Transcription
Have you heard about Chinese spies being involved with local politics in California? There was a recent case of a campaign manager of a city council in LA. This campaign manager got indicted as an alleged spy for the Chinese Communist Party.
Now, when it comes to the influence of the Chinese Communist Party across California, there is a lot of that that hasn't been covered much by the media. Today, we sit down with investigative journalist Joshua Phillip with Epoch Times, who has been investigating the Chinese Communist Party's influence.
This is the biggest threat America faces. This is a bigger threat than war. This is a bigger threat than Taiwan. This is a bigger threat than Russia because it's in our own backyards. It's already here. It's already infiltrating our government. It's already controlling, or at least influencing, most major American businesses and most major American media already, as we speak. If we don't take this seriously, we are going to lose our country.
>> Collecting all this information, as you're saying, what are they trying to achieve?
>> The big picture is they're trying to take over our country without invading us through military force. They're invading us through non-military means.
Have you seen them monitoring like all the Chinese people that are here?
>> Yes.
>> All of them?
>> Yes. All of them.
>> Remember that the Chinese people are not the Chinese Communist Party. And the Chinese people have strong values and strong culture, and they're the victims of the Chinese Communist Party. And a lot of the issues we're going to be discussing in this interview, they are victims of first. I'm Si Korami. Welcome to California Insider. Josh, it's great to have you back. Welcome back.
>> Yeah, it's great being here. I love, I love Southern California.
>> Josh, we want to talk to you about something that's happening in the politics of California. And this has been going on for a while. Uh, one of the examples that recently come up in the last five, six months, has been an Arcadia city council woman's campaign manager was a Chinese Communist Party spy. And China is having more and more influence, from what we are gathering, in California politics. But you have seen this existing for a long time. Can you tell us what you see? You're a China expert.
>> So, what's happening in California with the city council member and, you know, someone in their, someone tied with the administration working for the Chinese Communist Party, that's a very common thing you've seen. You've seen this in New York with government officials who've had like one person who was advising them on their campaign who was, you know, a Chinese Communist Party spy. Uh, it was very common for a long time in San Francisco, like on the surface, and, and I would say it's actually still happening where you had, for example, Rose PAC. And Rose PAC was even deemed by a lot of the mainstream media as the kingmaker of San Francisco. You couldn't get into politics without her blessing, and she was tied in with the United Front, an overt branch of Chinese espionage, right? An overt branch of the Chinese Communist Party dedicated to subversion.
So, the Chinese Communist Party, the way it does spying and influence operations, may not be, I'd say, understandable to people when we think of conventional espionage because a lot of it takes place for like gray zone type stuff. They go in through the education system. They come in, you know, here when they're students. They go to American universities, and there are different bodies at the universities that kind of groom them through their careers. Uh, you have, of course, we talked before about the CSSAs, the Chinese Student and Scholar Associations, last time I was on the show. That's students, scholars, faculty, and then, of course, the Chinese Communist Party's like, you know, fingers and tentacles within the communities. Those individuals will then try to like, you know, groom them, groom these students, and then place them in certain jobs. So, if they need somebody to get involved in politics, they might have them apply to be an intern, you know, for a major politician. And it's not hard to, it's not hard to do that, especially when they're trying to be, you know, diverse and they want to bring in, you know, more people, more, more voices, and you know, more different cultures. And they, especially if they want to engage with China, maybe they have business deals or in their, maybe their industries, or their, let's say, for example, if you're in a state where a lot of the GDP is agriculture and China's one of the biggest, well, in California too, or, you know, big energy and, and green energy, for example. Of course, we get a lot of the green energy products from China. Maybe you want to have somebody who knows the culture, who knows the language.
>> So, you hire somebody that's come from universities or interning?
>> Well, well, obviously, right? And, and especially when you're dealing with certain countries because certain countries, you know, if you're a politician and you go and meet with a foreign representative, or you're trying to make a trade deal with another country, or, or you have a, one of your core businesses in your state or your community, and they, you know, one of their biggest trading partners is with someone, another country, you, when you have meetings, it does help to have somebody who knows the culture, knows the language. Uh,
>> Especially with China because it's such a complex, it's so different than, than American culture.
>> And, and, and a lot of Westerners, a lot of people from the US know, even when they do learn Chinese, it's very hard to get a lot of the nuances and the subtleties within the language, and you'll always be regarded as a foreigner in their eyes. And so, you, if you have someone who has that real core common ground with them, you know, you view it as a foot in. The problem you have is the way that, the way the Chinese Communist Party knowingly, openly, and very strategically uses these kinds of people. Uh, so, for example, under the Chinese Communist Party's national security law, in fact, some recent changes they've made to it, if you're a Chinese citizen, and it, I'm not saying they're all spies, right? But if you're a Chinese citizen, and the CCP asks you to do something, you do not have a choice. If the Chinese Communist Party asks you to serve China or to, you know, "remember that you are Chinese," which is the way they often say, and that has suggestions and subtleties, right? Uh, it means you don't have a choice. If they want you to help the CCP, if they want you to do backroom deals with the CCP, if they want to use you to try to compromise somebody or help them get the deal, they will. And you don't have a choice. If you choose otherwise and you say, "I'm not going to help you." Uh, you risk, of course, first off, getting deported these days, which, which is a big issue. Uh, but they're gonna, they're gonna threaten your family. They're gonna end any possible future you had with having a career in any way tied to China. You're going to be cut off.
>> So, even if you're in the US, you're interning, or you're like a student that is just got a job with an interesting, potentially having access to politicians, you will be monitored by China. How, how does that work?
>> You, you don't have a choice otherwise.
>> Do you have to cooperate?
