CCP is still in power 30 years after Tienanmen.

These incidents have a relation to the US. In February 2019 some 75,000 invaders entered the US through the southern border with Mexico, and it's forecast that the number in March will be 100,000. Millions are already here. “Experts” on mainstream media announce that really nothing can be done to stop this. However, in the 1950s under President Eisenhower, Operation Wetback rounded up about a million illegals and deported them back over the border. (Now, with left-wing gatekeepers of language, we are no longer supposed to even use the word wetback.) America has laws on the books to apprehend and deport illegal entrants, yet whole cities, usually run by Democrats, openly announce their defiance of the law under the term “sanctuary” cities. Lawless cities would be more appropriate. Pres. Trump, whose signature issue was stopping illegal immigration – an issue that led him to victory over a dozen professional politicians in the primaries for the Republican nomination, and then led Trump to carry some blue-collar states to win the 2016 Presidential election over Hillary Clinton. He still orates against the invaders, but whenever he tries to build a wall or make it more difficult to enter, Trump is handcuffed, either by liberal judges, by Congress, or by the bureaucracy.

I ask, how will a wall stop the invaders when all they have to do is utter a few words and they will be home in the US where they will receive free schooling, welfare, healthcare, and other economic incentives. We live in a nation under stress: one major party supports open invasion of the nation. And some of the Republicans are just as bad. Even going back to the 1990s and the era of Pres. Bill Clinton, he gave a speech and announced that by the year 2050 whites would be a minority in the United States, and the audience applauded and cheered. Can you imagine Xi Jinping announcing that in 50 years the Han people will be a minority in China, and the Chinese cheer? Inconceivable! Or Prime Minister Modi making a similar comment about Indians being reduced to a minority in India. No Indian would cheer such an announcement.

To prevent an invasion of people who speak a foreign language with foreign customs, entering our country to take from the wealth of American citizens, a wall may help, but it is not sufficient. Those who say the caravans cannot be stopped are warped in their thinking (and some support the invasion). How do you stop an invasion? You use armed troops, border patrols, or regular army, or create a special force. They should have electronic speakers to make simple announcements in English first, and then Spanish. “This is the border. This is no entry point. If you want a visa, get it in the American Embassy in the capital city of your country. If you try to enter, you will not be permitted in. If you try to cross the border here, you may be shot.” If they ignore the announcement, first, shoot in the air. If they continue coming, shoot to stop or kill. It is probable few would need to be shot before the mob turns around and runs the other way. Do not interfere with the leftwing media as it films any killings. It will show to the world that America is determined to preserve itself and its borders. If only one invader is killed, the caravans would soon turn south to their points of origins. Those who hate America would hate it even more. Those who love America, will be grateful to know that the invasion has been halted by our government and American can continue to exist. Indeed, America could be great again.

If people are not willing to fight for their country, it will go under. But it is insufficient just to fight. When invaders try to cross the border, the defenders must be willing to shoot and kill. That way a nation survives and can continue to thrive. The invasion today is our Tienanmen, our Leipzig. The Germans learned the lesson: no border, no country. Will we have the courage to defend our borders and save our way of life? Even if we have to kill to do so? If we fail to stop the flood of invaders, America will soon join the Soviet Union in history's dustbin.