Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, By James Reed

An article from the American Thinker,titled "China is an existential threat to this country," discusses Senator Tom Cotton's book Seven Things You Can't Say About China.

The article, written by Andrea Widburg, begins by asserting that anyone following news about China should recognise it as a major threat to the U.S., yet many Americans fail to internalise this due to a lack of direct impact. It then highlights Cotton's book as an attempt to address this disconnect by outlining seven critical points—referred to as "seven things you can't say"—that expose the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) actions and their implications for America. Widburg notes that Cotton aims to make the threat "personal" for readers, suggesting that China's influence extends beyond abstract geopolitics into everyday American life. Her article lists the chapter titles from Cotton's book, which serve as the backbone of his argument, and briefly ties them to broader concerns about China's human rights abuses, economic aggression, and military ambitions. Here are the main points:

1."China Steals Your Data and Your Job"
Cotton contends that China engages in widespread intellectual property theft and economic espionage, undermining American industries and employment. The article implies this is part of a deliberate strategy by the CCP to weaken the U.S. economy, framing it as a direct assault on American livelihoods. This suggests China doesn't just compete economically but actively sabotages U.S. prosperity.

2."China's Concentration Camps Are Open for Business"
The book highlights China's human rights abuses, specifically the internment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, which Cotton labels as concentration camps. While the article doesn't elaborate on how this directly threatens the U.S., it positions China as a morally reprehensible regime whose actions should alarm Americans, potentially destabilising global norms and indirectly challenging U.S. values and influence.

3."China's Military Is Lying in Wait"
Cotton argues that China's military build-up—particularly its navy, which the article notes is now larger than the U.S.'s—poses a latent but growing threat. This suggests a future where China could challenge American military dominance, especially in strategic regions like the Pacific, threatening U.S. national security and global power projection.

4."China Is Literally Poisoning Our Children"
This chapter refers to China's role in the fentanyl crisis, as the article mentions Cotton's concern about drugs flooding into the U.S. from China via Mexican cartels. By framing it as "poisoning children," Cotton personalises the threat, linking China to the deaths of American youth and portraying it as an insidious attack on society's most vulnerable.

5."China Already Dropped the Bomb"
While the article doesn't clarify this metaphor, it could imply China's unleashing of economic, cyber, or biological disruptions (e.g., speculation about Covid-19 origins, though not explicitly stated). Cotton seems to argue that China has already inflicted significant harm on the U.S., perhaps through non-military means, that Americans have yet to fully recognize as an act of aggression.

6."China Bought America's Elite"
Here, Cotton accuses China of co-opting U.S. elites—politicians, academics, and business leaders—through financial influence or coercion. The article ties this to broader narratives of China's infiltration of American institutions, suggesting a threat to national sovereignty and decision-making integrity, as key figures may prioritise Chinese interests over American ones.

7."China Is Winning Because It's Allowed to Cheat"
Cotton asserts that China's success stems from exploiting a global system that the U.S. upholds but China subverts—e.g., through unfair trade practices, ignoring international law, or manipulating organisations like the WTO. This portrays China as a systemic threat that undermines the rules-based order America depends on, gaining an edge through deceit.

The American Thinker article underscores Cotton's intent to make China's threat visceral and immediate, not just a distant geopolitical concern. Widburg notes Cotton's focus on "atrocities" like genocide, organ harvesting, forced abortions, and torture, which, while not directly threatening U.S. soil, paint China as an evil worthy of opposition. The article also cites Cotton's preface, where he argues that China's actions affect Americans personally—through lost jobs, unsafe drugs, or compromised security—making it an "existential" threat to the nation's way of life. This personal angle amplifies the urgency, suggesting that ignoring China risks not just strategic decline but the erosion of American society itself.

In conclusion in Seven Things You Can't Say About China, Tom Cotton argues that China threatens the U.S. through economic sabotage, military build-up, societal harm (e.g., drugs), institutional corruption, and systemic cheating, all underpinned by a regime committing egregious human rights abuses. He frames this as an existential crisis—not just a policy challenge—by connecting China's actions to personal American losses, urging readers to see the CCP as an enemy already at war with the U.S. in all but name.