>> Especially if they, especially if you have something they want. If you have something they want, and that could be access to a targeted individual like a major politician. That could be maybe, maybe you're the key figure who can help them push a business deal. Maybe, maybe you're the figure who can help them get into, uh, you know, maybe a major interview with a major American news outlet, and they can get, you know, some big, uh, some big narrative pushed in American news. If they view you as the figure who can help make that happen, stealing, or even just, you know, friendly introduce me to this person. You don't have a choice according to Chinese Communist Party law. And so, you could say, well, what if it's a student? They come from China. They come to the US, and, you know, they, they plan on staying here, right? If they have family in China, the Chinese Communist Party will threaten. They, they'll first go to the family and say, "Hey, ask your son or daughter to help with this. Help us try to convince them. Tell them it's a great opportunity. We'll, we'll help their family back in China. Their family will get benefits. You know, this is a great opportunity. Why would you pass it up?" And they might say, "Well, you're not really doing anything illegal. You're just helping us make friends. You know, you're just helping, you're helping your country." And they might say something as simple as that. And that'll be the first layer, layer of pressure. The second layer of pressure, if you refuse to do it, is they'll start threatening your family or threatening you. Well, look, you know, if you want to come back to China, if you know, you're, you know, you're working in the US, but if you want to come back to China one day, or you want to have a good future, maybe you want to get into business, and it's very hard to go to school. And, you know, in China, they have college entrance exams. There's a lot of competition for the good universities. You have to jump through a lot of hoops to get a good university. And if you lose that, you know, you're working 9, you know, 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., you know, 6 days a week, they call the 996 schedule for the rest of your life in a factory earning like Chinese minimum wage. You know, pick, pick what future you want. You, you decide what future you want. Do you want that, or do you want to have this big cushy life, and your whole family's going to be happy, and they're proud of you? All you got to do is maybe pass this politician a little baggie full of money. Maybe help them get a meeting. Maybe, you know, help invite them to China, help moderate this meeting with a Chinese Communist Party representative. That, this is, this is the kind of pressure they put on you. If you continue to refuse, then it gets dangerous. Then they start threatening your family. Maybe your parents get, you know, taken in for questioning by the local authorities. Uh, maybe they pull your visa, and suddenly you're not legally allowed to be here anymore.
>> How would they pull your visa? Cuz the US is in charge of your visa, right?
>> Well, on the Chinese side, for example, right?
>> Cuz you have to get a permission to to come out. Is that?
>> Well, so from my understanding, if you come here, it's kind of on permission of the Chinese Communist Party. They can, they can, to an extent, eliminate that, and they, they can basically, you know, for example, if you want to go back to China, you have to like renew it and stuff. Even for Taiwanese, they have to go through the Chinese Communist Party's embassies. So, they can't really cancel your visa, is the wrong way to say it, but they can kind of cancel your right to be here to an extent on the Chinese side. Uh, maybe they can affect your passport, for example. They, they can start messing with you in different ways. Uh, remember also the Ministry of State Security have what's called Operation Fox Hunt, and that's kind of the more extreme end of it where you're really not listening to them. They'll send agents of the Chinese Communist Party through the MSS, Ministry of State Security, to threaten you, threaten your family. They will try to make you self-deport. They'll try to force you to self-deport. In some cases, they were even telling people, commit suicide, or we're going to hurt your family. And yet, you had that happening. That, that's a known operation.
>> That happening right now?
>> Yes. Yes. Absolutely. That was a known operation even during the Obama administration, happening on American soil. They, it was again called Operation Fox Hunt. And so that's when you get to the far end where like you're a dissident. You're not listening to the CCP. The CCP wants something from you. And remember, according to Chinese National Security Law, you don't have a choice. If you disobey, you're a dissident. And, and so, you know, on that point, when you do see people, Chinese people speaking out against the CCP, when you do see them protesting, when you do see them taking strong actions, like this is the risk they've taken upon themselves knowingly. They are knowingly ruining their ability to go home. Uh, they're knowingly putting themselves in harm's way. They're knowingly denying, you know, what could have been a great career, great opportunities, because it goes against their principles. They understand the Chinese Communist Party is a murderous communist regime with ill intent against the United States. And they're not willing to harm the United States. They're not willing to sacrifice their values. They're not willing to go against their religion, you know. And, and there are many who decide to go that route. But there are also many who decide to go the other route, serving the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, which is where you get these influence campaigns targeting politicians.
>> Are they monitored? Have you seen them monitoring like all the Chinese people that are here?
>> Yes.
>> All of them?
>> Yes. All of them. So, uh, the CCP has a branch of its government dedicated to this type of monitoring, and, and it's been made a lot worse because of social media and AI. So, a couple examples with this. The branch that monitors them is called the OCAO, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. It's like a sister branch tied in very heavily with the United Front. I've been told by many Chinese that if you see like the government offices for this, it's like the same door. It's like the same place, basically.
>> In China, right?
