Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win

by Peter Schweizer

352 pages, hardcover $18.25, Kindle $14.95
ISBN-10: 0063061147
Harper, 2022

Peter Schweizer is an Oxford graduate, former Hoover Institution Fellow, and co-founder and president of the Government Accountability Institute of Tallahassee, Florida.  He is a widely read and interviewed investigative journalist and has authored popular and well-received books on political corruption: Clinton Cash, Extortion, Throw Them All Out, and Architects of Ruin.

The book is the usual fare from Schweizer — based on well-documented and researched financial records that support the author's assertions.  In this book, the focus is corruption in high places that results from cozy entanglements with China.  This book focuses on the Chinese communist connections for good reasons: China has set about a long-term effort to compromise the political, business, cultural, academic, and scientific elements of America as a set up for creating global Chinese hegemonic control and dominance.  The Chinese have accomplished a great deal in the decades since the ill-begotten Kissinger Nixon opening to China in 1972, followed by the Clinton-Bush acquiescence to China's admission into the World Trade Association that was finalized with favored status in 2001.

Through these decades, the wolf, bear, coyote China has gradually expanded its dominance of world trade and economics by stealing intellectual property, using bribes and influence-purchasing, and standard espionage and propaganda methods.

The point of Red-Handed is exposing the participation of persons of influence in the West who have been compromised by Chinese efforts to buy influence and power — on a scale not previously seen.

Mr. Schweizer had a big scandal to investigate but a good team of researchers to help him organize the exposé — an exposé that warns of short-term and long-term danger for the survival of Western nations and the ascendancy of a savage and murderous Chinese communist tyrannical autocracy stained by a history of ethnic, religious, and domestic pogroms, persecutions, and genocide of immense and barbaric proportions that are numerous and stunning, extending forward from the millions of deaths of Mao's Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward that resulted in the deaths of millions of Chinese from starvation and systematic political purges to modern-day activities that subjugate Tibet, Hong Kong, the domestic religious minorities while pursuing external influence and dominance.

Now under new leadership, China continues to commit atrocities domestically and expand its influence in foreign political and economic matters, which raises the question — how do the compromised oligarchs of the West who are ensnared in the Chinese web of influence sleep at night or excuse their complicity?  Is money enough to justify complicity with barbaric malevolence?  When does the complicity become the role of accessory to crimes ranging all the way to treason?

With the foregoing in mind, the best this review can do is identify and briefly describe and introduce evidence of the treasonous or traitorous American perps who have sold their positions, stature, and influence to the Chinese political peddlers.  Mr. Schweizer's systematic reviews and investigative revelations include the following (in order of the chapters) — and after every short summary comes my choice of a few words to describe the corruption and treason:

An introduction featuring the ROPE, alluding to the apocryphal commie saying that the capitalists will sell the communists the rope they can use to hang the capitalists.  This chapter is a warning and an exposition of how brutal and cruel socialist systems can infiltrate and influence — ultimately devour civil society from the inside.  How American core concepts can be compromised with cheap talk and promises — brutality can dominate civility, and culture can be eviscerated by aggressive activist advocacy of Marxist nonsense.  The key, though, is the complicity of American citizens.  (vice, infidelity, and treachery)

A chapter on the evil and corrupt Biden family and its selling out to worldwide opportunities for corruption, but particularly Chinese influence-peddling. (decadence and depravity)

A wearying and maddening description of the corruption and pandering, grifting, and shilling by the denizens of capitol hill — Feinstein and family, Swalwell, Pelosi and family,  McConnell and Chou, former congresspeople like Senators  Boehner, Lott, Breaux, Baucus, and of course a long list of congressmen, also from both sides of the aisle — all selling their souls and positions of trust.  (degradation and degeneration)

The culture of power and money lust of the American Corporate Community and its major players — BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Bridgewater, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Twitter, and Musk — and, of course, Gates — that draws them to a plutocracy that would never hesitate to betray America for financial advantage or an opportunity to be a part of a global powerhouse oligarchy complicit with and colluding with malefactor government tyrannies. (avarice, cupidity, and rapaciousness)

The special place of diplomats and the chattering class as the lubricant for the social and societal resets best exemplified by pretentious poseurs like Kissinger, with so many others that the author exposes as self-promoting narcissists who achieve a grandeur that they consider to be well deserved, a grandeur usually as part of the dominant oligarchy — the list of exposed poseurs by the author is impressive because they saturate public life. (egoist and megalomaniac)

A special chapter is set aside for the Bush and Trudeau families, who have been served by their associations with China at the expense of their home countries. (betrayers and quislings)

Academia, for various reasons, provides excellent examples of the perfidy of betrayal but, of course, academics consider themselves beyond such pedestrian concepts as loyalty, fealty, family, tradition, constitutional government since they are pursuing the greater good...and their greater good.  They also identify themselves as "experts," essential to the survival of the world and progress of mankind, although many have no marketable or real-world valuable skills. (overweening, smug, and vainglorious)

Mr. Schweizer saves the last chapter for a grand summary and proposal to reverse the corruption he's put on display that endangers the survival of America.  The key phrase he uses is "Elite Capture," and the elites are vulnerable.  He warns that republics are easy prey for autocrat countries' intel and military influence-peddling and sabotage.  

• Clean up the lobbying and influence-peddling in D.C., and enforce foreign agent registration.
• No lobbying and influence-peddling by foreign intel and military entities.
• Clean up research and academics from influence-peddling and ban joint research.
• Ban foreign military and intel company listings on the stock exchanges.
• Engagement with foreign governments is a dangerous business.  Stop the looseness.
• Transparency and all conflicts declared on all "experts" proposed by media, government, or academia.
• Most of all, a return to the constitutional concepts of limited government and strict equality under the law, equal administration of the laws, no favorites or exceptions.  

Mr. Schweizer has received deserved praise for this excellent book, which is a product of extraordinary research.  I hope my introduction results in your decision to read it.  Three hundred fifty-two pages of your time.

Image: Marc Nozell via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.