Why California Birth Tourism Is Part of a National Security Debate | Joshua Philipp

A Chinese resident now has a hundred kids in California through surrogacy. People are starting to question what's going on with China, national security and in California. Today we sit down with Joshua Philip who's an investigative journalist who has uncovered the largest network of Chinese Americans influencing U.S. politics connected to the Chinese Communist Party, the biggest spy network. The Chinese Communist Party has very broad systems established to infiltrate what they call civil society. This is planting the seed of what could become one of the greatest national security threats we've ever faced. And remember, China is different from Chinese Communist Party and Chinese people are very different from the Chinese Communist Party. I'm Siamak, welcome to California Insider. Josh, it's great to have you back on, welcome back. Always a pleasure and it seems yet again the things we talk about are all coming to pass. Yeah, we want to talk to you about the influence of Chinese Communist Party in California and we've been talking about this, you've been investigating a lot of things. Now the most recent thing that's coming up and people are hearing more and more about it is that people from China are coming here and they're having kids and then these kids become citizens but they're not really citizens because they go back to China and they're really Chinese citizens. Well you know it's interesting because you know birthright citizenship is one of the big topics right now. Not all birthright citizens are the same and I think this is where the story kind of gets lost in the weeds for a lot of people. There's the more kind of middle of the road argument on birthright citizens which is you know what happens people come here yeah maybe they're not here legally or maybe they're here on a visa like a student visa. They fall in love, they have a kid or you know something happens, they have a kid and the kid's a citizen you know should you deny it a child citizenship when you know they're living here. But you have another whole you have an entirely other dimension of it which is organizations that facilitate this as part of like a package service. China's being accused of doing this, individuals tied with the Chinese Communist Party being accused of it. You have another element that like you know birth tourism effectively. You have another factor of it that sometimes those kids aren't even raised in the United States which you know the entire argument we have on a compassionate level for these kids is well look you know they're born here, this is their language, their culture but what if they bring them back to the country and that's the entire intent. So you actually have organizations that bring people here, have their kids and they bring them back to China and we don't know if other countries doing this but for sure China's doing it, the Chinese Communist Party's doing it and so that raises the question of well geez what are they doing it for? Is it so they can vote in our elections? Is it so that they can engage in American politics and work for the Chinese government when they get older? Like that's a real concern and then you have this other factor where you have people using surrogate mothers in the United States and a lot of times you have women who you know sometimes they think well geez I can you know make a bit of money but also you know help a family who can't have kids to have children by coming becoming a surrogate mother they think they're contributing a child to a family that can't have a kid and you know it's a nice thing to do and then you find out that a Chinese billionaire is paying for it and he has like a dozen kids or sometimes a lot more than that. There was one that had almost 100 kids right? Right where we're at actually right in Irvine as a matter of fact. So you know so this changes a bit of the narrative on the way we normally think of birthright citizenship and unless you want to get into the details of it we tend to group them all into a single category but they're not all the same. And how does this work because right now California especially Southern California is the hub of all of these like people come here from China can you tell us what what does it look like? So one of the first stories exposing this it was with birth tourism organizations in Los Angeles and this goes back this was back years even I think it might have even been before Trump some of the first cases on this. Basically there are Chinese tourism organizations that have birth tourism set up and so what they were doing is they had hotels right I believe one was right by the airport in Los Angeles right by LAX and it's essentially like a hotel service and they provide you know they bring women over from China and the package is hey you know we'll take care of you have your kid your kid's an American citizen and not only do you get to have your child under the American medical system but you get that you get to have a kid who becomes an American citizen and then you know if you want to cash in on welfare programs or whatever else you can then do that. There's also chain migration there's the ability to register your kid again on social welfare programs here cashing in on that or bring them back. You can do that as a Chinese citizen? Everybody does it I mean it's not just China it's not you know it's a very common thing where you can have a kid who's an American citizen even if you're not a citizen a lot of these are people on travel visas or anything and once the kid is an American