Stealth War, China by General Spalding

In 1970, one year after China ominously detonated two hydrogen bombs near its Russian border, Mao sent a message to President Richard Nixon inviting him to visit China. In Washington, this was seen as an intriguing opening. Nixon and his Cold Warrior secretary of state Henry Kissinger saw the opportunity to work with China as a way to further destabilize and isolate the USSR...

Mao and the CCP—having extracted all they could from the Soviets, who were ​clearly losing ground to Western technological and economic developments ...

They found [another state] with the deepest pockets, the best research and design infrastructure, the most innovative technology, and the strongest armed forces in the world: the United States of America" ...

The portfolios of the fifty states’ public pension systems are filled with stocks and bonds backing Chinese companies that should be flagged as bad actors—companies that build missiles or warships. These investments have national security implications, and investment managers need to start acting responsibly. This issue needs to become part of the national dialogue. Would American investors have invested in Germany during World War II? China’s brutal human rights abuses—forced internment, denial of assembly, brainwashing—are eerily reminiscent of Nazi behavior. And with the use of relentless digital surveillance to persecute a population because of its faith, this oppressive governmental strategy actually deserves a new designation: post-Nazi ...

[Robinson] wrote attention-grabbing articles about the trans-Siberian oil pipeline. His alarming projections regarding the future completion of the pipeline caught the attention of William (Bill) Clark, Ronald Reagan’s closest adviser ... [He] predicted that when the pipeline became fully operational, it would provide 70 percent of Western Europe’s energy needs. That would bolster the Soviet Union’s depleted coffers—exhausted by a deadly war in Afghanistan and efforts to match the massive US military buildup and the West’s onslaught of technological innovation. It would also simultaneously increase Western Europe’s dependence on the Eastern Bloc. Robinson joined the NSC, where, .. he hatched a multipronged offensive to not only stop the pipeline but erode the Soviet economy.

'There were only about twelve people in the United States who were aware of this economic and financial offensive,' Robinson says. 'It was based on not just killing the second strand of the Siberian gas pipeline, but delaying the first strand by about three years and then denying official and, eventually, private credit access to Moscow.' [they sabotaged the pipeline]

'There was also a secret agreement with the Saudis to pump two million barrels of oil and decontrol domestic prices at the wellhead to drop oil to 10 dollar a barrel.' Indeed, with oil prices plummeting from 37.42 dollar a barrel in 1980 (114 dollar, adjusted for inflation) to such bargain prices, a vital source of hard currency income dried up for the Soviets. Meanwhile, Robinson and the government actively opposed any plans to permit the Soviets from issuing sovereign bonds, further depriving our rivals of urgently needed cash [..]

​Limited access to much-needed foreign credit, an economy unable to compete in new technology, and the strategic erosion of the empire on so many fronts made it impossible for the Soviets to sustain their sovereignty. In 1991, the country defaulted on 96 billion dollars in hard currency debt. Two days later, the Soviet Union collapsed ...

Combatting China’s economic warfare will require business unusual—a radical change in how our society thinks about fiduciary responsibility. Regulators need to reorder the incentive system so Wall Street, corporate America, and institutional investors will change the current culture and ​mind-set that focuses on profits, growth, and stock valuation as the only measures of success. That isn’t to say the rules and motives of trade must be radically altered. It’s to say that providing capital to China is a fool’s game and, until things change, not only wastes money but incentivizes our competitors, who seek to co-opt US market share and earnings. Billions and billions of investor dollars are tied up in China. I’ve already told you the story of the banker who lies awake at night wondering how we will get our money back.

He is not alone. Corporations—huge multinational institutions—that have leapt headfirst into China are faced with the same problem. They don’t discuss the fact that they can’t actually move millions of dollars out of China because if they did, that would upset shareholders and result in lower—sometimes much lower—valuations. That kind of thing costs CEOs their jobs. It also will cost investors billions in losses. Seen in this light, it becomes clear that pouring money into the Ponzi scheme of China abdicates fiduciary responsibility. Profits that exist only in China and can’t be converted into transferable currency are not, in any traditional sense, profits.

There are other reasons powerful companies need to take their operations out of China. By moving research, development, and manufacturing there, they cede control of their intellectual property, which, as the past thirty years have demonstrated, will be stolen or co-opted. This, in effect, devalues the company ...

Businessman, billionaires go to China, then tell us democracy is dead, look at China ...