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** Realism on China ([link removed])
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by Pete Hoekstra • February 27, 2023 at 5:00 am
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* What is clear is that, intentionally or not, China has shown America's need to get serious about the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its expansionist global aims.
* As the latest provocation by the CCP plays out, it gets more disturbing. The media, and even US President Joe Biden, describe the CCP as a "competitor" and downplay any possible conflict. When the CCP flies spy balloons across the continent, opens police stations in our cities, infiltrates our universities, poisons more than 100,000 Americans with hard drugs each year, and announces its plans to replace the United States, it is hard to argue we are in anything but a "Cold War" with the CCP.
* It is time for the U.S. government and our allies to definitively outline the clear challenge and danger the CCP poses to the West. The behavior demonstrated by the CCP spy balloon is not an aberration; it is part of a dangerous pattern. This includes the CCP's longtime intellectual property theft; breaches of cybersecurity; its increasing global military presence; expanding and modernizing its military, and its purchases of farmland near US military sites. Given that this is the reality, the Biden Administration must act more forcefully in response to the CCP's aggressive behavior or, through passivity, it will invite an even greater challenge from China.
* Given the CCP's clear efforts against America, why does there continue to be such a muted response from the Biden Administration? While they haven't explicitly said it, one reason might be climate change.
* Other reports, however, strongly contradict the Annual Threat Assessment. These assert 1) that "apocalyptic claims about climate change are wrong" and that climate change is "a fraud"; 2) that China has less than no interest in cutting emissions; 3) that green energy actually consists of a huge transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich to "destroy capitalism" and punish the West for having "pulled millions out of poverty and shaped the modern world"; 4) that cutting back on fossil fuels hurts the poor , it hits them worst ; and 5) that climate change is basically caused by sun flares and there is not a blessed thing you can do about them. Vested interests can offer grants for "scientific papers" to promote their businesses; sun-flares cannot offer grants.
* No matter where one falls on climate change, the CCP's brazen spy balloon flight has left little doubt about the threat the Chinese Communist regime poses. It is past time for all Americans to recognize and respond to this threat.

China has shown America's need to get serious about the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its expansionist global aims. Pictured: Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks to the Politburo Standing Committee at the 20th CCP Congress on October 23, 2022 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

It was impossible to miss — a giant white balloon with a massive solar array and a yet-to-be-publicly-disclosed sensor package flying over some of America's most sensitive military sites. In the time since China's spy balloon traversed Alaska, Canada and the continental United States, details surrounding the surveillance overflight are murky at best as the Biden Administration has provided confused, conflicted and muddled statements to Americans and even Congress.

What is clear is that, intentionally or not, China has shown America's need to get serious about the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its expansionist global aims.

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