This is something that Australians need to take on board before we are completely conquered by China, as our traitorous New Class elites are encouraging.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/03/china_is_an_existential_threat_to_this_country.html

"Any person who follows news about China must believe that it is a significant threat to the future of the U.S. And yet it's possible that most people don't take that fact to heart, because we don't feel the impact of China directly in our everyday lives. However, after reading Senator Tom Cotton's latest book, Seven Things You Can't Say About China, I'm convinced that the threat is massive, dire, and personal to all of us and the future of this country. We must stop talking just about the threat, and take immediate and critical action.

Briefly, Cotton tells us that we can't say the following about China: China is an evil empire; they are preparing for war; they are waging an economic war on the U.S. and the world; they have infiltrated every segment of our society; they fill positions in our government; they are coming for our kids; and the direst prediction—they could win this global war, and we could lose. And we can't say these things because if China finds a person who has said them, they will likely retaliate.

You still might think that Senator Cotton is indulging in hyperbole. So let me give you some examples. To begin, you can be certain that calling China evil is accurate:

The Great Leap Forward resulted in the worst famine in history. Between 1959 and 1962, the famine killed up to forty-five million Chinese and drove some to cannibalism.

Xi Jinping has intensified the party's anti-Christian crusade in recent years, banning kids from attending church, eliminating Sunday schools, and requiring schoolchildren to sign pledges to remain atheist—The party is literally rewriting the Bible and hopes to publish by 2029 a new 'translation' that will replace the Word of God with the word of Mao.

China's police and security forces have rounded up hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners and leaders, throwing them in prison and forced-labor camps. In just the first decade of the party's war against Falun Gong, it killed an estimated 65,000 practitioners for their organs.

Though cloaked in Communist secrecy, life inside the concentration camps is hell on earth, according to accounts that have leaked out. Most sources estimate that the party has interned at least two million people, mostly Uyghurs, in these camps, though some believe the number is closer to three million.

Some might point out that all that horror is happening in or near China, which really doesn't have any bearing on the U.S. But, if China's leaders are prepared to decimate their own population, why would they hesitate to destroy American citizens if, or when, it comes to that?

We have evidence that China is in the process of devastating the economy of our own country. Trump's tariffs will barely impact the control they have of our companies and industries:

The Chinese Communist Party's economic strategy can be summed up in three words: 'lie, cheat, and steal.' China has stolen trillions of dollars of wealth, crippled entire industries, seized control of developing technologies, destroyed millions of American jobs, and extorted entire countries with its newfound economic power.

According to the bipartisan Intellectual Property Commission, the United States loses between $225 and $600 billion from intellectual-property theft every single year.

By 2023, Chinese producers accounted for 97 percent of domestic Chinese sales and dumped their products in foreign markets at prices 20 percent lower than those from Western competitors.

But it gets worse. American companies are complicit in helping China take over our companies and industries. American greed is high on their list of priorities:

But Silicon Valley isn't the only accomplice in China's crimes: a shocking number of American companies are complicit in the party's use of Uyghur slave labor.

These days, Chinese censors rarely need to suppress movies because American filmmakers do it themselves.

To win even more business in China, many Wall Street banks hired the friends and families of senior Communist officials. The executives answered the call: in return for promises of greater access to the Chinese market, they furiously lobbied the White House and Congress on China's behalf.

The worst part of the China "invasion," however, is that they have penetrated every aspect of our personal lives:

Chinese Communist influence has warped, censored, or defiled something important in your life— whether it's your entertainment, news sources, alma mater, employer, bank, or retirement fund.

The ideological rot that besets their [Confucius Institutes on] campuses, along with cold hard Chinese cash, has turned many in the academy into accomplices and apologists for the worst human-rights abuser in the world.

The Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated America and now has an army of puppets, allies, and useful idiots in our midst. Stay quiet about our crimes and we'll make you rich. Speak out and we'll destroy you.

You may want to believe that you are free from the China invasion, but if you look a little more deeply into your circumstances, you will likely find their presence. Have you bought a new appliance lately? Solar panels? Generators? Clothes? A computer? The list of their penetration in American markets is alarming.

And I haven't even described the expansion of their military or the infiltration of our own military.

Our own legislators are accomplices to the Chinese, too. But it's time for them to let go of their greed and fear of China's retribution against them personally, and to stop this devastating incursion into our lives.

Those efforts are way past due. Our future is at stake."