Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we get to the heart of the issues that matter to you.

Today, we're unpacking that massive military parade in Beijing.

It was the eightieth anniversary military parade where President Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Joe Non flex their alliance, sparking Trump's accusations of a conspiracy against the United States.

So what does this mean for America's stance against China?

Joining us for all of this and more is Gordon Chang.

You know him.

He's a leading expert on US China relations and he'll let us know what we should really believe.

Stay tuned for Gordon Chang.

Well, Gordon, it's great to have you back.

On the program.

You know you're always the go to on China related matters.

So appreciate you for making the time.

Well, thank you, Lisa, I appreciate it.

I wanted it.

Ask you.

We saw recently this military parade aid in Beijing with the leaders of North Korea and China and Russia altogether.

What did you think when you saw this?

What's the significance of it?

Is there a significance to it?

Kind of walk us through your line of thinking on.

This, Si Jimping was engaged in information warfare.

The most important audience for him was not us, It was the Chinese people because he wants to show them the Communist Party is capable.

It is the one responsible for the rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation, as he puts it.

But we were the secondary audience because Si Jimping wanted to intimidate the world.

He wants to promote the narrative that China is the dominant power and that the United States is finished.

And so we had this grand parade.

You know, when I saw the parade, I was thinking of the Chinese military strategists from ancient times, Sun Zu, and one of his more famous comments is quote when week appear strong, And that's what we have been seeing, especially over the last three or four weeks.

There's been an extraordinary amount of Chinese propaganda, state media, communist partny media, and their informal media promoting this all these weapons that we were going to see in the parade, and how strong China is and how much the United States has been like a finished power.

So it got a little bit too much, and I think, really what they are doing right now is trying to cover over some big weaknesses because for all of its weapons, I don't think that Chinese military is an effective fighting force.

Okay, so that's important.

Why don't you think they're an effective fighting force right now?

What's behind the weakness they are suggesting?

The most important thing is the infighting at the top of the Chinese military.

For the last two years, we have seen the disappearances of scores of flag officers.

Important than two of them actually were executed in May, although we don't know that for sure.

But what we are seeing are signs that Cjanping has lost control of the Chinese military, and we also have seen signs that he's lost some influence among civilian leaders, although the objective evidence for that is not as clear as what we're witnessing in the military.

So with all of this infighting, with these generals disappearing each other, I think that they're much more concerned about the guy in the next store than they are about the United States, or the Philippines or Taiwan whatever.

Got to remember, this is a Chinese This is a communist military, which means has got two reporting lines, one military and one political, and the political line is more important than the military one, and that's no way to run a war.

So I think that, for instance, if China were to attack some neighbor, you know, they would do very well for the first week because they would be just following the plan.

But once they were counterpunched, I think they have a hard time at it.

And this reminds me of that other great strategist, Mike Tyson, who said everybody has a plan until they're punched in the face.

And I think the Chinese military would have a hard time doing that.

And we've seen some evidence of the failure of officer leadership of the Chinese military, especially in June twenty twenty in Galwan, when the Chinese launched a surprise attack against Indian forces.

The Indians, although they were taken by surprise, got the better of the Chinese, and that's a real failure of the army leadership.

So what do you think is led has led to this discord and this disunity in leadership, then.

Well, dissatisfaction with Sijianping.

Now, Sijanping has been able to reshape the Chinese military, especially with the restructuring in the middle of last decade, which was very successful, but he is urged a lot of officers, and that's created, of course, animosity among people who are friendly with the purged officers.

And also I think that there is a natural reaction to Sijm Pang's grab for power.

So, for instance, since July ninth of last year, in PLA Daily, which is the Chinese military's main propaganda organ there have been these series of articles that have been praising quote unquote collective leadership.

That's a direct slap at Sijmping's demand for complete medios And as he has grabbed more power, he's offended more people, and eventually there was a tipping point, and this is I think now we're seeing the results of that.

Also, c Jmpang's policies have not been very successful recently, and we have seen so many crises and crises in China, and those are being chalked up to the failure of Sijm Thing's leadership.

