China and the Wuhan virus have been in the forefront of news in recent months in an increasingly revealing way.

It has become ever more obvious that China is a bad actor and a competitor to dominate the world’s economy, thanks in large measure to America’s generosity.

Roger W. Robinson Jr., president of RWR Advisory group and associated with a variety of financial advisory organizations, a senior director of international economic affairs on President Ronald Reagan’s National Security, gave a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan last September, in which he warned of the threat of China using America’s financial system to finance its goal of becoming the world’s leading superpower.

He compares the maneuvers as similar to what Russia was doing prior to the Reagan Administration to become the world’s leading power, using American taxpayer and other western countries’ money to achieve it. Robinson was a player in the Reagan team that undid the Russian plan and ultimately caused the Soviet Union to collapse.

In the speech, which appeared in part in Hillsdale College’s Imprimis publication, Robinson said:

“The story with China today has certain similarities, but with one big difference: the U.S. has been playing the role of the naïve Europeans. Since adopting the Kissinger policy of engaging with China in the 1970s, our government has operated on the assumption that economic and financial relations with China would lead Beijing to liberalize politically. And since 2001, when we backed China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, the pace at which we have given China access to our best technology and capital and trade markets has accelerated. Yet China has shown no signs of embracing individual freedoms or the rule of law.

“Instead, with our support, the Chinese have launched a massive campaign to become the world’s leading superpower. We know about the “Belt and Road Initiative,” a strategic undertaking to place huge segments of the world under China’s influence or outright control. We know about “Made in China 2025,” a strategy designed to dominate key technology sectors—from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to hypersonic missiles and 5G. We know about China’s practice of forced technology transfers: requiring American companies to share their trade secrets and R&D in order to do business in China. We know about China’s predatory trade practices. We know many of these things only because President Trump has brought them to the forefront of national attention, for which he deserves credit. And the ongoing tariff war is a good thing in the sense that we’ve finally begun to take a stand.”

Robinson delves into financial practices beyond our understanding to explain how China is capitalizing on what we would interpret to mean lax screening practices that allow China to finance concentration camps for dissidents when Americans transfer money into certain retirement and investment accounts.

Readers who are more conversant in economics and investing and are interested in greater detail can find Robinson’s speech reprinted at imprimis.hillsdale.edu.

Robinson says the following in one spine-chilling paragraph:

“But there is an issue more critical than trade that Americans, by and large, do not know about: China has over 700 companies in our stock and bond markets or capital markets. It has about 86 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, about 62 in the NASDAQ, and over 500 in the murky, poorly regulated over-the-counter market. Among these companies are some egregious bad actors. Hikvision, for example, is responsible for facial recognition technology that identifies and monitors the movement of ethnic Uyghurs. It also produces the surveillance cameras placed atop the walls of Chinese concentration camps holding as many as two million Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Both its parent company and Hikvision itself are on the U.S. Commerce Department Entity List (what many describe as the “Blacklist”).

Later he adds this:

This sounds difficult to believe, but it is an empirical fact: the majority of American investors are unwittingly funding Chinese concentration camps, weapons systems for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and more. This is because the U.S. has no security-minded screening mechanism for our capital markets, which have roughly $35 trillion under management.

He calls attention to how the NBA was cowed into silence regarding Chinese repression of the Hong Kong freedom movement.

He added:

“But it is nothing compared to where things are headed if Americans become more heavily invested in China. And we remain largely blind to this development, just as we were blind—prior to Reagan’s election in 1980—to the extensive financing of the Soviet Union by the West. So here we go again—another authoritarian villain waging economic and financial warfare against us and our allies— but this time even more aggressively and capably.

He called for excluding bad actors in China from access to U.S. capital markets, although he says there are those who will say “don’t politicize the markets.”

He gave some hope, commenting that America can win this economic and financial war.

Our capital markets are roughly the size of the rest of the world’s combined, and we hold about 60 percent of the world’s liquidity,” he said.

“Wall Street might argue that if we safeguard our capital markets, China will just go to another international exchange, in which case our country will be the one hurt. The problem with that argument is that no other country has anywhere near the depth and volume of our markets. China’s need for dollars is so voracious that it would likely use up the volume of a Frankfurt or London in months, not years. There is nowhere else for a player the size of China to go. Just as in the early 1980s, when we had a monopoly on oil and gas equipment and technology for Arctic-like conditions, we have most of the world’s money today—and the leverage that goes with it.” He concluded:

He concluded:

“The bottom line is clear. The Chinese are waging economic and financial warfare against us every day. We are in a position to prevail. The problem is that we’ve not seriously taken the field. In terms of our capital markets, we’re not even at the stadium. It’s time to mobilize our national assets and declare, ‘Not on my watch.’ After all, it’s our money.”