>> In China. But, but a lot, a lot of the agents of the CCP, they'll oftentimes even have both, uh, both titles, United Front and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. So, you could say the United Front kind of builds the, the overseas networks, builds the networks of infiltration, builds the networks of Chinese spies, and so on. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office maintains the databases. They maintain who is who, who are they friends with, where do they work, who are their family members, and so on. Uh, because remember, in China, they have the social credit system, right? Social credit system is a big data, a big data program tied in with every form of surveillance. Everything you look for on the internet, every purchase you make, every credit card purchase, because remember, they have a digital currency there, a centralized bank digital currency, a CBDC. Every purchase you make, uh, who are your friends, who are your family members, uh, you know, what do you believe? What's your religion? What is your family member's religion? What are your political beliefs? Do you believe in democracy? Do you support Hong Kong? Are you in line with the CCP? Do you oppose the CCP? All of this is documented, and you're actually given a score. Again, they call it the social credit system. You're given a social credit score based on whether you align with the interests of the CCP or deviate from them. So, if you're a good citizen, you get all kinds of benefits. And I mean, you could actually say that you just enjoy like normal relative freedom, you know, like, like even weird stuff, like you get access to like a good citizen dating apps, for example. If you're on the bad citizen list, you can't even, you can't, you can't use the bus system if you're on the lower end of it. Uh, there have been reports and videos even homeless people in China sleeping like, you know, in tunnels and so on, and those are the bad, those are the bad citizens. Those are the people who violated, you know, the CCP's social credit laws. Maybe you believe in democracy. Maybe you criticized the CCP. Maybe you went and protested, uh, when people were talking about, you know, their their runs on the bank in China, and what they were doing is they were turning their health codes red and arresting them and saying, you're violating COVID policy. But they, they were doing it to arrest protesters, right? They'll do that to you. Then you're on the naughty list. Once you have, you're on the bad citizen list, your ability to make, to make purchases is limited. Your ability to use public services is limited. Your ability to rent houses is limited. If anybody associates with you, you will by extension affect their social credit scores. So, people don't want to be friends with you. Your family is not going to want to be close to you. Uh, it's, it's like you're, you're like radioactive. And so, if you don't work with the CCP, you're that.
>> So, they have a system similar to this here. It's not as aggressive as that, but they're still monitoring everyone. And what a lot of people don't know, because stepping to the side a little bit, you know, there's the, there's the debate around banning TikTok and whether TikTok was sending American data to China. A lot of tech companies, uh, including social networks, sell private data to China. Uh, and you could say, well, they're not selling it to the Chinese government. They're selling it to, uh, to big Chinese companies. Big Chinese companies, because there's no law blocking purchasing of data. When, when you download an app like a social network, and you give it permission to take your data, you know, a lot of these apps are free, quote unquote, but the product is you. The product is your data. It's what you're looking at. Uh, again, your friend networks, your political beliefs, advertising data, and they sell it. Other countries buy it, too. And so, if, if a Chinese company buys it, well, under the Chinese Communist Party, right, under the Chinese Communist Party, all data needs to be secure and viewable by the Chinese Communist Party. So, there's no such thing as data security in China. You don't have a choice.
>> You have to give it to the government. Essentially.
>> You, you go out of business if you don't, and you probably go to jail if you don't. You know, you, you actually, you will violate their cybersecurity laws if the CCP says, "Give us all your data," and you don't do it. And, and so, back to the point of the Chinese Communist Party's social credit system, they're not just doing this to Americans. They're doing it globally. And when the CCP goes and tries to like, you know, they build these infrastructure projects, they build internet infrastructure, they build smart city technology. It's part of the Belt and Road initiative, going to Africa, going to Latin America, going to different parts of Asia. They also put in place these types of social control systems. Uh, there are many countries outside of China that actually have the social credit system, and the big data system is collecting data on everybody. Even biometric data, even like DNA, you know, retina scan type stuff. Even, for example, it came out that, um, some of the, the things you can use to check your ancestry. Um, a lot of that DNA data was being processed through Chinese laboratories. It was a big controversy a few years ago. A lot of the COVID tests, the, the DNA data was being processed in China. And the concern, of course, is that the CCP's been collecting DNA data, even in addition to collecting everything else on everybody. So, they have everything basically.
So, Josh, people wonder like, so them coming and having a spy as a campaign manager for a small city in LA and collecting all this information, as you're saying, what are they trying to achieve?
>> What the Chinese Communist Party wants to achieve is the control of foreign governments through non-military means. They want to puppeteer governments. The direct way of saying it is they want to take over the world. You know, if you're, if you want me to just say it.
>> True. Actually coming and influencing the government officials by using spies and then eventually taking over their policy. Is that what you see?
>> Yeah. And so the blunt way of putting it is that the politically correct way of saying it is that they, they want to have influence over other, over governments and policy.
Now, did you directly see this in your work when you were, you've been investigating the Chinese Communist Party for many, many years in New York?
>> I've seen it everywhere because once you grasp how the mechanisms work, you can see how the same mechanisms are in place in every single state in the United States, every single county in the United States. Uh, you can see it at the federal level, you can see it in Canada, you can see it in Europe, you can see it in Africa and Latin America. Uh, I was in South Korea doing research a couple years back, and I investigated the Chinese influence operations there, and it's, it's the exact same thing. Uh, it's the same thing in Australia. It's the same thing in Germany. It's the same thing in Italy.
>> So, what happened in San Francisco essentially with, can you explain how, how it worked with Rose PAC? How, how much influence?
>> Rose PAC was regarded again, and, and don't take my word for it. You know, this was the label used by most mainstream media. She was called the kingmaker of San Francisco. You basically couldn't get elected in politics unless you had her blessing. Now, the way that works is this. You, if you want the Chinese vote, if you want the entire, you know, network of of operations, the businesses to with any Chinese interest, and a lot of them have Chinese interest, you need to go through the agent who has all those connections, and that was Rose PAC. Now, making a deal with Rose PAC was making a deal with the devil. You were selling out the United States to an extent. But
>> Do people, did people know that the people that were dealing with, was it easy to know that or is it?
>> I don't think they think far enough to understand the implications of it. Because let's put it this way. If I were to say Hollywood films cannot be made for the most part, at least not getting to China, without co-producing with China, without agreeing to some Chinese censorship laws, without, without agreeing to implement some of the policies that the Chinese Communist Party has on representing core socialist values, with showing China in a positive light, without showing the US military in a, you know, that you can't show the US military in a positive light. You have to show in a negative light.
>> And those rules are there?