So there's this natural reaction to people saying, look, we can't continue on this path.

And people have the comparency to Mao Zadung, who was responsible for two great disasters in Communist Party history.

One of them was the Great Leap Forward at the end of the nineteen fifties, in the beginning of the nineteen sixties, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which started in nineteen sixty six and lasted for a decade.

And I think people are starting to compare See to mal and worrying about disasters that might fall China because of this mal type leadership.

Do you think is it Trump administration sort of aware of this disunity?

Do you think should we exploit it?

Or you know, I guess what should we do from the US perspective on that?

That's a really important question you asked, And I think that the Trump administration is aware of it.

We get hints of this, only hints, but we get hints from President Trump's comments about the fragility of the Chinese system, which he has said about two or three times.

Now.

I think we should exploit it.

And this is a very involved conversation because our natural instincts as Americans is to offer an olive branch, which President Trump has done to c jumping, but the Communist Party, and we've rescued the Communist Party at least three times, and that has not been good for the United States.

And at least two of those instances.

So I think that we have to understand that the Communist Party inherently hates the United States.

They believe that they are in an existential struggle with us, and therefore, I don't think we will ever have amicable relations with China as long as it's ruled by the Communist Party.

So as much as we would like to have great relationships with the Chinese people, we can't do that right now.

And we have to understand and that the Communist Party is as much or even a greater threat than the Soviet Communist Party was.

Quick break.

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Do you think that Trump administration sees that in China, sees China has enough of a threat?

No, I don't think so.

I mean, we haven't heard that or any hint of that from any comment from any senior administration official.

And it's a hard thing for Americans to do because we always want to think the best of it people, and we are determined to ignore what our enemies say.

For instance, we ignored Osama bin Laden.

We even ignored him after he killed six Americans at the nineteen ninety three bombing of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

So, and this is not just a fault of America, this is the fault of democracies in general, Tokfeld talked about in the nineteenth century.

So we've got a problem because as a democracy, we are not taking those measures that are necessary to protect our republic from unrelenting and malicious attacks from the Chinese regime.

And as history has shown us, only when our enemies kill a lot of us do we then start to become determined to protect ourselves.

But now, is that just.

In rhetoric or an action too, Because sometimes what we've seen from President Trump is you know, he'll speak, you know, he'll say nice things about Putin, but then when you look at the actions, he's been much tougher on Putin than you know, Biden or Obama and like placing sanctions or you know, for instance, he'll say nicet, he's about kimj Noon, but then you know, he shows him a video during their summit where like, you know, you've got two choices.

It's either peace or we're going to bomb the crap out of you and like basically destroy you know, Like, so is it is this just in red or in his actions are looking different?

Right, because sometimes we see President Trump, you know, kind of try to, you know, lay on sort of the niceties and play nice, but then you know they know he's being serious behind the scenes.

Yeah, there's only one person who can answer that question.

My guess, and it's only a guest from someone who you know, looks at this from a distance, is that Trump understands that China is dangerous.

But I believe that the President thinks that he can manage China, and I don't think he sees China in the same terms as Reagan saw the Soviet Union.

Now, I think that eventually the Chinese will go too far and force President Trump to take a more realistic view of China.

But remember Trump is a president in a democratic society, and most Americans right now, they understand the danger of China, but they don't have such a dark view of the Chinese regime as for instance, I do.

President Trump's accused them of conspiring against the United States.

I assume they are right, right, They definitely are.

And it was very very good for President Trump to say that because he was putting siege and pig on.

Notice that he knows what these guys are up to, and also the other message is that Trump is saying, I'm not afraid of you.

And this is important because the Chinese narrative right now, which Siegenping, they talk to visiting Americans, they talk to everybody saying that the US is finished.

And so it's important for President Trump to disabuse them of that and right now.

Although I think the Chinese narrative is absurd because I don't believe that China is nearly as powerful as the United States, Nonetheless, my view is a very very small minority one because a lot of people do believe that cjmping is basically got the truth, and a lot of Americans think that too, Lisa, which is a really, really dangerous thing.

