Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.― Napoleon Bonaparte

by Sanjay Perera

SOMEONE within US President Donald Trump’s inner circle must be good at chess. The latest move with the tariff gambit has paid off. Though it resulted in the tediously predictable ire against the US, it paradoxically also precipitated the anticipated reaction from many states affected: they did not retaliate. The non-retaliation to the tariffs was what Washington advised, but the People’s Republic of China retaliated by increasing its rate to 84% which led to America’s recent 125% tariff on it, that effectively translates into a 145% rate: this includes the 20% for the lethal fentanyl production in China which seeps into the US via Canada and Mexico. Trump then instituted a a 90-day moratorium on tariffs for all other states and levying them a base rate of 10%—except for Canada and Mexico whose tariffs remain at 25% as imposed last month; this is due mainly to the continued flow of fentanyl that has killed hundreds of thousands, mainly youth, in America. However, China walked into a snare by issuing its 125% tariff hike.

This resulted in Trump’s countermove: he exempted tax hikes on China’s smartphones, computers and other electronics into America. This should be a relief to Big Tech like Apple, Dell, Nvidia, Microsoft and other technology firms for the moment but there is a long term strategy for this. He says there will be specific announcements regarding these exemptions soon (discussed below). This shows that he is deploying a nuanced strategy against China; he is flexing his skill in deal-making: this is to force China to the negotiating table and be a responsible international actor in trade, particularly with the US. It is also part of the reciprocity in trade relations that underpins the tariff strategy. Crucially, China has to flood other markets with its goods and create further trading imbalances with them revealing how vulnerable it is to US tariffs: someone has to take its stuff.

Therefore, China’s only strategy at the moment—and it is forced to do so—is to try to get closer hopefully to Europe as it currently does the rounds among Southeast Asian states who have their own balance of trade concerns and budgetary issues: and may not be able to level up to being a substitute for Beijing’s dependence on US dollars nor its addiction to feeding off America on many levels.

There are good reasons for the US moves; a key factor being its great imbalance in trade with China which has helped leave the US with a trade deficit of US$1.2 trillion, the largest in recorded history. As Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says, Trump knows that “we are selling our soul to all the other countries in the world by running a giant trade deficit, and he needs to fix it.”

(China’s stance that fentanyl is “America’s problem” does not help. The evidence is there that China does play a major role in fentanyl production and its spread.[1] India has recently been said to be another source of fentanyl; both countries say they are taking action against such production.)

When Trump first announced his 125% move on China, the Dow surged by 2,800 points. In an announcement while hosting racing car champions, Trump said:

Last year China made $1 trillion dollars off trade with the United States. That’s not right. And now I’ve reversed it. It’s for a short period of time, but we’re making $2 billion a day [from tariffs]; somebody had to do it…

Nothing’s over yet but we have a tremendous amount of spirit from other countries, including China. China wants to make a deal. They just don’t know how quite to go about it. You know, it’s one of those things they don’t know quite how—they’re a proud people. And President Xi is a proud man…

But they’ll figure it out; they’re in the process of figuring it out, but they want to make a deal.

He continued that at least 75 states are now negotiating trade deals with his Administration as they do not want any escalated trade tensions with the US. Trump added,

I just want Fair. There will be fair deals for everybody. But they weren’t fair to the United States. They were sucking us dry and you can’t do that, you know, we have $36 trillion dollars of debt for a reason…people took advantage of our country and they ripped us off for decades.

We need to make medicine in America; if you don’t think that’s national security you’re not thinking it through; we need to make semiconductors in America; we need steel and aluminium in America; we need to manufacture in America. If we just run gigantic trade deficits and sell our soul to the rest of the world, eventually we are going to be the thinker for the rest of the world, but they’re going to manufacture, and if someday they say ‘Gee we’re not sending it to you’—we’ll be nothing.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clarified the trade situation:

As I repeatedly said and President Trump has been saying it for years, China is the most imbalanced economy in the history of the modern world. They are the biggest source of US trade problems. And indeed, they are a problem for the rest of the world because what we have seen is that as the US announced the tariff wall last week, many goods have started flooding into Europe…

It’s China’s decision we have the deficit with them [i.e. by limiting purchases from the US]. They sold us almost five times what we sell them. So again, I think it is an own goal by China…

What China is doing will affect their economy much more than ours because they have an export driven flood-the-world with cheap exports model and the rest of the world now understands: because when we put up our tariff wall those exports are now flowing to the rest of the G7 and the global South…

This was driven by the President’s strategy; he and I had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along. You might even say: he goaded China into a bad position…

I think, having seen the maximum level that Donald Trump is willing to go to, President Trump has created this negotiating leverage.

