הסנטור טד קרוז: המפלגה הקומוניסטית הסינית היא מרושעת ומדכאת

With the United Kingdom, Britain, and Canada seeking closer relations with China, how should the United States be proceeding with the CCP? And the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing testimony this week on the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI with the Arctic Frost. I sat down earlier with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to discuss these developments. Senator Ted Cruz, thanks so much for joining. Steve, thanks for having me. Senator, Hong Kong media mogul and British citizen, Jimmy Lai, sentenced to 20 years in prison. This is the harshest sentence yet under Beijing's draconian new national security law. What's your reaction to this and what does it reveal about the nature of the CCP? Look, this is horrific. It is wrong. It is the Chinese Communist Party being abusive. Jimmy Lai has shown incredible courage speaking up for the people of Hong Kong, speaking up for freedom, speaking up for democracy. In 2019, I traveled to Hong Kong. I met with Jimmy Lai at the time. I met with democracy activists who were standing up and protesting the CCP. The CCP at the time was pretending that it was going to protect some human rights, some economic rights, some free speech rights in Hong Kong. We now know all of that is a lie, that it was the Chinese Communist Party's intention to come in and crush Hong Kong and make it entirely subservient to the dominance and oppression of the Chinese Communist Party. Jimmy Lai is 78 years old. To sentence him to 20 years in prison, that is a life sentence. And that tragically is exactly the Chinese Communist Party's intention. The United States has rightly called for Jimmy Lai to be released. He should be released. And I'm going to do everything I can to shine a light, and I've done so for more than a decade, to shine a light on the oppression, the murder, the torture, the human rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party. It certainly didn't take long for the CCP to show its true nature, Senator. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, under quite a bit of heat and pressure since coming back from China recently, seeking more partnership, more ties with them. This comes as his own citizen is sitting in a jail since 2020, now sentenced to 20 years. How should the United States and the West ultimately be positioning ourselves when it comes to dealing with the Chinese Communist Party? So look, when I was first elected to the Senate 14 years ago, I said at the time that China poses the greatest geopolitical threat to the United States for the next 100 years. I got to tell you, when I started saying that, that was a very lonely view in the United States Senate. All of the Democrats disagreed with me, and most of the Republicans disagreed with me. They just looked to China, and they saw nothing but dollar signs as far as the eye can see. The Chinese Communist Party is evil, and it is oppressive. They commit murder, they commit torture. They have over 1 million Uyghurs in concentration camps right now, the largest incident of human slavery on the face of the planet. They engage in espionage, they engage in propaganda. And I believe that we need a comprehensive strategy to prevail. China's objective is global domination. They're not hiding it. And we need a comprehensive strategy just like we had to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War. We need the same approach to the Chinese communists. Now, one of the interesting things, the Chinese communists are very sensitive to public pressure. They're very sensitive to being called out. And so using the bully pulpit to shine a light on their oppression is very valuable. That's something that I've done. For example, Mark Swedon. Mark Swedon is a Texan, an American, who was wrongfully imprisoned in China for more than a decade. More than a decade, he sat in a dark cell, horribly abused. And I spent years speaking out for Mark Swedon. The pressure we put on China was sufficient, but they released him. We need to do the same thing for Jimmy Lai. Shine a light and use the leverage we have to pressure China to release him.