by Curtis Ellis
New developments reveal the breadth and depth of the Chinese Communist Party’s war against America.
Last week, federal authorities charged a New York City police officer with being a paid agent of the CCP for the past six years. The indictment says handlers in the Chinese consulate had officer Baimadajie Angwang, a naturalized U.S. citizen, keeping tabs on Tibetans living in New York.
Angwang was being directed by the China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture, part of the CCP United Front Work Department responsible for “neutralizing sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority” of the CCP, according to federal prosecutors.
The United Front Work Department is the CCP’s official overseas propaganda tool, one of the party’s “Magic Weapons,” in the words of Chairman Mao. When the CCP seeks to “neutralize” opponents nothing is off the table, particularly when the neutralizer carries a gun.
Angwang was also a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve with a “secret”-level security clearance. Did those vetting Angwang not know his father is retired from the People’s Liberation Army and a member of the Chinese Communist Party, his mother is a retired government official and also a member of the CCP, and his brother serves as a reservist in the PLA, as prosecutors allege?
Perhaps the Justice Department – and the Army – should be devoting more resources to countering the CCP espionage threat and less to diversity training.
CCP’s influence operations in the U.S. are widespread. In 2018, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington think tank, held a panel discussion, “Chinese Influence Operations in the U.S.: Shedding Some Light on All the Heat,” arguing essentially there was nothing to worry about. The think tank failed to disclose that Wang Huiyao, one of its panelists scheduled to speak, was a member of the CCP’s United Front Work Department and the Party’s Central Committee.
The CCP typically buys influence by offering their targets sweetheart deals to make them favorably disposed to China. And they often use family members to reach their target.
When CCP-connected companies gave Hunter Biden a $100,000 line of credit he and his wife used for a luxury shopping spree and $1.5 billion to set up an investment fund, it had all the earmarks of a classic influence operation.
The CCP’s threatened blacklist of American technology firms also fits with its influence operations, particularly how it is considering withholding the blacklist until after the election.
“Many in China are hoping to reset relations with the U.S. should Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden defeat Mr. Trump,” the Wall Street Journal report. “Mr. Biden has laid out plans to increase engagement with China over regional issues such as Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. Mr. Biden would also likely engage China in dealing with climate change.”
Beijing is banking on tech firms eager to gain a piece of the China market to go all out for Joe Biden. The CCP ran that play with Hollywood, and it paid off for Beijing and for Biden. The office of then-Vice President Biden overruled a decision to grant asylum to a high-ranking CCP official in charge of criminal investigations whose value to the U.S. intelligence would be unprecedented.
The defector, Wang Lijun, was turned away after 30 hours inside the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu and given over to China’s Ministry of State Security. Antony Blinken, Biden’s national security adviser, killed Wang’s asylum appeal.
Blinken feared China would cancel the upcoming visit by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, whose visit was to be hosted by Biden, the Free Beacon reports. During that visit, Xi and Biden met with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of DreamWorks Animation and Democratic mega donor. On the final day of the visit, Dreamworks announced a $330 million joint venture with Chinese companies to develop and distribute animated films in China. Hollywood has been a reliable ally of Beijing – and Biden – ever since.
Blinken is now Biden’s foreign policy adviser.
Sometimes the CCP influence operations in the U.S. are even more brazen. Wu Ting, the wife of China’s consul general in Chicago, emailed Wisconsin State Senate President Roger Roth in March asking him to submit a resolution praising the CCP’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, helpfully attaching draft language for the resolution.
After trashing the outrageous request, Roth led the passage of a different resolution, stating “the Communist Party of China deliberately and intentionally misled the world on the Wuhan Coronavirus.”
In April Ms. Wu was at it again, emailing CCP propaganda to the district director of Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., including this gem: “We are firmly opposed to racial discrimination and xenophobia against the local Chinese community and stigmatization of China and the Chinese people over the virus.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pulled no punches in describing what the CCP is up to:
“The CCP thinks it can drown out American cries for accountability with shouts of racism. It wants to foment the kind of strife we’ve seen in Minneapolis, and Portland, and Kenosha,” Pompeo told the Wisconsin State Senate.
The CCP could be using more than words to foment racial strife. Retired CIA officer Sam Faddis lays out the evidence showing how the CCP could well be funneling money to riot organizers.
Donations to a Black Lives Matter affiliate known as the Black Futures Lab are being routed through an organization known as the Chinese Progressive Association.
The CPA was founded in 1972 and according to a Stanford University paper, “The CPA began as a Leftist, pro-People’s Republic of China organization, promoting awareness of mainland China’s revolutionary thought and workers’ rights, and dedicated to self-determination, community control, and ‘serving the people.'”
The CPA “worked with other pro-PRC groups within the U.S. and San Francisco Bay Area. … Support for the PRC was based on the inspiration the members drew from what they saw as a successful grassroots model that presented a viable alternative to Western capitalism,” the paper says.
CPA is especially active in San Francisco. Russell Lowe, Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office director who was outed as a Chinese spy is a close associate of CPA’s former Vice-Chair Eric Mar, Faddis reports.
The CPA has reliably toed the CCP propaganda line. In 2017 the CPA joined with other pro-Beijing Bay Area groups to create the End National Security Scapegoating (ENSS) coalition. This organization was created in reaction to what it calls “pervasive efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that target and prosecute Chinese-American individuals for espionage-related crimes. … Today’s wrongful espionage prosecutions against Asian Americans must also be viewed and challenged alongside the broader foundation of racism and discrimination that fuels such injustices.”
Echoes of Ms. Wu. Like the CCP, the CPA is using cries of racism not only to deflect responsibility for the China virus but also to push back against our government’s long-overdue crackdown on Beijing’s espionage within our country.
To be clear, as Faddis sums up, “there is every indication the CPA, the outfit funneling money to the people burning our cities, is a Chinese intelligence front organization, part of what is China’s well known worldwide ‘United Front‘ apparatus.”
When corporate media express “concern” over anti-Asian racism without telling readers the CCP uses precisely such “concerns” in its propaganda and influence operations, we see yet again how deeply those operations have penetrated all institutions in our society.
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Curtis Ellis is a political communications consultant and senior policy adviser with America First Policies.
Photo “Protesters” by Lorie Shaull. CC BY-SA 2.0.