>> They're there. They're public. It's not, it's not even a secret. So, that, that's accepted. This is, this is known. This, this is not a secret. You know, Hollywood reporters talked about it. I've written about it. There's everybody's talked about it. If you have these, you know, Silicon Valley, you're talking about, you know, San Francisco, that whole area. Let's talk about Silicon Valley. Huge, huge voting block, huge financial sector for San Francisco. How many big tech companies need the Chinese market? All of them. Are there any that don't? Even outside of China, if you want to do business in Latin America, you know, there's, there's a lot of kind of gray area stuff going on. If you're a tech company and you want to do business in China, you need to hand them your source code. You need to agree to certain types of Chinese Communist Party law. You need to agree to their data policies where pretty much everything needs to be viewable and controllable by the CCP. On the more nefarious side, you'll even need to get involved in some of their more, let's say, uh, criminal, what, what Americans would consider criminal activities. But when China would just be normal business, like you need to employ some of the children of the Communist Party leadership, for example. You need to give them key positions. You'll need to have a Communist Party cell operating in your company, and, and they'll just rename it in different ways. You need to, you need to allow the CCP certain, uh, certain amount of access, and oftentimes you need to be engaged, and knowingly be engaged to an extent that your technology might be used for nefarious purposes. Many big tech companies involved in surveillance, uh, smart city programs, involved in human rights abuses. Uh, if you're a, if you're in the garment industry, you're knowingly engaging in slave labor in China because most of the garment industry is tied with slave labor. Um, especially slavery of Uyghurs. If you're involved in industries for like, even Halloween decorations, uh, there have been a lot of reports coming out, including letters from Ma and Jia, for example, about being involved in re-education through labor camps in China, using persecuted Falun Gong practitioners, people being tortured and persecuted in these horrible prisons making these things. And so companies, they know they're getting involved with that, but they do it.
>> They kind of don't want to look at it. They don't want to think about it.
>> Well, it's ironic because they feel that they have the right to preach to us about, you know, problems historically in America, but they don't have a problem getting engaged in the exact same activities. Worse, much worse, happening, you know, as we speak. It, it's a, it's a real like forked tongue type, uh, type, type approach they have to business. Uh, they, they feel the right to give, you know, this moral preaching to Americans about how bad we are, but the things they're engaged with right now is worse than any of that. And it's ridiculous when you think about it. It goes so against what we stand for as a country. And, and again, it's like, it's this cognitive dissonance where we can acknowledge something as bad, but they can also say, "Well, that's, that's the way it is if I do it right now." I, I'd actually question how many people in the past may have said the exact same thing about things that we could regard as wrong. Hey, uh, I was just doing my job. Hey, I was just following orders. That's just the way the society was. 20 years from now, is that what's going to be said? You know, if you're standing judgment in front of a court, I, I don't think it works like that.
Now, Josh, you said you saw these mechanisms playing everywhere. Was there a time that you realized that this is a mechanism? It's not just one or two places you've seen, it's everywhere.
>> You know, in New York City, uh, my, in my job as an investigative journalist began in 2008. So, I've been with Epoch Times since 2006, but, you know, I was, I was doing light, happy, fun articles, and then my whole life changed. 2008, um, I was an intern in New York City. You know, I'm from San Diego originally, but I went there for an internship, and I accidentally uncovered the United Front. Uh, and the way that happened was it was right when the Beijing Olympics were taking place. The CCP had just started China Daily. They were just starting to do their newspaper inserts in most American news outlets. They were putting paid inserts in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, I mean, all of them. What happened alongside that whole information campaign where the CCP was like, you know, threatening news. They were threatening Bloomberg, threatening most of the broadcast media about reporting on what's happening in China, especially with like protests against the CCP, like, you know, Tibetans were protesting them. They were silencing all of that. And once they brought most of the mainstream media to heel, which they did, and a lot of media even publicly declared, you know, we're not going to report on some stuff now because, you know, they wanted to keep their business in China, and that was plain on the surface back then that they, a lot of them admitted it. Uh, they also had to silence overseas criticism, and, and so what they did, what the CCP did was, it kind of, the glove came off, and you could see the hand for a little bit. And the way that looked was this, because, you know, they, they normally try to conceal it when, when the
>> It's usually hidden. You don't know this is happening.
>> They usually keep it hidden. Uh, the mask came off very briefly, and, and during that time was when I was reporting on some of the stuff. So, when the mask fell off, you know, I was there on the ground to, to, you know, expose it, basically. And as a very new journalist, it was a very, very rough time of my life, to be honest. But, um, so in New York City, the way it looked was this. There were, there were mass protests, violent protests taking place in the Chinese communities, and, and from the outside, that's how it looked like, you know, most of the media was basically writing it saying, oh, people in the Chinese community are attacking each other, there's violence, people are, you know, fighting over basically the Beijing Olympics, and that was like the, that was the most of the narrative you get in most media. What was really happening was this: you had human rights activists, pro-democracy activists, uh, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, and house Christians. And, you know, they were criticizing the Chinese Communist Party, the fact that that the Olympics were going to be held in China. They were, they were saying, "Hey, these are the bloody Olympics. Why, why are we letting the CCP, you know, why putting, why, why are you powdering the face of the CCP when it's abusing people like this?" And a lot of people were trying to expose the types of abuses taking place in China when all the cameras were on China. The CCP did not want that. And so, after silencing most of the media, they mobilized hundreds of people to go out and beat, threaten, uh, just bring to heel all the dissidents who were speaking out. And it was shocking to see. I mean, I, I, I remember I was reporting in Flushing, Queens, in New York, which is one of the bigger Chinese communities. It's kind of, it's like the new Chinatown. And you had people just, like, I'm not even exaggerating, hundreds punching people, tearing people's banners, spitting on people. Uh, they were threatening to kill people. And I mean, it was really jarring. And the police weren't doing anything about it for
>> And they were on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. They were doing that.