citizen the kid is eligible for all these benefits all these benefits especially in California where they have a lot of things available you know they say regardless of citizen citizenship status which then goes to the mothers and everybody else so I mean the question is well why not and and what what's also missing from the conversation you know in terms of their thinking like why not right what's missing from the conversation sometimes though is a cultural difference on the way that you know birth works in China. In China and and I think I mean this is not a CCP thing this is a Chinese traditional culture thing which I think we could probably learn a thing or two from in this regard which is they have an entire care package a way of caring for women who give birth so it not only relates to the lead up to giving birth but even like after care a lot of women know after you give birth sometimes their hair falls out they have dental problems there's a lot of like vitamin deficiencies Chinese traditional culture has systems set up on like recommended diets foods you'll have drinks they have a lot of aftercare so in China and in Taiwan they have companies set up that basically provide provide women with all of these packages you know so you can sign up for it and they'll have like home delivery for food packages vitamin supplements everything for all the aftercare you need and on the more wealthy side of it they have like spas set up or getaways set up or you know you make kind of like cruises but not really like cruises but you know the kind of thing they had in California so if you understand there's an interest there's an industry for that in China is what I'm getting at there's an actual industry around this and what was happening was is some of those industries were saying not only will we do all these care packages for you take care of you everything else but your kid also becomes an American citizen and you know who wouldn't want that like why not get that additional benefit because that's a huge benefit to have all else aside it means your kid can go to it can go to an American university a lot more easily and for them you know there's a lot of competition getting into college having a kid who can come here and go to school easily or even go for free like that that's a huge benefit for them do you think the Chinese Communist Party is behind this or would they benefit from something like this we can say two things so first of all a lot of times with things like this they do find the closest government tie they find is the Chinese Communist Party was allowing it there are Chinese government officials involved with it you'll have people who are Chinese Communist members involved with it and here's the reality with that the Chinese Communist Party at American universities you know they tend to use it quite a bit they call Harvard the Chinese Communist Party's university for example Harvard Harvard almost every major American university has a CSSA a Chinese Student Scholar Association all of those are tied into the United Front all of those are tied in with the Chinese consulates in fact the Chinese consulate finances them and operates them you know student groups I'm kind of explaining the broader picture of the way that Chinese civil society infiltration works basically all of the elements of authority related to China in the United States are tied in with the Chinese Communist Party and if you're not part of it you're going to be threatened your family's going to be threatened you're going to have a very hard time doing business unless you cut ties with your family back in China you're going to have a lot of problems and so if you're not working with the CCP in any area of influence politics media business education you basically have no choice or you're or you are kind of on the bad list and if you're on the bad list you have to it will affect your ties to any family back in China because they'll get threatened so it's very hard to get out of it it's very hard to get out if you're if so you're saying these kids are subject to following the Communist Party because of this system they will almost have no choice unless they are willing to sacrifice quite a lot unless they're willing to subject themselves to being ostracized or cut off from family members or anything else they're going to be used for it and they're American citizens and they're American citizens because because of the birthright citizenship system that they're manipulating the other side of this though is the way Chinese you know anybody in China who's wealthy typically is going to be a Chinese Communist Party member if you're in a business that grows beyond a certain extent you have to become Chinese Communist Party members most of your employees will be forced to become Chinese Communist Party members and the way that looks is this you have to pay monthly dues and you have to join their study sessions like you have to study all the communist books Xi Jinping thought Karl Marx Mao Zedong little red book the whole nine yards and so there's an actual like requirement of communist indoctrination once you become a CCP member if you have any area of influence in China if you're a billionaire if you're a millionaire if you if you're not even kind of close to that if you're in business if you're in finance if you're in any industry that the CCP wants to have you have no choice if you're at that level to become a Chinese Communist Party member because remember for the average person in China your lifestyle doesn't look like these you know shiny buildings you see on TikTok you're talking people