The Truth with Lisa Boothe: Gordon Chang: How Iran & Venezuela’s Collapse Hurts China—and What It Means for Taiwan
3/12/202628 mincomplete
0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.
0:02Guaranteed human. Welcome to The Truth with Lisa Booth, where we get to the heart
0:06of the issues that matter to you.
0:08Today, we're talking China with Gordon Chang.
0:11He is the author of multiple books on China.
0:14But with Maduro's removal and Iran's leadership and military decimated in Operation Epic Fury, how
0:22does this all impact China?
0:23We know that China uses countries like Venezuela and Iran as proxies.
0:28So what's the impact on China?
0:31Also, Iran and Venezuela have both been armed with Chinese radar and air defense systems
0:36that have proven essentially useless against the United States and Israeli attacks.
0:42So does that make China more likely or less likely to try to take Taiwan?
0:47Also, China has been dependent on crude from Venezuela and Iran at discounted prices because
0:54of the sanctions. How does that impact China's economy?
0:58We're going to dig into all of this, you know, taking on sort of a
1:01different angle to the Venezuela and Iran situations from the prism of China.
1:05Stay tuned for Gordon Chang.
1:13Well, Gordon, it's always great to have you on the show.
1:16Appreciate you making time for us.
1:17So thank you so much.
1:19Well, thank you, Lisa. I really appreciate it.
1:22Oh, thank you. So we've seen a lot of development throughout the world.
1:26President Trump's been very active.
1:28We've seen it since we've last had you on the show.
1:32President Trump has captured Maduro in Venezuela, and we've also gone to war in Iran
1:37as well. When you look at those actions, how much of that is to counter
1:42China? Walk us through the China angle to those two specific actions.
1:48Both Venezuela and Iran were Chinese proxies.
1:51I'm sure that the Venezuelans and the Iranians didn't view it that way, but the
1:56Chinese certainly did. And both of those regimes were able to maintain themselves because of
2:01Beijing. So, for instance, when you look at Iran, China was taking about 90 %
2:08of Iran's exports of crude oil, 87 .2 % last year.
2:12But also China was giving diplomatic support, propaganda support to Tehran, weapons support.
2:19When you look at the Iranian drones, they've got computer chips in them.
2:23Those computer chips are probably Chinese -made or were sent into Iran through Chinese intermediaries.
2:31In other words, China was buying those on the black market and sending them to
2:36the Iranians. Iran's nuclear weapons program is largely a Chinese program.
2:41And Iran's terrorist proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi militia, all have large quantities of
2:48Chinese weapons. You put that all together, and it's clear that Xi Jinping was using
2:53Iran to disrupt the world.
2:55And you can make the same argument with Venezuela because the support there was also
3:00extensive. The Chavez and the Maduro regimes were in place because Beijing was supporting them
3:06with money and, of course, with weapons and diplomats they can propaganda support.
3:12And so what does China get out of that?
3:14Tell us, expand upon a little bit more about how China uses these proxies and
3:19why China uses them. Yeah.
3:21I think that Xi Jinping, who reveres Mao Zedong, the founder of the People's Republic,
3:26took two pages out of Mao's peasant movement playbook.
3:31One of them was Mao prevailed in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 by, quote,
3:37encircling the cities from the countryside, a famous phrase now in Communist Party lingo.
3:43And basically, Xi Jinping was using Iran and Venezuela to surround the United States, which
3:50they considered to be the city.
3:51The other page from Mao's playbook was the promotion of chaos.
3:58And clearly, Iran was creating chaos in the Middle East.
4:02Venezuela was creating chaos at our southern border.
4:06If you remember during the Biden administration, those caravans that were traveling up through Central
4:11America and Mexico into the United States, a lot of part of that was not
4:15organic. That was organized by Venezuela with Venezuelan money and subtle support.
4:23So clearly, we have Caracas and Tehran being used by Beijing.
4:29So that's why I think that you can call those two regimes proxies of China,
4:35or at least you could now no longer.
4:38You know, you had mentioned that Iran and its proxies have been dependent on Chinese
4:45software, Chinese weaponry. You know, you look at just how easy it seems to be
4:53to decimate Iran in short order, as well as its proxies with the United States
4:59and Israel. So what message does it send China that the U .S., outside of
5:05the drones, has had a really easy time sort of decapitating Iran's military?
5:12There are a number of messages there.
5:14One of them, of course, is the superb performance of the U .S.
5:18military. But more important, it tells the Chinese that the United States...
5:22States is willing to use force to achieve its goals.
