Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, is warning about the growing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence in the United States and insists on a robust reaction from the American administration and leaders to confront and defeat it.
In an April 29 interview with Jan Jekielek, host of EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program, Roberts talked about the Chinese threat facing the United States, which the nonprofit addressed in its “Winning the New Cold War: A Plan for Countering China” report (pdf).
“The CCP has infiltrated nearly every country in the world,” said Roberts. The report highlights how dependent the United States is on China in critical mineral supply and pharma products and the steps Beijing has taken to influence America.
The report recommends various measures to counter Chinese influence and protect American interests. According to Roberts, their efforts to make people aware of the Chinese threat are “already paying off because you see a shift in the rhetoric.”
“Let’s hope that on January 20, 2025, we replace the very CCP-friendly president of the United States with a man or a woman who knows what time it is, and that it’s time to confront them [the CCP], to defeat them, and to eliminate them,” he said.
Regarding the importance of the “China Paper,” Roberts said that it would act as a foundation for subsequent assessments by The Heritage Foundation on how the CCP must be confronted.
“We’re more than cautiously optimistic that we have made some progress here. We’re really confident that we have helped to change the debate.”
The Heritage Foundation advocates stopping all CCP-lobbying dollars in the United States. “And there’s a lot of people that like those dollars,” Jekielek observed.
Roberts thinks it is “outrageous” that “there would be any American citizen within blocks of where you and I are sitting having this conversation who would take $1 from a CCP-interest.”
An American who loves his country and understands the “evil” that the CCP and its advocates represent “wouldn’t do that,” he said.
“If it takes legislation to correct that, then Heritage is very happy to lead the way. We’re not going to stop working on that issue until there is a bill that bans lobbyists in this town from representing the Chinese Communist Party.”
Out of the many dozen recommendations made in the China report, blocking CCP investment in the American military industry is right “at the top of the list,” Roberts notes.
What the United States needs to focus on is “reinstilling in the CEOs and corporate boards of American businesses a desire not to invest in CCP-owned interests in China and elsewhere.”
The takeover of American education by the CCP is also a danger, he said. “We have to be really cognizant of the influence the CCP has in education, with the formerly named Confucius Institutes that have already been renamed something else. We should not be allowing the CCP to infiltrate our major research universities.”
Manufacturing in China
Roberts stressed the need to “reshore” and “friendshore” jobs that are offshore in China, saying, “Americans should be benefiting by any additional military production that we’re going to be engaged in order to defend Taiwan, who we will defend.”
Jekielek asked about a bill to stop buying drones from China that had passed the House and the Senate. However, the bill disappeared when the National Defense Authorization Act was passed. Citing industry sources, Jekielek raised the issue of a lack of alternative options regarding reshoring and friendshoring.
“That’s true. There aren’t a lot of options for drones, and yet that’s a result of our own choices,” Roberts said. “It’s a much more important matter and a greater obligation for individual Americans, especially those who have capital to invest, to stop being so significantly worried about a few pennies of difference in investment. That is, it’s more important to have an American-made drone or a drone made in a country that’s a real ally of ours than it is to save a few dollars on a drone made in China. This is the kind of thing that must change in the United States.
“In other words, we’re not going to defeat the CCP simply by passing legislation. We need American entrepreneurs to worry about the United States first, American workers first, and the future of American freedom first before they worry about, as they would tell you and me, their bottom line.”
When talking about the threat posed by the CCP, The Heritage Foundation is not only focused on the military posture alone but also the economic and social posture as well.
“Heritage is trying to remind people that the reason you want to endorse the China Paper and the reason you want to pass those bills isn’t just to defeat the CCP. It isn’t just to say that conservatives in America have to win, but it’s for every American and every human being on earth to live a good life. That’s what conservatives care about the most,” Roberts stated.
Confronting the CCP Threat
The March 28 “Winning The New Cold War” report calls CCP-controlled China the “greatest existential threat” facing the United States—an adversary “even more capable and dangerous than the Soviet Union was at the height of its power.”
“Instead of adapting to the threat, multiple Administrations pursued closer engagement with the PRC, all assuming that they could guide China on a path to greater economic openness and, ultimately, more political freedom. That gambit failed disastrously. Under [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping, the PRC has grown more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad,” the report said.
The United States now relies on the Chinese economy, with critical supply chains from vital rare-earth elements to key pharmaceutical products being “largely or wholly dependent” on China.
The CCP has also established a presence in U.S. college campuses, operates secret police stations in American cities, and bled the U.S. economy of trillions of dollars through the theft of intellectual property, the report stated.
To counter the Chinese influence, the report recommends several steps, including stopping CCP activities in higher education, banning dangerous Chinese apps, cracking down on illegal Chinese police operations in the United States, banning CCP lobbying, prohibiting the import and sale of Chinese manufactured drones, and securing critical mineral supplies among others.
As for the current state of affairs, “the deep state, the administrative state more broadly, is the rotten fruit of our individual members of Congress … not having the courage to pass bills or kill bills on behalf of self-governance,” said Roberts.
