Gordon G. Chang

Chang has appeared before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission among others.[5] He has warned that Chinese students attending U.S. colleges and universities have become the long arm of Chinese totalitarianism, that students, professors, and scientists have become “nontraditional collectors” of intelligence for China, and has stated that China's influence on activities on American campuses have infringed on academic freedom, violated sovereignty, and have violated U.S. laws.[4] Further, Chang has claimed that China is not trying to compete with the United States within the Westphalian order, but to overthrow that order altogether.[6]

In his book, The Great U.S.-China Tech War (2020), Chang submits that China and the United States are involved in a what he terms as a “cold tech war,” with the winner being able to dominate the twenty-first century. He notes that a decade ago China was not considered a tech contender, but Chinese leaders have made their regime a tech powerhouse, with some now finding China to be a leader with America behind in critical areas. Chang advocates mobilization for the U.S. to regain what it once had in control of cutting-edge technologies.[7]

As the author of The Coming Collapse of China,[5] since 2001 Chang has repeatedly said that the Chinese government would eventually collapse.[8][9][10] Chang also says that China is a "new dot-com bubble", adding that the rapid growth by China is not supported by various internal factors such as decrease in population growth as well as slowing retail sales.[11] In a separate interview, he remarked that China achieved its 149.2 percent of its current trade surplus with the United States through "lying, cheating, and stealing" and that if China decided to realize its threat that had been expressed since August 2007 to sell its US Treasuries, it would actually hurt its own economy which is reliant on exports to the United States; the economy of the United States would be hurt by a sell-off of Treasuries, causing the United States to buy less from China, which would in turn hurt the Chinese economy.[12]

Since 2001, Chang has made predictions that the Chinese government will eventually collapse.[13][14] Shen Dingli, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, wrote that Chang's predictions "collapse his own credibility." John Tamny of RealClearMarkets has criticized Chang's predictions and analyses about China, stating that Chang possesses "limited knowledge of simple economics" and that "Chang’s feel for China has been impressively incorrect for close to twenty years, and if his latest commentary is at all indicative of his grasp of what authors economic growth, Chang’s batting average on the matter of China isn’t about to improve."[15]

In Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World (2006), Chang says that North Korea is most likely to target Japan, not South Korea. He also says that North Korean nuclear ambitions could be forestalled if there were concerted multinational diplomacy, with some "limits to patience" backed up by threat of an all-out Korean war.

Chang has given briefings at the National Intelligence Council, the CIA, the State Department, and the Pentagon, and has appeared before the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs.[5] He is a former contributor at The Daily Beast.[16] His writings on China and North Korea have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, Commentary, National Review, and Barron’s among others, and he has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS, Bloomberg Television, and others, as well on as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.[5] Chang has spoken at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale, and other universities.[6]

Chang often criticized South Korea's President Moon Jae-in's term. Chang criticized Moon Jae-in, calling him "dangerous," and said that Moon should be considered "North Korea's agent."[17] Chang also asserted that Moon Jae-in is "subverting freedom, democracy, and South Korea."[17]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chang praised the U.S. for acting 'very, very quickly' in response to the epidemic,[18] while concluding that China was responsible for spreading the coronavirus, and that this means it's very difficult to cooperate with a country that deliberately infected and killed Americans.[6]