The CCP Thought the U.S. Was Dead. Instead They Got a Lesson From John Wayne.
The Chinese cannot replace the U.S. market. Without it, the Chinese economy collapses.
Don’t miss our Deep Dive “The Illusion of Chinese Strength: Power, Paranoia, and the Temptation of War”. It’s one of the most important things we’ve ever published.
by Sam Faddis
April 19, 2025
I’m a sucker for old Westerns. One of my favorites is the John Wayne film Big Jake, corny and predictable as it is. The plot is pretty straightforward. A gang of desperados raids the large and wealthy ranch of one Jacob McCandles, a.k.a. Big Jake. They kill a number of the workers at the ranch and carry off Big Jake’s grandson into Mexico, demanding a massive ransom.
Unfortunately for the raiders they have grossly miscalculated. They believed Big Jake was dead. They believed the ranch was easy “pickin’s”. They were wrong.
Wayne is very much alive. You know what happens next. The Raiders pay a horrible price. The boy is rescued. The bad guys learn a very hard lesson about overplaying their hand.
The Communist Chinese are about to learn the same thing.
The key to the rise of Communist China was very straightforward. The Chinese opened their markets to the West. They invited Western companies to come manufacture on their soil. They provided cheap labor. They could care less about worker safety and environmental standards. You could move your factory from Detroit or Birmingham or Bonn to China, produce dirt-cheap goods, and turn a massive profit.
Here's the catch.