What is missed amidst the anti-Trump-US rhetoric by much of the legacy media, and haters in general, is for how long can a state with a massive trade surplus continue siphoning away funds from its principal trading partner? At some point that source of finance will run dry, then what? And what else do you have to offer when much has been manufactured via cheap exploited domestic labour, and technology from the states you have been impoverishing such as the US? There is no proper thinking or strategy here unless it is to weaken others thereby casting yourself as a potential adversary at the least. Europe now has low-cost goods waiting to flood their markets at a time when they decided to back another bad international actor, Zelenskyy—in an unwinnable conflict with Russia (negotiations are still underway but the US may leave Europe to sort the matter out themselves). Even so, Europe is also negotiating with the Trump team to garner good trading arrangements: just as they have increased defence expenditure in pushing Ukraine to maintain its belligerent stand against Russia (despite Zelenskyy bloviating about ‘peace’). Thus, to what extent can they afford to buy excess goods from China when they too lack an edge in trade with China?

Trump and his inner circle have an appreciation of the whole economic and political chessboard: they are aware of key geopolitical pieces and are making moves to push certain states, and certainly China, into a position of forced moves. In that process a checkmating pattern is emerging contra China but reacting instinctively and ideologically—as it seems to be doing thus far—is not an effective way to counter US moves. The US wants negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to stop the killing; and it sees talks with Iran as an alternative to possible military action against its nascent nuclear weapons capability; but if negotiations fail with China, then other means of neutralising a potential or actual threat will be in motion (and are already). But the preferred mode of action is a negotiated settlement, cutting a deal by the Dealmaker-in-Chief, Trump.

For decades across multiple administrations, we have discussed leveling the playing field with China, instead the situation has only gotten worse. Make no mistake, I want to do business in China as so do millions of other investors and companies, but we want a reciprocal ecosystem that is transparent and where all parties play by the rules mutually agreed upon. I want access to the Chinese legal system so trade and IP grievances can be litigated and resolved

Kevin O’Leary, Chairman and CEO O’Leary Ventures

Commerce Secretary Lutnick elucidated the issue on what seem like exemptions for certain electronic goods under the recent reciprocal tariffs. These are not exemptions as such, there will be a separate slate of tariffs on them subsequently. He explains that semiconductors and pharmaceuticals (but will include other products like steel etc.), for example, will not be subject to the reciprocal tariffs that Trump has imposed; the reciprocal tariffs like 125% from China and America’s 145% on them are open to discussion. The essentials that are crucial to national security like semiconductors and pharmaceuticals will come under the registry of sectoral tariffs, and are not subject to negotiations (Trump is exercising emergency laws to enact this). For the US, as Trump says, cannot rely on foreign actors to provide what is essential for security and survival: for when there is a conflict this would make America vulnerable to the whims and stratagems of others.[2] As Lutnick says:

We need to make medicine in America; if you don’t think that’s national security you’re not thinking it through; we need to make semiconductors in America; we need steel and aluminium in America; we need to manufacture in America. If we just run gigantic trade deficits and sell our soul to the rest of the world, eventually we are going to be the thinker for the rest of the world, but they’re going to manufacture, and if someday they say ‘Gee we’re not sending it to you’—we’ll be nothing.

Lest there are doubts that the Trump Administration is executing carefully thought through manoeuvres rather than doing things willy-nilly, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller expanded further on some of the rationale for such moves:

The 90-day pause gives us an opportunity to have that conversation with each of these countries and to deal with these long-running systemic abuses while at the same time—and very importantly—focusing all of our attention, and the attention of the entire international community on how China has distorted the entire global trading system through decades of intellectual property theft, trademark theft, copyright theft, industrial espionage, currency manipulation, illegal subsidization of critical structures, targeted dumping to destroy core manufacturing capacity in other countries: so that they cannot protect and defend themselves in a time of national emergency.

These are state-led policies from China that require redress and their only scandal is that it took so long for us to finally have a president…who will protect and defend America from these abuses while every other president, Democrat and Republican, allowed China to plunder us to a degree that was so savage and so total…that it eclipses the imagination.

However, the view is not one of simply placing the blame on one state actor; Trump correctly identifies those within his own party and the Democrats that allowed others to take advantage of the country, and almost run it into the ground. Hence, his comments during one of his remarkably transparent cabinet briefings:

Look the EU is very smart, but they really have taken advantage of the United States. They were formed for the purpose of taking advantage of the United States. And I don’t blame them, and I don’t blame China, I don’t blame anybody: I blame the people that were sitting at that desk in that other beautiful Oval Office for allowing it to happen. Many presidents, I blame. They should have never allowed it to happen. And I’m doing something that a lot of them wouldn’t want to do, but I’m here, I do those things…

Notwithstanding, this is not a one-track approach to combatting abuse by others, the Trump Administration is working in tandem with other responsible members of government who are aware of the threat China poses to the US. This is not a fantasy or fabrication but a genuine ongoing systematic targetting of the US. It is not for casual reasons that a specific hearing was held on China’s interest in what may seem initially unlikely areas of American life. Disturbing information was provided during the recent hearing called “Financial Aggression: How the Chinese Communist Party Exploits American Retirees and Undermines National Security”. Some of the comments by Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Ageing, Rick Scott (capital letters are from Scott’s address notes):

Let’s make something very clear about why we are here today: The government of Communist China has chosen to be America’s enemy.

