China, the U.S. & the Rise of Xi Jinping (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] Chinese president xiin ping reportedly calling president-elect D Trump to congratulate him Trump naming more China Hawks to his cabinet he said that he intends to impose tariffs on products imported from China by as much as 60% at a pivotal moment correspondent Martin Smith examines the rise of the Chinese leader his life xiin ping learned as a teenager that if you want to survive you you have to master the tools of the ma toolkit you have to be read than anybody else his rule she was not afraid to say no we're not giving you the

freedoms and rights you deserve and relations with the United States we can't continue to allow China to rape our country will Donald Trump who preaches America First go to war to defend Taiwan you know I'm not sure now on front line China the us and the rise of XI Jin ping this program contains graphic content which may not be suitable for all audiences your discretion is advised [Music] in July of 20121 China marked the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in his speech president xiin ping celebrated China's emergence as one of

the wealthiest countries on Earth by all accounts she is the most powerful Chinese leader since the founder of the People's Republic Mao sidong and like Mao he has immense Ambitions for his [Applause] country in his first decade in power shei launched the largest infrastructure project in history building ports roads and a massive digital Network linking China to around 150 countries he has made China the world's number one producer of electric [Music] vehicles in Ed heavily in a race with the US to dominate the development of artificial intelligence he has plans to Dethrone the dollar as

the world's Reserve currency and she has presided over an increasingly antagonistic relationship with the US [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] shishin ping is different he does not want to be part of the world as it is what he wants is to be much more dominant in the way the world is run he doesn't want Orville shell is widely recognized as the dean of China experts in the US and has served as a consultant on this project he has made many trips to China and has closely observed the rise of Xi Jinping you can read his

speeches and it's all there he says what he's going to do and he does it [Music] we can't quite believe it's anything but propaganda which is just maybe nonsense but it isn't he's laid it all out there Shing speaks all the time about hostile foreign forces that is the core of his sense of the US and China relationship it's hostile we set out to understand the roots of this hostility to understand shei himself and the China he is leading but China has heavily restricted International media and we were not allowed to report from outside the

country no current official would speak to us on the record China is not allowing us to come into China why China's handling all kinds of challenges in the world you may or may not be on the a r Victor GA is a well-known figure who travels the world speaking in defense of she's China we interviewed him in New York what is it about XI jinping's presidency that has fed Ed this hostility between the US and China I disagree with the way you characterize the situation after 2012 when he comes into Power I would say fundamentally

China and the United States need to deal with each other as equals but China us relations are moving in a direction which is proving to be uh difficult and dangerous to begin I wanted to know where Xi Jinping came from and how his past shaped him into the man he is today he grew up during a tortured time in Chinese history but he was a child of privilege with red roots she's father had fought alongside MAOI dong and After the revolution had risen to become a high-ranking Communist Party official young shei lived in a comfortable

home and was able to attend the best schools he was one of the so-called princelings and there was a lot of privilege that he enjoyed so xinping would have grown up Joseph tirian is an author and professor at American University he went to a school that was primarily attended by The Offspring of high ranking cats and they were told that they were going to be the ones who are going to bring China to modernity who we're going to draw upon the legacies of the Chinese Communist party to trans formed Society prior to the 1949 Revolution

China was ruled by a usback dictator Shang kek well known to every American his lean Keen Chang kek Undisputed leader and Idol of millions of Chinese Mao called Chang a running dog of imperialism he fought to depose Chang for 22 years despite aid from America jang's forces were beaten back the re reolution was now within M's grasp and it was the start of the biggest political and economic experiment the world has ever seen before Mao's Victory China was among the world's poorest Nations inspired by communist Theory ma blamed China's wealthy Elites for the nation's [Music]

ills ma embraced communist propaganda like this film to Rally the people against land owners dun caps a regular feature of ma China were used to publicly humiliate land owners intellectuals and disloyal [Applause] [Music] politicians in 1962 when Xi Jinping was just 9 years old his father became an unlikely victim of these purges Mao accused him of being disloyal she's father was subjected to so-called struggle sessions where he was beaten and denounced his father was flamed by a Trum of charge that he supported a Noel that might have cast out or a mouse leadership and that's

simple Professor Alfred Chan is author of an exhausted biography of shi Jin Pang that Chronicles his life seen his father was dra out and parade in the street uh in those day they put a dun's cap on him and he was subjected to mock trials those were essentially kangaru courts here A Sign hangs around the neck of she's father that reads anti-party element XI Jong shun we know that this was an emotionally traumatizing experience for him when you're a member of the Chinese Communist party everything is the party your entire life is the party so

for the party to tell you that you oppose ma it's hard to overestimate just how ging it is for a member of this kind of organization to hear that she's father was sent to work in a factory and was later incarcerated for 8 years meanwhile some of the party elite were having doubts about Mao's leadership a famine the result of Ma's failed Farm policies had devastated the country these people have come with reports of people dying in the fields and starving peasants eating some of the seed for next year's planting undeterred Mao launched his so-called

cultural revolution in 1966 expanding the categories of those who would be purged so during the cultural revolution there was something known as a heay the black categories and these were the people who had no standing as human beings they had no rights they were considered unacceptable or I guess you'd have to say evil they had to be overturned and even possibly uh in all too many cases exterminated and we saw minion killed they were not fully [Music] [Applause] human marauding bands of Youth known as red guards were encouraged by Mao to help root out the

so-called black elements for punishment [Music] [Applause] [Music] TAA a long time party member came of age in the midst of the cultural revolution you say he was the Savior what did he save you from [Music] for one of the most pernicious and harmful aspects of the whole Mau Revolution was that it distorted and made it impossible for people to be human and to have family loyalties friendship loyalties to keep any moral compass on whatsoever as a 13-year-old boy she himself was subjected to struggle sessions he was forced to wear a Dun cap and was publicly

denounced by his own mother according to suin Ping he suffered quite a few of those struggle sessions and his half sister she couldn't take it and she committed suicide the psychological and physical abuse was tremendous at 15 XI jingping was sent to the countryside to do manual labor a so-called sent down you at that time 17 million young people were sent to the countryside to be re-educated by the poor persons ma thought that's the reality of China the poor and underdeveloped Country Side suan ping went to one of the poorest Park of China and he

stayed there for seven years and essentially work as a peasant work was really strenuous so Shen ping being a city kid the prin was never used to uh the farmers work style like Beast of Burden at first it was something he couldn't handle he talked about the hard labor he talked about living in a cave he talked about how difficult it was to get along with the peasants Shin ping did at one point just leave and try to go home and his family refused to accept him so I mean it's difficult to know what the

