A Critique of the Absurd Claims in the Hudson Institute Report

I briefly read the report published by the Hudson Institute, with a foreword by Miles Yu.

In short, the nine articles in this report, written by both anonymous and named authors, reflect their understanding of China’s current situation and propose various plans for comprehensively controlling Chinese society in the event of China’s collapse. These include suggestions such as seizing China’s overseas assets and dismantling its self-defense capabilities. It’s like a group of ideologically outdated yet belligerent literati, obsessed with theorizing on paper, turning geopolitical discussions into something as fantastical and unbelievable as science fiction.

Among them, Gordon Chang is hardly worth serious comment. His book The Coming Collapse of China has long been a laughingstock in today’s commentary circles. Inviting him to contribute to this report is truly a self-inflicted blow to its credibility.

Below, I excerpt two passages from his views:

Asset Freezing — Within the first 48 hours of the CCP’s collapse, the U.S. Treasury Department should issue an executive order to freeze all assets of Chinese state-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds in the United States, including bank accounts, real estate, investment portfolios, and equity. The estimated value of these assets is approximately $300 billion, covering holdings of entities such as CNOOC, CIC, State Grid Corporation, and other major entities. The freezing process must be coordinated with the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure compliance with the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and notify the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to coordinate global actions. Frozen assets include, but are not limited to:

• CNOOC’s 10 oil and gas fields in Texas, valued at approximately $20 billion.

• CIC’s five commercial buildings in Manhattan, New York, valued at approximately $15 billion.

• State Grid Corporation’s shares in California ports, valued at approximately $5 billion.
This measure aims to prevent assets from being transferred or used to fund hostile activities.

Asset Redistribution — The frozen assets should be redistributed through public auctions to American companies and allied firms, prioritizing support for domestic energy companies (e.g., ExxonMobil) and technology firms (e.g., Intel). It is estimated that $150 billion can be raised for infrastructure development (high-speed rail networks), defense budgets (missile defense systems), and education funds (STEM programs). The auction process must be transparent, subject to Congressional oversight and public scrutiny, to avoid conflicts of interest. The distribution will follow these principles:

• 50% allocated to U.S. companies, 30% to allies (e.g., Japan, EU), and 20% for public use.

• Former CCP officials or related entities are prohibited from participating in bidding.

This brazen bandit logic of exploiting chaos to seize another country’s assets—how dare they proclaim it so openly? Shouldn’t these assets, which belong to China, be returned to China, according to the theory that China belongs to the Chinese people? What shamelessness.

As for Mr. Miles Yu, although he served as a China policy advisor to Pompeo for a few years, a position clearly higher than that of Tang Baiqiao, who wrote the foreword for Navarro’s Death by China, the extent to which Yu’s policy proposals led to U.S. misjudgments about China, and the damage these misjudgments caused to America’s long-term interests, will likely take more time to fully assess.

Now that Pompeo himself has been sidelined in American politics, Mr. Miles Yu, who served under him, naturally finds it hard to regain prominence. This is not just a case of “a new emperor, new courtiers” but also because Yu’s limited perspective, inadequate understanding of China’s current development, and his neoconservative, hawkish stance are facing significant skepticism and challenges in Washington. Although the Trump administration still views China as its primary adversary, it is clear that it will not adopt the blatant calls from Pompeo and Yu to subvert the Chinese regime, make it an explicit policy goal, or even propose one day taking over China entirely.

In the end, the Cold War mindset since World War II should have been abandoned long ago. Unfortunately, beyond continuing to endorse the outdated authoritarian vs. democracy narrative and further worsening the already tense U.S.-China relationship, Mr. Yu offers no forward-looking policy proposals to improve bilateral relations or at least foster dialogue, reduce hostility, and defer the unresolved issues of this generation of aging politicians to the next generation of leaders with greater peace consciousness and capability to address mutual hostility and conflict.

Let’s imagine for a moment: if a Chinese think tank proposed a similar hypothetical scenario—say, a collapse of American democratic society after Trump (no need for reasons in fiction)—and suggested that China would send aircraft carriers to U.S. territorial waters to contain the spillover of the crisis, seize U.S. overseas assets and the dollar system, and occupy all U.S. overseas military bases, such a fabricated plan would seem more absurd than a pipe dream to Americans.

Yet these Americans, including Miles Yu, a naturalized American, who are oblivious to how fast the world is changing, can so brazenly scheme that one day, when China collapses, the U.S. could once again bring China under its control as a vassal state. Where does their ambition come from? Wasn’t it enough that the U.S. built its early wealth by slaughtering countless Native Americans to conquer North America? Wasn’t it enough to traffic countless enslaved Africans to America? Wasn’t it enough to turn the Middle East into a powder keg through decades of hegemonic dominance? Wasn’t it enough to profit from wars fueled by arms sales since the Cold War? Now they covet conquering China without firing a shot, even if they lack the capability today, indulging in such fantasies in their minds. What kind of perverse psychological distortion drives this arrogance and conquest lust typical of a declining empire?

Do these people think America isn’t declining fast enough, that the trade war with China hasn’t been won enough, and that they won’t feel satisfied without stirring up more chaos?

Appendix: Original Hudson Institute Report

Supplement:

I originally had no intention of commenting, especially given our past interactions and shared acquaintances. However, this report is profoundly disappointing. Not only does it fail to contribute to a deeper understanding within American society of contemporary China’s true state—namely, the specific areas where China poses a challenge—but it also lacks even the slightest reflection on the successes, failures, and misjudgments of current U.S. policy toward China, particularly the trade war initiated under Trump in 2016. On the contrary, it adopts an even more right-wing stance, proposing a strategic vision that essentially aims to “dismember” a future China. This approach not only disregards reality but also reignites the outdated geopolitical logic of interventionism and regime change, which has repeatedly failed since the Cold War.

The real danger of such proposals lies in their shift of U.S. China policy from realistic competition and strategic maneuvering toward ideologically driven confrontation and hostility. This not only alienates the Chinese diaspora communities worldwide who still wish to trust in the value of America’s institutional system but also forces those who once held pro-American views and hoped for relatively rational channels of interaction between China and the U.S. to reluctantly distance themselves from this group of self-proclaimed representatives of American national interests. These individuals, waving the banner of democratic fundamentalism, unscrupulously push for “containing China” with extreme right-wing tactics.

These people are too accustomed to the inertia of “America First” thinking, viewing the international order as a hierarchical structure that must serve U.S. interests and imagining the world as a jungle system sustained only by strength and deterrence. Consequently, they have no genuine interest in upholding the core values of fairness, justice, and freedom that America has long championed, nor can they comprehend or accept the basic principles of peaceful coexistence and civilizational harmony that form the global consensus in the 21st century. The narrative they construct remains firmly tied to outdated paradigms of tribalism and imperial conquest, which not only disconnects from the current global landscape but also plunges America’s own foreign policy into a dangerous regression.

If the United States cannot produce a political leader with true strategic foresight, one who confronts and reverses the deep-seated structural issues exposed in America’s institutions, economy, and society, then it will struggle to effectively halt its ongoing decline within the international system. In this sense, while Trump has attempted to oscillate within the policy space, seeking a relatively pragmatic foreign policy path through “the art of the deal,” whether he can truly win the trade war with China, exert a deterrent effect within the BRICS framework, or successfully bring Putin back to the negotiating table remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the last thing he needs right now is the kind of fanciful, unrealistic, logically crude, yet highly dangerous proposals and policy recommendations put forth by the Hudson Institute.