the majority of whom live off like a hundred dollars a month you're talking people who live like not a whole lot different than like you know 1580 peasants in Europe like the the destitute people live in in most parts of China is just not really shown to a lot of the world that's what that's what most of China looks like so the people who'd be able to afford this will almost entirely be Communist Party members or you know within their families and not only that they will have to work if the businesses in China facilitating this are going to operate they have to work through visas they have to get travel visas which means the CCP has to approve of it meaning they can't operate a business like that without the Chinese Communist Party it just it does not work the only the only exception to that because what about crime that would be the the snake heads they work for the triads that you know the Chinese mafia the Chinese mafia operates under what you call tongs all the major tongs type of the Chinese mafia are also run by the Chinese Communist Party I've investigated these in person in like New York City and San Francisco almost all of them with the exception of the Taiwanese ones some of them not even all but some of the Taiwanese ones all of them all the ones in mainland China are tied in the Chinese Communist Party so you're saying these kids when they grow up there's a high likelihood that they're going to be supporting of the Communist Party because you know their parents and family members have ties to Chinese Communist Party and even if they are not part of that system from what it seems like they're going to get registered into the Chinese Communist Party's influence system here where you go to college you go to university they're going to well here's why it matters so this is not a far-fetched idea if you understand the way that communist societies have worked in the past yeah I'll give you a kind of a zooming out picture what it in George Orwell's book Animal Farm right there's the part in the book where you know the the king pig takes the takes the puppies from the dogs right the dogs have puppies he takes the dogs and then goes and educates them and he brings them back and they're like attack dogs they become the attack dogs of the regime that was based on the kind of stuff that Stalin was doing in Russia and you know you have Communist Party leaders basically saying you know let me give me five years of your kids and they're going to support me forever the Chinese Communist Party will treat these kids as tools it doesn't mean that every single one of them is going to become you know a Chinese Communist Party agent but they're going to be very valuable for the CCP and here's why one of the biggest areas is going to be sanctions so if the United States sanctions China it's detrimental to the Chinese Communist Party it affects whatever industries they're tied in with it's a very big deal there are ways to get around sanctions which is where you have minority investments you know instead of majority investments in projects they go through shell companies and everything else like that but if for example you have a guy who went to a Chinese university speaks Chinese born and raised in China or raised in China but born in America he's an American citizen he is not held to sanctions because he's an American citizen he can register an American business that operates as a Chinese business on the books it's American in reality it's Chinese but they're manipulating his American citizenship status to get around sanctions very easy way to do it for example and that's just one of many examples they can have people who do that maybe not even dual citizens maybe maybe in I know in China actually there's there's a lot of legal gray areas they don't really recognize dual citizens so a lot I'd imagine a lot of these kids they're probably not going to get Chinese citizenship technically so what does that mean if you want to join the FBI are you aware that they they might have changed it now but for a long time they did not accept dual citizens you have to be an American citizen now that doesn't mean you could not have been raised somewhere else and they might even be interested in hiring someone raised somewhere else because you know they want someone who speaks Mandarin who maybe can get into those communities so if you have a guy or a woman raised in China born in America American citizen speaks fluent Chinese knows their culture everything like that they're raised in China they go to school maybe at Harvard they want to apply for a government job they want to run for office in America they want to go into the intelligence services they want to join the military they want to become an officer that's actually open to non-citizens too by the way it's easy for them to do it and then the question of allegiances comes into play because you know under American law you really can't discriminate we have laws preventing that it doesn't matter where you're raised as long as you're an American citizen and so it'll become very difficult legally for the United States to block that kind of influence or infiltration when you have American citizens protected by the constitution and protected by the full book of American law who just happen to have been raised in another country and there's a question over their allegiance but how do you ever prove it like this is this is planting the seed of what could become one of the greatest national security threats we've ever faced I know Peter Schweizer raised this concern because he was talking about there's organizations tied very