China Expert Gordon Chang: ChiComs Using TikTok to Promote Drugs, Violence in Attempt to Weaken US

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

Before we get to China expert Gordon Chang, a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, author of “The Great U.S. China Tech War,” and Fox News contributor’s take on TikTok, let’s first make sure everyone’s up-to-date on the wildly popular, and increasingly suspect, social media platform.

Check out these recent RedState headlines:

Louisiana Secretary of State Bans TikTok in His Department, Asks Governor to Do the Same

Senator Marco Rubio Introduces Bipartisan Legislation to Ban TikTok

FCC Commish Calls for US to Ban TikTok on National Security Grounds

We have more, but suffice it to say that lawmakers and others across America have grown increasingly concerned that Chinese Communist Party ‘mouthpiece‘ ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, poses a significant risk to the security of the United States.

In fact, TikTok’s future in the U.S. is already looking increasingly uncertain after a recent investigation found that ByteDance had been spying on several American journalists.

So, back to Gordon Chang. In a Thursday night segment with Fox News host Jason Chaffetz, Chang shared his concerns that communist China is using TikTok to promote social disruption in the U.S. in an attempt to weaken America’s system of government. Chaffetz kicked off the festivities:

All right, my next grievance is China. Why do we continue to do any business with them? They lied to us on COVID, they’re committing genocide. President Xi is practically best friends with Vladimir Putin. We learned yesterday that ByteDance, the Chinese-owned parent company of TikTok, is spying on us journalists.

And today, the CCP issued a warning to the United States about bullying them. The Chinese foreign minister reportedly telling the Secretary of State Blinken in a phone call that the United States must not continue the old routine of unilateral bullying. And we must pay attention to Chinese legitimate concerns, stop curbing and suppressing its development, and not constantly challenge China’s red line in a quote ‘salami slicing way.’

Here now is Gordon Chang, he’s a Gatestone Institute senior fellow and author of “The Great U.S. China Tech War.” Gordon, you’re so good on China. Tell me, give me your impression, your thoughts on this latest revelation in these, this rhetoric coming out of China.

No word if Blinken bowed, and nervously said: “Yes, Mr. Foreign Minister, we’ll get right on that. Is there anything else we can do for President Xi?” Xi Jinping has played the ever-loving crap out of clueless Joe Biden from the outset, but I digress.

Chang responded as he always does; incisively and to the point:

Well, first of all, China doesn’t have legitimate concerns. It’s not a legitimate state. And we should stop treating it as such, because as you say, it is committing genocide, crimes against humanity, it deliberately spread COVID-19 beyond its borders — that 6.7 million people outside of China who have died from a disease that should have never left the central part of that country.

You know, we can go on and on. But clearly China is engaging in a series of acts which are destructive not only toward the United States, but the international community as a whole.

After both guys sufficiently threw Biden under the bus for kowtowing to the ChiComs’ every desire, the conversation got around to TikTok, with Chaffetz asking Chang to share his thoughts on the controversial platform. Chang said it was past time for the U.S. to outright ban TikTok from the country:

Yes, well, President Trump banned TikTok along with WeChat. President Biden, one of the first things he did was he reversed that ban. We know that over a course of years, about three or four of them, TikTok has been making representations to the U.S. about how it doesn’t allow data to be sent to China. And it’s violated every single assurance it’s given to the U.S.

But it’s not just stealing data. It is actually more serious that it is using the TikTok algorithm to disseminate Chinese propaganda, glorifying drug use, promoting violence on American streets, and this year, disseminating Russian narratives about the Ukraine war.

So this really is an attempt to undermine and actually even overthrow the U.S. government. And why we permit it? I don’t know. India banned TikTok, we should do the same thing.

The whole TikTok mess is just one more example of Abraham Lincoln’s admonition:

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Incidentally, the above quote is the genesis of the following false quote attributed to Lincoln, which – regardless of its own unauthenticity – is also true:

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.

Either way, in the immortal words of the “real” China expert Joe Biden:

China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.

Sure they’re not, Joe, sure they’re not.