What Should Be Said About China
By Ralph l. Defalco III
Written by Ralph l. Defalco III
Senator Tom Cotton’s book is a tacit admission that more than 50 years of American policies toward China have failed
In March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA). For the first time, the ATA identified the People’s Republic of China as the most capable threat actor that now confronts the United States. The reasons for ranking China as the top threat—militarily, economically, diplomatically, and informationally—are made clear in Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, a crisply written new book by US Senator Tom Cotton.
Cotton’s slim volume is a very readable and clear-eyed look at China’s capabilities, actions, and intent to challenge the US. Intended for a general audience, the book reflects Cotton’s keen understanding of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) decades-long plan to undermine US global leadership and the insights about China’s leadership he has gained from serving as a member, and now chairman, of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
In Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, Cotton pulls no punches and calls out the media conventions, ideological leanings, commercial interests, and diplomatic niceties that preclude our leaders saying that China is an “evil empire,” waging economic war on the world, preparing for armed conflict, infiltrating US society and government, and targeting American children. He makes the case for each of these “unsaid” six things and concludes with the sobering assessment that Beijing could win the struggle for global supremacy—another unpleasant truth that goes unsaid.
Evil, Intention, and Infiltration
Much of what Cotton has written in this book could be dismissed by some readers as hyperbole. But his sharp, short arguments—written clearly and succinctly—are well-reasoned and supported by salient facts. His claim that China is an evil empire, for example, is buttressed when he describes ways the CCP built a “dystopian police state to monitor, manipulate and master its people.” He cites forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations that were used to enforce the party’s One Child Policy; the suppression of religious freedom, and Christianity and the Falun Gong movement in particular; the genocidal campaigns against the people of Tibet and Chinese Uyghurs; and a social-credit score that measures the average Chinese citizen’s political reliability and determines access to everything from education to housing.
The author also argues that China is preparing for war by funding an unprecedented military build-up. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is now the largest ground force in the world; its navy is larger than the US Navy (and augmented with the world’s largest coast guard fleet and a militarized merchant fleet); and Beijing plans to have a stockpile of 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035. “This massive investment of national resources,” writes Cotton, “speaks volumes about the party’s intentions.”
Seven Things You Can’t Say About China also details the party’s infiltration of American cultural, economic, and academic institutions and government. The author describes, for example, how JP Morgan Chase created a “Sons and Daughters Program” to hire family members of the Chinese elite, which violated American anti-corruption laws, and coughed up a $264 million fine for so doing. Cotton also recounts the now-infamous Hunter Biden dealings with Chinese companies. But he has special ire for retired politicians who have become lobbyists for Chinese enterprises with close ties to the state, including former Senators David Vitner, Barbara Boxer, and Joe Lieberman.
Influence and Obeisance
In his eye-opening chapter “China is Coming for Our Kids,” Cotton moves far beyond the story of TikTok’s hold on American children (in 2023, more than 60 percent of American teens used the app) to describe the influence the CCP is exerting on schools. On college campuses and in primary and secondary schools, Beijing is promoting Chinese language and cultural programs. Innocent on their face, Cotton argues the programs are artfully contrived. He quotes a less than circumspect Chinese official who noted the programs “are an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.” The Chinese government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on these programs, supplementing them with billions of dollars in donations (most of which are underreported) to academic institutions.
The CCP cannot win its battle for global supremacy without Taiwan in hand, and Beijing is readying to take that island by force.
That kind of spending, Cotton acknowledges, buys influence not only on college campuses, but also in K-12 classrooms. Nearly all of the estimated 120 Confucius Institutes on American campuses were closed when they were designated as foreign missions, and Congress prohibited DoD funding to any university that played host to these fronts for the CCP’s notorious United Front Work Department. Many have re-emerged as rebranded programs or have been spun off into other schools.
From 2007 to 2020, a Chinese-funded guest-teacher program placed 1,650 Chinese nationals in Confucius Classrooms. These K-12 teachers taught Chinese language and cultural studies and sanitized versions of Chinese history and the party-line versions of geography and politics in more than 500 American classrooms. The teachers, according to the Department of Education professionals Cotton cites, are “trained to steer classroom discussions away from an ever-expanding list of issues: Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, the South China Sea and more. The problem isn’t what is being said; the problem is what is not being said.” The overarching teaching objective is to “normalize” the activities of the CCP and suppress any criticism of China.
The cost of criticizing China can be painfully steep. Cotton recounts the notorious story of how the NBA was forced to kowtow to China after losing an estimated $400 million when Beijing pulled all NBA games from state-run television and suspended sales of the league’s branded merchandise. The NBA’s affront was to permit one team’s general manager to tweet his support for the democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong. The CCP, Cotton explains, has “compromised American businessmen, academics, and celebrities,” and “uses fear and greed,” to influence them. The author notes that he has been “sanctioned” by China for his views on Hong Kong and sees that condemnation as a badge of honor.
Not so the business leaders, academics, celebrities, and influencers—like Disney’s Michael Eisner—who have issued self-abasing apologies after making any one of several statements deemed offensive by China. Cotton recounts actor John Cena’s mea culpa as one case in point. Cena referred to Tibet as a “country” when promoting the film Fast & Furious 9. At risk of losing access to the Chinese market of tens of millions of movie-goers, and millions in revenue, Cena groveled his apology in tutored Mandarin: “I made a mistake, I must say right now. It’s so so so so so so important, I love and respect Chinese people. I’m very sorry for my mistakes. Sorry. Sorry. I’m really sorry. You have to understand I love and respect China and the Chinese people.”
Then Taiwan
Throughout Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, Cotton builds a solid case for his claims. A Harvard Law graduate, the author assembles point-by-point arguments and usually avoids speculation that would open his arguments to criticism and counterargument. That objective and understandable approach to a complex topic gives way to informed speculation in the chapter, “China Could Win.” Here Cotton argues the CCP cannot win its battle for global supremacy without Taiwan in hand, and Beijing is readying to take that island by force. War for Taiwan would result in “a global depression, the fraying of US military alliances, nuclear proliferation, the decline of American influence, long term economic stagnation,” and “the sun finally setting on American power.”
Cotton handily explores these shocking claims in the same succinct style that characterizes the rest of his narrative—only to hedge by writing “no one can predict with certainty how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would end up.” What is certain, however, is that Cotton has made the case here for the promulgation of an American strategy “to deter Chinese aggression in the first place.” But the author never hints at even a base outline of a deterrent strategy.
Seven Things You Can’t Say About China finishes on a weak note. The epilogue offers up seven things ordinary Americans can do to beat China, including boycotting Chinese-made products, buying American, and voting for candidates that will stand up to China. This is disappointing. Cotton could have provided a substantial call to action as he has been far more forthright with how to address the Chinese threat in other forums. For example, in his report, “Beat China: Targeted Decoupling and the Economic Long War,” Cotton called for severing most economic ties with China; reinvesting in scientific, technical and manufacturing fields where China has the lead; sanctioning China for the theft of intellectual property; and withholding visas for Chinese students. That report would have been a welcome appendix to this eye-opening book.
That’s a minor criticism of a well-crafted book that otherwise offers a savvy and startling assessment of the reasons why so many in academia, business, finance, stardom, and even government are reluctant to say what needs to be said about China. These things are left unsaid by so many lest they call forth an unwelcome reckoning and a galling confession. Seven Things You Can’t Say About China is, at bottom, a tacit admission that more than 50 years of American economic, military, diplomatic, and informational policies for China have failed.
It’s a silence now kept at our own peril.
*****
This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.
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