5:26And those goals also help peace and order in the world.
5:30So I think it has an important message for Xi Jinping.
5:34I mean, he looks at the United States and even certainly Biden and even Trump
5:39up through last year. Xi Jinping looked at American presidents as things to be pushed
5:46around. He pushed around Biden.
5:48He even pushed around Trump last year.
5:51And I'm not saying that the Chinese view of the United States is right, but
5:56they thought the United States was in terminal decline.
5:59And that made China very, very aggressive.
6:02You come to January 3 of this year, President Trump extracts Maduro and his wife
6:08from Caracas. And I think the Chinese then start to look at the United States
6:12and President Trump in a very different light.
6:15And I think they're worried right now about our president.
6:19That's a good thing, because when the Chinese are worried about us, it means they
6:22are cautious. And when they're cautious, they tend not to do things that are adverse
6:29to our interests or the interests of the international community writ large.
6:34You know, do you think there's any part, because I've been kind of thinking through
6:38this question in my head, which you kind of disanswered it in terms of, does
6:42this all make China less likely or more likely to try to take Taiwan?
6:46Because on the one hand, the United States is bogged down right now, right, from
6:50a manpower perspective, as well as, you know, going through our stockpiles, both in being
6:56involved in what's going on in Ukraine and Europe, as well as, you know, Venezuela
7:01now, and then Iran and potentially Cuba, you know, so does China look at that
7:06and say, hey, look, they're distracted?
7:09Now's the time? Or you know what I mean?
7:11Like, I guess kind of what's, what do you think the thought process in China
7:16is right now? That's a critical question.
7:19And I think they look at it from a number of different perspectives.
7:22First of all, they do look at the United States as being tied down around
7:26the world. And, you know, in a theoretical sense, I do believe that they see
7:30that this is an opportunity to, for instance, take Taiwan.
7:34But it almost doesn't matter.
7:36And the reason is that the Chinese military right now is not capable of starting
7:41hostilities by invading the main island of Taiwan.
7:44So whatever the Chinese think about us, they know that they are not ready.
7:49The Chinese military has been decimated with Xi Jinping's purges.
7:54So for instance, on January 24th, the Ministry of National Defense announced the investigation of
8:00two generals. One of them was General Zhang Yaoxiao, who is then the number one
8:06uniformed officer in the Chinese military, the first vice chairman of the Communist Party's Central
8:12Military Commission. The Central Military Commission of the party controls the Chinese military.
8:17And right now, because of the purges, this seven -member group only has two sitting
8:24members. That's Xi Jinping himself, who of course is not a military officer, and a
8:30political commissar. There are no operational officers left on the Chinese Central Military Commission.
8:37So the chain of command has been severed.
8:40It's been severed for the first time in the history of the People's Republic.
8:43And there are a lot of other reasons why I believe that the Chinese are
8:48not ready to take Taiwan.
8:50Now, this is not to say that the Chinese military won't start a war.
8:54I mean, they could easily blunder into a war.
8:57And I think the chance of that is extremely high for a number of reasons.
9:02But in terms of the Chinese waking up one day and saying, we're invading the
9:06main island of Taiwan, that's just not likely for at least some time.
9:12And by the way, the people in Taiwan and the government in Taiwan are cheering
9:16on the United States and Iran, because they know what's at stake.
9:19And they realize that a successful American outcome in Iran means that they in Taiwan
9:25are a lot safer. Got to take a quick commercial break.
9:28More on the other side.
9:32You had mentioned there are a number of reasons they might blunder into trying to
9:36take Taiwan. What would those be?
9:39Xi Jinping, I think, believes that a high degree of tension is in his personal
9:45interest. Now, and that's why we have been seeing belligerent Chinese conduct from an arc
9:52from India in the South to South Korea in the North.
9:55And I think that Xi Jinping believes that this high degree of tension helps him
10:01not because if it starts a war, he doesn't think it's going to rally the
10:05Chinese people. The Chinese people right now do not want war.
10:10But I think that he believes that a high degree of tension is in his
10:14interest because it will prevent other senior Communist Party figures from challenging or deposing him.
10:19You got to think about his mentality.
10:22And this goes back to the time that he took power in 2012 when he
10:26became the Communist Party's general secretary.
10:29In other words, the ruler of China, he inherited a consensual political system where no
10:36supreme Chinese leader got either too much credit or too much blame because every decision
10:42of consequence was shared across the top of the political system.
10:47In other words, across the Politburo Standing Committee.
10:50and sometimes even across the wider Politburo itself.
