Remarks by Matthew Pottinger at Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum in London

Matt Pottinger: 

It’s an honor to be invited to speak to you today. The Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum has played a pivotal role bringing together parliamentarians and other officials from nearly 100 countries to discuss matters of security and technology that affect us all. I’d like to extend my deepest thanks to my friend, Congressman Rob Pittenger, for your leadership of this forum. 

The nature of global threats today requires robust cooperation among the countries gathered for this forum. Clear analysis, frank discussion, and forthright collaboration are a prerequisite for successfully confronting global threats. Yet there is one government in particular that, far from helping to solve challenges, is a net contributor to the biggest problems we face. 

The Chinese Communist Party, which currently rules China, is engaged in activities that endanger our health, prosperity, security and liberty. Beijing undermined our health with its reckless coverup of the COVID outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, seeding a global pandemic that has killed millions, and it threatens even worse to come through its biological warfare programs, which violate its treaty commitments to all nations. 

Beijing further undermines our health as the single greatest source of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and of pollution in our oceans. Beijing weakened our prosperity through its state-sponsored theft of intellectual property, and its official subsidies, protectionism, and dumping practices, which punish innovation and competition by law-abiding nations and entrepreneurs. 

Beijing stripped away our security by backing rogue dictators in Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea. Xi Jinping signed a “no-limits” pact with Vladimir Putin on the eve of Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine in 2022, helping cause the largest war in Europe since World War II. Even now, Beijing spends more money on pro-Russian propaganda worldwide than even Russia itself spends, and Beijing is threatening to wage a war over Taiwan that would devastate the global economy and trigger a possible Third World War. 

Beijing threatens our liberty through its coercive, corrupt and covert lending activities in the Global South, and through its multi-billion dollar propaganda and influence activities. Through its debt-diplomacy and loan-sharking, Beijing seeks to co-opt our elites. Through its control and manipulation of social-media platforms, such as TikTok and WeChat, Beijing influences ordinary people by the hundreds of millions. 

For too long, too many of us around the world have indulged the wishful view that if we opened our markets to China, transferred more of our technology, invested greater sums of money, and trained more Chinese technocrats, government officials, scientists, and military officers, we might finally persuade China’s leaders to see the world how we do. We told ourselves that a policy of engagement at any cost would result sooner or later in the liberalization of China’s economy, society, and perhaps even its politics. 

These assumptions were reasonable to make a quarter-century ago, when the Soviet Union had recently collapsed and democracy was spreading around the globe. But Chinese leaders, we now know, have shown tremendous determination to avoid the fate of the Soviet Union, less by emulating democracies than by exploiting, outmaneuvering, and undermining them. Beijing has been waging a silent cold war against democracies when we thought such thinking had ended at the close of the 20^th Century. 

For some people, it’s hard even now to let go of the myths that we’ve held about China’s rulers and their intentions. Sometimes it helps to listen to China’s leaders in their own words.

Myth number one is that, “The Chinese Communist Party is Communist in name only.” 

Xi Jinping: 

[It is my will to join the Communist Party of China,…] 

Audience: 

[It is my will to join the Communist Party of China,…] 

Xi Jinping: 

[…guard Party secrets,…] 

Audience: 

[…guard Party secrets,…] 

Xi Jinping: 

[…fight for communism throughout my life…] 

Audience: 

[…fight for communism throughout my life…] 

Matt Pottinger: 

In a once-secret speech to the Party’s central committee, Xi Jinping said, “Facts have repeatedly told us that Marx and Engel’s analysis of the basic contradiction of capitalist society is not outdated. Nor is the historical materialist view that, ‘… capitalism will inevitably perish and socialism will inevitably triumph.’” 

Myth number two is that, “Beijing isn’t seeking to spread its own autocratic model or upend the liberal international order.” 

Xi Jinping: 

[Comrades, today we commemorate Marx to pay tribute to the greatest thinker in human history. Marxism is not to be kept hidden in books. It was created in order to change the destiny of human history. To adhere to the ideals and beliefs of communists just like Marx we must struggle for communism our entire lives.]  

Matt Pottinger: 

China’s new official ideology, called Xi Jinping Thought, advances the notion of Chinese political and cultural supremacy. It even attacks the centuries-old concept of a world composed of sovereign nation states. Xi Jinping Thought states that, “All mankind needs a new order that surpasses and supplants the balance of power…. A new world order is under construction now that will surpass and supplant the Westphalian system.” Toward this end, Beijing is promoting the idea that single-party autocracy is superior to democracy, not just in China, but around the world. 

As Dutch and American news reporters recently discovered, the Chinese Communist Party has set up a leadership school in Tanzania to indoctrinate African officials in the idea that the ruling party should sit above the government and the courts, and that fierce discipline within the party can ensure adherence to party ideology. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party is exporting its autocratic model even as that model is showing serious signs of failure inside China itself. 

Myth number three is that, “Beijing isn’t pursuing a zero-sum competition with democracies or a new Cold War.”

