The author, who helped shape current American perceptions of the Chinese Communist Party and U.S. policy and is a political ally of President Donald J. Trump, told RedState that shuttering Radio Free Asia would be a mistake.

"If we close Radio Free Asia, America will have no voice,” said Gordon G. Chang, the author of the 2024 book, “Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America.”

Chang said the private news organization funded by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, now led by another Trump ally, Kari Lake, is vital to both America’s interests and as a counterweight to her dictatorial rivals.

Radio Free Asia is necessary, he said. 

“China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, among others, will dominate conversations throughout most of the world,” he said. “Totalitarianism, at a time when it is already relentlessly attacking us, will be the only one speaking.”

In his DOGE-inspired executive order signed Friday, Trump ordered the federal government to close down the U.S. Global Agency for Global Media and six other agencies to their statutory minimum existence, including the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and the Minority Business Development Agency.

Elon Musk, however, has not specifically criticized RFA, while he knocks VOA and Radio Free Europe.

Yes, shut them down. 

1. Europe is free now (not counting stifling bureaucracy). Hello??

2. Nobody listens to them anymore. 

3. It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.

As an independent, non-profit USGAM grantee, RFA had no choice but to shutter its broadcast operations. The 250-staff-strong outlet that produces content in Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, and other languages is the brainchild of the late North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, who was supported by Georgia Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich. 

Radio Free Asia grew to a $50 million annual budget from its 1994 launch. 

Chang has long been in Trump’s close circle of foreign policy advisors. In his Feb. 22 speech to supporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump gave a shout-out to Chang, a CPAC board member.

The president was discussing the falling ratings and false reporting at CNN and MSNBC when he saw his friend, a Cornell-educated undergraduate and lawyer.

“They shouldn't be allowed to lie every night,” Trump said. “They are really a vehicle of the Democrat Party—they should be paying--is that Gordon? Yes, is that Gordon? The great Gordon Chang. Is that Gordon? Stand up, Gordon. Wow! We have everybody here today. Thank you very much. How am I doing on China? Am I doing good?”

In that moment, Chang told the president he was doing a good job.

Hudson Institute senior fellow: Capitol Hill relies on RFA for China news, insights

Michael Sobolik, a senior foreign affairs fellow at the Hudson Institute, told RedState when he was a staffer for Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz from 2014 through 2019, he learned to rely on Radio Free Asia.

“I would read a lot of RFA’s reporting out of China, particularly when it related to human rights issues in Tibet and Xinjiang with the Tibetans and the Uyghurs,” he said. 

“When I left the Senate in 2019, I would keep tabs on what RFA was reporting, particularly during the pandemic,” he said. “In those early days, I recall they had some reporting about crematoriums inside of China whose activity was surpassing the official death toll that the PRC was reporting.”

Sobolik said RFA is always interesting because its reporters get news from inside Red China that the outlet can then share with the rest of the mainland.

“They have some on-the-ground sources that are, in some cases, a little more sensitive and a little more delicately developed over time, so they will find things that other people won't,” he said. 

“The obvious beneficiary is the Chinese people, and RFAs Mandarin service is a huge benefit for the United States because we can basically be that free press inside of China that the CCP tries to suppress,” he said.

“We benefit too because for those inside of China that are brave enough to very quietly and secretly speak with RFA reporters,” the Hudson Institute senior fellow said. 

“We get the benefit of that on-the-ground information, which sometimes puts us a little bit ahead of the curve and empowers policymakers to make better decisions.”

VOA, Radio Free Europe poisoned the well

Working against RFA is that it is lumped in with other federal broadcasters that have long been hostile to Trump and his supporters.

In his April 15, 2020, press conference, Trump criticized VOA coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as Senate Republicans, for delaying more than 100 of his nominees, including his choice to lead VOA.

“We have way over 100 people that we very badly need in this administration that should have been approved a long time ago, and one of them is the head of Voice of America,” he said. “If you look at what they’re doing and what they’re saying about our country, it’s a disgrace — the people that are running that.”

For most of Trump’s first term, VOA was run by two holdovers from President Barack Obama’s administration.

More recently, Steve Herman, the VOA White House correspondent, was put on extended leave after he X-posted an anti-Trump quote from Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of the leftwing advocacy group Democracy Forward, blasting cuts to USAID.

Before that X-post, on Jan. 21, Herman asked Trump a challenging question about his J6 pardons. 

Similarly, during the Jan. 11, 2021, town meeting when then-Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo was hosted for an onstage conversation with VOA Director Richard R. Reilly, VOA staffers hooted at Pompeo and VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara broke protocol to holler questions to the secretary.

Grateful to celebrate the holidays with one last party under this administration. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! pic.twitter.com/GGKfpqLvBQ

— Patsy Widakuswara (@pwidakuswara) December 24, 2024

The stunt got Widakuswara reassigned to the VOA’s Indonesian-language section until President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his team took over the government.

That was after the Trump administration tolerated Widakuswara's relentless sniping — as if VOA was not an arm of the U.S. government but just another leftwing media outlet.

That would be me. It’s a false claim and I’m giving the president an opportunity to reject it, which he didn’t.https://t.co/iN88Dp7hxY

— Patsy Widakuswara (@pwidakuswara) August 14, 2020

Despite its Cold War heroics, Radio Free Europe will permanently be flagged in Trump World as one of the first places to post about the Russian Collusion Hoax.

The outlet posted: “Report: U.S. Intelligence Officials Examining Trump Adviser's Russia Ties” on Sept. 24, 2016, an amplification of a piece by Michael Isikoff. Isikoff co-wrote one of the great tomes pimping the hoax “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump” with David Corn.

Radio Free Europe also posted on the day of Trump’s first inauguration: “Report: Probe Launched Into Possible Links Between Russia, Trump Associates,” based on an article in The New York Times.

Chang: If RFA is shuttered, only China's voice will be heard 

Chang said he was aware of the controversies surrounding the political loyalties of staffers and journalists at government-funded outlets, such as the Voice of America. Still, he was not concerned about that problem regarding RFA.

“What matters is that now the only voices that many in the world will hear will be those of China and others that hate America,” the Long Branch, New Jersey, native said.

Sobolik said Radio Free Asia, which is a separate entity from the other outlets with which it is lumped, did not play domestic politics, let alone take on Trump and his supporters. 

“They played it straight,” he said. 

“RFA has been nonpartisan. They've been focused on their mission, which is all you can ask for an organization like that,” he said. 

“Going after RFA in the process of targeting VOA, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” he said. 

“The collateral damage in the context of our security issues with the CCP is a huge problem.”

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