Steven Mosher: ‘We Have to Understand That China Inc. Is a Criminal Enterprise’

Population Research Institute President Steven Mosher, author of Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream Is the New Threat to World Order, discussed China’s role in the opioid epidemic on Breitbart News Sunday with SiriusXM host Amanda House.

Mosher explained how China’s shipment of illegal drugs to American streets mirrors the Opium Wars of the 19th Century when British traders facilitated an opium epidemic in China.

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“200 years ago, when Western ships first arrived in China’s harbors, China said: ‘We don’t need your manufacturers. We have no interest in trading with you.’ The British found something to sell in China that no one else had found, and that was opium,” Mosher recalled.

“There was a huge market developing in China in 1810, 1820, 1830, 1840. Millions of people were addicted,” he continued. “Finally the Qing imperial court said enough was enough, and they sent a commissioner down to the southern province of Guangzhou, who burned all the opium in the warehouses of the English traders.”

“Of course, the British were upset at having their stock of things they were going to sell burned, and so they fired upon Chinese ships. The British ships were more advanced than the Chinese at that point in time, and they won the First Opium War. They were granted the island of Hong Kong as a British colony,” he said.

“At that time, the island of Hong Kong had 2,000 people and two fishing villages. Today, of course, it’s a very prosperous city with seven million people who have a First World standard of living. The British did very well in Hong Kong, and so did the Chinese who moved there,” he observed.

“Now flash forward. We’ve got China manufacturing fentanyl and shipping it directly through the U.S. Postal Service, but also indirectly through Mexico,” said Mosher. “We know how porous the border is with Mexico. We know we have a North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico so that things can come in, largely without being inspected. This stuff is pouring into our country.”

“Just as the British government knew that British traders in the British East India Company were bringing opium into China, so the Chinese government today — which is engaged in a war with the United States on many fronts — is consciously carrying out a drug war with the United States, against the U.S. and its people,” he charged.

“I say that because nothing happens in China without the overt or tacit permission of the government,” he added. “It is inconceivable that factories in China would be turning out huge amounts of fentanyl and then shipping it through the Chinese postal service to the United States without the Chinese government’s knowledge and tacit approval.”

“They approve it for two reasons, I think. One is, it’s a great moneymaker. You sell the drug in the United States, you’re increasing the trade surplus with the United States, which is another problem,” he said.

“And the second thing you do is, you weaken your principal enemy, which is the United States of America, which is the country that China dreams of succeeding as the most dominant power on the planet. It wants to eclipse us. It wants to reduce us to second-class status. I think the ongoing, what we’ll call ‘drug war’ of China against the United States plays into that purpose. That’s what I believe is happening here,” he warned.

Mosher suggested lodging formal complaints with the Chinese government as a first step to combat the crisis, but he said the supply of deadly drugs must be interdicted quickly before they can kill thousands of more Americans.

“We have to understand that China, Inc. is a criminal enterprise,” he urged. “I say that and it sounds over the top, but look: the president’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, a couple of days ago issued a report. It was entitled ‘How China’s economic aggression threatens the technologies and intellectual property of the United States and the world.’ The report is 36 pages long, but I can summarize it in two words, and the two words are: ‘China cheats.’”

“China cheats by protecting its home market from American imports with tariffs and non-tariff barriers,” he explained. “It cheats by subsidizing the exports of government-owned national champions to crush free market competition. It cheats by preying on weak countries, it locks up their natural resources with debt traps. Once it gains a stranglehold on resources like rare earths or copper or nickel, it then uses that monopoly to punish countries who would oppose its policies.”

“It cheats by subsidizing manufacturing,” he continued. “China now makes 80 percent of the computers in the world. It turns a blind eye to environment, health, and safety standards, so workers are exposed in some cases to heavy metals, they die at a young age. It doesn’t matter to the Chinese government because they’re able to produce these products cheaply by keeping the workers down.”

“And of course, we all know China cheats by stealing technologies and intellectual properties from the United States. We talk a lot about cyber-espionage and forced technology transfer. If you could imagine a way to steal intellectual property, the Chinese party-state has already been doing it for some time. And it’s not only that it’s doing it — it has an official government program, funded by the government, staffed by government employees, to do just that,” said Mosher.

“So if you can imagine a way to steal intellectual property, or get ahead of the United States, or weaken the United States in some way, the Chinese Communist Party is doing exactly that. To go back to the opioid crisis, you can’t tell me the Chinese government isn’t quietly encouraging the manufacture and export of fentanyl to the United States,” he contended.

“China wants to capture the high-tech industries of the future, of course, but in order to do that, it has to beg, borrow, or steal technology from the United States. Anything that China can do to weaken us, they will,” he cautioned.

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