According to an official textbook on Xi Jinping Thought, “Xi Jinping has emphasized that our state’s ideology and social system are fundamentally incompatible with the West.” Xi has said, “This determines that our struggle and contest with Western countries is irreconcilable, so it will inevitably be long, complicated, and sometimes even very sharp.” 

By “very sharp,” Xi appears to be referring to war. He has delivered several speeches in 2023 on the need to prepare for war. The official textbook on Xi Jinping Thought defines the waging of war as perfectly compatible with China’s policy of allegedly peaceful development. “To use war as a means to protect our core national interests is not in contradiction with the path of peaceful development; Moreover, it is a manifestation of the Marxist view of warfare.” 

Xi Jinping: 

[The Chinese people will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who attempts to do so will bash their heads bloody on a great wall of steel forged with the flesh and blood of over 1.4 billion Chinese people.]  

Matt Pottinger: 

So those are examples of the Chinese Communist Party’s real intentions in its own words. For years, Chinese leaders have hidden their true intentions behind the facade of a country eager to join the international system and willing to abide by its norms. Dual messaging that is deceptive external propaganda for foreign ears, twinned with authoritative internal guidance for party members, comes naturally to the party. 

Hence, we have Chinese leaders outwardly urging, “peace talks” to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, while those same leaders secretly connive internally to provide Moscow with lethal arms to lengthen the war. Publicly, Beijing feigns neutrality with calls for respecting the sovereignty of all countries. Behind closed doors, it has described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as, “a counterattack” and, “the only action that could be taken.”

Beijing’s doublethink is ubiquitous once you learn how to spot it. Concentration camps holding more than a million ethnic Uyghurs and other minorities inside China are called, “vocational training schools.” Beijing’s dismantling of the rule of law in Hong Kong and the jailing of local journalists and lawmakers is passed off as “one country, two systems.” 

The use of covert operations to interfere in the elections of Canada and other democracies is disguised as civic engagement and couched in gauzy slogans advocating, “a community of common destiny for mankind.” Special units of China’s premier spy agency which infiltrate and influence our universities and policymaking circles are disguised as “think tanks” and “civil-society organizations.” 

In short, China’s leaders most revealing statements are not the ones they make at Davos or at the United Nations. They’re the statements they make to their fellow Chinese Communist Party leaders. 

Here are a few principles I believe are worth bearing in mind throughout this forum and after its conclusion as your governments go about their essential work of safeguarding your sovereignty and the rights of your people. 

First, speak candidly, publicly, and at the highest possible level to Beijing about its actions that undermine your sovereignty or the sovereignty of other nations. It’s important to speak openly and loudly if we are to prevent Xi Jinping from making grave miscalculations. Miscalculations and missteps are common for long-serving dictators, as Vladimir Putin reminds us. 

Second, impose steep costs on Beijing’s actions that harm our countries and our friends. Imposing costs isn’t provocative; it is stabilizing. One of the paradoxes of Marxist-Leninist dictatorships is that the more comfortable and more self-confident they are, the more aggressive they become. Gratuitous efforts to flatter and reassure Beijing are likely to be taken as signs of weakness. 

Third, it would be better to constrain and temper Xi Jinping’s ambitions now through robust coordinated military deterrence and through strict limits on China’s access to technology, capital, and data controlled by our countries. That is better than waiting until Xi Jinping has taken fateful and irrevocable steps, such as attacking Taiwan, that would lead to a war between superpowers. Such a war would have severe effects on the security and prosperity of all nations. Putin’s war in Ukraine offers constant reminders that deterrence is far preferable to rollback. 

Fourth, the “main battleground,” to borrow Xi Jinping’s term, is the internet. Beijing employs many varieties of information warfare, from united-front activities to cognitive warfare to deepfakes. Beijing has invested billions of dollars into these techniques to enhance what Xi Jinping calls discourse power, the power to shape perceptions and narratives worldwide to whitewash China’s record and to disintegrate free people’s faith in their fellow citizens and in democracy itself. 

We must go on the offense and the defense simultaneously. Right now, we are doing neither. Free societies should never traffic in disinformation the way Beijing does. All we need to do is prevent Beijing’s platforms from manipulating our discourse at home, while making it easier for Chinese citizens to communicate safely with one another and with the outside world. Banning TikTok and WeChat, as India’s government has done, was a prudent step that other governments should consider. 

Finally, protect the rights of Chinese people living, studying, and working in your countries so they can enjoy the freedoms that so starkly distinguish free nations from the increasingly oppressive atmosphere inside China today. This means standing up against discrimination at home. It also means taking proactive steps inside your borders to expose and counter the Chinese Communist Party’s activities to censor, intimidate and coerce your citizens and especially people of Chinese descent. We should always distinguish between the Chinese Communist Party on the one hand, and China and the Chinese people on the other. 

I commend all of you who have come to this forum with the mission of understanding global threats and finding solutions to them. I’m hopeful that with more initiatives like the Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum, we can foster and strengthen our own united front, one of independent and sovereign nations working together to protect our health, our prosperity, our security, and our liberty. Thank you for the honor of speaking with you today.