consequences of something like that are but we do know fundamentally that all human beings have close connections to parents and when those close connections go arai they have consequences I managed to visit this area where CIA served out the culture Revolution a village in shansi Province so I think I got a somewhat unvarnished look at what life was like there and until 2016 Edward Wong was the New York Times Beijing bureau chief and this area of China is one of the poorest areas of China back then people lived in these cave homes and she lived

in a cave home in the back of the house of this elderly man whom I met Mr Lou Mr Lou told me she had books with him and his light would be on late at night sometimes reading she's time in Exile has become part of his creation myth a cave where he lived during his seven years here is now a tourist attraction it's filled with books on Marxist philosophy and political Theory which she says he read in the evenings while struggling to survive shaping him into the leader he would become jying jaw and her family

also barely survived Mao she now lives in New York the author of eight books on China and a contributor to the New Yorker I was born into this called New China and I was fed this diet of we're living in a strong and happy country and we're going to grow up and you know not only build a better China but at some point we're going to liberate mankind including the Americans this was my mother was myself and I was six one of and I remember clearly this night where our house was ransacked by these red

guards they came at night and our house was turned upside down my parents were humiliated you know you go from the flowers of motherland Mouse children to suddenly were black [Music] elements how many people died as a result of the cultural revolution there's different estimates of that of officially one of the party Elders said several Millions people died but you know the figures are far from being accurate because the government who whoever was the dominant regime had always a tendency to cover up between the 1950s and the mid 1970s China suffered an estimated 25 to

45 5 million deaths from the famine and from the eradication of black [Music] elements this is our Holocaust and to this day the world has not really come to realize that's really what happened and the same party responsible for it are still in power and Ma is still a icon today Xi Jinping lives and works aside this familiar portrait of Mao overlooking tanaman Square in Beijing she has embraced Mao it's a mystery why these people don't hate Ma you know why don't they reflect why the cultural revolution happened why they went lean who grew up

in China now writes a column for the New York Times suffering siim himself talk a lot about his suffering when he was a young kid he says it was good for him yes and now he he's telling the Chinese young people you should learn to eat bitterness it's it will be good for you XI Jin ping learned as a teenager that if you want to survive you have to master the tools of the ma toolkit you have to be read than anybody else his education was one of surviving in a highly politicized environment of the

cultural revolution when his father was one of the anti christ and she had to find his way and to do that he had to be become more politically correct than anybody else fundamentally xiin ping drank the Kool Aid of a cultural revolution and those formative years really did cast the [Music] die at age 22 Xi Jinping returned from the countryside he had missed years of schooling but he would manage to gain entrance to one of China's most elite universities yeah he was lucky to be accepted into the chingwa university is China's MIT well this is

a kid who has no secondary education and he's able to get admitted to the most prestigious University in China yes very unusual ma destroyed the educational system but then in the early 1970s ma decided the educational system had to be reformed not favoring the elite but welcome persons and workers and soldiers as well and that's how sudin ping got admitted she got a degree in chemical engineering but his interest was in Party politics in 1979 after graduation he was posted as a junior Aid to a senior Communist Party official but after 3 years in Beijing

she decamped to the provinces to pursue his own political career and would rise through the ranks of local government it was a time of great reform Mao had died in 1976 and China was now under a new leader dong shiao ping twice purged himself dong had seen the horrors of the cultural revolution he set out to reverse many of Mao's [Music] policies the 1980s were an extraordinary decade dong shaing was radically changing the relationship of the party to society he broke up the people's communes gave peasants prop to farm individually and suddenly you go to

the countryside and S the most amazing open markets where people were selling things they had raised that was a huge [Music] change it seemed like China was really different and opening and it was changing really fast you have and Stevenson Yang worked for decades in China as a financial analyst and entrepreneur ever since shaing told the poot buau that they should change their M jackets for sports jackets every Big City built these huge airports and they had straight Avenues straight to these five-star hotels and these hotels were better than any hotel you'd stay in in

Europe and you'd think what's wrong with China this is fantastic today under the leadership of DCH ping the attitude toward capitalism is changing not quickly enough for some numbers of the new generation who see nothing wrong in mixing Marxism with the market economy as one China specialist put it such astounding things have been happening under dung that no one who works in the China field is willing to make predictions [Applause] [Music] anymore in 1979 dung visited Washington dung's opening was seen as a welcome development in the west and a policy of economic engagement held for

the next four decades now we share the prospect of a fresh flow of Commerce ideas and people which will benefit both our countries in China free trade and foreign investment help lift Millions out of poverty but many Chinese were not entirely one over especially students they were concerned about corruption and wanted democratic [Applause] reform in the spring of 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations around the country were gathering [Music] momentum while still a provincial official Xi Jinping watched carefully Xi Jinping tried to gauge the political climate what's going on is the central government supporting this and being a

very cautious bureaucrat back home he tried to prevent students from outside to come in and to link up with the local demonstrations by early June the protest boiled over at this hour there are hundreds of thousands of people here in Tenon man Square some observers see the current wave of unrest as the greatest challenge the Communist party has had to face the momentum on TMS Square was strong for me the most amazing experience is just hearing people's voice yeah uh from everywhere like Joe Fango was a student leader during the tan protest come there he

was among the first to enter the square we want to have a dialogue with the communist government and I think at that time there was a real chance because the party has positioned itself after the cultural revolution in the way of you know open and reform so you feel like there's freedom in the air on TMS Square [Applause] [Music] I was on T square at the night of June Force we were all standing like clusters talking to each other and suddenly there was a guy standing there and he fell backwards and we didn't hear anything

so you know we're all stunned and and everybody thought oh it must be rubber bullets until we saw that he's not waking up and he there is a like a pull of blood or something from his neck tank rolling in down the main th towards Square as we were kind of retreating there were I think at least a dozen people right around me being shot down there shooting automatic weapons opened up people were diving for cover that night it it was the worst of China the monster reared his head at one of the big intersections

an APC just ran over a young girl on a bicycle was charging down anything and everything barricades uh people and the protesters have put up the steel barricades and this APC got stuck and the crowd started gathering around it hurling in salts and rocks and sticks and [Music] everything see that guy the next day a man stood in defiance blocking a column of Tanks it wasn't just a single tank he stopped there were 18 tanks and armored carriers in this Convoy the image of the tankman as he was called was carried around the world at

one point defiant demonstrators set an ambulance on fire and aimed it at the troops but the Vehicles smashed into a traffic Island and that prompted the soldiers to open fire once more on the suud just overnight the optimism that Chinese felt for their own country and for this newly awakened newly modernizing newly reforming China came to a very abrupt halt David shamba is a professor of us China relations at George Washington University he served in in the state department and on the National Security Council during the Carter Administration I lived in China right after tinan

