Republicans Demand Hold on Biden Commerce Pick Over Huawei Concerns
Raimondo won’t commit to keeping Chinese tech giant on U.S. Entity List
Leading House Republicans are calling for a hold on the Biden administration’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department, citing her refusal to commit to keeping Chinese telecom giant Huawei on the U.S. Entity List as a result of its global spy operations.
Gina Raimondo, Rhode Island’s Democratic governor and President Joe Biden's commerce nominee, drew scrutiny earlier this month when she declined during her confirmation hearing to answer questions about how the administration will approach Huawei, the top Chinese telecom company that is suspected of helping the Communist Party spy on users across the world. Huawei was put on the Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2019, restricting its access to U.S. technology that could be used to fuel Beijing’s spy operations.
"The fact that the Biden administration has still refused to commit to keeping Huawei on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List is incredibly alarming and dangerous," a group of 21 lawmakers led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas) said in a Tuesday joint statement that called for a hold on Raimondo's Wednesday confirmation vote. "There have been repeated, bipartisan calls to keep Huawei on the Entity List in the past, with members on both sides of the aisle referring to the company as a national security threat."
White House press secretary Jen Psaki also declined on two separate occasions last week to say whether Huawei will remain on the Entity List, heightening concerns the Biden administration could drop the designation in a bid to appease China.
Three Republican senators—Marco Rubio (Fla.), Tom Cotton (Ark.), and Ben Sasse (Neb.)—demanded in a letter last week that Raimondo clarify her views on Huawei, hinting that they could put the nomination on hold if answers are not provided by the administration. Senate rules allow all members to place a hold on a vote for any reason. Senate Democrats, however, do not need any Republican votes to confirm Raimondo if her nomination comes to the floor.
The U.S. crackdown on Huawei garnered bipartisan support during the Trump administration, but it is unclear if Democrats will support a hold on a Biden nominee. If Huawei is removed from the Entity List, it will once again be able to tap into sensitive U.S. technology, which remains a priority for the Communist government.
The representatives calling for a hold on the nomination—including Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.), Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), and Steve Chabot (R., Ohio), among others—described the Huawei designation as a "threshold issue" for how Raimondo and the Biden Commerce Department will approach national security issues stemming from China’s public and private surveillance on citizens across the world. Huawei was identified by the U.S. Defense Department as having deep ties to China’s military. The company also has been accused of helping Beijing perpetuate crimes against its minority populations through surveillance and other tracking methods. Technology experts have also warned that Huawei products grant the Chinese government a so-called back door into any users’ devices.
"We urge those senators who have a history of calling for Huawei to remain on the Entity List to stick to their principles and place a hold on Ms. Raimondo’s confirmation until the Biden administration clarifies their intentions for Huawei and on export control policies for a country that is carrying out genocide and threatening our national security," the lawmakers said in a joint statement.
The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, a massive defense spending bill that was passed with bipartisan backing, included a section meant to ensure Huawei is not removed from the Entity List until the executive branch deems it does not pose a national security threat.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) has also expressed a willingness to place a hold on Raimondo’s nomination, telling the Washington Free Beacon through a spokesman that the senator was "deeply concerned by commerce secretary nominee Raimondo’s comments" and "all options remain on the table."
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Schweizer: ‘It’s Going to Be Business as Usual’ for Hunter’s Dealings
Video:
20 Jan 2021185
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On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer said he reads President Biden’s statements about his son Hunter’s deals as a declaration that “it’s going to be business as usual in the Biden administration as far as these deals are concerned.”
Schweizer said, “Joe Biden has said there are going to be no sketchy overseas deals during his second term. Here’s the problem: He does not believe that the early deals that Hunter was involved in, the China deal, Burisma, he’s never described those as sketchy. So, I read that as saying, it’s going to be business as usual in the Biden administration as far as these deals are concerned.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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Chris Hedges: How Republicans, Democrats, and the Media Have Weakened US Democracy
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Biden’s Asia Policy Czar Helped Found Group ‘Heavily Influenced by the CCP’
China hawk: Kurt Campbell's U.S.-China Strong Foundation 'tantamount to a front group'
Joe Biden's incoming Asia policy czar was a top leader at a nonprofit group that was bankrolled by the head of a Chinese propaganda front group and partnered with a Chinese foreign mission.
Kurt Campbell, a former Obama State Department official and businessman, was until August 2020 listed as board vice chairman of the U.S.-China Strong Foundation, ostensibly a nonprofit group that promotes student language exchanges with Beijing but whose leaders included prominent members of the Chinese government’s overseas propaganda fronts, according to State Department and Department of Justice records.
