EPISODE 168: “No Rights, No Games” with Chen Guangcheng, Reggie Littlejohn and Yaxue Cao


The 2022 winter Olympics in Beijing China opens a few weeks from now, and the International Olympic Committee’s 2015 decision to have China host the event looks ever more dubious.

Since then, it’s become obvious to most observers that China, never a champion of human rights, is growing ever more oppressive. It’s Communist Party leadership has become even more deeply committed to preserving its monopoly on power through state sponsored repression, surveillance, and indoctrination.

Witness its takeover of Hong Kong, the internment of Muslims in Xinjiang, the disappearance of tennis star Peng Shuai, its totalitarian social credit system, the Covid coverup and mounting threats to democratic Taiwan.

So why are democracies from all over the world moving ahead to send their athletes to a country so antithetical to their values?

My guests for this episode provide a first hand, clear eyed and stark assessment as to why they should not.

Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese civil rights lawyer, was imprisoned and under house arrest by the Chinese government for seven years for his human rights activism. Since escaping to America he has remained a persistent voice for freedom, human dignity, and the rule of law in his native country.

Reggie Littlejohn, who as the president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, has spent years campaigning against China’s forced abortion policies.

and

Yaxue Cao, who grew up in northern China during the Cultural Revolution, and went to college at Peking University in Beijing. She founded DC-based China Change.org to inform the world about human rights, rule of law, and civil society in China – aspects of China’s political landscape that are the most censored and least understood.

China claims that the Chinese people “experience a broad, thorough and true democracy” and the China’s National People’s Congress “guarantees that the people are masters.”

To this Guangcheng responds “the Chinese people have never had a free election, the National People’s Congress is made up entirely of the party’s handpicked officials and the subject of democracy has been banned from kindergarten to university classrooms since 2013.”

Surveillance and social control are pervasive.

Yaxue Cao explains, “If you speak any dissent on the internet, your accounts will be suspended or deleted. And not only that, policemen will quickly be able to identify who you are, and find you offline, and threaten you, sometimes take you away to the detention center.”

When the Olympic athletes go to China in a few weeks, they are entering into this surveillance culture.

“They need to understand their movements are going to be tracked, all of their social media posts,” says Reggie. “What if an athlete posts something that is very critical of the government? What’s going to happen then?”

It’s not just governments, it’s also the major multinational corporations, who are looking the other way.

“The Chinese Communist Party is very calculating and has used China’s market, the world’s second largest, as an enticement,” says Guangcheng.

With billions at stake, the multinationals do not want to risk offending the CCP.

These are but a fraction of the endless issues surrounding this Olympics.

Listen in as my guests, with first hand experience of the CCP’s iron hand, talk about what’s at stake for the cause of freedom in the world.


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EPISODE 168 TRANSCRIPT

Automated voice (00:04):

Welcome to the Bill Walton show, featuring conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, and thinkers. Fresh perspectives on money, culture, politics, and human flourishing. Interesting people, interesting things.

Bill Walton (00:24):

Welcome to the Bill Walton show. I’m Bill Walton. The 2022 winter Olympics in Beijing opens a few weeks from now in China, and the Olympic committee’s decision to have China host the event grows ever more dubious. It’s clear to most observers that China is no champion of human rights as we understand them and conceive of them in the west, and that its Communist Party has become even more deeply committed to preserving its monopoly on power through state sponsored repression, surveillance, and indoctrination. So why are democracies from all over the world moving ahead to send their athletes to a country so antithetical to their values? Is it because China has mounted a massive disinformation campaign designed to whitewash its image, or something else?

Bill Walton (01:19):

To explore these questions, Chen Guangcheng and Reggie Littlejohn, returning guests, are back to tell us what’s really happening.

Bill Walton (01:29):

Chen Guangcheng is a Chinese civil rights lawyer and activist, who’s been a persistent voice for freedom, human dignity, and the rule of law in his native country, China. Blind since childhood, his human rights activism led to his imprisonment by the Chinese government for four years. And after his release, he remained under house arrest until his escape in 2012, when he came to the United States where he is now a distinguished fellow at Catholic University’s Center for Human Rights. And he’s also the author of The Barefoot Lawyer: A Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China.

