Guest: Sasha Gong is a former China director at Voice of America and a former China expert at the AFL-CIO. Born in China, she was sent to the countryside at nine, had three years of schooling before college, and spent a year in a Chinese jail as a young dissident before Xi Jinping's father ordered her group released. She went on to earn a PhD from Harvard, writes for American Greatness, and is now writing books and making films.

Key topics:

• Xi Jinping in the United States this week for talks with President Trump: what Americans should watch

• By Scott Bessent's account, China did not get the deal it wanted: a truce to January, not to the end of Trump's term

• Why not surrendering to China means keeping American AI and rebuilding the industrial base

• AI as the new industrial revolution: something you have to live with, you better own

• China's world AI organization in Shanghai, 26 countries, and why America must lead its own table

• Give Xi face, do not give an inch: why a presidential greeting at the airport costs nothing

• Xi has purged every top leader of China's military: insecurity, not strength

• Xi's childhood: a father sixteen years in jail, five in shackles; a boy paraded at 13 while his mother watched, then sent back by her

• The illusion of power, and why Trump the businessman is giving it to him

• Is China helping Iran? Gong says not much, and Beijing would abandon Tehran when it became useless

• China's economy: almost 19 percent youth unemployment, 300 million who need a job, imports to the U.S. down 25 to 30 percent

• What the CIA learned from the Soviet archives, and whether Xi Jinping knows

• How a reporter who did not like Trump came to back his industrial policy

Timestamps:

00:00 — Welcome and introduction: Sasha Gong on Xi Jinping's visit

01:16 — Who Sasha Gong is: political prisoner, Harvard PhD, AFL-CIO, Voice of America

04:06 — Xi is in America this week: what to pay attention to

04:32 — Bessent: China did not get the deal it wanted; a truce to January

05:51 — Why not to surrender to China: the industrial base and AI

07:17 — Why AI infrastructure has to be American: the new industrial revolution

08:25 — "Something you have to live with, you better own it"

08:56 — China's world AI organization in Shanghai, 26 countries

09:23 — American values in the technology standards

11:30 — Quantum computing and the 1825 railway report

13:30 — What should happen from the visit: give face, not an inch

14:15 — Xi has purged the top of the military: a sign of insecurity

15:28 — Brezhnev and the last Ming emperor: a dictator with no challenger

16:51 — Meeting Xi at the airport: why it costs nothing

17:32 — Xi's history: an insecure man; his father's sixteen years in jail

20:36 — Detained at 13 for a Russian love song

21:40 — His mother sent him back

22:41 — Paraded again, this time welcomed

24:25 — "The elementary school graduate"

25:00 — Pretending to be humble

26:07 — The deep background; when family turns against you

27:33 — Stalin, Mao's purges: "you only have survivors"

29:38 — What Xi wants from America: the illusion of power

31:12 — What Trump wants: a ceasefire in the economic fight

32:15 — Red carpet, not an inch

33:05 — Is China helping Iran?

34:28 — What her contacts in China say; Jimmy Lai

35:19 — China's economy in bad shape: 19 percent youth unemployment

37:48 — Imports from China down 25 to 30 percent; the factories left

39:24 — Ripe to take out the leader? Two million robots

40:19 — The Soviet lesson: does Xi know?

42:08 — What Americans should take from the visit

42:20 — How Trump won over a skeptic

44:36 — "I want something from China"; close

Links mentioned:

jennybethshow.com

teapartypatriots.org