Before reality TV really took off, American movie-goers got a glimpse of what life inside a TV program might look like. "The Truman Show," starring Jim Carrey, centered on a man living inside an artificially constructed reality. Nothing about his world was authentic: His family and friends were actors. He was essentially confined to his small "town" on a soundstage. His attempts to understand what was happening were thwarted at every turn.

This is sort of the way that Communist China is treating Americans these days. Beijing's leaders have us trapped in a false reality.

Those of us old enough to remember the Clinton Administration may recall that Americans were told that if we engaged in open trade with China, it would evolve to become more democratic. The planet's final bastion of Communism would fall, washed away by a wave of trade.  Instead, it is America's democracy and economy that is in peril. 

Millions of Americans have lost their good-paying manufacturing jobs to Chinese slave labor. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed by opioid addiction, and the deadliest opioids come from China. Per the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, "China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States." 

With China in the World Trade Organization, the U.S. market is open to Chinese products. Yet Beijing continues to protect state-owned companies and subsidize Chinese labor. That eliminates the sales of American goods in China.

Meanwhile, American companies have been forced to turn over their intellectual property in order to operate in the mainland. Once China reverse-engineers those products, it steals the patents, makes the products for less, and runs the American company out of business.

The solution is long overdue: We need to decouple our economy from China's.

China even steals American military secrets. It is building fighter jets based on American designs as well as submarines so quiet they may be able to attack American carriers. If war comes over Taiwan, China may be able to swallow that island—along with its computer chip factories—without a fight. The Chinese government also hacked the U.S. government's Office of Personnel Management, collecting information on millions of Americans. Meanwhile, Americans stumble along, like Truman Burbank in the movie that bears his name.

Americans think we are in control of events. Instead, we're making idiotic TikTok videos, embarrassing ourselves while handing China even more personal information. What we don't willingly upload, China steals.

Yet instead of fighting back, our leaders act like the directors of China's reality show. They cooperate with the Chinese, less worried about everyday people than about their own power. And they tell us things are going well. "President Biden will deliver bold action and immediate relief for American families as the country grapples with converging crises," the White House insists, "championing America's values and human rights, and equipping the American middle class to succeed in a global economy."

Oh? Ask yourself a version of Ronald Reagan's question: Are you better off than you were 25 years ago, before we opened our economy up to China?

Is Sony The Next TikTok?

By

Paul Boardman

There was a time when Sony was America’s go-to electronics company. Its stereos, TVs, car stereos, and tape decks were state of the art. Its name was emblazoned on the scoreboard at Dodger Stadium, a cathedral of America’s pastime — the story went that Sony bought the scoreboard for the Dodgers and charged them just $1 for the privilege of putting its name on the bottom.

But in recent years, seemingly lured by a Chinese market with triple the population and dramatically increased buying power, Sony has fallen in with the wrong crowd.

Today, the partner Sony seems to seek to impress most is not the Dodgers or American baseball fans but Tencent, a Chinese corporation controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

While China doesn’t own Tencent outright, it holds what are known as “golden shares” in the company, which gives it enhanced rights to dictate its management initiatives, a sine qua non of Chinese deals in recent years. So, it should come as no surprise that the CCP reportedly holds events at Tencent’s headquarters and that nearly 25% of Tencent’s employees are CCP members.

That’s why it’s so concerning that the company, which started with seed money from a known CCP-controlled entity, has partnered with Sony to invest in FromSoftware, maker of the popular video game Elden Ring, and Quantic Dream, a French software developer, among

Sony may have aligned with the Chinese for market access, but Tencent certainly isn’t hating that its new partner has access to billions of Americans’ data and is close to U.S. policymakers. A company with Sony’s reputation and long-standing relationship with Washington officials has a far easier time getting its wishes granted. Sony donated nearly $750,000 to candidates and spent more than $5.5 million on lobbying in the last two years — almost all directed to Democrats, and it has a reputation of successfully using its money to buy their support.

So, predictably, Sony now wants the Biden administration to protect the video game market that it controls with its CCP-funded partners. Seemingly to prevent greater competition from arising to Sony’s PlayStation, it wants the administration to block Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of game developer Activision, which would allow Microsoft to strengthen its marketplace position and put a damper on the anti-free market activities Sony uses to keep the gaming industry under its control.

Using the force of government to make liberal sweetheart Sony and Tencent even more powerful would come at great expense to America’s national security.

Most already know about the dangers that China’s TikTok poses to America’s national security, but Sony’s partner Tencent — which is owned by TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance — is far worse. Through its ownership stakes in companies such as WeChat, Snapchat, Spotify, and Tesla and partnerships with ones such as Sony, this firm — the 10th wealthiest one in the world , whose data collection practices have already received significant scrutiny — may be able to collect more information on the public than any other company.

As the BBC’s China media analyst, Kerry Allen, made clear , Tencent “has a business model that other Chinese companies can only envy — it can reach an audience of, basically, everyone.”

By blocking a harmless merger, the Biden administration would be using its power to effectively help block the private marketplace competition that would shrink the size of the CCP’s large gaming data net. Indeed, the Biden Federal Trade Commission voted 3-1 to advance Sony’s complaint, which is not determinative but is often influential in governmental merger decisions.

American business and government leaders, including the Biden administration, have recently turned a critical eye toward dealings with Chinese firms thanks to recent events, including the spy balloon that traversed the country. Some seek to ban TikTok, while others are demanding increased divestment from CCP interests. Yet, though the Biden White House has expressed sympathy with this movement and has, in some cases, even expressed interest in leading it, it’s now opting to help a Democratic corporate ally in a way that will only make China’s abuses worse. Why?

Time will tell whether this Biden FTC challenge is ultimately successful, but let’s hope not. China already gains enough power, data, and ground against the United States on its own accord. The last thing the U.S. needs is for its policymakers to do Xi Jinping's dirty work for him.

Paul Boardman is Chairman of Decouple China PAC 

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