So I believe that President Trump needs to reach out do something to show the Chinese whose boss.

We absolutely need to do this.

This is not something that president of a democratic state is going to It's not going to be popular.

But if we don't do this, we are in for a world of hurt because the Chinese are going to continue extremely belligerent actions against us.

But how strong are these three countries together?

Because you just highlighted some weaknesses within China.

North Korea is poor and isolated, and then Russia has faced a lot of sanctions in financial pain as a result of that.

And then also you know it's bleeding its people and its military dry with this war against Ukraine.

So like, collectively, how strong really are these three nations?

These are three week states, and they've all got different problems.

Russia of course has shown that it is not as strong as people just assumed, and you know, the Ukrainian War is still going on, and people are talking about real problems for Russia a year down the road.

China, I believe, has got an economy which is if it's not contracting now, it will be contracting soon.

And Si Jimping has no solution for it within the confines of his political thought.

China's facing so many simultaneous crises.

I think the country is in real trouble, which is the reason why we saw this big parade, the largest military parade in the history of China.

Kim Jong un leads I think the most secure of the three countries because he's isolated North Korea from the rest of the world, and he actually had a very good twenty twenty four as we can see from a number of objective criteria that's not to say that South North Korea is a strong state, but I think it's in a pretty good position when you compare it to the other two.

Now, China, you know, parated some weaponry, weaponry like you know, hypersttic missiles, you know, kind of like assessing their military advancements on display during the parade.

You know, how much of a threat does that pose to the United States?

Should we be concerned by what we saw during that the parade?

Yeah, those weapons, if they are deployed and worked, some of them are quite actually fearsome, like their hypersonic cruise missiles, and they're better than what we've got from what we think, although it's hard to speak with any sense of assurance because we don't know if these weapons in fact have been deployed, and we don't know how well they work, and we don't know how well our countermeasures will work.

But yes, they've got some, and you put your finger on the one which worries me the most, they're hypersonic cruise missiles, because we may not have a defense for them, which means we may not have much of a navy, which is an important point that the Chinese are making.

The you know, we know that they've got long range ballistic missiles.

We saw a new one on a sixteen wheeled transporter director launcher.

That's the DF sixty one.

We saw the new DF five C, the JL three, and then a DF thirty one.

So yeah, these are fearsome weapons, but we've all known that they've had them for quite some time.

The drones, I think are really interesting because they are new types of weapons.

One thing about the Ukraine battlefield is told everybody, shown everybody that the future of warfare is very different than what we tillt five years ago.

So the drones are really an important thing for us to look at.

And China showed off a lot of them on the third So this is this is uh, this is a big military.

It has got some pretty good weapons, but it's got some internal problems that I think make it less fearsome than it appears.

You know, South Korea is going through a lot of political turmoil.

President Trump recently met with the relatively new president of South Korea.

Obviously South Korea is important to us with its proximity to North Korea and then also to China.

What do you make of the recent bilateral meeting between the United States and South Korea and kind of like, how does this new president change the dynamics that you sort of geopolitical dynamics at play, or does he?

Yeah, President Trump met E G.

Mung in the Oval Office.

This was perhaps the most important meeting between American and South Korean presidents.

Ye is a leftist.

He might even be a communist that we don't know, but he's certainly a determined leftist.

And we know that he hates the United States, and we know this because of comments that he has made in the past.

We Americans have survived three previous leftists presidents in South Korea, and I think there's a feeling in Washington, in the State Department, maybe even the White House that we can sort of survive Ye, which may be true, but it also might not be because Ye is much more ruthless than three previous leftists, and Yee is in office at a time when China is more aggressive.

So it is not inconceivable that within six months people understand and that South Korea is a leftist dictatorship.

It could even be the world's next communist state, which is not inconceivable.

Certainly, it could become the next Venezuela, and we had a problem because we have a treaty to protect what could become a state which is inimicable, inimicable to our interests.

