Delist Alibaba — And All Other China Companies

• [I]t is time to delist Alibaba from the New York Stock Exchange and remove all other Chinese companies from U.S. stock listings. All of them are integral parts of a hostile regime assaulting America.
• The Communist Party of China runs a unitary state and demands absolute obedience from all individuals, businesses, and institutions in the country…. Washington must stop assuming that Chinese society is organized the same way as America’s.
• [T]he People’s Liberation Army has access to everything any Chinese company, state-owned or privately owned, or Chinese institution possesses.
• China’s relentless gaming of the global trading system has given the worst elements in the Chinese political system the resources to accomplish their predatory ends.
• What matters is that Alibaba is part of the Communist Party’s system.
• The Party has declared the United States to be its enemy and is now waging its brand of “people’s war,” which the Chinese military defines as “total war.” The regime, although it denies employing “Unrestricted Warfare” tactics against America, is in fact doing so every day.
• It is time to delist Alibaba and all other Chinese companies from American stock exchanges and to prohibit Americans from doing business with any of them.
• All of them are America’s enemies.

“Alibaba provides tech support for Chinese military ‘operations’ against targets in the U.S.”

That is what a White House memo charges, according to a November 14 report in the Financial Times. The White House has declined comment.

The Chinese giant reportedly provided “access to customer data that includes IP addresses, WiFi information and payment records, as well as different AI-related services.”

Whether the FT report is accurate or not—it sounds accurate—it is time to delist Alibaba from the New York Stock Exchange and remove all other Chinese companies from U.S. stock listings. All of them are integral parts of a hostile regime assaulting America.

As an initial matter, China’s embassy in Washington denied the accuracy of the White House memo and charged the U.S. with a “complete distortion of facts.” The embassy claims that China protects privacy.

Alibaba was more emphatic. “The assertions and innuendoes in the article are completely false,” the company told CNBC. “We question the motivation behind the anonymous leak, which the FT admits that they cannot verify.”

For one thing, the denials of the embassy cannot possibly be true. There are no real privacy protections in China’s total surveillance society.

The Communist Party of China runs a unitary state and demands absolute obedience from all individuals, businesses, and institutions in the country. Businesses operate as separate entities and report to separate controlling government bodies, but they are not separate. Washington must stop assuming that Chinese society is organized the same way as America’s.

All Chinese entities—businesses or institutions of any type—should, therefore, be treated as one single organization, the way the Party views them.

Xi Jinping reinforces this view with his doctrine of “military-civil fusion.” In other words, the People’s Liberation Army has access to everything any Chinese company, state-owned or privately owned, or Chinese institution possesses.

“The Chinese Communist Party has exceeded the extreme lengths taken by the Soviet Communist Party to integrate and subordinate its ‘civilian economy’ to serve the larger goals of its ‘military economy,’” Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told Gatestone this month. “All Chinese companies, factories, universities, and local governments either directly or indirectly support the military.”

The fundamental problem is that free-market societies do not understand the nature of totalitarian ones and, as a consequence, do not protect themselves as they should.

“Even Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican presidential candidate and globalist foreign policy icon, understood it was perilous to integrate market economies with state-directed ones,” Alan Tonelson, referring to the work of American economist Benn Steil, told this publication. “This integration, Willkie believed, distorts production and trade flows, finishes off enterprises in free-market economies, fuels imbalances, and ultimately breeds resentment.”

“Tragically, for America’s economy and national security, Willkie’s successors completely neglected his warning in their rush first to reestablish normal trade relations with Communist China and then admit it to the World Trade Organization,” Tonelson, who blogs on the intersection of trade and geopolitics at RealityChek, added.

Willkie was prescient. China’s predatory and criminal trade practices created imbalances that accelerated the 2008 global downturn and, more importantly, eroded support for free trade. Moreover, China’s relentless gaming of the global trading system has given the worst elements in the Chinese political system the resources to accomplish their predatory ends.

Did Alibaba in fact support the Chinese military as the White House memo charges? Only those with access to classified information know.

Yet the truth of the White House’s charge does not matter. What matters is that Alibaba is part of the Communist Party’s system.

The Party has declared the United States to be its enemy and is now waging its brand of “people’s war,” which the Chinese military defines as “total war.” The regime, although it denies employing “Unrestricted Warfare” tactics against America, is in fact doing so every day.

In these circumstances, it is strategically wrong to support any element of a system that is assaulting the free world in general and the United States in particular.

It is also morally wrong to do so.

It is time to delist Alibaba and all other Chinese companies from American stock exchanges and to prohibit Americans from doing business with any of them.

All of them are America’s enemies.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board. Follow him on X @GordonGChang.

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The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.