Bill Walton (02:07):

Reggie Littlejohn. My buddy, Reggie, who is the president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has spent years campaigning against China’s forced abortion policies. A graduate of Yale Law School, she’s an experienced litigation attorney, an international expert in China’s one child policy, its surveillance tactics, and its social credit system. LifeSiteNews recently named Reggie as one of their people of the year heroes of 2021, and a leader to watch in 2022.

Bill Walton (02:41):

And also joining, who I just met, is Yaxue Cao.

Yaxue Cao (02:48):

Yes. Yaxue Cao.

Bill Walton (02:48):

Yaxue Cao. I’m getting better. She was a founder and editor of chinachange.org, which is a human’s rights organization based on activities in China. Do you want to give us a quick summary of what your groups does?

Yaxue Cao (03:02):

Yeah. China Change was founded in 2013, and based in Washington DC. It’s a English language website reporting and translating about human rights rule of law, and human civil society in China.

Bill Walton (03:20):

And you’ll be serving as the translator for Guangcheng?

Yaxue Cao (03:23):

Yes.

Chen Guangcheng (03:24):

Thank you.

Yaxue Cao (03:25):

Very pleased [crosstalk 00:03:26].

Bill Walton (03:25):

Thank you.

Bill Walton (03:28):

So the Olympics in Beijing, good idea, bad idea?

Chen Guangcheng (03:34):

Of course, bad idea.

Bill Walton (03:36):

Well, we’ve got a lot of reasons for this. I think they’re seeing this as a celebration of everything they’ve achieved, and they’re going to use this as a triumph, an awful lot like the way Germany used the 1936 Olympics. And they’ve been doing an awful lot of things to make Beijing pretty. I guess they’re trying to get the pollution out of the air in Beijing, and they’ve shut down all the coal fired plants within a few hundred miles, and of course people are freezing to death, but the air will be a little cleaner. Reggie?

Reggie Littlejohn (04:12):

I am so deeply opposed to these genocide games that I, together with Frank Gaffney, founded a movement called genocidegames.org. It’s its own website. We just launched a campaign urging the US Olympics committee to urge the athletes not to attend. And I also testified before the US Congress in May.

Reggie Littlejohn (04:42):

The main thrust of that hearing was the fact that China is actively committing genocide at this very moment. And throughout the entire games, as those athletes are competing, people are being tortured, people are being raped, systematic rape, forced abortion, forced sterilization. This is all against the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. Forced labor, people in internment camps, like concentration camps, children separated from their parents and brainwashed to forget their Uighur heritage.

Reggie Littlejohn (05:25):

I think it is absolutely unconscionable that these Olympics are going forward. And I would urge everyone to go on to genocidegames.org. We have a new Align Act campaign. We’ve got about 36,000 actions. You can send emails to President Biden and all kinds of other people urging them to not send the athletes. We have this diplomatic boycott. It’s not enough.

Bill Walton (05:52):

Guangcheng, you wrote a very interesting oped in the wall street journal, December 29th, entitled No democracy Should Be Participating in the 2022 Beijing Olympics. And you’ve accused the Chinese, I think accurately, of white washing their image in preparation for the games. What are they doing to paper over the abuses that Reggie cites?

Yaxue Cao (06:22):

As a matter of fact, the Chinese Communist Party has never stopped persecuting its people, and repressing human rights. But on the surface, it claims it’s a country with a rule of law, and deceiving the world. So the persecution against the human rights defenders minorities have only increased over the recent years.

Bill Walton (06:58):

Well, Reggie cites some specifics for some groups that are being targeted, and that’s absolutely happening. It’s absolutely true. But this is a more pervasive sort of genocide, a sort of pervasive oppression. I mean, they claim their democracy. I don’t remember any elections held in China, except maybe the politburo reelecting president Xi.

Yaxue Cao (07:25):

China has not had any meaningful elections. The so-called people’s representatives are all fake. They are designated by the party. And they act like rubber stamps. If they don’t do so, they will be committing political suicide. There will be no more of representing people.

Yaxue Cao (07:51):

So average Chinese do not know who are their representatives. During the two sessions, which are held every March, Beijing was under strict limitation for movement and stuff. Dissidents and human rights defenders, anyone on their list are either forced to travel to be taken out of a Beijing, or not allowed to go into Beijing, or put under house rest, or even thrown in jail.

