Based on an exclusive interview with Stephen Bannon in Hanada, this essay examines the Chinese Communist Party’s transformation of China into a high-tech authoritarian state, its militarization of the South China Sea, and the Trump administration’s strategy toward China.
It is an important testimony showing that the confrontation between liberal democracy and Chinese totalitarianism has entered a decisive stage for the future of the Asia-Pacific.

2019-03-29.
The radical leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have turned George Orwell’s “1984”-style police state into reality.
The following is an excerpt from this month’s issue of the magazine Hanada, from the exclusive interview titled “Unmasking Huawei: Trump’s Strategy Toward China and Prime Minister Abe.”
Stephen Bannon, former Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President of the United States.
Interviewer: Katsuyuki Kawai.
Special Adviser on Foreign Affairs to the President of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Member of the House of Representatives.
This is an excerpt from that interview.
All emphasis in the text, except for the headings, is mine.
Will the high-tech authoritarian state prevail.
Kawai.
Can the liberal democratic system defeat China’s high-tech authoritarian system?
Bannon.
President Trump postponed sanctions, and the United States and China returned to the negotiating table, but no one knows how this will end.
The debate between the United States and China is nothing less than a massive power struggle between two fundamentally different systems.
Facing Western liberal democracy, which respects individual freedom and rights and values civic responsibility and virtue, stands China’s totalitarian system.
The Chinese people are among the most oppressed in history, and technological progress is only making the situation worse.
The radical leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have turned George Orwell’s “1984”-style police state into reality.
Deng Xiaoping and the leaders of the collective leadership system after him built win-win relations while cooperating with the West.
However, Xi Jinping and those around him have taken China down a completely different path.
Looking at the South China Sea, it is clear that the purpose of building military bases on the islands is to blockade the South China Sea in the event of a crisis by using them as unsinkable aircraft carriers and air bases, thereby turning the entire region into China’s internal sea.
If that were to happen, the situations of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea would fundamentally change, but if President Trump’s negotiations succeed it can be stopped.
People criticize President Trump as an isolationist, but from my perspective as someone who has worked overseas for a long time, no American president has engaged with the Asia-Pacific region more actively than President Trump.
No leader has devoted all available political resources to the peace of the Pacific to such an extent.
The reason President Trump’s foreign policy appears hard-line is that “America First” has been misunderstood.
The United States is now more actively involved in Asia-Pacific security than ever before, and this was reflected in the negotiations.
I never thought in my lifetime that American diplomacy would focus so intensely on the Pacific.
After the terrorist attacks of 2001, the attention of the American people was concentrated on Islamic extremism and the Middle East.
President Obama sought a “pivot to Asia,” but it remained only rhetoric and allowed China to militarize the islands in the South China Sea.
However, thanks to President Trump, the United States has fundamentally changed and has come to recognize that the real problem is China.
As I mentioned earlier, North Korea is also part of the China problem.
In my view, President Trump has invested more political capital in confronting China and North Korea than in building the border wall.
From this it is clear that the President believes maintaining close relations with allied nations in the Pacific will lead to freedom and prosperity for the American people.
For the United States to maintain its power as a Pacific nation, the existence of Asian allies such as Japan is indispensable.
To be continued.