 Our next testifier is Jodi Evans. And thank you so much for being here. She is the code founder of Code Pink, Women for Peace, and campaign coordinator for China Is Not Our Enemy. She has been a visionary advocate for peace for several decades. Whether in boardrooms or war zones, legislative offices or neighborhood streets, Jodi's enthusiasm for a world at peace infuses conciliation, optimism, and activism wherever she goes. And she's a very, very generous woman who opens up her home to have the Code Pink LA meetings there. Very much appreciated. Jodi, your testimony. Thank you, Rachel. For this brilliant organizing, of course, you Frank for being just the rock star, tireless peace activist and organizer, you are. I'm blown away by this day. Thank you for inviting me to talk about China and their history. I want to start with a little Vijay Prashad who also warns that something gets lost in calling it a Cold War instead of naming it as an aggression directed from the US foreign policy that desires to rule the world. So call it by its name, barbaric imperialism. I was living part time in China before COVID changed our capacities to travel. And living there made me hyper aware of the propaganda of hate and lies that was flowing from scores of media sources toward China. It felt very familiar to the early days of the push for war in Iraq. That propaganda has already brought a war against Asians in the streets of the United States. This is a truth commission, and there has been so much truth and beauty shared today. I want to start by saying the names of the victims of the war this week that happened on the anniversary of the Mayline massacre. Soon Chung Park, Hyun Young Grant, Soon Chak Kim, Young A. Ye, Delania Ashley Yon, Paul Andre Michaels, Chao Ji Tan, Dayou Feng. May you rest in peace and love. There have been over 3,000 other attacks that have taken place in the last year, and Code Pink has been raising concerns about the Asian hate this propaganda is driving. We have a national call to action March 27th with a big coalition of groups. It's across the country. We hope you will join us. I'll put the links in the chat, including reaching out to Kamala Harris and the White House about ending their hateful language towards China. So the desire to crush China is not new, and we in the United States know a little about China. So that's my offering today. The opposite of hate is love, which is compassion, and to be with another is to know a bit about them. We think of ourselves as affluent in the US, but we are impoverished Americans in our understanding of the world. Imperialist desires to own China go back to the Opium Wars of 1839. It starts with England wanting to dismantle China after raping and pillaging India. This is also the first invasion of Afghanistan to control the region by European powers. So let's begin with the awareness that China has experienced imperialist terror for a very long time. Before the Opium Wars in 1837, China represented 25% of global GDP and Beijing was larger than London. After World War II in 1949, China represented 5% global GDP and was one of the 10 poorest countries in the world. In China, World War II started in 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. This is when the access between Germany, Italy, and Japan were executing their plan to hit the Soviet Union from the East and West and crush China to take over the world. Before 1939, you can read in US foreign policy documents that they hoped Germany would take out the Soviet Union and Japan would take out China. It's interesting to note that at this time, both the US and Germany are giving military to support to the KMT in China. And Goebbels, who is a big supporter of Chiang Kai-chec also had Chiang Kai-chec's son working for him in Germany. What few Americans know is that many Chinese died, as many Chinese died as Russians in World War II. They say around 27 million Soviets died and over 20 million Chinese died. There was also barbaric scientific research and biological warfare that was carried out on the Chinese by Japanese. At a museum in Harbin, China, there are photos of Japanese science literally executing barbaric acts infecting living human beings with this biological warfare and leaving them standing in meadows until they succumbed to the effects and then burying them there. Those scientists went back to become the leading scientists in Japan. I bring this up in light of the Kwan Blinken gathered this week to remind us these alliances have a long history and how China might feel toward Japan. Another atrocity most Americans are not aware of is the rape of Nanjing in 1937, which also came to light in a war crimes tribunal, but that was in 1947. As we heard earlier, there was no need to drop the atomic bombs on Japan as surrender was near. This was also true in China. Nanjing had surrendered, but the Japanese entered and in the next six weeks, somewhere between 300,000 were beheaded, raped and subjected to barbaric violence. The loss of life close to that of the dropping of atomic bombs. Between the time of the opium wars in the Korean War, 100 million Chinese died in war at the hands of Europeans, American, Japanese and internal civil wars. A century of invasion and violence. In 1949, China was 450 million citizens. That means more than 15% of their population had died. Just imagine that. They know this as the century of humiliation. Then China gets pulled into the US war in Korea. The barbarism and insanity of the US war in Korea is a wretched and also not well-known. I encourage you to follow the women across the DMZ as this is another violence against humanity by US foreign policy. But it was also a huge price paid by China. None of the generals in China wanted to support the Workers' Party of North Korea. They knew it was a bloodbath that no one could win and preferred to wait until the US was at their borders where they felt they could be more defensive. They are defensive in temperament and training. But Mao had a commitment to internationalism, a commitment