Yaxue Cao (08:37):

I will start with a specific example. I have a friend whose name is [inaudible 00:08:42] [Xu 00:08:42]. Starting in 2005, we have been working together, fighting for human rights, and he was sentenced to prison, and I end up escaping China. And he has served the two prison terms totalling 11 years from 2016 to now.

Yaxue Cao (09:08):

His wife, early last year, was diagnosis with a late term cancer. And [inaudible 00:09:16] Xu, my friend, went to the airport. He’s a free citizen now. He was released from prison already. He’s a free citizen. He got to the airport. He was stopped at the airport from leaving China to visit his wife. His wife just died two days ago, and China had disappeared him and is not allowing him to visit the two children to take care of the aftermath.

Yaxue Cao (09:52):

Anyway, my question is with face of such a evil regime, why is the Winter Olympics held there to begin with? And why are the democracies have fallen so much that we’re not only not boycotting it, but anticipate participating in there. And what China is perpetrating on its own people will eventually be brought to the whole world if we don’t do anything.

Yaxue Cao (10:30):

Take another example. Let’s talk about the pandemic. With such an unprecedented pandemic upon us for two years, we’re still not waking up. We have stopped working. We wear masks every day, and millions have died. And how many more people is the death from wars we fought, from Pearl Harbor attacks? And now we’re not even investigating the origin of the virus, and we’re still looking to China for market and everything else.

Bill Walton (11:08):

This is the Bill Walton show, and I’m here with Chen Guangcheng and Reggie Littlejohn, and translating is Yaxue Cao.

Yaxue Cao (11:16):

Yaxue Cao.

Bill Walton (11:16):

And just a fascinating take on human rights or lack of human rights in China, and all the various interplays here. Reggie, you look like you’re ready to weigh in here.

Reggie Littlejohn (11:31):

Well, I want to just follow up on what Guangcheng just said about the coronavirus, okay? So there have been investigations into the origin. And at first they said, “Oh, the idea that it escaped from a lab is laughable.” Now that’s the main theory, that people think that it escaped from a lab, likely. They lied about human to human transmission, the Chinese Communist Party. They stopped travel from Wuhan, internally, inside of China. They allowed travel from Wuhan internationally.

Reggie Littlejohn (12:05):

Now, it looks like they were deliberately attempting to infect the world, causing this horrific pandemic with millions of people dying. And now at this very moment, they are experiencing an outbreak, and they are clamping down. So they have about 20 million people on lockdown in China right now, including Xi’an, and including in Xinjiang, which is close to Beijing. It’s about a half hour train ride.

Reggie Littlejohn (12:38):

So my question to the US Olympic Committee is what are you going to do to keep our athletes safe from the coronavirus, number one? And number two, they’re also having an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever, which is a horrible way to die.

Reggie Littlejohn (12:55):

And what if one of the athletes decides that they’re going to say something about human rights in China? What’s the Chinese Communist Party going to do? What if they arrest one of our athletes?

Bill Walton (13:04):

Well-

Reggie Littlejohn (13:04):

What is our government going to do?

Bill Walton (13:07):

Well, there’s all sorts of interesting parts of that statement. One is that the Chinese have decided they’re going to open up their internet a little bit during the games. And they’re taking the chance that nobody inside is going to break through that and say what they really think, including the athletes. And so it’d be interesting to see if we get an athlete talk about what’s happening in Hong Kong, or Taiwan.

Bill Walton (13:31):

They’re trying to be a little open. That’s very hard for the Chinese. I’m telling you that. But yeah, the virus risk. And they’re going to have as much success locking down the virus as everybody else has, which means you can’t confine people to their houses and expect it to stop. Guangcheng, go ahead,

Yaxue Cao (13:50):

Bill, when China says they’re going to open up the internet little bit, they don’t me open up to all Chinese people.

Bill Walton (13:58):

That’s [crosstalk 00:13:58].

Yaxue Cao (13:58):

It’s the village where the athletes are staying.

Bill Walton (14:02):

Exactly.

