This May Be The Real Reason Why China Is Flying Spy Balloon Over US: Gordon Chang | Forbes Exclusive

Hi, everyone. I'm Diane Brady. I'm here with Gordon Chang, who is, of course, a noted author, China expert, senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute. I follow you on Twitter, Gordon G. Chang. I'm just going to say that to our viewers. And welcome, Gordon. Nice to see you.

Well, thank you so much, Diane. Thank you.

So we're talking about this Chinese spy balloon over Montana. It just, to me, sounds like a ridiculous 1940s movie. What do you make of this?

This is not a weather balloon that was blown off course, as Beijing says. This was a surveillance balloon, and it is maneuverable. It spent a fair amount of time over Maelstrom Air Force Base in Montana, where we have intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is now heading east across the United States. And as the Air Force says, they're watching it. But clearly what Beijing is doing is it's saying to the world that the United States can't control its own airspace and making us look incapable.

I guess what my first question when I heard about this is, what can a weather balloon glean that a satellite cannot in this day and age? Or a balloon. Forgive me, I don't want to buy into the mythology around this.

Yeah, it could very well be looking at our reactions. You know, of course, satellites can surveil the United States, but they can't see how we would react to an incursion. And that's exactly what Beijing is learning. They're learning a lot about this, and they're learning about how we deal with, for instance, our planes that are trailing this and the other we. Other means that we are using to surveil this surveillance balloon.

Why not just ground it? I mean, since it is in US Airspace, is there anything that would be keeping us from just simply observing it?

The. The Pentagon says that to bring it down could cause damage on the ground. But we got to remember that this balloon entered the US not from international water, but across Canadian airspace, and it traversed areas which are uninhabited. So we could have brought this down over Canada long, long time ago, and then we wouldn't have had all of this. But, you know, right now, the Air Force does not want to shoot it down.

It's interesting. It gives a whole new meaning to the term trial balloon. Gordon, I'm sitting here thinking, what does this say about the mindset of. Of Xi Jinping and just the administration in general about U.S. relations and its relationship with the world?

Yeah, that's a great question, because I think it shows the mentality of the Chinese. They're really arrogant. They think they can get away with this. This is not the first incident with a Chinese surveillance balloon that we have learned. They've disclosed that there were several of these over the last couple years, which means that in a similar situation, the United States decided not to take measures because otherwise we would have heard about it. So I guess the Chinese felt that, you know, they could violate our sovereignty, they can commit an act of war, and we won't do anything. And that really makes Chinese mentality really dangerous right now. You know, I'm not saying that Beijing is correct in its assessment of our lack of political will, but the point is, it doesn't matter what's correct or not. What matters is what the Chinese think. And right now, they have the mentality of a regime that's going to go to war.

So you see this in some ways, if we were to see it as a test of sorts, is it a test as a precursor to how we would react, you know, with the Taiwan Straits? I mean, because it. One reason we're not taking action is the consequences of this balloon don't seem terribly serious in terms of the actual data that's being collected.

Yeah, but it's never been about the data in my mind. It's been about the way this appears to the world, because Beijing is undoubtedly going to say to other countries, either openly or in private, that the US Is just not capable. That's been what China's been saying, actually, for the last couple of years in its propaganda and has been very open about it, especially after the fall of Afghanistan. So we've got to be concerned that countries are not going to work with us because they feel that we cannot accomplish our aims. And this has really been one of the most important narratives that Beijing has been maintaining through both central government and Communist Party media outlets.

Is there any reason for the why now? Component of this balloon coming from Canada, for example? I'm sure that's a whole other question. But this has been ongoing, these disputes, these tensions. Why would this be a time that they would launch this test?

Well, many observers have thought that China is on a very short timeline in terms of invading Taiwan. So, for instance, there was that leaked memo of General Mike Minihan, who is the chief of the Air Force's Air Mobility Command, which said that his gut, as he put it, tells him that we're going to be fighting with China in 2025. You know, we have heard from Admiral Mike Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations, last October, saying we could be in a war with China at any moment. So these are shortened time frames, and I think that China, you know, to the extent that they can gather information that's not available through satellite means, you know, they just want to know more about this in testing our reactions. So this, this is another sign, not that we needed any more of them, but this is another sign that China is actually preparing for battle.

And comes in a year, of course, when the US Is hosting APEC and lots of conversations around power dynamics in the Asia Pacific region.

It's very hard for us to judge Chinese intentions, but we can see what they're doing. They are preparing for war. They're involved in the fastest military buildup since the Second World War. They're trying to sanctions proof their regime, and most ominously, they're preparing China's civilians for battle. You put that all together and we have to be very concerned. You've got to remember that Xi Jinping right now is facing so many domestic problems at home with, for instance, the protest, collapsing property prices, stagnating economy, worsening food shortages, deteriorating environment. COVID 19 he really could use a distraction right now. And that's why we got to be concerned that a lot of the friction that we're seeing is being driven by domestic problems.

Let me pause on one point you made. You said they're preparing the citizens for war. In what respect?

Amendments to China's National Defense Law, which went into effect in the beginning of 2021, take power away from the civilian State council and give it to the Communist Party's central military commission. And these are powers about mobilization for war. But that's not just the only thing we are seeing. For instance, the Communist Party cadres are going to factory owners and telling them to switch their production from consumer items to. To items for the Chinese military. And matter of fact, there have been so many of these orders to domestic manufacturers that the Communist Party is actually running factories once owned by private entrepreneurs because the private entrepreneurs don't want to stick around for Xi Jinping's war, as they put it. So we can see that this is starting to be a total society effort and we're just not paying attention. That's one of the real risks, and that is that China is preparing to go to war and we're being oblivious.

One of the reasons that maybe this assumption we've had for the better part of certainly a generation, that economic prosperity is so central to the power dynamic in China and that economic prosperity is very tied to US Trade, supply chains, relationships. Has that changed as well?

It changed. Supply chains obviously had to react to the COVID 19 disease control measures in China, zero Covid, as it was called, which was in effect until December 7th of last year. And these were among the strictest measures anywhere in the world. And, of course, they clobbered supply chains. They they prevented workers from going to factories. Factories couldn't get materials. And, of course, logistics were affected. So, yeah, companies started to see, well, they needed to have alternate sources of supply. That's China plus one, as it's called. And indeed, a lot of logistics guys are not talking about China anymore. They they talk about not supply chains, but they talk about supply webs, which are essentially multiple suppliers. And so companies now are less efficient because they got multiple suppliers, but they are more resilient. And that means that China is losing out to some extent. Great.

Thanks very much for joining us, Gordon.

Thank you, Diane.