Gordon Chang is the author of "China is Going to War", "The Great U.S.-China Tech War", "Losing South Korea", and "The Coming Collapse of China." He worked as an attorney in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Federal Newswire: How did China change while you were there?

Chang: I was practicing law in California. Most of my clients were in Asia, and we were traveling across the Pacific. Eventually, we decided to go to Shanghai, where my primary client, which was the Shanghai branch of Citibank, just wanted to be closer, because we were doing deals, and it became much easier being onsite. 

We arrived in August 1996, which was a time of great optimism in China for a lot of reasons. I can remember my wife saying, “Mom, China's not communist anymore.” I agreed with her. My clients would buzz into Shanghai. They'd stay at the Grand Hyatt, which is really one of the most spectacular hotels in the world. They would say, “China's not communist anymore.”

As we worked in China, as we talked to people, as we traveled around the country, we saw a very different side to the country and to the regime. We realized, at a time of great optimism about China, that China had not changed. It was still communist, and in many ways we could see that it would go in the wrong direction. That's why I wrote a book, which was very much against the mood of the times, which was The Coming Collapse of China.

You can't practice law anymore if you write a book like that. We just stayed here and started working and writing about China and becoming extremely disturbed, because things were getting worse.

Federal Newswire: Was it a gradual realization?

Chang: It was just bit by bit, drip by drip. It was maybe an illustration of Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point, that at some point I realized the views I had about China were wrong and that there was just too much evidence to the contrary. I felt that China was moving very much in the wrong direction. You could start to see how things could go badly. It wasn't any one blinding event.

Federal Newswire: What are the main issues that made you change your views on China? 

Chang: Well, we've been concerned because of what we've noticed. You can see Xi Jinping's talk. He talks about war all the time. He doesn't talk about it in general terms. He talks about it in more specific and urgent terms. But at the same time, of course, there's the fastest military buildup since the Second World War.

He's preparing his regime to sanction-proof itself. He's stockpiling grain and other commodities. He is mobilizing China's civilians for war. He's purging the military of officers who were opposed to war. No one event is significant, I suppose, but when you put them all together it shows that this is a society that is moving in a very belligerent direction.

We are seeing China's moves against its neighbors almost all at once. India, Philippines, Taiwan, Japan. This is really very dangerous, because we've seen this in previous decades, what happens when regimes with problems on the inside have decided that the solution to them is military misadventure abroad.

Federal Newswire: What concerns should our leaders have?

Chang: Well, let's take a look at what they're doing with fentanyl. The general narrative in the United States is that this is some sort of criminal activity and that the United States talking to Beijing can stop it. The problem, though, is that this is directed by the regime. We know this from any number of different indications.

For instance, Chinese diplomats actually give cover to the fentanyl gangs and producers. Every container that leaves China is inspected by officials. The fentanyl gangs launder their proceeds through the Chinese state banking system. China's TikTok, which Beijing uses to propagate its narratives, actually promotes illegal drug use in the United States.

We know just from Xi Jinping's interactions with the U.S. what he's doing. On November 15 of last year, he promised President Biden to significantly reduce the flow of precursors and pill presses from China to the Western Hemisphere. President Biden on the following day touted that. But we have to remember that Xi Jinping made essentially the same promises to President Trump in 2018 and to President Obama in 2016. We can see that this is part of Beijing's plan to weaken America.

We've got to remember that China is organized very differently than the United States. They have a near-total or even total surveillance state, which means these fentanyl producers, which are large and international in scope, couldn't operate without…the knowledge and also the approval of the regime.

A lot of these fentanyl producers, we call them gangs, but a lot of these fentanyl producers are even state-owned. So it is clear that this is a project on the part of the regime to kill Americans.

Federal Newswire: Why does our policy not reflect these kinds of indicators? 

Chang: I think part of it is because after the Cold War, there was this notion that China would become just like us, that the regime would engage with the world and it would see things in the way the rest of the world sees them. There was this great optimism about engagement. 

I think it's too horrible for many Americans to contemplate that, “No, China's regime is communist. It is evil.” So we can't deal with that, and the problem cuts across our political spectrum.

Because it's not only… leftists who want to engage China. It's not only Democrats who do. Some of the most pro-China elements in Washington right now are conservative Republicans. Not because they want to support the Communist Party, but because their views are such that they actually help the Party. 

People say, “well, China is just competing with us within the existing international system.” Well, no, it actually wants to take down that system and it wants to destroy the United States. That's the concept of People's War.

Federal Newswire: What do you think of a concept like ‘reciprocity’ for our interactions with China?

Chang: Absolutely. Just for instance, no American may own a square inch of land in China. So why are we allowing Chinese nationals onto our farm and ranch lands where we know they're engaged, many of them, in very dangerous activities? 

Human trafficking operations on Oklahoma farmland owned by Chinese nationals, illegal marijuana grows all over the place, the spread of the Triads in American rural communities– none of this has to happen. 

Also, they don't allow our social media platforms in China, so why do we allow theirs in ours?

Xi Jinping talks about Tianxia, which is the notion that China is the world's only legitimate state. We may think that's ludicrous, but the point is the Chinese don't. The Chinese are working to implement it. They're now talking about the moon and Mars as sovereign Chinese territory. We better wake up, because we do not understand what our enemies are saying about us and what they're doing.

Federal Newswire: Where can people go to follow your work?

Chang: I tweet all the time @GordonGChang. I archive all of my articles for free on my website, www.gordonchang.com. 

The China Desk podcast is hosted by Steve Yates, a former president of Radio Free Asia and White House national security advisor.