by WorldTribune Staff, July 10, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
How many know the extent to which China’s military, economic, and social institutions have aleady infiltrated the United States?
The Chinese Communist Party’s tentacles reach from the border, to the classrooms, to the White House, begging the question, does China already own the USA?
The scale and metrics of documented Chinese soft power in the United States is as overwhelming as it is indirect.
“Too many American leaders are soft on China, partly because toeing the Communist Party line can be lucrative. Between 2019 and 2023, China spent more than $330 million on lobbyists — up from $60 million between 2015 and 2018,” Rick Berman, president of RBB Strategies, wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Times.
According to one national security expert, “China’s lobbying roster reads like a ‘who’s who’ of Washington insiders.”
The Biden administration has ties to the CCP forged with Chinese money that go well beyond Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
“In 2018, the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement was established at the University of Pennsylvania. In the three-year period around that time, the school collected more than $61 million in gifts and contracts from China,” Berman noted. “Antony Blinken, now our secretary of state, managed the Biden Center and oversaw the foreign Chinese donations. After Biden took office, the Chinese money kept flowing. Between mid-2021 and mid-2023, tens of millions of dollars from China benefited the Biden Center.”
Related: UPenn got $54.6 million in anonymous Chinese donations after establishing Biden Center, January 10, 2023
Well-funded Chinese nationals have quickly become the fastest growing demographic crossing Joe Biden’s open border — a staggering 5,200 percent increase over two years. Between last October and April this year, U.S. Border Patrol has encountered over 27,000 Chinese nationals.
China has also been buying up U.S. farmland with an emphasis on grabbing land near U.S. military bases.
The communists “already own about 384,000 acres of U.S. soil, a 30% increase since 2019. Or maybe China needs local managers for its portfolio of real estate assets near U.S. military bases,” Berman wrote. “In 2021, the China-based Fufeng Group purchased 370 acres of dirt 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. Last year, a Chinese company bought land near America’s largest National Guard training center in Michigan to build an electric vehicle battery plant.”
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also has developed close ties to school districts near 20 U.S. military bases.
“Three of the nation’s top science and technology high schools — Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia, Simpson County Public Schools in Kentucky, and North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics — have ties to Chinese government-affiliated programs,” Berman noted.
After years of negative publicity, U.S. colleges and universities have pulled out of China-funded Confucius Institutes that support the CCP playbook.
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“But these organizations are subtly rebranding,” Berman noted. “According to a 2023 report, schools are helping the party peddle propaganda through what are known as ‘Confucius Classrooms,’ selling the same communism under a different name.”
The U.S. Defense Department has reported that China has 46 military firms and subsidiaries operating within U.S. borders disguised as civilian entities.
“The Chinese Communist Party’s ‘military-civil fusion’ program requires Chinese companies to share all technologies with the Chinese army. Huawei Technologies secretly funds cutting-edge research at U.S. colleges and universities, gaining access to new data on biomedical diagnostics and lasers. And the Chinese army controls Huawei,” Berman noted.
Berman continued: “China also exerts its influence across various media platforms. Through the China-linked company EDI Media, Chinese propaganda is broadcast on TV and radio channels in the U.S., reaching more than 14 million people in Southern California alone through a single radio network. The China Global Television Network reaches tens of millions of Americans, while news sources like Time and USA Today struggle to turn down advertising dollars from mouthpieces for the Chinese Communist Party.”
Carrying out the CCP’s “cognitive warfare,” nearly 97% of Hamas-related videos shared on Chinese-owned TikTok are supportive of the terrorist group.
Chinese pharmaceutical companies supply 97% of U.S. antibiotics. About 80% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients used to make drugs in the U.S. come from China or countries that rely on Chinese production.
It has been left to mostly independent media to deliver the wake-up call on China’s influence operations in the U.S.