openly to the CCP doing this kind of thing going to Saipan Saipan's an American territory off the coast it's closer to Japan actually a lot of people forget some people forget Saipan even exists right it's in one of these American territories we forget our American territories like Guam but yeah probably even less known Saipan is heavily run by the Chinese mafia casinos prostitution rings and full-scale birth tourism from China tied in with the Chinese Communist Party Peter Schweizer wrote a book on this where he exposed mass birthright citizenship operations and they're just going there having kids and bringing them back to China he raised the concern aside from infiltration of government business finance or military which I would really raise concerns over he's raising concerns that they bring them to China and they can vote in our elections that's a real concern for us and it's not it's not something we're going to see the real effects of until you know maybe 10 years 15 years down the line yeah well because because think about this how do they prove residency in America well you know they'd have to have a house here or you know whatever whatever state requirements there are to declare residency what happens if they go to a swing state if China says hey five million Chinese born in Saipan or million Chinese born in Saipan we want to register 20,000 of you in this swing state we'll provide you free housing to go to college but you have to vote for the guy we want they they could swing an American election that that's how big of a deal this is are there any regulations on this like when people are setting up these houses and they're inviting people from China to come here and have give birth and get the citizenship is there any laws around this there are some part of this ties into the broader arguments around birthright citizenship is in its entirety which is very you know it's more of a partisan issue in America I would assume eventually we're going to see some gray area laws passed where you know maybe if certain types of visas will be allowed to have birthright citizenship I don't know about illegal immigrants but maybe people just doing it as a form of fraud California actually has shut down some of these operations so there are laws on it you know some of this was done in coordination of course of the federal government as the birthright tourism organizations we talked about in Los Angeles those were shut down for example so they can get them on fraud and you know money laundering or money you know wire wire fraud and things like that you know if they commit additional crimes in addition to that they can you can even talk about it in terms of human trafficking right there's there's a lot of but a lot of this depends on them not doing things according to the books if they do have the ability you know the Chinese human smugglers or businesses doing this they do have the ability to do this completely legally if they go by the book you know the book of the law and so yeah there are some cases where they've been shut down really targeting but it's not really going after the the real issue it's going by kind of crimes tied in with it something that's very common for us here is we don't understand China very well because it seems like there is a big difference between Chinese people their ancient culture and the Chinese Communist Party and there was the recent case we discussed last time you were here about the campaign manager for a city council member here in Los Angeles that now he said that he's guilty apparently they were trying to meddle in our local city council elections this is something that the CCP is doing which is very different from their ancient Chinese culture right this is where things get a bit mixed up and where I think a lot of most people even including a lot of government officials even including I think in military I don't know about the intelligence community but a lot of Americans I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the Chinese Communist Party the Chinese people how the CCP manipulates things what's the difference between that and just your honest hard-working normal American you know American born Chinese this is the reality of the Chinese communities the Chinese Communist Party has very broad systems established to infiltrate what they call civil society that means using basically what we would call spies but I'm not talking about James Bond spies I'm talking about the you know your friendly neighborhood guy who happens to be from China who gets paid like twenty thousand a year under the table from you know some maybe some backdoor business deal he has with China something like that which one of these guys was getting paid fifty thousand a month for 25 years to just hang out okay there you go there you go you know in other words high-level spy versus low-level spy the Chinese Communist Party has a lot of low-level spies who are incentivized to work for the Chinese Communist Party competing for different benefits whether it's trade deals import export deals favorable positions you know kind of climbing the ladder of influence within their networks they provide kind of incentive packages to work as maybe official or even unofficial agents of the Chinese Communist Party this is tied in with very broad networks they've established in the United States we've talked before on your on your show about the United Fronts I won't go too into that basically the Chinese consulates like in Los Angeles for example or San Francisco they will operate these networks and they have Chinese military agents who provide an intel to