Yaxue Cao (14:03):

And the media centers. So it’s a charade.

Bill Walton (14:08):

It’s a [crosstalk 00:14:09] village.

Yaxue Cao (14:10):

Yeah. It’s not for Chinese people.

Bill Walton (14:14):

I want to cover all these things, but the thing that’s interesting we talk about, to me anyway, is how pervasive is this oppression. I think about maybe different categories. People locked up and disappeared, people under detention, people under surveillance, and people who are chilled from activities simply because they might be surveilled or punished by the Chinese Communist Party. And then layering above that is the social credit system. So everybody’s getting marked good or bad, according to whether you’ve done what the Chinese Communist Party wants you to do. Could you talk about how that layers? How many people are there like you who’ve been actually directly imprisoned, or murdered, or disappeared, versus the more pervasive problem that we have with the Chinese Communist Party?

Yaxue Cao (15:08):

The surveillance and the social control are, yes, pervasive everywhere. On internet, if you speak any descent, your accounts will be suspended or deleted. And not only that, policemen will be able to… The New York Times has an article on this. The police will quickly be able to identify who you are, and find you offline, and threaten you, sometimes take you away to the detention center.

Yaxue Cao (15:46):

The coronavirus has given the Communist Party a… It’s a gift. It’s a huge opportunity now that China uses what they call a health pass. Before the virus, the pandemic, they have to send people to either threaten you, beat you up, put you under house arrest, or arrest you. Now when human rights defenders, activists, or average people who are expressing the slightest dissent on government policies, when you are traveling, they know exactly where you are any time, any moment, and they can turn your health pass, even though your perfectly fine, from green into yellow or red. And then you are stuck. You can go anywhere.

Bill Walton (16:39):

This sounds an awful lot like our vaccine passports that people are pushing here in the United States.

Reggie Littlejohn (16:45):

That’s why I opposed it.

Bill Walton (16:46):

Reggie’s been very vocal about that.

Reggie Littlejohn (16:49):

Right. I’m actually going to be speaking at the march on January 23rd, march on Washington, to stop the mandates. But yeah, this vaccine passport coming to the United States, it could be used as a tool of mass surveillance and social control. And in China, if you get your passport into the yellow or the red, it’s connected to your bank account and to your credit cards. They can turn off your ability to have money.

Bill Walton (17:23):

What sort of things lead to a yellow or red mark?

Reggie Littlejohn (17:25):

Just like she said, just dissenting the littlest bit.

Bill Walton (17:29):

Just more detail.

Yaxue Cao (17:31):

Red means you’re infected. I think yellow… Green means you are healthy, you’re tested, you’re fine. Yellow, I think means you’re asymptomatic, but positive. Red means you’re infected. Something like that.

Reggie Littlejohn (17:55):

But what he’s asking is what would cause you to go from green, to yellow, to red that’s not related, actually, to health?

Yaxue Cao (18:04):

I see.

Bill Walton (18:04):

Yeah, that’s the big question.

Yaxue Cao (18:06):

Yeah, I have a-

Bill Walton (18:08):

That’s where we think this is going here.

Reggie Littlejohn (18:08):

Exactly.

Yaxue Cao (18:08):

Right. I give you a recent example. A human rights lawyer who is going to do a case in the city in China, and the Chinese police wants to stop him from going, so turned his health pass into yellow. At the airport, he can’t go.

Yaxue Cao (18:35):

And also, recently the state department awarded a woman courage award to another human rights lawyer, a woman, whose name is [inaudible 00:18:51]. And to stop her from receiving the award in our embassy, they turned her health code into yellow while she was in another city, so she can’t be there.

Yaxue Cao (19:07):

And things like that, these are just the daily example. Of course, what we know is only the-

Reggie Littlejohn (19:13):

Tip of the iceberg.

Yaxue Cao (19:13):

Not even the tip. The tip of the tip.

Bill Walton (19:13):

The tip of the tip.

Chen Guangcheng (19:15):

Yeah. I want to talk more.

Yaxue Cao (19:23):

So you were speaking of how many Chinese are exactly under this kind of surveillance and social control? Well, there is not a number. But we can ask the question, how many are not being controlled? For example-

Bill Walton (19:43):

That’s great.