It’s simple. I wish it wasn’t true, but unfortunately it is.

Unfortunately, that’s not a problem that only our military or intelligence community has to worry about.

The government of Communist China has shown again and again that it will do ANYTHING to hurt America and weaken our place in the world—including going after our citizens and targeting the retirements and hard-earned savings of American seniors.

I want to be clear about the threat here: IF YOU HAVE YOUR RETIREMENT INVESTED IN ANYTHING THAT IS CONTROLLED BY OR UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY YOU ARE AT RISK OF LOSING EVERY DOLLAR. And this can happen overnight.

I know this may sound extreme to some, but here is what we know…

I bet many in this room have retirement accounts and investments, but may not even know what companies these investment dollars are being invested in.

THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM.

Too often, Washington fails to fix problems not because it lacks the authority to do so, but because of intentional or incompetent failure to enforce existing laws and rules.

This is true in every part of government, and it’s dangerously true when it comes to holding foreign companies and governments accountable.

In 2020, the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act was signed into law by President Trump which mandated that if companies in Communist China did not comply with U.S. auditing standards for three consecutive years, they must, not maybe, they must, be delisted and banned from trading on American exchanges.

This law was amended in 2022, reducing the consecutive years of non-compliance from three years to two years. Unfortunately, under the last administration, the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] FAILED to enforce this law, and today many Chinese companies including Yum China, Alibaba, and Baidu are still listed on American exchanges in clear violation of U.S. law.

This is a perfect example of why your money is NOT SAFE when invested in companies tied to Communist China.

I am going to hold the SEC accountable to enforce the law…

I am also fighting to fill gaps in current law and strengthen U.S. enforcement authority with multiple pieces of legislation that will hold Communist China accountable. These bills will take the necessary steps to secure our markets, protect consumers, demand transparency and accountability, and ensure investors, especially seniors, who are the most vulnerable, are protected.

WE NEED TO STOP putting Americans’ retirements at risk with investments in the corrupt businesses and practices of Communist China, and I believe the new Chairman of the SEC will, and he has committed to me, that he is going to enforce this act.

STOP putting Americans’ retirements at risk due to their involvement with propping up the agenda of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party].

Americans work way too hard to have their financial security destroyed by Communist China.”[3]

For over two decades, Beijing has used Wall Street to penetrate U.S. capital markets and obtain the capital necessary to fund its economic, technological, and military rise. In exchange for selling Chinese companies to U.S. investors, Wall Street receives huge fees and access to the Chinese market. It’s this quid pro quo that directly threatens America’s economic and national security….As of March 2025, there are 286 Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges with a collective market capitalization of $1.1 trillion.

Christopher A. Iacovella President & CEO, American Securities Association

The opening remarks by Scott at the hearing are quoted here extensively to show that this has been an issue for many years. The committee was not set up by Trump, but it would be difficult to argue that it is not influenced by his clear electoral mandate in the recent elections. Much of its work is bipartisan. During the hearing there was also a statement by Chairman John Moolenaar of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. This committee was established during the Biden years but spearheaded largely by Republicans. Moolenaar’s statement:

This is a unique hearing not only because it’s bicameral but because it reflects growing momentum in Congress to confront the growing risk to American investors and our national security…[T]he United States has led the world in innovation and investment but today that leadership is being challenged not just by market forces, but by a foreign adversary: the Chinese Communist Party.

The CCP is actively using its financial system and state-controlled companies to infiltrate American capital markets and while some might see that as just another investment risk it’s much more than that, we’ve already seen the damage in 2021: the CCP abruptly imposed sweeping regulations on China’s private education sector banning profit-making foreign capital and public listings. That decision wiped out billions of dollars in US investments almost overnight devastating major companies like TAL Education and New Oriental; it was a wake-up call not just for what can happen in a single sector but for the broader reality that when the CCP maintains ultimate control no company is truly independent, and I look forward to the hearing from today from the witnesses on how the CCP’s control creates systemic risk for US investors regardless of industry.