Campbell is slated to serve as the chief coordinator for President Joe Biden’s Asia policy on the National Security Council, but his leadership role with the foundation is raising concerns with China hawks in Washington. The foundation has promoted the Chinese army and China's Belt and Road Initiative—deemed a national security threat by U.S. officials. It has also partnered with the Confucius Institute U.S. Center, an educational nonprofit organization that the State Department designated as a foreign mission last summer, citing its promotion of Beijing's propaganda efforts to academics across the world.
In August 2017, the U.S.-China Strong Foundation appeared to celebrate the founding of the People’s Liberation Army on its Twitter account, writing, "Today is the 90th anniversary of the founding of China's PLA!" and urging followers to read about a commemorating address by President Xi. The group also posted multiple favorable Twitter messages about China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure program that U.S. officials have decried as a national security risk.
"The indicators suggest that the U.S.-China Strong Foundation could be a [Chinese Communist Party] front group, or so heavily influenced by the CCP as to be tantamount to a front group," said Anders Corr, an intelligence analyst and publisher of the Journal of Political Risk.
The U.S.-China Strong Foundation’s website appears to have vanished from the internet in August 2020, and its phone number and email address are no longer in service. An archived version of the website, however, listed Campbell as vice chairman and a member of the corporate advisory board as recently as Aug. 15, 2020. He is also listed as vice chairman in the group’s most recent federal financial disclosure, filed in 2019.
The foundation is bankrolled by Florence Fang, a Chinese-American philanthropist who sits on the group’s board and corporate leadership council. Fang is listed as the honorary president of the San Francisco chapter of the National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification, which promotes unified Chinese control over Taiwan. According to the State Department, the association is controlled by the United Front Work Department, the Chinese government’s primary overseas propaganda agency.
Fang, who also goes by the name Fang Li Bangqin, is regularly quoted in state-run media outlets and pictured meeting with Chinese government leaders, including President Xi Jinping. In 2017, Fang met with then-vice premier Liu Yandong, who said their friendship began when Liu served as head of the United Front Work Department in the early 2000s.
Hong Kong billionaire Ronnie Chan is also listed as a member of the U.S.-China Strong Foundation’s leadership council. Chan is a former Hong Kong government official and a governor of the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a registered foreign agent of the Chinese government, the Washington Free Beacon reported last July.
Other U.S.-China Strong Foundation board members include Pin Ni, the head of Chinese conglomerate Wanxiang's U.S. subsidiary, and Cindy Mi, the head of a Chinese-American educational company that reportedly fired teachers for teaching about the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The U.S.-China Strong Foundation was founded in 2013 and was previously known as the "100,000 Strong Foundation." The group was a privately funded spinoff of an Obama administration joint initiative with the Chinese government in 2010 to encourage 100,000 American students to travel to China to learn Mandarin through foreign-language exchanges.
The initiative was spearheaded by Campbell, who served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs at the time. Then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton credited Campbell for advancing the project in a Jan. 24, 2013, speech and praised him for helping to "deepen and strengthen our relationship with China and others in the region."
Campbell left his government post just a couple of weeks later and immediately helped launch the U.S.-China Strong Foundation as an independent nonprofit with more than $1 million in seed funding from Florence Fang and the Ford Foundation, according to a Politico column he wrote at the time.
Although the foundation initially seemed aimed at supporting American language exchange programs in China, its work has also focused on promoting Chinese cultural centers in the United States and even pro-Beijing policies.
The foundation has partnered with the Confucius Institute U.S. Center, an umbrella group of Chinese-language educational centers partially funded by the Chinese government. The U.S. State Department has said the institutes actively seek to influence students and academics as part of "Beijing’s multifaceted propaganda efforts" and designated the group as a foreign mission in August.
In 2018, the U.S.-China Strong Foundation cohosted a "panel discussion" with the Confucius Institute U.S. Center at the National Press Club titled, "U.S.-China Educational Exchanges: 40 Years of Engagement in Higher Education." The event came as federal agencies were starting to crack down on Confucius Institutes on American campuses and seemed timed to defend the program against public criticism.
"The kinds of groups that Campbell associates with typically promote ‘engagement,' ‘cooperation,' and ‘understanding' between the U.S. and China," said Corr. "The words sound great, but the CCP is using these words as cover for infiltration operations."
Campbell is not the first Biden-administration official whose China-related work has drawn scrutiny. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s consulting firm, WestExec, helped American universities raise money from China while sidestepping Pentagon grant restrictions, the Free Beacon reported in December. And Biden’s nominee for a top Pentagon post, Colin Kahl, works at a research institute that runs an outpost at Peking University, the Free Beacon reported in January.