Yaxue Cao (19:43):

When they… That’s a great question.

Bill Walton (19:44):

Yeah. that’s great.

Yaxue Cao (19:45):

For example, when the Chinese mouth piece media outlets have their report on their governance, or the coronavirus, whatever, and their policies, they would close their comment section. If they don’t, sometimes they accidentally leave it open, or maybe just didn’t think about it, 90% of the [inaudible 00:20:16], the Chinese, will oppose it, will criticize it. For example, the lockdown in Xi’an, the lockdown two years ago in Wuhan, or the reports by [inaudible 00:20:32] news and their CCTV. So it will be flooded by negative or critical comments, and they will end up closing it down again.

Yaxue Cao (20:42):

So from this angle, looking at this angle, just how many are not controlled? You can see that just about everyone, every outlet where you can speak are controlled.

Yaxue Cao (20:58):

For another example, there is a citizen journalist, a former lawyer. Her name is [inaudible 00:21:04], a woman, almost the six feet tall. She went to Wuhan in early 2020, and she reported what’s on the ground, daily life there, nothing really that striking. But they detained her, and sentenced her to four years in prison. Now she has been on semi hunger strike for over a year, and is dying in prison. And China still wouldn’t give her bail so she can get treatment.

Bill Walton (21:43):

I want to put this in context, because I think we’re making the point. Surveillance, and oppression, and indoctrination is widespread, pervasive. And we’ve got 1.4 billion people in China. There are what? 80 million members of the Chinese Communist Party. Does it matter whether you’re a member of the party? Does that give you any special protections?

Bill Walton (22:04):

But I’ve also understood that the only thing that matters is maybe seven or eight or nine people in the top, in the politburo that are close to Xi. Who actually is running this, and who’s free from surveillance? I think I know the answer, but-

Reggie Littlejohn (22:21):

I don’t think anybody’s free from surveillance.

Bill Walton (22:22):

Nobody’s free from it.

Reggie Littlejohn (22:24):

Before we ask that, there’s one little point that I want to make, which is that when the Olympic athletes go over to China, they are entering into this surveillance culture. And they need to understand their movements are going to be tracked, all of their social media posts. It’s interesting that opening up the internet for the athletes, right? They will for sure be tracking what those athletes are posting. What are they going to do with it? What if an athlete posts something that is very critical of the government? What’s going to happen?

Reggie Littlejohn (22:56):

So I would not be surprised if they have some kind of surveillance in their bedrooms. Would you be surprised by that?

Bill Walton (23:03):

[inaudible 00:23:03].

Reggie Littlejohn (23:03):

No. [crosstalk 00:23:03].

Bill Walton (23:03):

Well, the Olympic village is supposed to be a pretty wild place during the Olympics, so what they’re tracking will be pretty interesting.

Reggie Littlejohn (23:10):

Well, that’s right. So they’re going to be tracking all of that. They’re going to be tracking all of that, and they can use it to blackmail people. What if the… I’m not going to get into stories like that. But I’m just saying that this is something that the US Olympic Committee, the International Olympic Committee has not addressed. They have not said, “We are going to stand by our athletes if they criticize China on Chinese soil.” This is a danger for the athletes.

Bill Walton (23:38):

I think I’ve said in the tease for the show some place, that if these Olympics were held in any other country with the same list of human rights violations, there’d be an international human cry to move it flat out. But it’s China. And China has hundreds of multinationals that are vying to do more and more business in China, all the sports companies, Nike, the NBA. The WNBA actually showed some courage on this.

Reggie Littlejohn (24:12):

The WTA, Women’s Tennis Association.

Bill Walton (24:14):

The WTA. But it just seems like we’re talking about politics. We’ve also got to talk about the international business community and how complicit they are in what’s happening here.

Reggie Littlejohn (24:27):

Right. The international business community, as you said, they’re deeply in bed with China. And not only that, but China has something called the belt and road initiative-

Bill Walton (24:36):

Yeah, sure.

Reggie Littlejohn (24:36):

Where they’re basically buying off countries. So what they will do is they will lend money to a country that they think probably will not be able to pay it off. That’s the point. To build some kind of critical infrastructure. And then when the country can’t pay it off, China will own the infrastructure. I was recently reading that Uganda lost its airport to China. So China now has an airport in Uganda. But this is what happens.