>> They were. And so that came out gradually. So, the way, the way myself and Epoch Times overall exposed the Chinese Communist Party was involved with it is actually some people actually called and got them to admit it. Uh, they, they actually made phone calls in Chinese to some of the, uh, the front organizations, and they admitted it during recorded phone calls. Uh, but we also got the former consulate general, Pang Kaiyu, to admit it. Uh, Pang Kaiyu actually personally met with the individuals who were attacking people on the streets. Many of whom were, many of the people they were attacking were Falun Gong practitioners, you know, which is a Chinese meditation practice based in truthfulness, compassion, tolerance. Basically trying to be good people, and the CCP is killing them for it because the CCP says that their values go against the atheistic, you know, concepts of the CCP. They say that they're a threat to the atheistic system of the Chinese Communist Party. So, how dare you try to be honest and preach kindness, right? Uh, and so, of course, they start persecuting them. And then when persecuted people start saying, "Hey, I'm being persecuted." They say, "You're being political for saying you're being persecuted."
>> Even in the US, right?
>> Even in the US. And so, and so that's what people are doing. They say, "Hey, we're being persecuted. We're giving them the Olympics. They're, they're harvesting people's organs while they're still alive. And you want to give them the Olympics?" And the CCP says, "Well, how dare you be political for talking about this?" And, and they punish them. The media is silent on it. I found out that the police advisory board was actually run by the Chinese front groups. And so the police advisory board for the, representing, you know, the Chinese community, meaning the United Front, uh, they were being run by the, by the tongs, by the
>> In that area, in that, in the, in Flushing?
>> Because it's all Chinese anyways, right? So it makes sense for the police advisory board to be all Chinese, right? It was.
>> But then they are connected to the Communist Party, is that?
>> It was, it was like the mafia running the anti-crime campaign. It's like if you have a drug problem, and the drug cartels are running the anti-drug campaign. Like that. That's what that basically was. You, you have the CCP organizing mass violence against dissidents on American soil, and then the CCP front groups are doing the front-facing operations, telling the police, "Don't worry about it. Let us handle it. This is just an issue. This is just a Chinese cultural issue, and you don't understand it." And, and so these groups, they work as like the front, you know, they're the community leaders.
>> So, they're like the organizations that represent Chinese Americans, and they're kind of controlled by the CCP.
>> A lot of them are. And, and so what, what the CCP tries, tries to do is gain control of those organizations. That's actually what, that's one of the main focuses of the United Front is to get all these front-facing Chinese organizations to serve the Chinese Communist Party. And, and they get a lot of them because it's all the Chinese business. If you, if you want to do business in China, you got to play the game. If you don't, if you don't play the game, you don't do business in China. If you don't play the game, you lose business opportunities with every other organization in the Chinese community that's tied in with it. So, if you're, and, and these are really insulated, you know, immigrant communities. They don't really, they don't really operate outside the Chinese community. So, if you want to get in the local newspapers, other than the Epoch Times, if you want to get in the local newspapers, if you want to get the advertisements, if you want to do business with this import export company, if you want to do any of that, if you're outside the system, the entire thing cannot associate with you, or they will be punished by extension. So, they don't dare do it. You're, you're basically exiled from the system. So, all these front-facing groups, they, they, they work with the CCP like almost all of them because it goes against their financial interest to not. And, and, and that's a frightening thing for the United States because when they start working with the CCP, you basically have networks of tens of thousands, some claim to have hundreds of thousands of individuals, all of whom can be activated as spies if, if they're asked to do it. And a lot of them believe they don't have a choice. Th this is the biggest threat that America faces. Th this is a bigger threat than war. This is a bigger threat than Taiwan. This is a bigger threat than Russia. This is a bigger threat than, I mean, I think anything we're dealing with because it's in our own backyards. It's already here. It's already happening. It's already infiltrating our government. It's already controlling, or at least influencing, most major American businesses and most major American media already, as we speak. It's already influencing our entertainment industry, Hollywood, major sports associations. It's already here, and we just let it happen. And the scary thing, like aside from universities and farmland and real estate and, you know, cyber theft and big tech and the energy industry and green tech, and I mean, I, I could go on and on about everything that we know the CCP is involved with. The drug trade, fentanyl, marijuana, everything the cartels, they're, we know they're involved in all of it. The scariest thing in my opinion is that they've also groomed people to apply for positions within the US government, and they've been doing it for decades now. And you, you have deep, deep roots throughout our entire system. And the intent of it is to make our system no longer serve the American people, but instead serve the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. That, that, that is, that's the big picture of what's happening right now. If you, if you take all these little points that we all know are happening and you draw the big picture, the big picture is they're trying to take over our country without invading us through military force. They're invading us through non-military means.
Before we get to the rest of this interview, let's take a look at some key headlines in our newspaper, Epoch Times, this week. Let's take a look at the California section. California won't replace the federal tax credit that was for EVs. The state was planning to do that. It's $7,500 tax credit along with being able to use HOV lanes. All of this is gone. 8 months after the biggest battery storage fire in California in Moss Landing, residents are still asking questions. They're saying the cleanup effort was not done well. The US is going to impose 100% tariff on movies made out of the country. 30,000 jobs have been created in Toronto, Canada, because of the outsourcing of the movie industry. State of California allocated $750 million of tax credits to make sure that the movie industry doesn't outsource and stays in California. Now, we'll see if these tariffs will change the situation in Hollywood. 3.2 million of inactive voters were removed ahead of the 2025 special election in California. These are usually voters that haven't voted in two elections. The most number of inactive voters are in LA County, followed by San Diego County. This is just the California section of the newspaper. We have many other sections, national, international, lifestyle, and we have unique coverage of China that nobody else has. Make sure to try the newspaper. You can get it for a dollar a week for the next four weeks with the link below. And then let us know what you think. Make sure to get it today.