in Beijing that was severe this was martial law the city was occupied by military forces there were roadblocks everywhere foreigners were monitored constantly Chinese were monitored constantly interrogated so that was a really repressive period in the news this morning the government Crackdown continues in China where officials say they have arrested student leaders on their most wanted list one of those captured chaang swwa a 22-year-old physics student he reportedly was turned in by his sister and brother-in-law it's been reported that you were turned in by your sister that was a government propaganda uh I it's not

true it's it's not true Joe says it was a party tactic to sew distrust among family Joe Fango was fifth on the party's most wanted list and was thrown in prison for a year when I was in prison and later for about five more years the support for students even after the massacre was so strong like even the policemen the prison guards uh they would acknowledge that the students were right in their demount after the massacre these photos were smuggled out of China evidence of what happened to scores of protesters to this day there is

no final accounting of how many people were executed Ed a footnote after the tenanan Crackdown soldiers who had opened fire on the protesters were serenad by a popular Chinese folk singer pong Lean 2 years earlier pong had married a junior Communist Party official XI jingping she has never spoken publicly about the ti events he went silent yes nothing in the public record that I am aware of that really shows his cautious demeanor as a provincial official and he always looked to the Center for guidance always trying to gauge what the central government intentions are after

Tian China moved on under dong Shao ping China's Unwritten informal social contract stipulated that if you stay away from politics we the party will make you rich it's a deal many Chinese accepted without protest [Music] we shouldn't underestimate the amount of political control inside China but at the same time it's also important to recognize that over the past 40 years the government has done a good job in raising living standards that takes the Ian Johnson is a journalist with a long history of reporting on China and if you think that tomorrow is going to be

a better day that you just bought a house that your kids's going to be able to go to college that you're going to be able to go abroad to travel all of these things that have never been possible before for the vast majority of Chinese people then you'll hold your nose or say why the party isn't doing such a bad job on balance and you'll go with the [Music] flow by the mid 1990s China's economy was growing at an historic Pace supporting China's entry into the WTO represents the most significant opportunity that we have had

you know especially after China's entry into the World Trade Organization you know China's economy just got another tremendous boost and more opportunities for individuals and back then lingling way a reporter for the Wall Street Journal grew up the daughter of loyal mau's parents her maternal grandfather was part of Ma's Inner Circle maybe not she remembers how under dong China became more open to Western culture we knew that China's relationship with the United States was getting better Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken has just arrived in Beijing we were exposed to American pop culture ready boo boy when

I was growing up one of my favorite shows was this American TV series called Growing Pains I just loved it you know watching how kids could just talk back to their parents I was just being friendly what is it with you people I grew up with a lot of admiration for the United States I I really wanted to go there was very curious about the US you know not just me a lot of my uh classmates a lot of my friends you know the entire reformed generation you know had that kind of mindset toward the

United States [Music] China was most open to Western influence in the coastal provinces where dong sha Pang lured foreign companies to invest offering them tax incentives flexible labor contracts and cheap real estate one of the fastest growing provinces was fuan where by 2000 Xi Jinping had become a provincial Governor he had earned a reputation for rooting out party corruption [Music] Beijing took notice and in 2007 she got his big break a corruption scandal in Shanghai led the old guard of the Communist Party to search for a new Shanghai party Chief Shanghai was the biggest and

wealthiest city in China she was brought in to address the Fallout from a party secretary's theft of Pension funds the move to Shanghai was a huge promotion because the party chief of Shanghai is always inducted in the 25 members of China's Apex of power he was picked because of his long experiences in uh Coastal provinces which were the most open uh most developed in Shanghai shei distinguished himself by issuing lavish party perks such as a private Chef special doctors luxury cars and palatial housing and after just 7 months he was brought to Beijing where he

was catapulted onto the standing committee of the pup Bureau suddenly xiin ping became one of China's nine top leaders he was on his way at just 54 party leaders saw shei as pliable and Cooperative they didn't expect a strongman in one of his first assignments as a Committee Member she was appointed to head the central party school in Beijing a post once held by Chairman Mao it's where top Party official are trained and for she it was an early indicator of the leader he aspired to be ta taught at the central party school at the

time but few people in the west were paying much attention and inside China the country was preparing to celebrate its Newfound riches that year China was hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics the person heading up the preparation committee for the games was Shin pingin ping actually was named the coordinator for the Olympics now he had really little central government experience and that was fairly tough because he had to coordinate the ministry of public security uh Minister defense the Olympics uh it was a mean to test him in his probational period to see if he was material

for the top job exactly the Beijing Olympics was China's coming out party and everything has to be perfect no expense would be spared at over $40 billion the games were among the most expensive in history 2008 was a spectacular Olympic summer game a was great Professor chenan Lee is a neurologist at P King University we interviewed him while he was a visiting scholar at Stanford you were in the stadium yes I was say that was a high point there was a true sense of Joy but it was not a national list to Joy it went

beyond that honestly it was I think more like what can only be described by Bam's Ninth Symphony it wasn't that [Applause] good Xi Jinping had passed the test better yet he was inheriting a country at its peak the Olympics were a major propaganda coup for the Chinese Communist party to say look we've arrived we're a world power power right now I I remember between 1998 and 2005 Matthew pottinger worked as a reporter in China for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal he also served on the National Security Council during the first Trump Administration pottinger sees

the 2008 games as a key moment when the US China relationship shifted coincided with the global financial crisis the first Spark of which was lit in the United States stunning news on Wall Street tonight at one point the market fell as if down a well de crisis and economic chaos could have a dangerous ripple effect so those two things juxtaposed together created an incredible sense of Jubilation in this idea that China was slingshotting ahead of the United States Chinese leaders realize wow your system used to be one we were trying to emulate and at least

economically but now you know you're no longer our teachers there's this feeling that we are equal to the United States now above that time China had pass Germany passed UK and then passed Japan and of course every year it goes up and up and up to be the second largest economy this is an extraordinary period for America's economy we've seen triple digit swings in the stock market major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse and some have failed the collapse of Leman Brothers triggered turmoil in markets around the globe the economic crisis made

it look to people like Xin ping that history was moving on the US was in Decline China was on the rise they could do just like the great Powers had always done it is our way or the highway and that was a very important moment that changed the relationship between China and the rest of the world particularly the United States the had finally arrived it was time to elect a president the leader of the world's most populous nation but there was no discernable tension no suspense the election of the Chinese president had been decided months

