What if the most potent weapon that America has against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) isn’t nukes or tariffs?

“This isn’t a competition between the largest economy and the second largest economy. This is a competition of ideals—and we’ve got the better ones,” says former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.

“If you want to hit them where it hurts, hit them on human rights issues, genocides in their own country, religious freedom that they don’t grant any of their people—whether they be Buddhist, Muslim, Falun Gong, Christians. That’s where they’re the weakest. It’s where they’re the most vulnerable.”

Ahead of President Donald Trump’s expected meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, I sat down with Brownback to understand what he sees as the Chinese regime’s greatest vulnerabilities, its deepest fears, and how those can be strategically leveraged by the United States.

Brownback is co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit. He previously served as governor of Kansas from 2011 to 2018 and as a U.S. senator from Kansas, 1996 to 2011. His upcoming book is titled, “China’s War on Faith.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.