\n<\/p>\n
To my sheer dismay, I opened a letter the other day informing me of yet another speeding ticket. How? I saw no cops. I stay just slightly above the speed limit like every other functioning adult in this country. No flashing lights, no sirens, no officer pulling me over to exercise any semblance of human judgment.<\/span><\/p>\n No need. The District of Columbia has taken a page straight out of the Chinese Communist playbook, embedding surveillance cameras on every major road in the city, lying in wait to snare Washington, D.C. residents in a money trap. The same residents, by the way, who already pay some of the highest taxes in the nation.<\/span><\/p>\n $400<\/span><\/i>. I was as thrilled to see that bill as Pete Hegseth was <\/span>shaking<\/span><\/a> President Xi\u2019s hand this week. Granted, I was going too fast, and I\u2019ll pay it like a law-abiding citizen, but I shouldn\u2019t have to feel like I\u2019m dodging the Ministry of Public Security just to get to work.<\/span><\/p>\n Because that\u2019s exactly what this is. China operates one of the world\u2019s largest surveillance states, with an estimated 700 million CCTV cameras tracking its residents\u2019 every move. The Fox News crew <\/span>found<\/span><\/a> that out the hard way during Trump\u2019s Beijing trip, getting slapped with a $40 ticket for parking illegally for two whole minutes! It\u2019s <\/span>authoritarian<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s Orwellian. And it\u2019s a reminder: keep CCP-style surveillance and Chinese influence out of America.<\/span><\/p>\n Speed cameras are annoying and invasive, but they\u2019re the least of what\u2019s crushing the Chinese people. China is a disaster area. As President Donald Trump sits across from Xi Jinping this week, it\u2019s worth remembering exactly who the enemy is and exactly how weak they really are.<\/span><\/p>\n You wouldn\u2019t know it from their propaganda show. As Trump stepped off Air Force One in Beijing, he was greeted by perfectly choreographed children, waving flowers and American flags with rehearsed smiles, robotically jumping to the music. It looked like a <\/span>scene<\/span><\/a> out of The Interview. Abnormal. Creepy. Stop it.<\/span><\/p>\n Beneath that polished, stage-managed surface is a nation rotting from the inside.<\/span><\/p>\n China\u2019s<\/span><\/a> nominal GDP per capita is under $15,000 a year. Ours is $95,000. They\u2019re facing a huge demographic problem after their one-child policy prevented 400 million births, gutting their workforce and leaving no one to pay the bills \u2014 bills that now sit at a 336% debt-to-GDP ratio, propped up by trillions in bad loans that will never be repaid. Beijing long ago crushed free enterprise in favor of a top-down mercantilist system where the Party picks winners and losers, and the result is a country that can\u2019t innovate or build, which is why America is running away with the AI race and the global hegemonic title.<\/span><\/p>\n So instead, they steal \u2014\u00a0up to $600 billion in American IP every year \u2014\u00a0and mass-produce what they can, because they have no regard for human life or child <\/span>labor<\/span><\/a> laws. That same apathy toward their own people shows up in how they govern them: heavy taxation just to keep the nation afloat, a military that\u2019s large but technologically limited, with no real deep-water capability or meaningful power projection. Their one-party autocracy doesn\u2019t produce innovation; it produces loyalty oaths. China is not an ascending power threatening to displace us. It\u2019s a declining one, desperately trying to stop the bleeding.<\/span><\/p>\n The CCP is not just our adversary. They are our enemy. And they\u2019re losing. Some of it is self-inflicted, some of it is courtesy of our sanctions, investment restrictions, and the compounding advantage of being a free market that keeps innovating while they stagnate. But the Iran situation? That\u2019s the cherry on top.<\/span><\/p>\n Fifty-four percent of China\u2019s total oil imports come from the Middle East. Another 3\u20135% was coming from Venezuela before that dried up. They are almost entirely dependent on a region currently on fire, and they have no leverage to do anything about it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it <\/span>plainly<\/span> this week: Chinese ships are stuck in the Persian Gulf, Chinese cargo got hit over the weekend, and their export market is in limbo. An Iran war hurts China far more than it hurts us.<\/span><\/p>\n That desperation is precisely why this week\u2019s White House meeting produced real <\/span>concessions<\/span><\/a>. China agreed to greater U.S. access to Chinese markets, an end to fentanyl precursor exports, a halt to purchasing American farmland, and \u2014 most significantly \u2014 that Iran cannot ever have a nuclear weapon. The Strait of Hormuz stays open. China even wants to buy American oil, because when your energy supply chain runs through a war zone, you get pragmatic fast.<\/span><\/p>\n Our little enemy has been backed into its rightful corner. We need more of this, because China has been running a full-spectrum assault on the United States for years: espionage, economic theft on a historic scale, and subversion right here at home.<\/span><\/p>\n In California, <\/span>Arcadia<\/span><\/a> Mayor Eileen Wang just pleaded guilty to spying for the PRC. A sitting mayor. A <\/span>Bronx<\/span><\/a> man named Lu Jianwang was just convicted for operating a secret Chinese \u201cpolice station\u201d in Manhattan\u2019s Chinatown, monitoring dissidents and harassing fugitives on direct orders from Beijing. Eric Swalwell, the disgraced former congressman, got honey-potted by a Chinese spy named Fang Fang while sitting on the House Intelligence Committee \u2014 and it barely made a ripple. Chinese \u201cstudents\u201d embedded in our research universities go home upon graduation and take whatever they\u2019ve collected with them. TikTok is a CCP <\/span>propaganda<\/span><\/a> pipeline running on 170 million American phones. The <\/span>Confucius<\/span><\/a> Institutes spent years pumping Beijing-approved curriculum into U.S. campuses, scrubbing any mention of Taiwan, Tiananmen, or the Uyghurs \u2014 the same <\/span>Uyghurs<\/span><\/a> sitting in <\/span>Chinese concentration camps<\/span><\/i> right now \u2014 millions of them.<\/span><\/p>\n