in advance by 2012 Xi Jinping had been able to impress upon the party's Elite that he was the man to lead China into the future he was elected General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and a few months later he became [Music] [Applause] president she tried to outwardly cultivate an image as a man of the people his nickname Papa she when he came into office he portrayed himself as a normal person he launched a charmer fence you know he went to a steam buang restaurant and he said he's not going to have traffic control for

his car like for his mot kid initially this charm offensive worked many thought she would be a moderate the wishful thinking that existed I think was something that westerners delude themselves with about all Chinese leaders is this the next gorbage off she didn't ping is no reformer but nobody saw the repressive dictatorial control freak insecure leader that he has become none of us saw that a few months after coming to power a secret memo surfaced called document number n document number nine is is an important internal party document in which she talks about different forms

of subversion that might be taking place in China it points to Civil Society groups or Nos and says these are dangerous subversive elements in China it's stipulating a whole list of ideological restrictions including the so-called Universal values which is cold word for Western constitutional Rule and Rule of law the document is explicit instructing party members to forswear Western ideals like constitutional democracy human rights freedom of the press and Civil Society party members should stay true to the revolution soon after a 71-year-old journalist GA Yu was arrested in and sentenced to 7 years in prison after

allegedly leaking the document she was just getting started the news four top officials removed for taking bribes was announced on state TV she had famously fought corruption in Shanghai and now as top leader he launched a nationwide anti-corruption campaign bureaucrats to low-level clerks China their nickname tigers and flies corruption was a real problem but the scope and scale of she's campaign took many by surprise suin ping began to purge and people at the time including Chinese officials said well look this is going to be a six-month thing he's got a consolidate power more than 80,000

Communist party members have been investigated so far that was 12 years ago the purges are not only continuing but they've deepened in many respects they're they're now encompassing not only sees enemies but he's actually also purging many of his loyalists cin ping has just sacked his foreign minister just sacked his defense minister he sacked a whole lot of other people at the top of the military establishment the former security Zar has not been seen in public for more than a year inv those were handpicked people by him people that he had appointed the historian Steven

cotkin said Hitler used to kill his enemies and Stalin killed his friends uh she she is purging both friends and his enemies and that is the mode by which he governs as she tightened his grip he watched for other threats today in China there are some 600 million surveillance cameras one for every two citizens able to track people's movements down to the minute every street corner there's facial record recognition there's digital recognition there's the social credit system the social credit system is what so the social credit system is the sort of highest aspiration of the

Chinese Communist party to have everything every human being does go into a computer system and with AI and all sorts of other sophisticated programming you can know exactly where a person is because he'll have bought something with a credit card or a digital payment system his car will have gone down a highway every kilometer there's a camera taking pictures of your license plate they will know everything about everybody real time so this creates a kind of a techno autocratic system that's unprecedented and with which we've had no experience it makes George Orwell you know look

like something from the Stone Age there is also a designated Ministry of public security tasked with monitoring the internet the power created this agency to control the internet we all like hahaa how can you control the internet internet is so messy so vast good luck yes and then he did he controlled the Internet it's part of of the great firewall a combination of legislation and technology used to regulate and block huge swaths of the internet in China there is no Google or YouTube or Facebook when a meme comparing shei to Winnie the Pooh went viral

on Chinese social media Xi Jinping was not amused sensors banned any such comparisons when TAA published an oped calling for the protection of individual rights she was purged from the party she says she was already being monitored 24 hours a day for it could be in millions tens of millions or hundreds of millions who have negative thoughts about C or the system but it's very hard for them to mobilize to act together any direct more confrontational organized political movement will be Zapped the fear is like almost like a subliminal air that you you breathe [Music]

in there has been significant resistance to she's rule among large groups of ethnic minorities the resistance today is concentrated in Shen Jang home to 15 million Wagers kazaks and other Muslim minorities many of whom feel like they're not even part of China which is primarily Han sang becomes one of the great early challenges to se power sang for years before seed took power in 2012 had been a region where ethnic tensions had flared the party had tried different forms of control and sometimes very repressive measures but had often met resistance from different ethnic groups out

there in particular the weager Muslims who live in a belt of Oasis towns mainly along Southern shin [Music] J Shin Jang was first taken over by China in the 18th century but twice it broke away Beijing has for decades tried to suppress weager resistance to Chinese rule [Music] in the months after she became president China was rattled by a series of attacks the government said were carried out by Wagers they intensified in the spring of 2014 when scores of people were killed at a railway station in Southwest China by individuals wielding machetes and Long Knives

Chinese officials blamed the attack on a group of weager separatist several weeks after the incident president shei traveled to shinjang as he wrapped up his visit there was a suicide bombing and another knife attack at a train station in Shin Chong's Capital this was a trigger she decided that's it you we're not going to coddle these people we're not not going to try to work it out we're going to control and I think this bespoke of his toolbox which he had carried with him ever since he was a teenager which is you know how do

you fix things control that's his main tool she would return to Beijing and enact what the party called a people's War the idea was to curb separatism and extremism a chilling directive was sent out to local officials in Shen Jang instructing them how to separate families and began arresting Wagers on mass the directive was clear use the organs of dictatorship and show absolutely no mercy this Drone footage appears to show weager being rounded up it's estimated that over a million have been detained since 2017 she says that we must assimilate the Wagers and other ethnic

groups into the mainstream Han culture and what that means in his mind is elements of Islam have to be eradicated or severely weakened even you know more radical ideas that are taking root but basic practices such as not eating pork um fasting dur Ramadan trying to make a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj so very mainstream Muslim practices must be pulled back is what he's saying the central government starts to put in place these interment camps across parts of sang where large groups of weer Muslims and sometimes kazak Muslims are put into these camps

forced to live there and the point seems to be to really eradicate knowledge that weer culture is built [Music] on the Chinese government portrays the camps as a place for self-improvement promoting peace and stability in shenan [Music] they want them to not speak weager they want them to speak Mandarin Chinese and families are separated so it's really changing the entire foundation of the weager culture mirle Turon was detained at the airport as she returned to Shen Jong from her adopted home in Egypt she was coming back to introduce her newborn triplets to her parents miral

says they accused her of being a spy and separated her from her children I asked them where's my baby they are hungry they are need to change diapers the Chinese police never answer me but they ask my my family contact information with my family of who who who who writing then one man coming to from my backside suddenly tip my mouth and then I cannot speak in then they put my hand backside hand the cup and then put black hot in my head then Miro was held for several months without her children understand when she

was reunited there were only two then they gave me to his dead body like ice cream like you know you take some ice from the outside his body ice it's cold yeah cold total eyes he say sorry he's dead you can take him now his body so and then I say wake up wake up and then I scream so that time is the doctor say the call please two police coming say get out from here shut your mouth don't scream don't say anything just go out from this place then they kick me out from hospital