I think President Trump's handling of Ye was masterful.

What he's doing is he's binding Ye with trade and investment agreements.

And if we get through a Ye presidency, and that's a big if, Lisa, it'll be because of the trade and investment agreements that we're putting in place.

So this is going to be a very difficult time for us.

Now.

A lot of people in South Korea don't like what Ye is doing.

And if you know, it's not like YE can do if you wanted to do what he wanted, If he could do what he wanted to do, he would break a treaty with us, and he would turn it into a leftist totalitarian state.

Within a month.

But there's a lot of people in South Korea who don't want him to do that, and so this is going to be a big contest, and I hope the Trump administration is fully alive to this.

I think they are.

Because we saw President Trump's truth social posting before he showed up in the Oval office that indicated that Trump was aware.

Yeah, that was that was sort of you know, it's kind of an interesting right before he came to kind of putting in on my notice a little bit.

Yeah, and Trump, you know, just sort of let him have that he have face, which was good.

But this is a struggle.

This is a bigger struggle than Trump had with Moon Jay in the last of those three leftist presidents, because Moon was in office when Trump was in office, and Moon went out of his way to disrespect President Trump.

And this was this was really awful, you know.

Because if memory serves me a quat the previous president is currently jailed.

That's right, Yuk y'all was impeached, he was removed by the Constitutional court.

He is now being charged with insurrection.

He is being held in inhumane conditions, denied medication, humiliated in public with the unauthorized release of footage.

His wife has been charged.

She I think fainted in custody three or four days ago.

And this is just shows you the monstrous nature of v.

J.

Boone.

And then before we go, you know, where does everything stand with you know, terroriffs and trying to reach a trade deal with China.

I know that a trade between India, China and Russia has increased, you know, sort of kind of where does this all stand with this trade and tear a face off with China.

We have a ninety day pause in the enhanced tariffs which expires November ninth.

I believe.

I think the Chinese are going to stall for more time because I'm not so sure that they the regime is in a position to make compromises.

Right now.

The Chinese have.

Used their card, played their cards by trying to withhold rare earths and magnets to the United States President and Trump has not really played his cards.

You know, we talked about the generosity of the president and sort of offering an off ramp to see GM ping C is not really reciprocating.

Eventually, President Trump has got to do something.

And here, if I may, one reason why India, which is natural partner in the United States, has really pissed at US, is because on August sixth, we announced additional twenty five percent tariff on Indian goods because India is buying Russian crude oil.

And the Indians say that that was unjustified.

Well, no it wasn't.

It was certainly justified.

But the Indians have a point because they say that it was unfair, and it was deeply unfair because the United States did not impose the twenty five percent tariff on China for buying Russian oil, and China was buying more Russian.

Oil than the Indians.

And matter of fact, since August six, India has been reducing his purchases of Russian crude and China's been taking up the slack and we haven't done anything about it.

And this is one of the reasons why the Chinese think that they own President Trump, because they're saying that we are afraid of imposing that twenty five percent tariff on China because China is so magnificent and we're so weak.

And I think that President Trump needs to impose that twenty five percent tariff on China because if he doesn't, the Chinese are going to be more bold and they're going to be more aggressive.

Then life is going to become more difficult for us.

So I hope that President Trump just gets tired of the Chinese trying to humiliate him.

Well, he seems to be getting really frustrated with Putin, so you know, yeah, you know.

And I think that shows a pattern that he offered an offer the Putin Putin didn't take it.

Trump, I think, is going to give him a hard time and C.

Jimping should take that as a warning.

But I'm sure Ce Jimping isn't because he's he's bald and aggressive and he'll push everybody to the limit.

Yeah, I think President Trump.

You know, you can tell he really starts to get annoyed when he feels like it's sort of venturing into being disrespected.

Gordon Chang.

Appreciate the insights, sir.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Lisa.

I really appreciate it, and so thank you.

Those Gordon Chang.

Appreciate him for taking the time to come on the show.

Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week.

I also want to thank my producer, John Cassio for putting the show together.

Until next time.