◎ A continued Trump presidency is Communist China’s worst nightmare.
On Nov. 25, Chinese leader Xi Jinping sent former U.S. vice president Joe Biden a message congratulating him “on election as U.S. president,” according to state mouthpiece Xinhua. Xi hopes that the United States and the People’s Republic of China will “uphold the spirit of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, focus on cooperation, manage differences, advance the healthy and stable development of China-U.S. ties, and join hands with other countries and the international community to promote the noble cause of world peace and development.” PRC vice president Wang Qishan also sent congratulations to Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris.
On the same day, President Donald Trump’s legal team participated in a public hearing on the election conducted by the Pennsylvania State Senate. The hearing featured a presentation by Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and witnesses who filed affidavits attesting to fraud in the Pennsylvania election. Trump also spoke at the hearing via telephone.
Highlights of the hearing include:
- Giuliani said 682,770 mail-in ballots entered in Allegheny County and Philadelphia were “not observed by any single Republican.”
- Giuliani said 1.8 million mail-in ballots were sent out in Pennsylvania, but 2.5 million mail-in ballots were received. The discrepancy of 700,000 votes was about the size of Trump’s lead over Biden as of Nov. 4, 5:00 a.m., according to media reports. The Associated Press shows Biden leading by 81,660 votes at the time of writing.
- Giuliani said 22,686 mail-in ballots were returned on the day they were mailed, 32,591 were returned the day after they were mailed, and 20,000 were returned before they were mailed.
- One witness found that a sudden spike in votes in Pennsylvania delivered over 570,000 votes to Biden but only 3,200 to Trump. The witness is a retired military colonel with about 15 years of experience in information warfare, electronic and special electronic warfare, and computer network operations, and has been looking into voting manipulation in the U.S. since 2018.
- Other witnesses shared accounts of how they were not allowed to properly observe the counting of the ballots, illegal pre-canvassing of votes, Democratic counties contacting voters to “cure” their ballots but not Republican counties, poll workers intimidating a Democrat election observer after she tried to verify steps in the voting process, and several other irregularities.
- When asked if the Trump legal team had affidavits from whistleblowers who could testify to election fraud, Giuliani said, “yes we do.” He added that three of them require a subpoena to testify, and one of the three is a Democrat.
- In concluding, Senator Doug Mastriano, who organized the hearing, said that the “truth is out there” and called on the media to “do your job.” He added, “we need to make sure that the real winner is sent forth from this election.”
The Pennsylvania hearing is the first of three scheduled public hearings by state legislatures on the election. The Arizona legislature will hold its hearing on Nov. 30 while the Michigan legislature’s meeting will take place on Dec. 1.
On Nov. 25, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Judge Patricia McCullough ordered state officials not to complete the certification of the results of the presidential election until her court holds a hearing contesting those results on Nov. 27. A day prior, Pennsylvania officials had announced that the state was going to certify the results.
Also on Nov. 25, attorney Sidney Powell filed lawsuits in Georgia and Michigan alleging “massive election fraud” in those states. Both suits cited a declaration by a “former electronic intelligence analyst under 305th Military Intelligence with experience gathering SAM missile system electronic intelligence” that the Dominion software used in those states was “accessed by agents acting on behalf of China and Iran in order to monitor and manipulate elections, including the most recent US general election in 2020.” The Georgia suit pointed to “incontrovertible evidence Board of Elections records demonstrates that at least 96,600 absentee ballots were requested and counted but were never recorded as being returned to county election boards by the voter,” and called for 96,600 votes to be disregarded “at a minimum”; Biden leads Trump by 12,670 votes at the time of writing.
Our take
1. No objective observer can review the evidence of voter fraud and irregularities on display at the Pennsylvania hearing and the lawsuits filed by private lawyers and the Trump legal team and claim, as legacy media has been doing in the past several weeks, that voter fraud allegations are “baseless” or there is “no evidence of widespread fraud.” The fact that no mainstream media outlets bothered to cover the witness testimonies—the meat of the hearing—in detail and instead opted to mock Trump’s brief remarks while trotting out the usual snide dismals of the voter fraud allegations indicate that the Pennsylvania hearing has swung the momentum of the contested election in favor of the Trump camp. Some commentators are even saying that the onus is now on the Democrats to provide credible refutation to the Trump team’s fraud claims or be suspected of guilt as the latter delivered compelling evidence.