Equally concerning is the ‘golden share’ the CCP holds in many Chinese companies; on paper these firms may look like private enterprises, but the reality is that party influence runs deep when political control overrides fiduciary responsibility: even the smartest investor can be left in a losing position. That issue has also shaped policy decisions here in Washington. The Tik Tok bill, for example, was crafted to require full divestiture of CCP control because anything less would leave the door open to the same risks; we’ve seen this at play time and time again…

We’ll look at what happens when American money flows into companies tied to surveillance, censorship, military buildup, even human trafficking. Americans deserve to know whether their capital is being used to fuel the very threats we’re trying to guard against, and they trust us to take action to keep their investments safe. This hearing isn’t just the end of the conversation it’s just the beginning.[4]

Again, the lengthy quote from Moolenaar dovetails with that of Rick Scott. The threat posed to the US and other states is not from the people of China, it is from those who control the People’s Republic of China: the CCP. The danger is quite real as seen from the time and effort invested in finally tracking the invasive tentacles of the CCP which penetrates a host state like the US, feeds on it, then grows into a competitor and threat to it: but is upset when it is called out. The latest revelation about the notorious Covid virus displays yet again what was hidden in plain sight, with the complicity of most of the legacy media and other state actors. Legal scholar and commentator Jonathan Turley writes:

Imagine a world war that left more than seven million dead, hundreds of millions became ill, wrecked the global economy, and left a generation with lasting psychological and developmental injuries.

We have seen such wars in history. What is different in this circumstance, however, is that all of that happened, and yet, years later, we still have no agreement on the original cause or possible culprits behind a pandemic that ravaged the world.

Worse yet, many politicians, experts and journalists do not seem inclined to find the answers.

This is like fighting World War II and then shrugging off the question of what actually started it…

The Chinese first reported the outbreak in December 2019 and insisted that it came from a wet market in Wuhan—a natural or ‘zonotic’ transfer from bats sold at the market. Others were skeptical and pointed to the nearby Wuhan government virus lab, known to have conducted coronavirus studies with bats. This lab had a history of safety and contamination concerns.

The ‘lab-leak theory,’ which was always the most obvious explanation, was further reinforced by scientists who saw evidence of possible manipulation of the virus’s genetic code, particularly the ‘spike protein’ that enables the virus to enter the human body in a ‘gain of function’ operation…

The Chinese immediately moved to crush any speculation of a lab-leak. Wuhan scientists were gagged and the Chinese refused to allow international investigators access to them or the lab in question. The Chinese also used their considerable influence over the World Health Organization and other groups to dismiss or downplay the lab theory.

Now, a long-withheld military report has finally been released by the Trump administration. It appears to confirm what was once denied by the Biden administration: U.S. military service members contracted COVID-19-like symptoms after participating in the World Military Games in October 2019 in Wuhan.

That contradicts China’s timeline. It suggests a longer cover-up in that country, which allowed the virus to spread not only to the U.S. but to countries around the world. Other nations also reported that their military personnel had fallen ill after attending the same games, suggesting that the virus was not only spreading but already raging in the area at that time.

The most disturbing aspect of this report is not the alleged conduct of the Chinese government, but that of our own…

As scientists were being attacked publicly and blacklisted for supporting the lab theory, experts at both the FBI and the Energy Department found the lab theory credible. Although no theory could be proven conclusively, it was deemed a more likely scenario than the natural-origin theory. The CIA also found the lab theory credible.

What the public was hearing was entirely different. They were hearing the same narrative laid out by the Chinese government in December 2019.

The Chinese relied upon western scientists to form a mob against anyone raising the lab-leak theory as a possible explanation. Many were enlisted to sign letters or publish statements denouncing the idea. It became an article of faith—a required virtue signal among university scientists.

The western media were equally primed to quash the theory…

After President Trump embraced the lab theory, the Chinese had the perfect setup. The media was on a hair-trigger in opposition and denounced his comments as not only unfounded but also racist. MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace mocked Trump and others for spreading ‘conspiracy theories.’ MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt insisted that ‘we know it’s been debunked that this virus was man-made or modified.’…

The Washington Post was particularly dogmatic. After Senator Tom Cotton raised the lab-leak theory, he was chastised for ‘repeat[ing] a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.’…

In 2020, I wrote a column on why China seemed poised to avoid any liability for what might be the greatest act of negligence in history. The sheer size of the disaster somehow seemed to insulate China. As Joseph Stalin had once said, ‘a single death is a tragedy’ and ‘a million deaths is a statistic.’

Try more than seven million, and you have a statistic that was not worth confronting the Chinese over. What was done was done.

Congress and the Trump administration are now working to reconstruct this record. There is much that we still do not know. However, the public has already paid dearly for the answers. We have more than a million questions, and not one of them is a statistic to those who loved them.

What is important here is that there is nothing surprising in any of this. It has long been suspected and believed by those who take a commonsense approach to the world. That a virus outbreak in Wuhan location of the Wuhan Institute of Virology which studies such viruses—was assuredly not the source of the pandemic: defies reason. But that the virus was from bats, just as the so-called ‘bird-flu’ was blamed on birds is expected to be taken as truth. The SARS virus originated in Foshan municipality, Guangdong Province, China, in November 2002. And bird or avian flu also originated in Guangdong, China, in 1996. What does this tell us? That animals must be culled because they are the source of deadly viruses and they originate coincidentally from the same province? So that the animals must be the cause and not human agency though Guangdong has key biological research labs? And even with a virology lab in Wuhan the virus there somehow still originated from bats? Those kinds of tales are known as just-so stories.

