- Given the emergency, Washington should immediately close down all of China’s bases of operation in the U.S., including its four remaining consulates — Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco — and substantially reducing the staff of the embassy. The embassy, in reality, needs only the ambassador, immediate family, and personal staff, not the hundreds currently assigned there.
- China’s New York consulate is also an espionage hub. James Olson, a former CIA counterintelligence chief, “conservatively” estimated that China, in the words of the New York Post, “has more than 100 intelligence officers operating in the city at any given time.” New York City, he said, is “under assault like never before.”
- Will Beijing merely transfer spies to Chinese banks and businesses operating in the U.S.? Probably, but that will take time and, in any event, Washington can order the closure of non-diplomatic outposts as well.
- Others will say American businesses in China need consular support. Of course they do. My reply is that it is in America’s interest to get its companies out of that country, for moral as well as other reasons. The loss of consular support will be one more reason for them to pack their bags in a hurry.
China’s influence, intelligence and infiltration attempts are overwhelming America. China has hundreds — perhaps thousands — of agents in the U.S. identifying, grooming, supporting, influencing, compromising, and corrupting Americans in politics and other fields of importance to it. Pictured: China’s consulate in Houston on July 22, 2020, the day before the U.S. government closed it down for being a “hub of spying and intellectual property theft,” in the words of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (Photo by Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images) |
Revelations this month about U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, highlight Beijing’s complete penetration of American society.
China’s influence, intelligence and infiltration attempts are overwhelming America. Given the emergency, Washington should immediately close down all of China’s bases of operation in the U.S., including its four remaining consulates.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the news about Swalwell is that Fang Fang, a suspected Chinese Ministry of State Security agent also known as “Christine,” first contacted him not while he was sitting on the House Intelligence Committee but when he was a councilmember in Dublin City, California.
Fang followed and promoted his career as he was elected to the House of Representatives and assigned to a committee of great interest to China.
China has hundreds — perhaps thousands — of agents in the U.S. identifying, grooming, supporting, influencing, compromising, and corrupting Americans in politics and other fields of importance to it.
To identify and work with all the Swalwells, China’s collectors may even number in the hundreds of thousands. Darrell Issa, the Republican returning to Congress from California, told Fox News on December 11 that there are “hundreds of thousands of people that act like spies that are coordinated by China.”
China has a “thousand grains of sand” approach of interviewing students, tourists, and businessmen and women returning to China, collecting seemingly inconsequential bits of information. Beijing, however, is able to collate collected material, using its growing artificial intelligence and other capabilities.
Fang appears to be more than just a casual collector of information. She may have even “honey-trapped” Swalwell, who has yet to deny allegations of a sexual relationship with her. Fang came to America sometime around 2011 to study at Cal State University East Bay, where she ran a political group, a local chapter of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs organization. At the moment, China has approximately 370,000 students in American colleges and universities. The number of Chinese students has tripled in a decade.
Each student is a potential agent because all are under a legal compulsion to commit espionage against the United States. Articles 7 and 14 of China’s National Intelligence Law of 2017 requires every Chinese national to spy if demanded. Moreover, no Chinese citizen can resist a demand to spy — or to commit any other act — in the Communist Party’s top-down system.
China, not surprisingly, is systematically employing its nationals for gathering intelligence and using diplomatic facilities to handle them. Fang, for instance, was in contact with a diplomat suspected to be a Ministry of State Security agent, based in the San Francisco consulate.
That consulate even harbored a fugitive wanted by the FBI. Tang Juan finally surrendered to U.S. authorities on July 24 after fleeing to the safety of the compound a month before. She is suspected of concealing links to the Chinese military while working as a biology researcher at the University of California Davis…