Given the strength of the evidence provided by the Trump team and private lawyers so far, President Trump has a very good chance of reversing the election result and winning a second term in office. The U.S. Supreme Court could be called in to judge some of the cases and state legislatures in contested states could block certification of the election results, denying Biden 270 electoral votes by the mid-December deadline and throwing the election to the House of Representatives. Trump will beat Biden in this scenario because the House votes for the president by state delegations and there are currently 26 states whose delegation is majority Republican.
2. Global Times, the nationalistic Party propaganda outlet, claimed that Xi Jinping waited 18 days after U.S. mainstream media called the election for Joe Biden before sending congratulations because the PRC was adopting a “cautious approach toward the highly disputed U.S. election results.” We believe Beijing only sent congratulations in light of the General Services Administration (GSA) making transition funds and resources available to the Biden team on Nov. 23, a move that the Chinese Communist Party likely interpreted as Trump quietly throwing in the towel. Trump, however, said the GSA was acting on “initial protocols” and appeared to suggest that he approved of GSA releasing the funds because GSA administrator Emily Murphy was “harassed, threatened, and abused” for acting in accordance with the law. Trump also said he would “keep up the good fight,” a statement that he is fulfilling at the Pennsylvania hearing and with other scheduled public hearings.
Xi’s congratulations to Biden suggests that the CCP is confident Trump has zero chance of reversing the 2020 U.S. presidential election. If so, an eventual Trump victory would be a Black Swan event for Beijing, and would trigger political Black Swans in the PRC (see the next point).
3. We have established in past analyses that Xi Jinping’s political position is far more precarious than most observers believe. The fact that Xi needs to continually consolidate power and rectify key Party apparatus like the political and legal affairs indicate that he lacks the “quan wei” of a Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping, and does not have unchallenged authority to do as he pleases in the regime. Xi has come under increased pressure lately and is exposed to significant levels of political risk due to the “perfect storm” of domestic and external problems plaguing the PRC, including the coronavirus pandemic.
A Biden presidency would see Xi weather the “perfect storm” of problems and greatly curb his exposure to political risk. This is clear from Joe Biden’s unwillingness to publicly name China as the number one threat to the U.S. and his key cabinet appointees. For example, Janet Yellen, Biden’s likely pick for Treasury Secretary, opposes Trump’s trade and tech war, while Jake Sullivan, Biden’s pick for National Security Advisor, said in 2017 that the U.S. should encourage China’s rise. Under Biden, the U.S. would return to the pro-China “engagement” strategy, though it may superficially appear as “competition.” The CCP will definitely exploit U.S. unwillingness to seriously challenge China as an opening to catch its breath and aggressively advance its global hegemony agenda. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping would finally have a genuine achievement (outlasting the Trump presidency, an existential threat to the CCP regime, by “delaying and waiting for change” [以拖待變]) to give his “quan wei” over the Party a momentous boost. Further, the softened, “nuanced” stand of a Biden presidency would allow Xi to secure sufficient time and energy to dominate the factional struggle in the CCP elite and become truly “unrivaled.”
On the other hand, a continued Trump presidency is Communist China’s worst nightmare. There is no question that President Trump would go very hard on China if he wins a second term, including punishing the CCP for being uncooperative on investigating the origins of the coronavirus and covering up the outbreak, eviscerating Hong Kong’s autonomy, bullying neighbors like Australia and Taiwan, perpetuating severe human rights violations like the persecution of Uyghurs and forced organ harvesting, and potentially its alleged interference in the 2020 U.S. election (see Sidney Powell’s lawsuits). A recent document released by the State Department’s Policy Planning staff, “The Elements of the China Challenge,” clearly indicates the trajectory of the Sino-U.S. relationship under a Trump presidency. As we wrote in our Nov. 19 newsletter, “the document’s focus on the CCP’s ideology and the recommended tasks inevitably sets Washington on the path of zero-sum, ‘you die, I live’ competition with Beijing … faithful implementation of the ten tasks will create conditions necessary for triggering CCP regime collapse.”
4. The final outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election will have a tremendous impact on China. To sidestep unnecessary risks and position themselves for future opportunities, businesses, investors, and governments are advised to wait for the election result to be legally confirmed before moving forward with their China plans.