to others. Who are you if you abandon your friends, those who have stood with you? He knew it was a big risk and it could have been the end of China. It was the end of his son who died in the battles with the US and North Korea, a huge and painful price. China had no tanks and no airplanes and this was a loss of another million people. Here is when Sino-US relations fall apart because of China's support of the Workers' Party in Korea and when it's over the US sanctions against China are launched and also they block China from becoming a member of the UN. My friend Georgia Kelly at Praxis for Peace Institute has security clearance in the 60s working on more papers at Stanford. Where she read the intention of the US to isolate Afghanistan, Shenzhen, Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan as tools to take over China. These reports start back in the 50s. Shenzhen has long been under the effects of US infiltration including a request to the king of Saudi Arabia to bring mohabism to the Uyghurs, something the king even spoke about as strange. There was a plan to take over China and we saw in these documents later a question, who lost China? Imperialist language in itself as if they owned it privately. They felt that because Mao didn't like Stalin they could do what they always do as colonialists, divide and conquer. But here's where American foreign policy failed. Also the British had wanted Tibet since the end of the 1800s invading Tibet in an attempt to pull it away from China. But they were not interested in national liberation for the Tibetan people but colonizing them than Tibet, a theocracy with slaves. The infiltration of Tibet by the CIA is what provoked China's pushback. The CIA Tibetan program was a nearly two decades long anti-Chinese covert operation focused on Tibet which consisted of political action, propaganda, paramilitary and intelligence operations based on US government arrangements made with the brothers of the 14th Dalai Lama. And it states to keep the political concept of an autonomous Tibet alive within Tibet. This ended with Nixon's visit to China. Taiwan, there's no dispute is Chinese territorial under Chinese territorial control. But the US wants to use Taiwan as a base for military engagement and economic interests. Basically it's Miami next to China. China stuck. It can't allow US missiles sit in Taiwan. How long did JFK allow Cuba to keep those missiles? You know, China sees it has 1.5 billion citizens to take care of and it is not gonna sit back and let US aggression bring military presence closer to China. Cold War, this is part of a bigger international issue and we've heard a bit about this today but if the US crushes China it cripples the fight of people of the global South for possibly centuries. It cuts off progress for other ways to live together on this planet and for many would cut off hope for the human race and life on earth. A wave came from the West and destroyed everything lives, culture, community, connectivity and the health of the planet. We live in the dark times of this effect. We live in the belly of this beast. We need the wind that comes from the East to rebuild infrastructure and heal and create peace. European white maritime expansion started in 1492 to today with 500 years of European terror and white supremacy. Yet there was a Silk Road based on trade instead of war. Not the Europeans concept of trade which was slave trade but the exchanging of wares and creation. It is what we see from China an extension of the Silk Road. The question of how do we construct trade in a mutually beneficial way? Under the leadership of the CPC China is the only country in recent decades that has become the world's second largest economy without resorting to warfare, colonialism or slavery. For more than 10 consecutive years China has contributed to over 30% of global GDP growth. 850 million people have been lifted out of poverty. China is the second largest contributor to the UN and has sent more than 40,000 UN peacekeeping personnel outnumbering other permanent members of the Security Council. The CPC also enjoys the highest rate of support and satisfaction from the Chinese people over 90% according to the latest Harvard study. Another fact about China is it has had strong central government for 2,200 years with a responsibility to society and a concern for the whole. So let us call this what it is. Another boondoggle for the Pentagon and the weapons industry to distract, destabilize, destroy and clean out the funds in the US needed to invest in a functioning society. We must change the narrative. No money for war. Funds need to be redirected to the needs of the people. Cut military spending at least in security, death and destruction. Yes to respecting human rights starting with our own behaviors. We must not be used by the propaganda. It is being directed at the progressives and the lefts. We cannot spread hate. We must spread compassion. We cannot spread lies but truth. We at Code Pink are here to help with tools, actions and teachings. You can find them at Code Pink's China is not our enemy. We have to be fierce in the face of Biden's foreign policy as it is still mostly Trump's. I'll post ways to engage in the chat. And I thank you for attending for your passion for peace onward. Wow, thank you, Jodi. That was beautiful, devastating. Very beautiful testimony. Thank you so much. And for those of us in the LA area or even the West of the United States here we are benefiting financially from trade with China yet allowing all of this anti-China hate. And so Jodi, your talk, we've talked about this a little bit, but I'm recommitted, I say right now on this call to reaching out to the ILWU and the union that benefits so much from the trade with China and there's crickets when it comes to our aggression against them. So thank you so much. We'll do some organizing around that. Thank you. Frank, you and I wrestled on who was going to introduce John. Hello, John, but he gets to introduce you. Okay, well, thanks, Jodi. That was great.