So Josh, from what you're saying, is a lot of the Chinese and Chinese Americans, whether they're Chinese nationals or Chinese Americans that are in the system, they're under a lot of pressure to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party. What can they do? And how can people help them? How can you know that one of them is working for the Chinese Communist Party when they're in your company or not? Because if they are not, they're really good people and, and they're they have good morals and good work ethics.
>> So, and this, this is a challenge. I mean, look, like Epoch Times, we were started by Chinese dissidents. Like a lot of my friend group is Chinese dissidents, you know. It's the people I've been around for like, you know, almost, I've been with Epoch Times since 2006, almost 20 years. I mean, given we have, I mean, yeah, we have a lot of, we've grown quite a bit from the early years. You have everybody now. I know a lot of Chinese people who have had to sacrifice their well-being, sacrifice their safety, sacrifice their ability to ever go home and ever see their families again, unless, you know, one day hopefully the Chinese Communist Party collapses, in order to stand up for what they believe in, in order to not be evil, frankly, uh, in order to defy the Chinese Communist Party and stand up for what is right. Like the, the, the price of that is very high. And so, the, the problem a lot of businesses have when they're hiring these people is that you have to remember the way the CCP works, right? The way the Chinese society works. If you're growing up in China, you've lived under a system where you've been taught fake history. I had a Chinese friend who was telling me, she said when she was growing up, there was a story she was really inspired by where like Communist Party soldiers were like crawling through the tall grass, and the Japanese were throwing like torches and burning things, and one of them caught on fire and, you know, didn't want to expose his comrades and kept quiet and burned to death with the with the flames. You know, it was a fake story. It never happened. She, she only found out after she came to the US that the entire story was fake. It never happened. I had a, I had a friend, you know, he lives in New York now, Chinese dissident, you know, he understands the CCP now, but he went to business school in China. He said that when they were in school, there was a question on a test about the Korean War, when the United States was, of course, fighting against the North Koreans. Of course, the Chinese Communist Party was sending soldiers down. So, we were, we were also fighting the Chinese Communist Party, right? One of the questions he had on his test in school was how this outdated Chinese airplane was able to shoot down an American jet. And the correct answer was because the Chinese pilot had the spirit of the Communist Party, right? Like he, he laughs about it now because he's like, what, what is like, what kind of a question is that to ask like college kids, you know? It's, it's crazy. But, but this is how they're indoctrinated. They've been raised to believe that the Chinese Communist Party is like everything. Uh, they have to do slogan classes, like, like, you know, you have your different classes all throughout the day. You have an entire like hour-long class where for like an hour, you have to sit there and repeat Communist Party slogans, like, like you're, like you're doing your Hail Marys religiously, but you're praising the Communist Party. Wow. They make you do this.
>> California is a very open-minded state. We have a lot of immigrants here, and immigrants provide a lot of value to to this state and their country. For people that are in this situation that they might have been brainwashed by the Chinese Communist Party, which most people were that in China, how can these business leaders or politicians that have them in their office help them?
>> There are quite a few movements trying to help them. I know within the Chinese community, there's the Three Retreats movement, uh, the quit the party movement. Uh, Epoch Times, you know, we published the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, which exposes the real history of the Chinese Communist Party. That book is what helped spur on the quit the party movement because, again, the problem is, is they don't know. They don't know how they've been lied to. They don't know what the Chinese Communist Party has done to the Chinese people. I will say it, I've said it before. The greatest persecutor of the Chinese people is the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party does not represent the Chinese people. It is the wolf that ate their parents. And it, it's the wolf that ate their parents. And they, and they've grown up with it. And they think it's their parents. This is the thing that caused their suffering. This is the thing that destroyed their culture. This is the thing that devoured everything that China was, and then replaced it with something horrid. And they've been told, "Hey, no new China without the Chinese Communist Party." That's not true. China without the Chinese Communist Party, up until the reform and opening up, looked like every other third-world communist country on earth. Again, it was where the, you know, Chinese military controlled everything, the PLA controlled everything. Dirt poor communist country. The reform and opening up was just bringing in Western business, Western enterprise, and Western investment created the new China. And the whole business development was not from the CCP. That was Deng Xiaoping lightening up the CCP's restrictions. The Chinese people were the ones who did that without the Chinese Communist Party. And, and they, they're not being told this. The entire world went from being, you know, mostly agrarian societies early 1900s to being, you know, modern developed countries like we have now. Uh, South Korea went from being, you know, very, again, like agrarian society to one of the most advanced modern civilizations on earth. Same with Taiwan. They didn't need communism. Uh, look at North Korea, what communism is for them. You know, uh, China was like that before they opened up. It was only when they opened up to Western enterprise, Western technology, Western investment that things did come up. And, and I, I will note that, you know, prior to the CCP, it's not like Chinese people
We're told. China before the CCP was a very prosperous country. Uh, they were regarded. Chinese craftsmanship was so good that they didn't really want anything from the rest of the world other than gold, which is, which is what spurred the opium wars. Unfortunately, they only wanted gold 'cause they didn't like Western craftsmanship couldn't match what they had. It, it was one of the greatest countries on earth at the time. That was China before communism.
And so there are many Chinese people in the United States, in other countries, who've been living in other countries and who know the real story of the CCP. And, and it's those people, I think, who are having the greatest impact of undoing the brainwashing. This is kind of the, the silent battle that many Westerners don't see. This silent battle of Chinese dissidents against the Chinese Communist Party trying to, I, I would say save the souls of the Chinese people because they see what's been done to them. Uh, the Tweedong movement, the quit the party movement is an education program showing Chinese people, this is what the CCP did. This is how they lied to you. This is how they abused you. This is the famine. This is the murder. This is the camp. This is the torture. This is what the CCP is. And what happens is the Chinese people see it and they say, "What can I do about it?" They say, "Quit the party. Quit the CCP." And they have a whole program, the Tweedong Movement, where they can go and they can condemn the CCP. They can quit the Young Pioneers, the Youth League, and the Chinese Communist Party. And hundreds of millions have quit. Hundreds of millions.