them narratives objectives goals they'll then pass it through their networks to others Chinese mafias tied in with it Chinese businesses are tied in with it Chinese media organizations are tied in with it they have Chinese policing organizations tied in with it we've heard about these secret Chinese police stations those are run by the Ministry of Public Security by the way Chinese spy agencies are tied in with it Ministry of State Security propaganda departments of the Chinese military it's everything and and this is one of the problems we have with understanding it we like to we like to compartmentalize our understandings we'll look at the Chinese secret police stations we'll look at the Confucius Institutes we'll look at one of the tongues we'll look at you know this office of a local official has a has a Chinese agent working as the assistant but we don't look at how these issues interrelate so they're all working together they're all into they're all intertwined we talked about the CSSAs earlier Chinese Student Scholar Associations those are tied in with it too and so the CCP has broad networks established to control overseas communities Chinatowns or Chinese communities even outside of Chinatowns that's what this is about so they so they have people essentially working for them but they're not really working for them full-time they're doing a normal job it's a it's a mix of both it's a mix of both they have people directly working for them and then they have a lot of people who understand that if you're going to be successful doing business within the Chinese community you have to work with them and so it's a difference of working for them or working with them or you're going to be cut off and you're going to have a very hard time doing business you're kind of on your own you have to figure it out and even worse if you dare speak out if you push too hard against them if you still have family back in China if you have family who are part of that you know the business with them they're not working for them side their businesses their their jobs are going to be threatened and so you know if you understand you have you have a group of people where you know communal life is very even even before socialism you know the family structures you know because of Confucian culture the family structures are very important respect for your parents is very important filial piety you know your your role within the community and in society it's very important you can be cut off from that if you don't play ball with the CCP and the CCP knows that they've taken over that network using the united front systems which is a huge problem for the United States because what we're effectively dealing with then is a foreign government that is trying to extend its governance its form of religious persecution the whole nine yards onto American soil you have American universities where if you engage in your first amendment rights whether it's speech or whether it's religious belief like religious freedom if you're if you're a house Christian if you're a Falun Gong practitioner if you're a Uyghur if you're a Tibetan you are going to be threatened you're going to be denied your constitutional rights if you're a Chinese American or if you're a Chinese it used to be just Chinese now you even have American citizens who are not of Chinese background getting threatened with this on campuses on campuses that's how far it's actually gone now there's a case just uh past couple months actually a non-Chinese uh you know full white woman was she said she's being threatened on American college campuses for for talking about stuff the C-SPES so one of the things that we have noticed is that we sponsor Shen Yun and we uh we talk about Shen Yun the dance show about China before communism they are facing a lot of these threats is it similar is the CCP coming after them like this yeah so a few examples I mean so first off yeah I mean anybody who's watched the show has probably heard us talk about Shen Yun performing arts before and they might say well why do you keep talking about it yeah we're epitomes of sponsor of course but it's a big issue if the CCP can validate a tool of foreign influence foreign suppression threats bomb threats death threats threatening business you know punishment against against you know theaters or even politicians if they can validate that as a working model to export their policies which is they want Shen Yun cancelled they're not going to limit it to Shen Yun they're going to extend that to other areas Shen Yun is kind of the uh the spearhead in terms of an organization that's exposing the CCP you know they're just they're showing the traditional dance culture of China which happens to be the dance culture the Chinese Communist Party dedicated itself to destroying there I think they're in many ways restoring the traditional Chinese values the inner bearing that the CCP worked so hard to destroy they also talk about some of the human rights issues in China which the CCP hates and so what does the CCP doing well the Chinese Communist Party has been threatening theaters issuing bomb threats threatening to kill the dancers threatening to rape them which I mean even here on American soil I mean imagine imagine if this was any other country or any other group of people imagine if you had you know a group of like you know let's say like black students at American college you maybe American dance school and there was a totalitarian regime abroad who was threatening to rape students threatening to murder them threatening to kill their families or imprison their families issuing