Bill Walton (25:05):

Well, there’s a term from my world in finance, it’s called loan-to-own.

Reggie Littlejohn (25:08):

Loan-to-own.

Bill Walton (25:09):

When you loan people money that you know they can’t repay. And when they can’t repay, you take the collateral. And that’s what they’re doing with these airports, that’s we’re doing with ports. They’re doing this with all sorts of infrastructure facilities all over the world.

Reggie Littlejohn (25:21):

All over the world. So owning critical infrastructure all over the world.

Bill Walton (25:24):

So the reason you’re getting crickets when it comes to criticism of the Chinese is they’ve got their fingers in almost everybody’s pocket.

Yaxue Cao (25:36):

The Chinese Communist Party is very calculating, has been. It uses the market as an enticement. So the international corporations, Wall Street, they hand in hand with the work with the Chinese Communist Party, and they’re making money in China off the Chinese people. So the Communist Party gets double sided benefits. It makes money, and also get technology from international corporations that help the Communist Party to maintain its regime. It’s a rule of China.

Yaxue Cao (26:32):

So in short terms, the international corporations seem to be making money, but in the long run, you know what? The Chinese Communist Party is to force them to cough it out down the road. Take the virus, for example. In such a short period of time, how many businesses have been stopped? How many transactions have been stop up in the track?

Yaxue Cao (27:04):

So these international corporations, they help the Chinese Communist Party with the advanced technologies, like a facial recognitions surveillance system, and computer monitoring system. And they are accomplices in this. And the mainstream media have reported very little of it. Otherwise they are deemed politically incorrect.

Yaxue Cao (27:41):

The Chinese Communist Party are very good at corrupting people and infiltrating organizations and people. In Washington DC alone, they spend, annually, $200 millions on various purpose. Our politicians have been corrupted. For example, during the presidential campaign, or I think after the election, a Chinese think tank personality named [inaudible 00:28:22], he said on video that, “Who gave Hunter Biden the $1.3 billion for his fund? We helped.”

Yaxue Cao (28:39):

So human rights activists, dissidents, and the defenders here, we speak out a lot. But we seldom see our politicians do anything, because in my opinion, they are being affected under some kind of control.

Reggie Littlejohn (28:58):

I agree with everything that Guangcheng said.

Chen Guangcheng (29:00):

Thank you.

Reggie Littlejohn (29:05):

Not that it matters, but I would just say that the United States and 151 other countries are signatories to the genocide convention. And under that convention, we have agreed… The contracting parties confirmed that genocide with a committed and time of peace or war is a crime under international law, which they will undertake to prevent and punish. We are required by international treaty to prevent and punish genocide.

Reggie Littlejohn (29:32):

Now, having a diplomatic boycott is really just a slap on the wrist. We should be having a full boycott, but at least we’re doing a diplomatic boycott. Most countries are not even doing that. So what is the message that it’s saying to Beijing? What it’s saying to Beijing is, “You can do whatever you want. You can rape, you can torture, you can murder. We’re not even going to do a diplomatic boycott, and we’re going to allow you to have the biggest propaganda coup that you can have internationally, and stand up there for two or three weeks during the Olympic games and the Paralympic games talking just without any kind of control about how great China is and how China’s the greatest country in the world.” And this is egregious.

Yaxue Cao (30:16):

I want to bring in Hong Kong a little bit. Hong Kong for years, decades, as I grew up in China, everybody of my age or younger… Hong Kong is this star. And Hong Kong is not just considered, it was a free world. And in the west, the democracies have treated Hong Kong as a part of the free world, right?

Yaxue Cao (30:47):

So Hong Kong, the fact… What I want to say is that the speed with which Hong Kong has fallen should scare everyone. And yet we watch, and we seem to have been paralyzed, not being able to do anything. Oh my God, Hong Kong. We’re only talking about two years. Two years. A city like Hong Kong, over a hundred years of a rule of law under the British turned into another Chinese city in two years. I don’t know why people are not as shocked as I am. With that speed, how soon the Communist Party will turn the world.

Reggie Littlejohn (31:39):

That’s right.