The truth about what has gone on in China matters. I filed a shareholder resolution asking Meta’s Board to investigate its activity in China. And I filed whistleblower complaints with the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] and the DOJ [Department of Justice]. The measure of how important these truths are is directly proportional to the ferocity of Meta’s efforts to censor and intimidate me.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, Former Director of Global Public Policy, Facebook

Senator Tom Cotton who was criticised for raising the matter of Covid’s lab leak origins not only chairs the Senate Republican Conference but is Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. His recent book, Seven Things You Can’t Say about China,is doing well on Amazon. Here are extracts from the “Prologue”:

In the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic, before most Americans knew where Wuhan was, I had concluded that the Chinese Communist Party was lying—once again…I used simple common sense, not scientific knowledge or classified intelligence, to answer the bell early on the Wuhan coronavirus…Yet when I made a few commonsense observations in those early days, you would’ve thought I had committed unpardonable sins based on the hysterical reactions not just from China, but also from its American apologists. At every turn, they tried to silence me and suppress my ideas.

First, I advocated for a ban on travel from China into the United States…I urged this commonsense step; after all, China had already imposed its own travel ban from Wuhan. But Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, criticized the proposal as ‘culturally insensitive,’ and Joe Biden denounced the ban as the product of ‘hysteria, xenophobia, and fearmongering’ after President Trump halted travel from China. Biden and Fauci both would later reverse course. What’s remarkable, though, isn’t that both men were wrong—they often are—but rather that their first instinct was to leap to Communist China’s defense and attack its critics…

Next, the Washington establishment rebuked me and others for calling the virus the ‘Wuhan coronavirus,’ ‘China virus,’ or ‘Wuhan flu.’ I’ve never understood the controversy. There’s a long history of naming pandemics and viruses after the locations of suspected origin. West Nile virus, Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, Ebola, and Zika are just a few examples…

Finally, I became the first national leader to say one of the most unspeakable things about the pandemic: the virus may have escaped from a lab. Again, this commonsense observation shouldn’t have been controversial. Wuhan is home to China’s highest-risk ‘super lab’…

Of course, Chinese Communist officials denounced me. China’s ambassador to the United States condemned me as ‘absolutely crazy.’…For good measure, he disingenuously added that the theory would instigate ‘racial discrimination’ and ‘xenophobia.’ Likewise, a top researcher at the Wuhan lab—also the secretary of the lab’s Communist Party committee—huffed that I was ‘deliberately trying to mislead people’. I expected nothing less from Chinese Communists.

But the howls of indignation were just as bad from America’s elite, especially in the media. The Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and twenty-seven scientists in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet all condemned the lab-leak hypothesis as a ‘conspiracy theory.’…In their rush to attack and silence me, China’s apologists threw caution, curiosity, and basic facts to the wind—which they’ve slowly and grudgingly come to acknowledge…By 2023, the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and a former CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] director announced that they, too, suspected the pandemic had started in a lab. In 2024, even the New York Times published an article titled ‘Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points.’ The Chinese Communist Party never came around, though. I continued to speak the truth about Communist China and hold it accountable in the Senate. In August 2020, China responded by imposing sanctions on me, which I still wear as a badge of honor…

China has infiltrated our society. It has weaponized its stolen wealth and captive population of one and a half billion consumers to control what Hollywood celebrities, sports stars, media moguls, college professors, and corporate executives say and think about China. In turn, it has influenced what you’ve heard, read, and seen for a generation….

China has infiltrated our government. China is using both traditional spycraft and a sophisticated China Lobby to target our military, influence Washington, and subvert our state and local governments. America has failed to confront Communist China for many reasons; one reason is Beijing’s corrupt influence over American public officials and their families…

The truth about China is unsettling in part because you don’t hear it much. America should’ve awoken to these dangers decades ago, but too many of our leaders wouldn’t say what you needed to hear.

What follows is what you need to know. This book lays out the real and pressing threat from Chinese Communists based on established facts and the inherent logic of events…And let me stress that Chinese communism is the threat, not the ancient Chinese civilization or the Chinese people, the first and worst victims of Chinese communism.[5]

Senator Cotton’s words and his stand indicate again that there is much more going on on a large and small scale in domestic politics and geopolitics for decades, and that Trump is only trying—as best as humanly possible—to clear up the mess and bring some form of balance and justice into the precarious situation. This is only the tip of a titanic iceberg. US Senator Josh Hawley chaired recently the bipartisan Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism featuring Facebook corporate whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams. Here are extracts from “A Time for Truth: Oversight of Meta’s Foreign Relations and Representations to the United States Congress” made by Ms. Wynn-Williams, Former Director of Global Public Policy,Facebook. As Hawley states:

Wynn-Williams knows the truth about Facebook that’s what they fear; she knows that while Mark Zuckerberg now claims to be a champion of the United States, and claims to be a free speech warrior, he in fact worked hand-in-glove with the Chinese Communist Party for years. He in fact made censorship his business model, he in fact developed censorship tools for the Chinese Communist Party to use against its own people. He…made Americans’ own user data available, was willing to make it available to Beijing; the truth is Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have lied to the American people repeatedly and I think as we’ll see today they have lied to Congress as well: it’s time for this to stop that’s why this committee has launched an investigation into the potential illegal behavior of Facebook.