death threats to American government officials unless they cancel these shows like what do you think the media would say about that they'd be up in arms this would be the biggest story in the entire country imagine if it was you know Jewish students and they were getting rape threats bomb threats death threats American officials being threatened to be killed unless unless you know local officials shut down like a Jewish dance performance like how do you think people would react to that this is literally what is happening to what are American citizens to a dance company running out of New York upstate New York where it's an American dance company and these kids just happen to be you know second or third generation Chinese that somehow this is not treated as a serious issue and I think that's a fair question to say why why is it why is the media not talking about why yeah exactly why is it is it a race issue is it because is it is it because these media don't want to criticize the CCP if this was anything else it would be the biggest story in the United States and you would never hear the end of it look I mean in Canada this is happening all across the United States in Canada's in Canada they had a bomb threat come through and not only did Canada shut down like the local theater shut down the entire Shen Yun performance but it turned out the threat came from an individual who they were able to track researchers tracked and he's tied to the Chinese Communist Party some of the threats in the United States Kennedy Center out of Washington DC yeah you have I mean I remember years back even even in like Santee California you had the CCP trying to threaten local politicians and luckily the politicians here said you know take a hike you know told the CCP literally take a hike you know welcome to America we don't we don't play your games here it was Joel Anderson she's the county supervisor of San Diego now oh really there you go there were actually researchers even even Taiwanese like sir you know government services actually traced some of these attacks to a company tied to Huawei which is a Chinese telecom company tied him according to kind of different Cisco because they do similar work similar systems or similar systems but US intelligence actually say that Huawei is tied in with the Chinese military so this is a Chinese military tied organization making death threats and bomb threats on American soil why are we not taking this more seriously because because what this represents you can think about military threats you can think about political threats you know attacking politicians but when it comes to them trying to deny American citizens of their constitutional rights and succeeding in it in some cases that's a big deal this is a direct threat against the constitution of the United States a foreign government threatening theaters businesses politicians you know college students or sometimes even high school students studying at you know some of these universities threatening them in order to deny them of religious expression political speech and the you know the expression of just basic dance culture how is that allowed to take place it's it's absolutely insane and it's been able to take place going on now for a very long time do you ever fear for your life because you're covering things that are unique and and the paper has a it's independent you have the right to say the truth stories don't get killed because they they as long as they're true so do you ever feel afraid for your own safety I don't I have received death threats from Chinese agents especially most of it took place when I was researching the united front in New York especially between like 2008 and 2012 I had people directly to my face threatened to kill me on several occasions I honestly didn't take it too serious though because those Chinese agents were threatening to kill a lot of people at that time and maybe just maybe it's something with myself I just I just don't let that stuff get to me that much but I did do some soul searching at that time thinking well am I willing to die for this and I decided you know what if I don't do it who else is going to do it frankly you know I think you need to have a you need to have a dedication to the truth if you're going to do this kind of work and you need to have the understanding also that at least I have the understanding also and I believe you do too which is if you if you let them pressure you or bully you into silence you're validating those methods you're telling them okay that's a working method so I view it as a realm of responsibility to not let myself be derailed by threats I think the bigger thing that the CCP is doing though is that they're a little too smart now for like death threats unless it works against the Chinese community because they can actually act on them they actually do carry some of those threats out against guys so they go and kill people they for example Operation Fox Hunt the CCP's Ministry of State Security which is like their FBI CIA they actually have been operating on American soil and they've pressured people to commit suicide pressured people to leave China abducted people this is all publicly disclosed so people commit suicide but essentially they get pressured or or they threaten their families and make them do it that that is absolutely the case that has without a doubt publicly this isn't this even the mainstream media talked about it has happened on American soil the Chinese secret police stations do this also but a lot of that can only happen within the Chinese communities because a lot of it they