later she was detained again mirle remembers spending time in three different camps they don't allow me sleep then they shave my head and they give me electric electric shocks yeah electric shot I witnessed nine people di with me together in Te jail mle's account has been carried by multiple Western news outlets and in 2018 she was invited to testify before the US Congress 2019 a Chinese government-owned TV Outlet accused her of lying miyon claims one of her triplet died a claim that hospital adly denies they're saying it's all false this is not true child you've

seen these reports yes because they want tell they always lying this is in 100% true both miku's brother and mother say the state TV report included miro's brother denouncing her [Music] in fact many other weager men and women who have reported abuse have had family members testify against them a weager human rights project investigation says the government is simply media washing meanwhile the so-called re-education camps are still in operation Chinese officials have maintained that there has been no ter terrorism in chin Jang since 2016 chin Jang is a issue that needs to be uh studied

very carefully Dr G Chingo is a prominent Chinese academic and political adviser to the government who often speaks out on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party series of terrorist attacks I interviewed him at a China conference in San Diego I mean we had an attack on 9/11 but all Muslims in the United States were not forced into re-education camps would that have made sense in the United States in your view but you fought two Wars against Iraq and also against Afghanistan how many people were killed in Shang China was launching a large scale campaign against

terrorist the Chinese government decided that this is something they have to do they were taken from their homes Tak from their homes placed in these camps but all of those people were not terrorists and they were not harmed uh in in in in in in a physical way but families were ripped apart um we talked to one woman whose child was taken from her yeah when he was only a few months old and never was returned I don't know maybe there are better ways of of dealing with this issue but then uh in the process

I think uh some of the human rights are violated uh that cannot be [Music] avoided an estimated 880,000 detainees have been forced to work in factories across China some supplying American brands these companies have denied using weager labor but forced labor for other manufactur ures continues she decided as he did after the economic crisis that China did not need to bow to any Western demands it's none of our business what he does in shinan he has once again turned to control as the answer for a problem PA World know what shining is doing he's not

a very strong powerful country in this world China is a rich country now China is a rich country but is very weak he just believe he think he rich is money or no money cannot ever sink over the last 40 years China's economic growth has been eclipsing that out of the United States growing at an average rate four times faster China dominates Global Supply chains and it holds nearly 1 trillion of US debt China is a country with the United States today if we use purchasing power parity its economy is larger than the US economy

and if anyone believes that they can stop China's steady rise as an economy is probably indulging in fantasy one thing I have to do is economically take on China because China has been ripping us off for many years somebody had to do it I am the chosen one somebody had to do it so I'm taking on China in fact Donald Trump's predecessors have employed measures to restrict China Trade Practices they're taking our business they're taking our jobs they're making our product but in 2016 Trump made China a major campaign issue we can't continue to allow

China to rape our country and that's what they're doing it's the greatest theft in the history of the [Applause] world days before Trump's Inauguration in 2017 she wanted to make sure the incoming president knew where he stood on trade he sent a warning from his Podium at the world economic forum in Davos Less Than 3 months later she would fly to maralago to test the waters president Trump most important foreign meeting yet greeting the leader of the country he's previously called our enemy behind the scenes Trump's advisers were advocating bold new measures president Trump understood

that we had failed to compete with China and I think because of his business background General HR McMaster served as president Trump's National Security adviser one of the lines that President Trump would use with xiin ping periodically is he would say I don't blame you I blame us and so I think that that Summit communicated to kind of a shocked xiin ping that the Trump Administration was determined to compete and to and to no longer pursue this kind of flawed strategy of cooperation and engagement I don't blame China I blame our leadership they should have

never let that happen I wrote a lengthy maybe a 12-page provisional strategy in a sense but it really started out by saying how many of our assumptions had been wrong Matthew pottinger was one of the architects of Trump's China strategy one of the things that I've learned over the years first as a reporter and and later working on National Security on China is that the more comfortable China gets the more comfortable that the Chinese Communist Party leaders are the more aggressive and the grander their Ambitions and and I actually think that a more confrontational approach

something more reminiscent of uh key periods of the Cold War is what we should be looking to right now as examples you always want the enemy to be worried about what you might do the first line item on the agenda was to clamp down on China's effort to steal intellectual property from Western corporations CEOs of our most successful and our largest companies would come to me and say let me tell you how our company is being victimized by Chinese Communist Party economic aggression and they would lay out the story of you know forced transfer of

intellectual property other words you can't do business here unless you give us your secrets exactly and then also the false promises of access to the Chinese market as soon as they rip off your intellectual property and pick a state champion to produce those goods at an artificially low price because of the subsidies they close you out of their domestic market and then guess what they dump that hardware and equipment on the International Market and drive you out of business internationally the Chinese government repeated ly denied stealing intellectual property and XI Jen Pang ordered his diplomats

to tap their quote fighting Spirit adopting Trump's more aggressive style of communicating they were unleashing what they themselves called wolf Warrior diplomacy and it was pretty objectionable frankly they were quite John Bolton was another National Security adviser under President Trump but in a way I think it was beneficial that they did that they took the mask off there's no more concealing what their Ambitions were 60,000 factories in our country closed shuttered gone 6 million jobs at least gone Trump was exaggerating starting to come back less than a year after welcoming shei to America Trump was

ready to take off his own mask so we've spoken to China and we're in the midst of a very large negotiation we'll see where it takes us but in the meantime we're sending a section 301 action I'll be signing it right here right now he was firing the first shot in a war that had been building and would last for years to come this is number one but this is the first of many trade War worries igniting after the president signed this order to slap tough tariffs on China punishment started with a 10% tariff on

Chinese aluminum 30% on solar panels and electric vehicles 25% on steel and nearly everything else made in China surprisingly China's not happy already threatening retaliation what China did was move its exports to other countries and move its imports from other countries as well so it shifted the purchase of soybeans for example from the US to Brazil so that wasn't a useful policy president Trump has just slapped tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese exports igniting the biggest trade war in economic history Trump's trade War would consume the remainder of his presidency China is now punching

back with an equal amount of tariffs on American exports after several tit fortat tariff increases the trade War which continued into the Biden Administration actually increased the trade deficit the trade deficit has skyrocketed to $891 billion the highest ever cost increases also led to a decline in US manufacturing jobs destroyed the industry in the United States intellectual property theft continued and the costs imposed by tariffs were simply passed along to Consumers of imported products and now Trump has promised to impose even higher tariffs once he is back in office tariffs were put in place because