10:53But Xi Jinping, who grabbed power from everybody else, ended up with total accountability.
10:58Now, this is great if you're Xi Jinping in 2017, where everything is going China's
11:03way, and you're getting all the credit for it.
11:06But it's not so great in 2026 when things are definitely not going your way.
11:12Xi Jinping is being blamed for policies and correctly being blamed because his policies are
11:17accelerating China's problems. The other thing, Lisa, is that in 2012, when he became general
11:24secretary, he inherited a system where if you got drummed out of the leadership, you
11:29got a nice house. But Xi Jinping raised the cost of losing political struggles by
11:34jailing his opponents, stripping them of their assets, and going hard after their families.
11:39So Xi Jinping's mentality is, look, I'm being blamed for everything, and I could lose
11:44everything. I think that he can just decide to roll the dice, which means China
11:48cannot de -escalate. It cannot act constructively if one of these incidents that China is
11:54provoking goes wrong. That's why I think China can blunder into a war.
11:58But what do you think the probability is that this happens during the Trump administration?
12:04So we're talking about two years.
12:06I think it's a little bit better than 50 -50.
12:09I think President Trump can stare down Xi Jinping, but it's going to be a
12:14very close -run thing. So I'm really very worried about what Xi Jinping might do.
12:21You know, you get a desperate China.
12:22Who knows what these guys are going to do?
12:24And you've got to remember that China right now can't solve its own problems.
12:29It has an economy which is failing, and the only realistic way for China to
12:35save its economy is to export more, which means they need the United States to
12:40keep barriers down. They need the rest of the world to do that.
12:44So Xi Jinping has placed his fate in the hands of President Trump and other
12:49leaders around the world. This is not a good situation for China right now, and
12:55I think that that makes Xi Jinping very insecure.
12:59How strong is China's military?
13:01Because what we're seeing with Iran, at least, and we saw this during the 12
13:06-day war and then, you know, now, that Iran is sort of a paper tiger.
13:13Is China? Yeah, that's—we only will know once we see them in action.
13:19I think they're not nearly as good as people say.
13:23I think that if you're talking about the first week of a war, they're probably
13:28pretty good. They've got all sorts of plans.
13:30They're just executing them. But when they get counterpunched and that inevitably happens, then I
13:36think that they don't do very well.
13:38And the reason is that this is a communist military.
13:42Communist militaries have two reporting lines, a military reporting line and a political reporting line.
13:49Remember, the only other member on the Central Military Commission, he's a political commissar.
13:54He's really powerful because he—you know, the political reporting line runs through him.
13:59Two lines of communication and authority in a military just doesn't work in at all.
14:05And it doesn't work in any organization for that matter.
14:07So for that reason alone, I think that China is less capable than it appears.
14:13With its weapons, it's got some really good weapons, some weapons that we don't have,
14:17and that's our fault. But the question is, can China use them effectively?
14:22Because tactics are as important as weapons as we've seen in Iran, for instance.
14:27So when you put all—and one other thing is that a lot of the weapons
14:31are not nearly as good as advertised, as we've heard from Bloomberg and other reporting.
14:36You put all that together, I actually think that China's military is really good in
14:42intimidating others to back down.
14:44But when it comes to a fight, I just don't think that they're up to
14:47it. Remember, the rumors are that General Zhang Yaoxiao, the guy who was—the guy whose
14:53investigation was announced on the 24th of January, he was telling Xi Jinping, we're not
14:59ready to go to war.
15:00And I think that General Zhang, who was one of the few senior officers who
15:05had any wartime experience—and his wartime experience goes back to 1979 when China invaded Vietnam
15:12in that failed attempt to punish the Vietnamese.
15:16General Zhang was right, the Chinese military is not ready to go to war.
15:20You mentioned China's economy struggling.
15:24You know, China has been somewhat dependent on discounted crude from Venezuela and Iran.
15:31So how has that impacted China financially on the energy front?
15:37This is not going to be a good story for China.
15:39And we saw that in the first days after the U .S.
15:43attack on Iran, that gasoline spiked 11 .0 percent.
15:48And diesel, which is more important for the Chinese economy, soared 13 .5 percent.
15:54And those numbers are only going to go up.
15:56Now, China will cap prices.
15:58But it really has only two avenues of significance.
16:02One of them is tapping its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which we don't know exactly how
16:08much is in it, but some people say 900 million barrels.
16:11Some people say 1 .2 billion barrels.
16:14At most, it's 140 days of cover of imports.
16:17legs are no longer a thousand to the US, but they're not making it records.