have they depend on being able to threaten people's families or or use their families as points of pressure or get people who are you know cancel their visas or whatever else to bring them back to China a lot of what the CCP does though is it's reputational harm so they'll have the you know they'll pay people off in the media to do hit pieces on you they'll pay off youtubers to do propaganda pieces they've been exposed doing these types of things so they've come to the point now where they've discovered that manipulating elements of influence manipulate triggering for example legal investigations triggering you know whether it's through agents or people just making false accusations triggering different things to pressure you filing lawsuits against you you know legal warfare that is the new form of assassination it's not physical assassination it's reputational assassination and so they are doing this now is is their current model for trying to go after their enemies here when it comes to Californians and understanding Chinese and Chinese people because there's a lot of good Chinese people here then and this is a hub of innovation there's a lot of smart people coming here from China and helping building this a lot of things we have here how can people understand the difference between the Chinese people and well I mean case in point I mean epic times was started by Chinese migrants you know Chinese migrants who don't like the CCP let's be honest right and so and and the CCP doesn't like them we could say the CCP didn't like them first how about that okay so you know these are people basically who came here seeking religious freedom and people who really value what America stands for you have a lot of Chinese like this and and it is a challenge we have in the United States because I mean I've seen it personally like you know I'm obviously a been talking about the threat of the Chinese Communist Party for a very long time I talk about everything we talked about today infiltration united front war plans subversion birthright citizenship manipulation and when people learn about it you know a lot of times the knee-jerk reaction is oh man they're all problematic it can't in my personal opinion it can't be so black and white you have a lot of very good people here who do not like the CCP I mean we've talked before about the Persian community that you know the Iranian community a lot of them hate the Iranian regime a lot of them love the United States and so being able to differentiate that there's not just a hard black and white that you have a very large middle ground and a lot of that does involve very good people who are with you who support the United States support everything we stand for maybe even value the constitution more than a lot of us do these days because they have seen because they see what happens when you don't have it I mean I remember myself when I was when I started with epic times I was still a college kid you know and I remember complaining to you know a Chinese American when one of the older people at the epic times I was like I you know America we have our problems this Chinese American was like you spoiled kid you do not realize what you have in this country like you know like there are Chinese who know what we have because they know what it's like to not have it and they value this country and so it there is a difference between the CCP and the Chinese people and I think that needs to be differentiated it's the same thing we talked about Shen Yun Performing Arts Shen Yun Performing Arts very much it's an American company but run by you know Chinese Chinese people flood persecution a lot a lot of them a lot of the kids their families were tortured or even killed by the CCP in fact you're talking about people who value the United States value the American system and value the freedoms they're given who are being persecuted by the CCP even on American soil and so there needs to be a line we draw where we differentiate that from the totalitarian nature of the CCP because we have people here who very much value what we have and will defend it and you mentioned Shen Yun I think everybody should at several times it's very good and one of the things is also there might be some people that are brainwashed by the Communist Party yes that they really believe in the Chinese Communist Party but they really don't know the truth there's a lot of that there's unfortunately a lot of that and that's the other problem you do have with a lot of the Chinese kind of community you have a lot of people who grew up in China being propagandized and you know some people say well geez aren't they different no they're not in Chinese in Chinese school you have what they call slogan class where little kids in in you know modern day modern China under the Chinese Communist Party they have to go to school and for an hour a day they're reciting CCP slogans like over and over and over again like they're reciting like you know their Hail Marys or like prayers you know like like Catholic prayers but it's it's things praising the CCP and and it works like a religion Josh please come back and update us on what's happening in California with the CCP Joshua Phillip senior investigative journalist with Epoch Times it was great to have you back on California Insider yeah it's always a pleasure to see you Mac tell us what you think about the influence of China on California have you seen cases make sure to tell us in the comments or email us at siamakacaliforniasider.com we read all of your emails and comments I'm Siamak Karami this is California Insider we'll see you next time