China's Economic Policy was hurting us factories and workers that's a belief uh on the part of the some people in the US especially by the people of the Trump Administration the Biden Administration has even extended those but if you talk in private many don't agree with such kind of policy why because it hurts the US economy there is the argument you have the high inflation where do you get it in part because of this tariffs our top story for the very first time since taking office all seven standing committee members has appeared together at a

cultural event led by ging Beyond his crack s and trade Wars with the US she has had greater Ambitions for China's place in the world which he revealed even before he assumed the presidency it was just after he was made General Secretary of the party back in 2012 seven Party leaders took a tour of the grand exhibition road to Revival remember when Xi Jinping came into office the first thing he did was he took the poet Bureau across tenan Square to the National Museum Museum where there was a show on the humiliations of China's P

the party leaders reviewed a different historical stages the nation has gone through six leaders had come and gone since maosong but at the exhibition she made clear his Allegiance was to Mao there were pictures of D shaing and stuff all of which he by and large ignored Susan Sherk served as an assistant deputy secretary of state during the Clinton administration it's like he wants to eliminate the dung Legacy which of course was to institutionalize a system of governance in China that would be more responsive as Society modernized in the great hallway he delivered a speech

and laid out his vision now known as the China dream and what he was saying to everybody was his greatest calling was to restore China to a position of international greatness now that didn't just mean trading greatness it meant a position of political greatness military greatness to refesh out the old Imperial Empire that had occupied many peripheral territories including Tibet shinjang manua Mongolia Taiwan she wants to restore China to its grandest state so this actually came to be the road map for the China dream a key strategy for increasing China's might is expanding Chinese control

of the South China Sea during his presidency she ramped up these efforts the South China Sea is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world Japan and Korea completely depend on it so it's no small matter who controls this Waterway and in effect is saying everything from The Straits of Mala up around Taiwan to the Chinese Coast Is Ours these are Waters through which one third of the world's Maritime trade flows what China did to actually affect that claim was to commit a lot of ecological destruction to build up these these man-made Islands the

same year that she became president China began building artificial Islands on top of seven Coral reefs in the South China Sea the man-made Islands covered almost 5 square miles and so they tredge coral reefs to build up islands and then claim that these islands you know were just for research purposes Environmental Research purposes and then of course Landing strips appeared and then fortifications appeared and then missile batteries appeared she had repeatedly pledged he would not know militarize the islands he had built but after many assurances surveillance shows there are not only runways for fighter jets

but also deep waterer Harbors able to dock warships the Chinese Communist party has a really long record of just lying to our face and you can't take anything they say at face value what they done has promised a lot and not only delivered nothing but actually intensified their aggressive actions in addition to the Chinese Coast Guard and navy large fleets of Civilian vessels have been sent by Beijing to patrol the Waters of the South China Sea frequently they surround and harass vessels from other countries like the Philippines ramming them and Blasting them with high velocity

water cannons Cannon attack lasted for almost an hour with the force of the water causing damage to the railing and canopy of the Philippine Vessel the latest incident of Chinese aggression expected to further escalate tensions this is happening very far away from China in the orders near the Philippines there are warnings from Washington saying we are a treaty Ally of the Philippines we have a mutual defense clause in our treaty um you need to back off from this but China's complet completely ignoring that for [Music] now xijinping has also taken aim at Hong Kong major

port on the South China Sea one of the busiest in the world Hong Kong has become the financial capital of Asia Hong Kong was the Gateway of a lot of businesses entering the Chinese market and we were that International Financial Hub essentially connecting the Chinese market with the Western Market and a lot of that Legacy still stays today and a lot Anna qua grew up in Hong Kong she was born in 1997 the year that Britain returned Hong Kong back to China what was the promise that was made to you the promise was high autonomy

in Hong Kong that we would have what is essentially called one country two systems meaning that even though we are supposedly part of China Hong Kong would have its own system its own governance um its own autonomy and the people of Hong Kong has their own way of living Britain is proud of the rights and freedoms which hung Kong people enjoy in fact China promised that one country two systems would remain in place for half a century 50 years in xiin pin's eyes you can be a obedient citizen you can't be an obedient people when

you're living under a different system a different Joey Sue was also raised in Hong Kong she came of age during the so-called Umbrella Revolution of 2014 in the streets a sea of umbrellas the symbol of a mass demonstration underway in Hong Kong prot mostly students are demanding full democracy calling for free and fair elections demonstrators used umbrellas to Shield themselves from pepper spray and surveillance cameras City fighting to maintain it freedom for Joey Sue protesting was part of being a hong konger I could see you know demonstrations people fighting for different rights and freedoms inside

of Hong Kong so growing up what it meant by the promise to the people of Hong Hong Kong to me was that freedom of expression um that freedom to assemble to say whatever you want to be free to criticize the government or to support the government but in 2019 things began to shift local Hong Kong officials began to cut back on civil liberties senior party officials endorsed the move it began with legislation allowing authorities in Beijing to extradite Hong kongers to China around a million poured out onto the streets defying president shei it was a

stunning display of public anger with his presidency [Applause] I think the 2019 reling was a nail on the coffin I think Anna qua became a leading underground activist that year running operations from outside Hong Kong even though Hong kongers were all out on the streets millions of them even though you know the entire International Community showed support she was not afraid to say no we're not giving you the freedoms and rights you to serve and he was not afraid you know to employ police violence against [Music] us the government is just not worried about Optics

at all they don't [Music] [Applause] care now xiin ping was very astute some thought that he might March soldiers over the border and take Hong Kong when it had all those demonstrations he didn't do that he waited and then he passed a national security law and they locked everybody up slowly and quietly XI jinping's National Security Law gave China a broad legal framework to deal with protesters the law criminalized collusion and subversion and secession Joey Sue was on the front line facing tear gas and risking arrest on a daily basis I believe it is almost

a consensus among Hong kongers that eventually the Chinese Communist Regime would try to take over Hong Kong and turn Hong Kong into just another Mainland City but I think what surprised you know Hong kongers and international Society was how fast that was being done you go throughout his presidency she has repeatedly made assurances that he has committed to Hong Kong's [Music] [Applause] autonomy in 2020 Beijing subverted the 50-year guarantee it had made to honor Hong Kong's quote high degree of autonomy it completely uh kneecapped that agreement Hong Kong is I think an excellent case study

in how China lies they abandoned the one country two system policy they began to suppress economic and political freedom and they're now obliterating the difference between Hong Kong in mainland China it's one of the great tragedies of our time really to see Hong Kong snuffed out like this since the implementation of the National Security Law a 17-year-old student now faces between 10 years to life in prison under the since the 2019 protest Joey Sue is now a dissident operating from America as is an a qua in 2023 Hong Kong police held press conferences presenting bounties