Today’s hearing is one step in that investigation, Miss Wynn-Williams testimony is absolutely essential to that investigation that’s why we invited her to be here today, and it is why she accepted. Facebook does not want you to hear what she has to say, I dare say China probably doesn’t want you to hear what she has to say, but we are going to get the truth and we’re going to get the truth starting now.

Senator Richard Blumenthal followed with questions to Ms. Wynn-Williams and these comments:

You know we talk a lot about 1984: Facebook developed a ‘verility counter’ [veracity gauge] tool that directed any posts of over 10,000 views to be reviewed by an Orwellian named ‘Chief Editor’…So the ‘Chief Editor’, a creation of Facebook, was an Orwellian censor that applied to locations outside mainland China to Taiwan and Hong Kong…but also obviously to the Chinese themselves and it was designed and implemented by Meta and Mark Zuckerberg.

Ms. Wynn-Williams says in her written testimony:

Throughout those seven years, I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values. They did these things in secret to win favour with Beijing and build an $18 billion dollar business in China. We are engaged in a high-stakes AI arms race against China. And during my time at Meta, company executives lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress, and the American public. I sit before this Committee today to set the record straight about these illegal and dangerous activities. Meta’s dishonesty started with a betrayal of core American values. Mark Zuckerberg pledged himself a free speech champion.

Yet I witnessed Meta work ‘hand in glove’ with the Chinese Communist Party to construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored their critics. When Beijing demanded that Facebook delete the account of a prominent Chinese dissident living on American soil, they did it. And then lied to Congress when asked about the incident in a Senate hearing.

The willingness to censor was not the only troubling thing I witnessed. I watched as executives decided to provide the Chinese Communist Party with access to Meta user data—including that of Americans. Meta does not dispute these facts. They can’t. I have the documents. As recently as this Monday they claimed they do not operate services in China. Another lie…

Meta started briefing the Chinese Communist Party as early as 2015. These briefings focused on critical emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. The explicit goal being to help China out-compete American companies. There’s a straight line you can draw from these briefings to the recent revelations that China is developing AI models for military use, relying on Meta’s Llama model. Meta’s internal documents describe their sales pitch for why China should allow them in the market by quote: ‘help[ing] China increase global influence and promote the China Dream.’ The truth about what has gone on in China matters. I filed a shareholder resolution asking Meta’s Board to investigate its activity in China. And I filed whistleblower complaints with the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] and the DOJ [Department of Justice]. The measure of how important these truths are is directly proportional to the ferocity of Meta’s efforts to censor and intimidate me. I relied on their commitment given in 2018 that they would waive their rights to pursue forced arbitration. Despite that public commitment, they brought a case against me for hundreds of millions of dollars. Now they have a legal gag order that silences me even as Meta and their proxies spread lies about me. This order is so expansive that it prohibits me from speaking with Members of Congress. This gag order was sought by a company whose CEO claims to be a champion of free speech.

The American people deserve to know the truth. Meta has been willing to compromise its values, sacrifice the security of its users, and undermine American interests to build its China business. It’s been happening for years, covered up by lies, and continues to this day. I am here at considerable personal risk because you have the power and the authority to hold them accountable.

It is indeed a time for truth and that which is hidden, even in plain sight, to be brought into the light. However, just as there are many efforts by Democrats, those who share China’s sentiments on many things, and most legacy media—to suppress and deny what probably happened in certain virus outbreaks—the attacks on Trump for his recent tariffs have been irrational in many ways. It is to be expected that a country should look after its national interest (including the US) but a reinvented ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ strategy by China has led to it not only having a genuinely dysfunctional trade imbalance with the US which adds to the latter’s tremendous national deficit of $36 trillion at the least: but its exploitation and infiltration of the US domestic market, financial institutions, stock exchange and investment funds as well as educational institutions, and acquisition of agricultural land (including storefronts at military bases)—does not indicate anything short of a creeping hostile takeover hidden in plain sight but at long last dragged into the spotlight.[6]

From the House Republican Policy Committee on CCP purchases of American land:

• Land owned by individuals affiliated with the Chinese government gives the CCP a strategic foothold on American soil to potentially conduct surveillance of critical assets and American military members under the guise of agriculture purchases.
• Since 2017, American intelligence has more thoroughly investigated Chinese land acquisitions near critical national infrastructure. However, previous land purchases have not undergone adequate review to ensure that intelligence-gathering devices have not been installed.
• The CCP has sought to acquire land near the United States’ crucial military and strategic areas. The New York Post identified 19 bases across the United States near land owned by Chinese entities.
• The Fufeng Group, a Chinese-based chemical manufacturing company, purchased 300 acres of land for a corn mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota. This plot of land is approximately 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, home to some of the top United States intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. The Grand Forks City Council terminated the construction of the mill after the Air Force declared the project a security risk.
• A Chinese billionaire, Sun Guangxin, purchased over 130,000 acres near Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, right along the Mexico border. This land hosts a wind farm project that could disrupt the state’s electrical system due to its connection with the Texas grid. Mr. Guangxin’s close ties to the CCP have been well documented.