Yaxue Cao (31:40):

Upside down.

Bill Walton (31:41):

Well, the Chinese Communist Party, as you point out, has been just assiduously co-opting people, not just here in the United States, but throughout the world. You mentioned Uganda. They’ve got Sri Lanka. They own something like $3 billion to the Chinese, and that’s going to the next domino. But we’ve got the multinationals all tied into this. And it’s not just us. I mean, Germany, I think we talked about before we went on the air, they have a new prime minister, chancellor, whichever term, is replacing Angela Merkel. And Germany’s part of this European wide agreement about genocide, that they’re not going to do business this with countries that engage in it. And in the first conference call between the prime minister of Germany and Xi, human rights were mentioned how many times? Zero. And China’s Germany’s largest trading partner. And Volkswagen has half its sales, as somebody told me, in Germany. That may be apocryphal, but I think it’s pretty close to the right number.

Bill Walton (32:51):

So for us to be successful in the work we’re thinking about here, I think we’re going to have to start calling out some of these companies and some of these politicians who are complicit with the Chinese Communist Party. Are you all doing anything along that? Can we do the Saul? You guys are familiar with Saul Alinsky?

Reggie Littlejohn (33:11):

I am, yeah.

Bill Walton (33:12):

Tell us about Saul Alinsky. He was-

Reggie Littlejohn (33:13):

Oh.

Bill Walton (33:13):

A political activist who-

Reggie Littlejohn (33:16):

Well, he was on the left, and did tremendous amount of political activism on the left. I don’t know what else… he wrote a book called-

Bill Walton (33:25):

He had his strategies. And one of the strategies-

Reggie Littlejohn (33:28):

Rules for Radicals.

Bill Walton (33:28):

Was you have to take an issue, and you have to personalize it. You have to make it about a person, and not just some abstract thing. In your work in human rights in China, is there incidences where companies are doing things that you could call out as part of this effort?

Yaxue Cao (33:52):

In our work, we didn’t have bandwidth to wade into that part of the business, putting pressure on businesses. But there’s a Uighur organization that has been pushing for companies not making product in Hong Kong.

Bill Walton (34:14):

[inaudible 00:34:14]?

Yaxue Cao (34:14):

No, [inaudible 00:34:15].

Bill Walton (34:15):

Yes, [inaudible 00:34:16].

Yaxue Cao (34:15):

Yeah. The latest bill that passed the Congress and signed into law. So, that sort of thing.

Yaxue Cao (34:24):

The thing is the reason we’re on this kind of show, we have this show, and thank you, Bill, is that we need more people to know about it.

Bill Walton (34:41):

I so agree.

Yaxue Cao (34:44):

The awareness. We have to raise awareness, raise the sense of urgency so that the people say, “Oh, this is not something far away for me, having nothing to do with my life.” Yes, it’s at the doorstep of your life.

Bill Walton (35:00):

Well, the other thing is that… I didn’t have time to read the full article, but I think the post recently published, post of all periodicals posted a really in depth analysis that China’s been going out with requests for proposals for all sorts of technology companies here in the United States. And a part of every single proposal to build surveillance systems into what Americans are doing. And so the same social credit, or oversight, or monitoring of behavior, they’re seeking to push that out into the rest of the world. And I think they already have.

Yaxue Cao (35:36):

They already have.

Bill Walton (35:39):

And we fully expect they’re going to be monitoring this show. So if you got anything you want to say to the sensors, personally, this is your opportunity.

Reggie Littlejohn (35:47):

Well, I’ll say something. I’ll say something-

Bill Walton (35:49):

Say something.

Reggie Littlejohn (35:49):

To the Chinese Communist Party, which is that I believe that not only should we have a boycott of the games for the reason that we’ve been discussing, but that China should be banned from the games. China should be banned from the games. This is the same as… No, excuse me. Scrap that. South Africa was banned from the games from 1964 to 1988 because of apartheid. So there’s a precedent for this. I believe that not only should China not be able to host the games. If the summer games were delayed a year because of the coronavirus, I don’t see why they can’t be delayed a year because of genocide and be held in a country that is not committing genocide, and that China should be banned from those games, and should be banned from every Olympic games until they stop committing genocide, and force organ harvesting, and the rest of it.