Obama’s Man in China Now Beijing’s Man in Washington
Former ambassador Baucus appears regularly on Chinese propaganda outlets
As the novel coronavirus wreaks havoc across the world, the Obama administration's ambassador to China has found a second lease on life as a pro-China talking head on regime propaganda outlets.
Former ambassador Max Baucus has given at least four different interviews to Chinese propaganda outlets in the last two weeks, repeatedly comparing the U.S. rhetoric about China to both the McCarthy era and Nazi Germany.
"Joe McCarthy [and] Adolf Hitler … rallied people up, making people believe things that were really not true," Baucus said during a May 12 interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), a regime mouthpiece. "The White House and some in Congress are making statements against China that are so over the top and so hypercritical, they are based not on the fact, or if they are based on fact, sheer demagoguery, and that's what McCarthy did in the 1950s."
Since his retirement in 2017, Baucus has been a reliable critic of the Trump administration's increasingly confrontational China policy—chiefly the decision to wage a trade war with Beijing. He once warned that the White House's decision to impose additional tariffs was a "slap on the face" to China. But Baucus's recent comments in the pandemic era have been more sympathetic to China—and critical of the United States—than ever before.
His post-retirement public statements praising China have coincided with his burgeoning overseas investments. In 2017, he founded the Baucus Group, a consulting firm that advises both American and Chinese businesses, according to his U.S. Chamber of Commerce biography. He also sits on the board of directors for Ingram Micro, a U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, as well as the board of advisers for Alibaba Group, one of China's largest tech companies.
Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, said that it was "inappropriate" for a former ambassador to speak ill about his own government on a foreign propaganda outlet.
"It's like going to China and … talking about your own government that way in meetings. I think that would be pretty inappropriate," Lohman said. "So it would be inappropriate speaking on state media."
Baucus's public statements have received considerable attention from Beijing's propaganda outlets. When the former ambassador compared President Donald Trump's criticism of China to rhetoric used by Adolf Hitler and Joe McCarthy during a May 6 interview with CNN, Chinese propaganda outlets quickly amplified Baucus's comments about how Trump was "a little bit like Hitler in the '30s" and that Americans were worried about "getting their heads chopped off" if they voice their disagreement with the U.S. government's China policy. Xinhua News Agency, a state-owned outlet, extensively cited Baucus's attacks in a May 8 article, using it as evidence that the Trump administration is attempting to "deflect criticisms about their blunders by blaming China." The article was syndicated in party-controlled mouthpieces such as Global Times and People's Daily, according to the Investigative Research Center.
Baucus then appeared on CGTN on May 12 to double down on his Hitler and McCarthy comparison, blaming the Trump administration for flaming "sheer demagoguery."
"[The current U.S. rhetoric] is somewhat reminiscent, nowhere close to that yet, somewhat reminiscent of the McCarthy era and somewhat reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s," he told CGTN.
The former ambassador also gave an exclusive interview to Global Times on May 14, where he said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's claim that the virus may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory "makes no sense" and accused both Democrats and Republicans of being tough on China to score political points in an election year.
Baucus again appeared on CGTN on May 15, where he claimed that America is "sliding toward a form of McCarthyism" because the Trump administration is pressuring policymakers to be tough on China. The former ambassador did another CGTN media hit on May 16, this time appearing alongside his wife Melodee Hanes, who blamed the presidential election for making dialogue "difficult."
"There are a lot of pretty smart people in the United States who are not speaking up. People in office, moderates, especially moderates on the Republican side," Baucus said on May 15. "They are afraid to speak up, they are intimidated, intimidated by President Trump. And it's kind of sliding toward a form of McCarthyism—how it is politically incorrect to speak the truth, speak the truth to power."
When the Washington Free Beacon called the phone number listed for Baucus's home address, no one answered. A lawyer representing Baucus Group, the ambassador's consulting firm, also did not respond to a request for comment.
While Baucus rarely enjoyed this much attention from Chinese state media outlets after his retirement, this is not the first time he has spoken to Chinese media outlets in recent years. Baucus also gave an exclusive interview to People's Daily in March 2018, criticizing U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods as the "wrong policy" and "too confrontational." He has also spoken at events backed by the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, a registered foreign agent of the Chinese government according to a 2018 congressional report.
Lohman, the Heritage Foundation expert, said that while Baucus has the right to appear on any domestic and foreign outlets, he should not have addressed a propaganda outlet with the same degree of candidness that he did with CNN.
"I think he must have gotten wrapped up in the media performances because when you shift from CNN to Global Times or CGTN, you've gone to an entirely new level," he said. "And there I think you just have to express yourself differently. It's not an appropriate place to air political differences."
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