Uh, Epoch Times. You know, a lot of what we've done has been for the Chinese community also. We, we, we, I think we're probably one of the only, only major voices. There's a handful of other ones, but only major one of the few major voices, I should say, uh, that really shows the real China, that really shows what's happening, that shows real news in China because, and we've done it at great cost to ourselves because we get advertisers and the advertisers come to us and say, "Hey, the C, the Chinese consulates threatening us, saying that if we continue to advertise with you, that we're going to lose our business in China." Like, it's, it, it's affected us. It's affected our well-being. It's led to people like me facing death threats from the CCP because I talk about it. Like, it comes at great cost to speak out and stand up, but there are a lot of us who've decided to do it.
Shenyun Performing Arts, same exact thing, right? Their slogan is "China before communism." Uh, they've been presenting what Chinese traditional culture was, what communism did to China, and how, I'd say, the underlying values of the Chinese culture were incredible, you know, beautiful, wonderful things. And they also show the abuses of the CCP, how, how the essence of what was there is still there and still salvageable, and how the CCP is, is, you know, strangling it and choking it, right? Uh, beautiful performance, extremely successful performance, and constantly facing threats, bomb threats, uh, theaters being shut down, their tires getting slashed, uh, personal threats against their dancers, like death threats, rape threats against, like students. Uh, the Taiwanese intelligence agencies actually traced some of the threats and they tra, they traced it to China coming out of a company tied to Huawei. These threats against American B. This is, this is a New York-based performing arts company facing these things and then also triggering like criminal investigations. You have guys with ties to, like, Chinese spy networks spreading rumors, triggering investigations, and they're facing like just constant pressure, constant, constant pressure.
Uh, which, by the way, is tied in with one of the other CCP's warfare operations. It's called the Three Warfares. Psychological warfare, media warfare, and legal warfare. This is, this is, it's called the Three Warfares. It's a, it's adopted into actual Communist Party military code. Like, this, this is actually one of the, this is one of the main war programs of the, of the People's Liberation Army. Three Warfares. Psychological warfare is how you interpret information. It's, it's the narrative that overlies, it's the narrative that represents the interpretation of an event. Right? Uh, so, for example, the Chinese Communist Party is invading the South China Sea and taking it over. We can all observe this. What's the narrative? Well, the real narrative is that the CCP is invading the South China Sea and taking it over. The CCP's psychological warfare narrative is, "We have historical ownership of it, and you've taken it from us, and we're just taking it back." Even though international courts have determined the CCP has no historical ownership over it. They, they even falsified maps to do it. Same thing when they target dissident groups. Uh, they'll, they'll, for example, falsify criminal complaints. They'll falsify stuff, uh, trying to misrepresent someone's intent or whatever. Whenever the CCP wants to arrest a dissident or arrest, uh, someone who's escaped China, they'll say it's an anti-corruption campaign, you know, and they, they'll cook the books on the Chinese side to, you know, misrepresent things and go after people. They do it all the time.
And unfortunately, a lot of the Western media is just, you know, >> they just cover what, what >> they're like dogs eating out of the CCP's hand. A lot of them. And I'm trying to be nice, but that's not what journalism is, where you just repeat everything that you're told. Like >> because it probably trusts a government. You know, we, we are kind of trained to trust government outlets and if there's a PIO from a government agency saying, "This is what's happening," then you just report it. So that's what if, if the Chinese Communist Party is saying that, they think that's that's accurate. Well, >> let's put it this way. They're less discerning of the CCP than they are against the American government. They have no problem questioning everything the American government does. They, but they, they take everything the CCP says wholesale. Like, what's going on with that? It doesn't make sense to me.
But, but back to the point of this, right? Back to the point of this. Psychological warfare, the narrative. Media warfare is the control of outlets of information where they try to influence media. And remember, in America, like, you know, more than 90% of our media is controlled by like five corporations, most of which have ties, business ties in China, right? So they, they can leverage that. And then, um, then legal warfare, lawfare, the use of legal attacks as a tool of war. And so they can basically create a false narrative, manipulate the media to promote the false narrative while concealing the truth, and then use that to trigger legal investigations, uh, international, like lawsuits, whatever else. And it's very easy to frame someone. If you want to frame somebody, all you need is one person to make an accusation and two people to claim that they corroborate the accusation. And if you're the Chinese Communist Party, and you have the United Front, and you have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people you can co-opt to say anything you want.
>> Can you give us some examples of this?
