The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a free trade agreement amongst 12 prospective signatory countries that promises to be high on the agenda of the new Congress.  There are many benefits auguring to the United States from this agreement, so long as the U.S. government remains vigilant in preventing predatory mercantilist trade policies by selected countries designed to undermine specific U.S. industries.  There are some, however, who advocate that China should become an eventual member of this agreement.  I disagree.

As a matter of fact, I believe that so long as China’s ruling Communist Party continues to maintain a monopoly lock-hold on political power within the country, American commercial relations with China should be limited.

China has used international trade, and especially its commercial relationships with the United States, as a vehicle to achieve a multitude of strategic purposes that are inimical to U.S. national security and international peace, particularly in the East Asia neighborhood.

China uses its commercial relations with us to sustain a massive military buildup, the details of which have consistently been underestimated by the U.S. intelligence community.  Mostly under the cover of commercial relations — but also including the visits of students and scientists — China has some 50,000 spies in the U.S.  In any recent year, they have made 5,000 visits annually to all of our most sensitive national laboratories, where a “visit” consists of a stay ranging between two weeks to two years.  Shocking amounts of our most advanced scientific and technological developments are being stolen in these various ways.

This is not even to speak of the avalanche of cyber espionage, which, in itself, constitutes the greatest theft of intellectual property in world history.  This technology has gone into the construction of new road-mobile ICBMs, new stealth aircraft, new hypersonic missiles, anti-ship missiles designed to sink American aircraft carriers, anti-satellite weapons, neutron bombs, and various laser and directed energy weapons.

For those who are unaware of Beijing’s seriousness of purpose, the Chinese Communist Party has constructed the Underground Great Wall, a network of an estimated 3,000 miles of underground tunnels, through which trucks can drag road-mobile ICBMs and which conceal China’s burgeoning nuclear arsenal.  Whereas the U.S. government believes that China has some 300 nuclear weapons, Russian intelligence believes it is more like 1,500.  Don’t believe the statistics you hear about China’s military expenditures.  All of these figures are unambiguously deceptive in the same spirit as the deceptions of the old Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, China’s commercial relations with so many American enterprises have politically neutralized large portions of America’s business elite.  The result is that it is ever harder for influential circles in our country to come to grips with China’s inimical strategic purposes and its burgeoning strategic capabilities.

It is time for members of the new Congress and those who aspire to the Presidency of our country to start telling the American people the truth about these intentions and capabilities.

Let us make no mistake about the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions: it wants to restore the ancient tributary state system and to make America one of those states paying tribute to the Communist “Middle Kingdom.”