Bill Walton (36:46):

We talked about, coming on the show, that we need to grab people’s attention. I think you just did.

Reggie Littlejohn (36:54):

And then the other thing is that China should be honored by hosting the Olympic games, but should be declared to be a transnational criminal organization.

Bill Walton (37:03):

Well, I think we’re succeeding in getting that message out. Remember, we talked about this before, China, the liberal world order, we invited them in, we made them part of the World Trade Organization. They’re going to get rich. They’re going to become democratic. And they’ll be just like us.

Bill Walton (37:19):

Now, I want to make a distinction here, because you’re Chinese. I think we’re not talking about the Chinese people. I think we’re talking about the Chinese Communist Party. I think we need to make that distinction. This is not a cultural or racial issue. It’s a-

Reggie Littlejohn (37:36):

Chinese people are the first victims of the Chinese Communist Party.

Bill Walton (37:37):

That’s right. They’re the first victims.

Yaxue Cao (37:39):

Right. I want to make two points to our audience, is that first of all, I hope you don’t watch the Olympic, especially the opening. Do not watch. It is a propaganda. If you do watch, and please do not gush about it. “Oh, China did such a great job. Oh, that’s gorgeous. The firework, the show, the dance, the music, and blah, blah.” And when you see that, do remember people are tortured, people are disappeared, people are blocked from speaking, people are losing their homes, people’s land are taken away, and all sorts, and millions Uighurs are in concentration camp for years on end. So do remember this, and what you’re seeing is not the real China. That’s one point I want to make.

Yaxue Cao (38:52):

The other is that if you watch your favorite athletes or the winter sports, write down the sponsors and try to boycott their products.

Bill Walton (39:06):

Great idea. Guangcheng?

Yaxue Cao (39:15):

I believe that the international community should start stopping the Communist Party from participating in these international events. The democracies have a lot of a good cards to play. On the other hand, China cannot lose us. They are more rely on us than we are rely on them. For the democracies, China is just a market and money. But if we isolate China, they lose us. They lose their bloodline.

Bill Walton (40:02):

What we talked about earlier, the tip of the tip of the iceberg, I think we’ve covered the tip of the tip of the tip. There’s so many other things we need to be talking about, but we’re out of time. And so I want to thank you all for joining. We’ll reconvene before the Olympics. It’ll be interesting to see how it actually plays out. Could be a catastrophe, but we don’t know. I think they will try to stage manage it so it doesn’t look like it, even if it is under the surface.

Bill Walton (40:32):

This is the Bill Walton show here with Chen Guangcheng, Reggie Littlejohn, Yaxue Cao.

Bill Walton (40:38):

Reggie, how do we reach you?

Reggie Littlejohn (40:40):

Well, okay. There’s the genocidegames.org where people can take action on this issue. And then there’s womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org, which is my main website.

Bill Walton (40:50):

Great. And then Yaxue Cao, you’re reached at chinachange.org?

Yaxue Cao (40:56):

Yes. Our organization’s website is chinachange.org. Very easy to remember.

Bill Walton (41:04):

Okay. Great. And then Guangcheng, we can find you at Catholic University and every place else. And we should all get people to read your book, The Barefoot Lawyer.

Chen Guangcheng (41:13):

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I hope we’ll see… Since my story, I think you will know how to [inaudible 00:41:21] party. You will understand why we need joint hand to stand up to against the Communist Party.

Bill Walton (41:33):

That’s a wrap anyway. Anyway, thanks everybody. And thanks for joining Bill Walton show, and we’ll see you again next time. We’ll be following up more with this show and related topics on China and the international community. And you can find us on all the major podcast platforms, YouTube, Rumble, and so forth. And thanks for joining, and we’ll talk next time.

Bill Walton (41:55):

I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Want more? Click the Subscribe button, or head over to thebillwaltonshow.com to choose from over a hundred episodes. You can also learn more about our guest on our Interesting People page. And send us your comments. We read every one, and your thoughts help us guide the show. If it’s easier for you to listen, check out our podcast page and subscribe there. In return, we’ll keep you informed about what’s true, what’s right, and what’s next. Thanks for joining.

 

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