Most disturbingly, there appears to be a network of those in authority and the mainstream media of criticising, silencing, and intimidating those who speak up about China’s ascendancy at the cost of global trade imbalances, and its sustained debilitating influence within the US. It must also be asked openly why there were concerted efforts to suppress and deflect attention from evidence that the Covid virus emanated from a lab leak at Wuhan. What is clear is that the standard misdirection of investigation and critical thought is the jaded and empty term: ‘conspiracy theory’. It is easy and vacuous to accuse those someone disagrees with as ‘Nazis’, ‘fascists’, et al.: so is it equally meaningless to say every form of proof or statement that contradicts a person’s presuppositions and comfort zone is a ‘conspiracy theory’. Or, equally bizarre—if there is a challenge, contretemps or defence against an adversary who differs from you besides a difference of opinion: then the motivation behind it is race, religion, sexuality, language and an endless variation of differences that diverge from, and rarely converge upon, the truth. These forms of attacks are unleashed upon those who ask difficult questions and reject intellectual laziness like certain senators, scientists, entrepreneurs, corporate executives, whistleblowers, truth-tellers, and others at all levels of life. Conformity is required, illogicality extolled. And, indeed, much of the legacy media must be taken to task for promoting propaganda, a monolithic narrative, mindlessness, and harassing anyone who challenges the status quo with rationality and evidence.

That Meta and Zuckerberg are actively involved in developing and providing the CCP (and probably others) with censorship tools morphed into a technological plague occupying its latest host—AI—is of genuine concern. Why would this be needed unless the truth is feared? Confronting falsehood is important, but promoting censorship of what can in many instances challenge that falsehood in the first place, cannot have anything but nefarious intent. But refusing to accept the truth of what Meta surreptitiously does, and unwillingness to see the world as it is—will allow some to believe that Meta is not guilty as charged. Yet how many would accept willingly and be gladdened that their data on Meta/Facebook—and other apps that they own and deploy worldwide—can be accessed by the CCP (or any other actor that Meta and its owner have also sold their soul to)?

Trump wants China at the negotiating table, he does not want the reciprocal tariffs to keep increasing and has reiterated that even during the recent visit of the Italian prime minister to the White House. But it would be naive not to discern the overall movements on the board that show a strategically designed checkmating net developing around the CCP. The four year hiatus for Trump during the disastrous Biden-Harris years; the assassination attempt on him; and the undeniable weakening of the most important economy in the modern world, has prepared him through careful thought and calculation for the reality of the world disorder, and America’s needed rebalancing role in it: to help enact an epoch-making moment. Just as the dissolution of the USSR into its current configuration was an event, so is the potential reform or dissolution of the CCP and its control over China, wherein the country may evolve into a responsible state actor—a new democratic presence representing reciprocity, justice, liberty, and genuine global economic success. But only after the truth is out.

Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine.

Rudolf Spielmann, Austrian chess master

End notes:

[1] As the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) states:

According to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, mass quantities of fentanyl are being produced in China and brought illegally to the United States, contributing to the growing crisis in the U.S. The rise of fentanyl in the United States can be traced back to China’s large chemical and pharmaceutical industries, which manufacture vast quantities of the drug and its analogues to export to the western hemisphere with little regulatory oversight.

[2] Trump is invoking The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 signed by Jimmy Carter. According to Congress the act “provides the President broad authority to regulate a variety of economic transactions following a declaration of national emergency. IEEPA, like the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) from which it branched, sits at the center of the modern U.S. sanctions regime”. The act is part of Title II of Public Law 95-223.

[3] One of those who testified before the committee is Kevin O’Leary, Chairman and CEO O’Leary Ventures:

I have nothing against the Chinese people. Their contributions to science and art over the millennia are well documented. They are wonderful people and incredibly talented. Many of my team members in my operating company are of Chinese or Asian descent. It’s their Government I take issue with. In my opinion, since joining the WTO in 2000 the Chinese Government has never played by its rules. The Chinese Communist Party has the ability and the desire to exercise total control over its people and their companies—and anyone else who wants to do business with or operate inside its territory. This has led the CCP to passing various laws in the realm of cybersecurity, espionage, intelligence, and beyond, and other mechanisms to control its corporations, industries, and business partnerships, all to the detriment of US investors…

For decades across multiple administrations, we have discussed leveling the playing field with China, instead the situation has only gotten worse. Make no mistake, I want to do business in China as so do millions of other investors and companies, but we want a reciprocal ecosystem that is transparent and where all parties play by the rules mutually agreed upon. I want access to the Chinese legal system so trade and IP grievances can be litigated and resolved.