16:17I don't know. The other thing they can do is buy from Russia, but the
16:22Russians are going to jack up the price.
16:24And that means, go to your point, China's not going to get discounted crude anymore.
16:29And they're going to have to pay in hard currency, which they don't like doing.
16:34They'd rather pay in the renminbi, their own currency.
16:37I mean, this is not a mortal shock, but considering everything else that's going on,
16:41it really hurts China at a crucial time.
16:44You know, what is the likelihood we've seen in Iran, you know, mass protests break
16:52out across the nation? We've seen protests recently in Cuba when, you know, as electricity
16:57was down and also economic hardship fell in both countries.
17:01What's the likelihood of like Chinese protests?
17:05Could they go anywhere? You know, how do you see that potentially unfolding?
17:10China runs the most sophisticated set of and coercive set of social controls outside of
17:18North Korea. The North Koreans are really good at this.
17:21The Chinese are second best.
17:24And so they're able to control the Chinese people almost all the time.
17:28But we have seen periods where the Chinese people explode.
17:33The last time we saw this was October 2022, when the workers at an iPhone
17:40factory in Zhengzhou in central China just got sick and tired of the COVID controls.
17:45They exploded. They scrambled over the fences.
17:49They left people around the plant at great risk to themselves, helped the workers flee
17:55as they scrambled, you know, across fields and down roads.
17:58This was fascinating because it triggered other protests throughout China and not just on COVID
18:05controls, on everything else. So in Shanghai in the following month, people were in the
18:10streets chanting, down with Xi Jinping, down with the Communist Party, which means the sentiment
18:15was revolutionary. But these protests continued in China until about January of 2023, when they
18:23sort of petered out. But we saw just all segments of society just express their
18:29extreme displeasure at the party.
18:31Party was able to put this back into the box.
18:34But this tells us that the Chinese people are volatile.
18:37And this is something that we know because in many traffic accidents in China, they
18:42end up in fistfights because there's just so much repressed anger in society.
18:47So, yes, China is able to control people for long periods of time until it
18:53can't. And then, you know, we don't know where this is going.
18:56But we've got to remember that Chinese people right now are very unhappy.
19:00It's gloomy. The one thing that works in the regime's favor is that they are
19:04so depressed. And when people don't have hope, they generally don't protest.
19:09But they are getting desperate.
19:11And that is a factor that sparks protests.
19:14And they are angry. And the regime could lose its grip.
19:17Also, Apple restricted some airdrop features in China during those anti -government protests in 2022,
19:25which they were using to help circumvent the government or China, what Chinese people were.
19:31Walk us through for the controls that China has.
19:34A large part of that is AI -driven, correct?
19:37Increasingly so. They've got, for instance...
19:40Walk them through their means of control.
19:43They've got, at last count, which was last year or so, like 700 million surveillance
19:49cameras. They use one point, I forget, three points, 1 .36, whatever, cell phones for
19:57surveillance. They have social credit system.
20:00You know, we've got credit reports on every American.
20:04But their credit reports are not just credit.
20:07They are political social behavior.
20:09So they've got... They're putting together their nationwide social credit system.
20:13The Communist Party has what they call the neighborhood grannies.
20:18You know, generally older people who watch people coming in and out of their little
20:23communities. So it is a...
20:26And the Communist Party itself is more than 100 million people.
20:29So it is a total surveillance society.
20:33And it is AI technology -driven.
20:37They are very good at that.
20:38They are pioneering it. The only country that comes close to surveillance is North Korea,
20:43which uses different types of surveillance mechanisms than China.
20:47Less technology -driven, more person -people -driven.
20:51But the point is, this is a total control society.
20:54And we should stop talking about China as authoritarian, as a lot of people say.
20:59It's at least semi -totalitarian, Lisa.
21:02And I think even totalitarian would not be inappropriate for describing the Chinese state these
21:08days. Quick break. Stay with us.
21:10If you like what you're hearing, please share on social media or send it to
21:13your family and friends. You know, as we move toward AI and a more technologically
21:21-driven society or, you know, like centralized banking and things like that, how concerned are
21:27you that, like, we could follow in those footsteps in terms of giving the government
21:31ability to, you know, track us and control us?
21:35Well, the U .S. government has marvelous, they would say, ability to surveil us.
21:42And we see this not only in the United States, but in, you know, Britain.
21:45where all these surveillance cameras, we find all these criminals, like the guy who killed
21:50the UnitedHealthcare CEO he's found in Altoona, Pennsylvania, because the guy got just tracked as
21:56he fled New York City.