>> So, one example of this, right? So Shenyun Performing Arts, right now, uh, they were facing one attack that's been exposed. In fact, it ties even, even here to LA, where you had a Chinese spy arrested. Right. Uh, there was an incident where an individual was working with the Chinese Communist Party spy network, and they tried hiring an IRS agent to cancel the nonprofit status of Shen Yun. Right? Turns out the IRS agent was an undercover FBI agent. They got caught doing it. So you had a Chinese spy trying to manipulate the legal arms of the United States in order to have an impact on the organization they're trying to shut down. They were trying to manipulate the US government to do it. Uh, another example, a lot of the media attacks against Shen Yun Performing Arts have all kinds of weird ties to the CCP. You have the New York Times doing just ongoing hit pieces against Shen Yun. The, the key claims they have really come only from about seven individuals, and the New York Times is concealing the fact that many of these individuals have direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Uh, for example, being connected to state-run Chinese dance theaters, making tra, doing travel, you know, trips back to China. One of the authors, her dad has some weird ties, uh, to one of the Chinese Communist Party front groups, things like this. One of the main sources who, in his own words, claims that he connected them with these people, is even named in Chinese Communist Party leaked documents claiming they're going to use this guy to do exactly what we're talking about right now. The CCP was planning to do this, leaked documents talking about it. The guy they named, saying they were going to use to do it in these leaked documents from China, does in fact do it, by his own admission, and then triggers this whole thing using people, all of whom seem to have some weird tie to the CCP, making false claims, and then not citing the other side, and not giving the full context of anything, using what is just basically CCP narratives to target and tarnish the name of an American, American performing arts company, and then tr, and then by, by doing that, triggering lawsuits, triggering legal investigations, and so on. It's, it's exactly Three Warfares. The narrative, psychological warfare, the creation of false narratives, the manipulation of media, media warfare, and then lawfare, legal warfare, the triggering of legal investigations using these two systems. This is how Chinese warfare works under the Chinese Communist Party.
So, Josh, do you have any thoughts for Californians and state representatives and government officials in California? The problem America faces with everything we've talked about today is that we often try to compartmentalize the threat. So we look at Chinese cyber attacks and we say that's a big deal. We look at economic theft, we say that's a big deal. We look at the CCP's dominance of rare earth minerals and their, you know, monopolies on different industries. We see that's a big threat. We look, for example, the Belt and Road Initiative undermining American operations in other countries. That's a big threat. We look at their pressure of Hollywood. We look at their pressure of big tech. We look at their pressure on, you know, our financial industry. We look at them buying up farmland. We can acknowledge all of these are big threats. We can look at, for example, their involvement with the drug cartels and fentanyl, and even now doing marijuana grows in the United States. We can say that's a big threat, but we don't say all of this is tied in with some broader agenda. All of this, and we can, we can observe all of this happening. We don't put it all together, and there's nothing really analyzing what that big picture is. The infiltration of our universities, which Trump himself has acknowledged, the manipulation of professors and bribery of American professors, which Trump has acknowledged, the influence campaigns against American businesses, the pressuring against them, the use of this, you know, financial interest to censor them, to censor films in Hollywood, to censor media and force them to abide by this. So they, they get kicked out of China. The fact that we can't go to China and buy property like they buy it up here. We can observe every single individual piece and say, "That is a serious threat to our country." But nobody says, "If this is a big threat, and this is a big threat, and this is a big threat, and the entire thing is a big threat, what is the entire picture?" This is the greatest threat we face to the sovereignty of the United States. This is what is happening. We are in a war, and we're fighting it, and we don't know we're fighting it. We're in a war with the Chinese Communist Party, and if we don't take it seriously, we are going to lose our country. They're killing more Americans every single year with fentanyl and drugs than we lost in the entire Vietnam War. They're killing Americans on the scale of a full-scale war every year, and we let it happen. If we don't take this seriously, we are going to lose our country. And the prospect of what that looks like is the China model, a tyrannical, atheistic, murderous regime will control basically the entire world, including our country, if we don't do something about it, because they're already controlling many parts of our country. Everything I mentioned, these represent some form of control. We know about it. We're not doing enough about it. It's spreading, and because of financial interest, unfortunately, we, we let it happen. The scarier thing is them infiltrating government agencies, the spies who have gotten jobs within our own government. If we don't root that out, we will lose our country. This is the greatest threat the United States faces.
>> So, Josh, we're facing a lot of challenges in California that we are covering on the show, but what you're saying is really scary. Do you have any specific call to actions for our audience?
>> Well, the first step needs to be awareness. The second step needs to be action. And so, you know, the, the way a free society works, government reacts to what the citizens demand. If you want to have something done, the first step is to raise awareness. The second step is for people to become so aware that they say, "We need to do something about it." Government action will follow that. Uh, unfortunately, there, there are not enough voices exposing this right now. I think there are some, but, you know, we're among the few. Um, you know, look, I'm just saying, if you people really want to help get the word out, we need to make people aware of it. They can share this video. Tell a friend or family member about it. Like, we need the first step needs to be education. Like, you really need to get it out there. The second step, and you could do this now also, call up your local representative. Tell them you're concerned about this. Tell them that you're worried about your country. That we need to do something about the Chinese Communist Party infiltrating our system. That we know about all these forms of influence, and something needs to be done about it. Without demand for action, nothing will happen. Without an outcry saying, "We can't let this happen to our country," nothing will be done. So I hope people can share this video. I, I do think, I mean, honestly, I do think that'll help raise some awareness. I do hope people can call up their local representatives and tell them that they're worried about Chinese influence, Chinese Communist Party influence. Uh, even that you're worried about threats against members of the Chinese community coming from China, that there are, there are campaigns pressuring them, threatening them, targeting them, and that's happening on American soil. If you're in Hollywood, you know, you, you don't want to have your film censored by China. If you're in the media, you don't want to have the Chinese Communist Party threatening to kick you out of your country if you tell the truth of what's happening in China. We should not be allowing any of this to happen. So, we need to raise awareness. We, we need to raise awareness. That's the first step.
Well, hopefully, Josh, next time you come, you have better news for us so that we have made some progress on this. Joshua Phillip, investigative journalist and host of Crossroads. It was great to have you on California Insider.
>> Pleasure. Thank you.
Let us know what you think of this discussion with Josh. When we talk about the Chinese Communist Party, a lot of people mistake the Chinese Communist Party with the Chinese people. The two are completely different, and China is different from the Chinese Communist Party. The founders of our newspaper, Epoch Times, are all Chinese American, and they started the paper because of human rights issues in China. You can always email us at siamakalonstar.com or comment. We read all of your emails and comments. I'm S. Korami. This is California Insider, and we'll see you next time.
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