[4] Also testifying before the committee is Christopher A. Iacovella President & CEO, American Securities Association:

The CCP has been engaged in a multi-decade and multifaceted political, economic, and military strategy to achieve ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’ The ultimate goal of this strategy is to reshape the international world order through economic coercion, subversion, and manipulation to benefit China, while avoiding a ‘hot’ war.

The strategy is broad-based, and it includes, among other things, intellectual property theft, undermining American cultural values, creating social unrest and division in American society, co-opting American elites and heads of multinational corporations, infiltrating U.S. governmental institutions, and accessing Western markets.

To carry out this strategy the CCP needed access to Western capital, and that’s where Wall Street comes in.

For over two decades, Beijing has used Wall Street to penetrate U.S. capital markets and obtain the capital necessary to fund its economic, technological, and military rise. In exchange for selling Chinese companies to U.S. investors, Wall Street receives huge fees and access to the Chinese market. It’s this quid pro quo that directly threatens America’s economic and national security….

As of March 2025, there are 286 Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges with a collective market capitalization of $1.1 trillion. Each of those companies pays a listing and sustaining fee to an exchange to keep its securities trading. Congress enacted the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act and Accelerating Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act to prohibit these companies from having their shares listed on a U.S. stock exchange if they do not comply with U.S. financial reporting, disclosure, and auditing laws…

U.S. exchanges also have regulatory authority to protect the U.S. investing public from any non-compliant Chinese company whose stock is listed on their exchange. They can use that authority to delist any company, its subsidiaries, or a fund that includes such companies and has not complied with U.S. laws or been named to a U.S. prohibition list. To date, they have been reluctant to do so…

According to Bloomberg, ‘more than 2,000 U.S. mutual and exchange-traded funds—particularly those tracking indexes—have $294 billion invested across Chinese stocks and bonds.’

An index fund is a fund that owns a portfolio of stocks that tracks a financial market index (i.e., S&P 500 or Dow Jones). Index funds significantly impact the flow of global capital, especially in international and emerging markets. Inclusion in an index can lead to billions of dollars being steered into a company or a country through the sale of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that track the index.

A regulatory loophole, I call the ‘passive index loophole’, allows non-U.S. companies listed on non- U.S. stock exchanges to be included in an index fund and sold to American investors. This allows the non-U.S. company to avoid the company-specific disclosure, financial reporting, and audit requirements that American companies must comply with to sell stock to American investors.

With knowledge of the loophole, the CCP pressured the index providers to create a special index for mainland Chinese companies listed on Chinese exchanges called A-shares, and to include those companies as well as the ones listed on U.S. exchanges in international and emerging market indices. A recent study found the dollar amount of foreign investment in Chinese companies was 51 per cent higher for those companies in an index. As a result, the ‘passive index loophole’ has funneled billions of American investor dollars to China.

[5] Cotton, Tom; p8-13. Seven Things You Can’t Say About China. Broadside Books, 2025: New York.

[6] Tom Cotton, Colleagues Introduce Bill to Ban Retail Storefronts Owned by Foreign Adversaries from U.S. Military Bases:

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), Ted Budd (R-North Carolina), and Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida) today introduced the Military Installation Retail Security Act to prohibit the Department of Defense (DoD) from authorizing, renewing, or extending long-term retail agreements with companies owned or controlled by adversarial nations on U.S. military bases. The legislation also requires the review of all retail stores on military bases nationwide to determine if there are foreign ties to China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea…

‘My team uncovered that GNC is fully owned by the Chinese Communist Party and operating more than 80 stores on U.S. military bases. That’s not just a problem; it’s a direct threat to our national security. We moved quickly to get a solution on the table and introduced the Military Installation Retail Security Act in the House. I’m glad to have Senator Budd step in to help drive this forward and make sure CCP-owned companies have zero place inside America’s military infrastructure,’ said Congressman [Pat] Harrigan…

• Retail stores on U.S. military bases gain direct and prolonged access to our nation’s servicemembers and their families while operating in a sensitive base environment, which creates serious risks for surveillance. This gives companies, owned by foreign adversaries, unprecedented access to personally identifiable information such as names, payment methods, and purchase history.
• GNC—which started as a small, family-owned health-food store in Pittsburgh in 1935—was bought by the Chinese state-owned Harbin Pharmaceutical Group after the supplement retailer filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Currently, this Chinese-owned company operates over 80 locations on U.S. military bases. 
• On one base at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, GNC operates four storefronts serving 53,700 troops: which makes up nearly 10% of the U.S. Army alone. 

[Top picture credit: X; formerly Twitter.]

The writer is the founding editor of Philosophers for Change.

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