Last month, Wikileaks released a new set of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton's private email servers, which has been a major point of controversy in the 2016 US Presidential Election. The Obama administration has denounced the most recent leak and blamed Russian hackers for the cyberattack.
Among the latest batch of emails is a trove of new revelations — some potentially damaging, some humorous and some downright embarassing — including transcripts of private speeches the Democratic Presidential candidate and former Secretary of State gave to Goldman Sachs and the CME Group in 2013, for which she reportedly earned six-figure speaking fees.
Here are some of the comments Clinton made with regards to China in the speeches, which were previously never made public.
1. She said China has 'the right to assert themselves' in the South China Sea.
One of the thousands of hacked emails from Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta contained the text of a private speech given to Goldman Sachs in October 2013, in which Hillary reportedly told the crowd that she didn't blame China for its activity in the South China Sea:
“48 percent of the world’s trade, obviously that includes energy but includes everything else, goes through the South China Sea... China basically wants to control it. You can’t hold that against them. They have the right to assert themselves. But if nobody’s there to push back to create a balance, then they’re going to have a chokehold on the sea lanes and also on the countries that border the South China Sea.”
2. She said that if China claimed all of the South China Sea, then the US could claim the Pacific Ocean as the 'American Sea.'
In that same October 2013 speech, Clinton joked about China's claims in the South China Sea:
“I think that—you know, one of the greatest arguments that I had on a continuing basis was with my Chinese counterparts about their claim. And I made the point at one point in the argument that, you know, you can call it whatever you want to call it. You don’t have a claim to all of it. I said, by that argument, you know, the United States should claim all of the Pacific. We liberated it, we defended it. We have as much claim to all of the Pacific. And we could call it the American Sea, and it could go from the West Coast of California all the way to the Philippines. And, you know, my counterpart sat up very straight and goes, well, you can’t do that. And I said, well, we have as much right to claim that as you do. I mean, you claim it based on pottery shards from, you know, some fishing vessel that ran aground in an atoll somewhere. You know, we had conveys of military strength. We discovered Japan for Heaven sakes. I mean, we did all of these things.”
During that speech, Clinton also said that a Chinese counterpart told her that by that logic, they could claim Hawaii, to which Hillary responded that the US could give them a "red (Republican) state":
"[Clinton]: And then he says to me, well, you know, we’ll claim Hawaii. And I said, yeah, but we have proof we bought it. Do you have proof you brought any of these places you’re claiming? So we got into the nitty-gritty of...
"[Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein]: But they have to take New Jersey. (Laughter.)
"[Clinton]: No, no, no. We’re going to give them a red state.”
3. She vowed to 'ring China with missile defense' if North Korea wasn't stopped.
In the June 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs, Clinton called China out for its handling of North Korea:
“You know, we all have told the Chinese if they continue to develop this missile program and they get an ICBM that has the capacity to carry a small nuclear weapon on it, which is what they’re aiming to do, we cannot abide that. Because they could not only do damage to our treaty allies, namely Japan and South Korea, but they could actually reach Hawaii and the west coast theoretically, and we’re going to ring China with missile defense. We’re going to put more of our fleet in the area. So China, come on. You either control them or we’re going to have to defend against them.”
4. She claimed the PLA were North Korea's 'biggest supporters.'
In that same speech to Goldman Sachs, Clinton said that the PLA were the biggest supporters of the North Korean regime:
The biggest supporters of a provocative North Korea has been the PLA. The deep connections between the military leadership in China and in North Korea has really been the mainstay of the relationship. So now all of a sudden new leadership with Xi and his team, and they’re saying to the North Koreans—and by extension to the PLA—no. It is not acceptable. We don’t need this right now. We’ve got other things going on. So you’re going to have to pull back from your provocative actions, start talking to South Koreans again about the free trade zones, the business zones on the border, and get back to regular order and do it quickly.”
5. She believes that Xi Jinping is a better politician than Hu Jintao.
In remarks to the CME Group given on November 18, 2013, Hillary said that Xi Jinping was a better politician than his predecessor, Hu Jintao:
"The new president of China is a much more sophisticated actor than his predecessor. He lived in the United States for a short period of time, actually lived in Iowa on a -- on a farm. He was working in agricultural issues within the Communist party, you know, about 30 years ago. He is a better politician than his immediate predecessor, Hu Jintao. He has consolidated his power quite quickly over the military and over the Communist party. He has set forth a plan for economic reform, some of which is quite far-reaching, and some social reform as well like, you know, saying they're going to end, at least to some extent, the one-child policy.”
These echo similar things said during the June 2013 speech at Goldman Sachs:
“I think it’s a good news/maybe not so good news story about what is going on right now in China. On the good news side I think the new leadership—and we’ll see more of that when Xi Jinping gets here in the United States after having gone to Latin America. He’s a more sophisticated, more effective public leader than Hu Jintao was. He is political in the kind of generic sense of that word. You can see him work a room, which I have watched him do. You can have him make small talk with you, which he has done with me. His experience as a young man coming to the United States in the 1980s—going to Iowa, spending time there, living with a family—was a very important part of his own development...
“So he’s someone who you at least have the impression is a more worldly, somewhat more experienced politician. And I say that as a term of praise, because he understands the different levers and the constituencies that he has to work with internally and externally. That’s especially important because of the recent moves he’s making to consolidate power over the military...
“So President Xi is doing much more to try to assert his authority, and I think that is also good news.”
6. She said 'anti-Japanese' feelings are on the rise in China.
In the June 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs, Clinton commented on growing 'anti-Japanese' sentiment in China:
"There has been a stoking of residual anti-Japanese feelings inside China, not only in the leadership but in the populace. It’s ostensibly over the dispute that is ongoing, but it’s deeper than that and it is something that bears very careful watching. Because in my last year, year and a half of meetings with the highest officials in China the rhetoric about the Japanese was vicious, and I had high Chinese officials in their 60s and 50s say to me: We all know somebody who was killed by the Japanese during the war. We cannot let them resume their nationalistic ways. You Americans are naive. You don’t see what is happening below the surface of Japan society.”
The Clinton campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the leaked emails. But the latest dump from Wikileaks (if indeed authentic) shows that Clinton's team worked hard downplay the transcripts, with research director Tony Carrk telling Podesta in one of the leaked emails that the speeches contained “a lot of policy positions that we should give an extra scrub."
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