for the women's arrests you have fames still in Hong Kong yes what has been their fate 1 month after the Bounty was released on me um in last August they were taken into questioning by the police what did they ask I have no idea cuz I'm not in touch with them and you're not in touch with your family no and that is for their best interest oh my God I'm going to cry yeah you can't call your mom no or your siblings no and I think that's the toughest strategy the regime has on people it's

about breaking up the trust and breaking up the human connections you have with each other um so that you cannot have that power and that connection you need to keep fighting the fight because at the end of the day it's about fighting for people you love right and once that connection is gone you lose that motivation so I think that's what the Chinese Communist party has been doing um for decades actually to various communities that have been trying to fight for [Music] [Applause] Freedom happy New Year Happy New Year [Music] on New Year's Eve 2023

president XI addressed the nation while he celebrated China's many accomplishments that year he also made a notable reference to Taiwan [Music] his remarks on Taiwan were more pointed than in previous years they came during taiwan's presidential election season a recurring reminder to shei that Taiwan is not in step with China today Taiwan is a vibrant democracy and its capital taipe is one of the wealthiest cities in Asia but she has been clear that a central goal of his China dream is to reunify Taiwan with mainland China it's a position that the party has held ever

since They seized power in 1949 General isimo Chang kek now on the last stronghold of nationalist China it was in that year that America's Ally Shang kek fled to the island and set up a separate government large anticommunist Force for Beijing this was unacceptable and the problem has festered ever since they hope they will return to their ancient Homeland the Taiwan issue is a direct result of a unfinished Civil War very simple there is only one China Taiwan being part of China the problem today is that the people of Taiwan have made it pretty clear

with their elections that they do not want to reunify with the mainland China the future of Taiwan is not to be decided by the local residents in Taiwan themselves why shouldn't these people have the right to self-determination the status of Taiwan eventually will be decided only by the people on both sides of the Taiwan stet including the 23 million people in Taiwan as well as the 1.4 billion people on China's Mainland Taiwan was on the agenda when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made their groundbreaking trip to China in 1972 history in the making the first

American President to foot on Chinese soil but they were here primarily to explore how China could become an ally against America's Archen enemy the Soviet Union Kissinger asked me to go along to the meeting I'd been a good notaker this relieved him of having to take notes a young age to Kissinger Winston Lord was on the trip we met for about an hour with ma he found that Mao was willing to engage on Taiwan but Ma was also wary of Soviet power and seem more interested in exploring a US Alliance Taiwan got pushed down the

list during the summit ma would outline the basic Chinese position he said that the Taiwan issue could take 100 years that's another way of saying taiwan's important to us we'll maintain our principle but we don't have to solve it for a while after a week of negotiations the status of Taiwan remained unresolved Nixon referred to Taiwan as an irritant his private handwritten notes reveal Nixon was prepared to yield our policy is one China he wrote Taiwan is part of China won't support Taiwan Independence it became known as the one China policy Nixon conceded that Taiwan

was officially part of China at the same time Nixon and Kissinger defended taiwan's right to autonomy it was a compromise on the specific issue of Taiwan of course we had to make a gesture and we came up with a one China formulation that's quite elastic and Elusive and has served until this day both parties over you know seven or eight or nine presidents have used this formula both to maintain through ambiguity our relations with China and a sensitive issue but but meanwhile helping to protect taiwan's autonomy the arrangement has remained relatively stable in 1979 President

Carter attempted to strengthen America's commitment to Taiwan signing into law the Taiwan Relations Act which stipulated that the US promised to maintain the capacity to Aid Taiwan ciens of Taiwan will still be secure but what exactly does that mean policy is deliberately strategically ambiguous on occasion there have been incidents close calls in the air us and China planes collided over Taiwan in 2001 with both countries blaming each other this accident has the potential of undermining our hopes for a fruitful and productive relationship between our two countries but the extent of today's saber rattling over time

Taiwan is new we will continue to make utmost efforts for peaceful reunification but never promise to anounce the use of force and we reserve the option to taking all measures necessary complete reunification must be realized and it can without a doubt be realized I think Taiwan is the next great danger in the world even in this era where the United Nations proclaims you know self-determination is a high principle if Scotland wants to leave the UK or Quebec wants to leave Canada but China has a more old-fashioned view of sovereignty we claim it it's ours get

off our Ranch don't get in the way China's military drills over Taiwan airspace are a regular reminder of the possibility of a real war in early 2023 a memo from US Air Force General Mike minahan to his subordinates circulated online that flatly gave a date for when she would invade I hope I am wrong it read my gut tells me we will fight in 2025 my gut tells me we will fight China in 2025 you reacted negatively lead to that you think yeah well I mean so first of all anybody who says they know the

date that Shan ping is going to invade Taiwan doesn't know what they're talking about ping doesn't know the date right col call is a former National Security adviser to Vice President Biden and former under secretary for policy at the Pentagon something while he disputes the 2025 date call and other US military analysts as well as the CIA are wary of she's near-term intentions she has made some statements about the urgency and he has and the date that most PE that most analysts point to is 2027 that is the date that shanping has given his military

to have the ability to do it now the ability doesn't mean they'll actually actually manifest that ability like his his giving them the homework assignment doesn't mean they'll actually complete it but taiwan's military doesn't want to tempt fate we have several scenarios that we have imagined that enemies will take and we have to weaken those invading force or even take them down in July 2023 I traveled here to watch taiwan's military rehearsing how to repel a possible Chinese Invasion so this is one of the beaches where you expect the uh paa to yes correct we

expect this we expect this place to be high on the list for POA as you can see we're basically right here and uh this is where Taipei City East and uh that will be bad for us so you want XI jingping to see what you're doing yes this beach is one of 14 Landing sites that the Taiwanese military has identified as potentially vulnerable to a Chinese amphibious and air assault the Taiwan straight is difficult Crossing 20 ft tied 3 mile mud flat really only conducive for a Crossing three or four months out of the year

I spoke to Admiral Sam paparo commander of all US forces in the Indo Pacific about the feasibility of a successful Chinese takeover it is difficult terrain to get to population centers it's mountainous mountainous and canalizing terrain as we call it meaning very few passes that can be easily closed is it likely that we're going to go to war over Taiwan the likelihood is low but the consequence is so very high that I owe you every bit of urgency that I can the effect of some War spiraling out of control would dwarf the second world war

so we seek to uphold the status quo we seek to deter conflict xiin ping believes that the unification of Taiwan is existential to legitimacy of the Chinese Communist party's rule of China they've gotten along for 70 plus years without reunification so what makes this existential I don't know I don't hope he grants you an interview and tells you Admiral paparo says that in his view Xi Jinping and China see Taiwan as an existential issue that it must be unified why you don't have the right to separate the land from your motherland okay just like in

the US you don't automatically have the right you need to go through procedures right like Texas if they want to get independent you cannot just have a pite in Texas you need to get other states to approve okay this is by the Constitution okay Taiwan is part of China Taiwan has never been separated more than ever a successful Chinese takeover of Taiwan threatens global stability if China takes Taiwan you're talking about an island that is responsible for 70% of all the semiconductors in the world and 90% of the highest end chips that power the most

