UN National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien attacked China and compared President Xi Jinping with former Premier of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin, who assumed leadership following Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924.
The American lawyer who is currently serving as the 28th U.S. National Security Advisor warned that the Communist Party of China was seeking leverage over individuals in the U.S. through propaganda and collection of their "most intimate data" via well-known Chinese firms that made huge investments and had pressured Hollywood into self-censorship.
O'Brien said that China's efforts to control the mind of people beyond the Chinese borders was underway and the CCP was using trade skills to coerce compliance with its diktats.
NSA O'Brien explained that the structure of China's armed force, the People's Liberation Army, and the use of propaganda as a tool in democratic nations. He said Donald Trump administration had started taking corrective steps to curb the Chinese influence in America but it will take some time.
The Control Freak China
As per the reports, O'Brien said the CCP wants to control people's lives which means "economic control, it means political control, it means physical control, and, perhaps most importantly, it means thought control."
He referred to the analysis by an officer from Australian that in Classical Chinese statecraft there were two tools for gaining and maintaining control. It includes 'wu', weapons and violence, and 'wen', language, and culture. It is needless to say that Chinese leaders have always believed that power comes from controlling the physical battlefield and the cultural domain.
O'Brien also cited several incidents when China used trade to coerce compliance with its diktat. This includes the threat given to Australia by China to stop buying agricultural products which came after the Oceania country called for an investigation on China's handling of Coronavirus outbreak.
He claimed that as the country extended its reach to international organizations like the UN, the leaders are used to force the international bodies to parrot Beijing's talking points and to install Chinese telecommunications products in their facilities. At present, China heads four out of 15 special United Nations agencies, more than the U.S., U.K., Russia, and France, the other members of the permanent members of the UN Security Council combined, said O'Brien.
For example, when Houlin Zhao became Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union, reports claimed that he started to promote the sales of controversial Huawei, and after becoming Secretary-General of the International Civil Aviation Organization, Fang Liu blocked the participation of Taiwan in General Assembly meetings as well as covered up a Chinese hack of the organization.
As per O'Brien, Xi Jinping's government has used country's membership on the UN Human Rights Council to control the criticism of its human rights abuse in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, where over one million Uyghurs, as well as members from other Muslim minority groups, have been detained in a sprawling network of internment camps.
O'Brien claimed that China was collecting the most intimate data which include "Your words, your actions, your purchases, your whereabouts, your health records, your social media posts, your texts, and mapping your network of friends, family, and acquaintances."
In addition, he said, the CCP accomplishes this goal by subsidizing hardware, software, telecommunications, and even genetics companies. As a result, Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE undercut competitors on price and install their equipment around the globe at a loss.
"This has the side effect of putting out of business American manufacturers of telecom hardware and has made it very difficult for Nokia and Ericsson. Why do they do it? Because it is not telecom hardware or software profits the CCP is after, it is your data," said O'Brien as the companies use "backdoors" built into the products to obtain that data.