21:57So yeah, it is in our society.
22:00The difference, though, between America and China is that our government is democratically elected.
22:07That means if people don't want the surveillance, they can stop it.
22:11Now, government has sort of a momentum of its own, but we can stop it
22:15if we decide that that's what we want.
22:18Now, the American people have, you know, there's been a lot of discussion in our
22:23society about the proper surveillance, and it's not as intrusive as China is, because we
22:29are a democratic society. But yeah, I worry about that, and it is something that
22:35is a discussion we are going to continue to have, especially as technology gives the
22:39government more and more means to control.
22:41This is now coming down to this idea of a central bank digital currency, which
22:46is one of the means that China is now starting to employ to control the
22:50Chinese people. That is something that we're going to have to confront.
22:55Unfortunately, we don't have it now, but this is basically a surveillance issue.
23:00And before we go, is there anything I've missed in my questioning to you that
23:04you want to convey to the audience?
23:05I think that this is a crucial time.
23:09Xi Jinping always talks about going to war.
23:12It's a constant theme that he has.
23:14And one of his favorite phrases is dare to fight.
23:18We Americans tend to think we're at peace.
23:21And because of that, although we are a far stronger society than China, we can
23:26lose our country because we're not understanding the situation we're in.
23:31This is a crucial time, and we need the president of the United States to
23:37talk to the American people in realistic tones about how dangerous the world is right
23:42now. Remember, we just found the second of China's biological weapons facilities on American soil.
23:51That was on January 31, when Las Vegas SWAT and federal agents descended upon that
23:56home in Las Vegas and found over a thousand vials of a reddish substance or
24:01substances that was making people deathly ill.
24:04This is after December 2022, where authorities in California found a secret Chinese biological weapons
24:14lab that had almost a thousand mice that had been genetically engineered to spread disease
24:21and at least 20 pathogens.
24:23Some of them, for deadly diseases like Ebola.
24:27So the Chinese are really moving on our society and we're not protecting ourselves.
24:32So we need to start thinking about the world in much more realistic tones, because
24:39if we don't, then we will be unprepared for what very well could happen.
24:45Not much of that's because of open borders under Biden.
24:49We know a lot of Chinese nationals made their way to the United States during
24:52those four years. Yes. There are Chinese agents, operatives, and soldiers in our country, and
25:00there's more, they were there before Biden, but there are more of them because of
25:04that open border. If you go back to the early, the first after Biden was
25:10elected, the Chinese, there was an unprecedented surge of Chinese migrants in our country, but
25:16most of them were family groups.
25:17In other words, people who were desperate to live in a free society.
25:21Towards the end of the Biden era, U .S.
25:23Border Patrol noticed that there was a stark change in the composition of Chinese migrants.
25:28That towards the end, about two -thirds, and at some border crossings, 85 % of
25:34the Chinese migrants were single males of military age, traveling without family members, some pretending
25:41not to speak English. Border Patrol knew that some of them had links to the
25:45Chinese military. And many of these guys were coming across in packs of four to
25:5015. And some of these packs of Chinese males, they were actually decked out in
25:58identical kit. So yeah, we got to be really concerned that there are now more
26:03of them here. And it's not just the Chinese, it's the Iranians.
26:08Remember that September 11th, 2023 deal that Biden had with Iran?
26:13Well, as part of that deal, he gave five Iranian operatives clemency, which was in
26:18exchange for releasing Americans. And so I can sort of accept that.
26:24But what I can't accept is that he gave three of those five Iranian operatives,
26:29he released them into the United States at a time when other Iranian operatives were
26:36trying to kill President Trump.
26:37I'm trying to kill Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State.
26:41And we're trying to kill other Trump senior officials.
26:45So we know these guys are here.
26:47And unfortunately, ICE and federal authorities have just been overwhelmed.
26:53So we got to get these guys out of our country because they are here
26:57to kill us. Yeah, I mean, I think if they're, you know, doing these biolabs
27:02with all these dangerous pathogens, that's the objective.
27:06Gordon Chang, always interesting to hear your perspective.
27:09Always scary, but important warnings for us to heed.
27:13And I hope that the Trump administration and our government, I hope they're paying attention.
27:18So, Gordon Chang, thank you so much for your time, sir.
27:21Well, thank you, Lisa, and stay safe.
27:23That was Gordon Chang. Appreciate him for joining the show.
27:25Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you can listen
27:29throughout the week. I also want to thank my producer, John Cassidy, for putting the
27:32show together. Until next time.