Advanced Technologies that all of us have in our pockets with our iPhones and our laptops the world needs this technology Europe needs it Japan we all need it and nobody else does it the way Taiwan does China also depends on Taiwanese chips a war that destroys taiwan's chip industry may give she pause so does the war in Ukraine in 2022 when Putin invaded president XI took notice Ukraine is marking an anniversary of infamy two years since Vladimir Putin launched his war on I think she is watching Ukraine incredibly closely because the parallels with Taiwan although

not complete or nonetheless haunting and Ukraine could be the best deterrent against she doing anything in regard to Taiwan people thought that that invasion was going to last several weeks that Russia would have its way but the ukrainians have fought valiantly they continue to fight I don't think Shin ping is happy about the war in Ukraine without question he took notice of how good us intelligence was on Russia and he has to wonder well gosh do they know this about Russia what do they know about me so if he's counting on surprise Vis Taiwan or

South China Sea I think he's got to calculate the odds of him pulling off a strategic surprise are less than they were before because of the quality of us intelligence she has denied that he is preparing to invade Taiwan anytime soon but every few years he orders the military to tianan square for a display of China's Readiness and might one of the things that has been very consistent about C is his alignment of his identity with the Chinese military I'm in the crowd across from him and W witnessed several of these spectacles it feels very

much like this Imperial event where the leader of this great nation this great power is surrounding himself with people who've come to pay tribute to him and to pay tribute to China as a military [Music] power and he goes out in a car standing you know out of the sunroof as a drives up and down these rows of troops we see things like intercontinental ballistic missiles on flatbeds and this is all a signal of China's military strength she's rapid buildup of China's military capacity has prompted the US to send more weapons to Taiwan [Music] given

the stakes President Biden has been consistent and straightforward to be clear sir US forces us men and women would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese Invasion yes President Biden has said unambiguously four times the United States shall defend Taiwan no American president pres has ever said that and no American president has that responsibility the Taiwan Relations Act says nothing about the United States defending Taiwan it simply says that should coercive measures be used by mainland China against Taiwan it will be a matter of quote grave concern to the United States now the question

is what will the incoming Trump Administration do you've worked for Donald Trump if China encroaches further on Taiwan will Donald Trump who preaches America first uh go to war to defend Taiwan you know I'm not sure and the fact that I'm not sure may not be a bad thing because as long as it remains ambiguous as long as he doesn't you know say hey I'm not going to do anything on Taiwan and I think it's also important for us not to make promises that we may be not be able to to fulfill uh if Congress

doesn't authorize military action I don't believe that we should fight uh unless Taiwan becomes independent but Taiwan is not separated from China why should China use Force if it's a domestic issue then we can we can do it uh in a peaceful [Music] way taking stock of his Ambitions his deceptions his human rights abuses and his threats against Taiwan I come to wonder what US policy should be to date little has been done to effectively stop China's moves in the South China Sea or in Hong Kong or to deescalate the situation in Taiwan I think

engagement was right to tr TR and it was a great tribute to American diplomacy under nine presidential administrations with the perhaps somewhat naive hope that China might not turn into a Jeffersonian democracy but might become less hostile that was a good diplomatic effort did it succeed not yet and engagement has now ended now can we start it up again I believe that under Xin ping it's probably impossible for decades the growth of China's economy was described as a miracle fueling the rise of a new and massive middle class but these are less confident days for

most of China despite shiin Ping's grip on power his China is not Invincible in recent years the economy has faltered growth has slowed a housing boom has morphed into a housing glut with tens of millions of vacant units littering the country the workforce is also aging but as China's youth attend job fairs they face a staggering unemployment rate estimated to be as high as 25% foreign investment is fleeing the country Chinese economy is headed down for much more then we have today it's heartbreaking whenever I talk to my friends back in China you know the

sense of hopelessness is something I never felt before people were just very worried about the direction the country is going ch's economy having ackl I think sh ping has taken the economy for granted for most of the past 10 years he sort of figured that it didn't matter as much as ideology as control the way people think and clamping down on descent when Co hit China she's lockdown policy Drew huge protests becoming the largest anti-government demonstrations since tenan Square citizens millions of them yearning to escape almost 3 years of intermittent lockdowns the lockdown became uh

a kind of lock jaw and it's no secret if you talk to people in Chinese cities who were locked down what a what a nightmare that was in the Central City of Wuhan they break down the fence that kept them [Music] quarantined but it also was a kind of a perfect metaphor for the way a leninist system does things control back because the government forbade overt messaging protesters began holding up blank pieces of paper as symbols of China's strict censorship the white paper movement is spreading first it was all about opposition to China's strict zero

covid policy but in recent days the message has morphed touching the roar to political ner this wet peer movement was a very exciting time I heard these young people shouting you know and CCP and it's the first time that public protest forced CCP into changing its [Applause] policy but many of the protesters paid huge prices and they were harassed and they were locked out because for many Chinese Shing is a name you cannot say you cannot speak out the zero Co policy woke up many chines I think the white paper protest suggested exactly the degree

to which these forces dissenting forces are latent sort beneath the surface of things having watched CH for so many decades these forces are there and they keep coming up again and again and [Music] again and they actually grow and and multiply under [Music] repression but right now China has affected a kind of a techno autocracy that makes it more difficult than ever to have these kinds of manifestations Cu the cost is so high today she is trying to find a way forward that balances control with the need to get China's economy moving again Xi Jinping

thought that he could have it both ways clamp down and still have economic growth but the recipe for success yes that you had to unshackle Society in order for things to move forward has now been abandoned if China continues their policies which I think they will you're going to have longer term slower growth that'll lead to more tensions at home so I think we're in for a rockier time even though she feels that engagement with the outside world might be necessary to jumpstart the economy again I think at the current moment he has made the

other choice he has chosen to go down the route of consolidating power the route of nationalism so he's taking the darker path for now he's taking the darker path [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for more on this and other Frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org [Music] Frontline front lines China the US and the rise of xiin ping is available on Amazon Prime video [Music]