Greedy America's Money Cult: The Long List of Beijing Ass-Kissers

Don’t be mad at the NBA. Hundreds of U.S. companies have sold out to Chinese tyrants.

By Sally Jenkins

Get off the NBA’s back, all you people who want sports to be the children’s literature of your lost youth.

Somehow, because the Houston Rockets capitulated to their Chinese business partners, the league is now supposed to be a gutless violator of human rights?

You better start with General Electric.
Or KFC. 

Or how about Walmart?
It’s more than a little ludicrous for everyone from Ted Cruz to Beto O’Rourke to suddenly hand the NBA and the Rockets the tab for American toadying to authoritarians in Beijing. 

If they want to draw that line in the sand, they can draw it with any of their favorite dozen American corporations — only that wouldn’t be so politically convenient, would it?
It’s easier to hurl righteous outrage and umbrage at a large target such as Rockets star James Harden, who on Monday apologized to China for "hurt feelings" at the behest of his bosses. 

“We love China,” he said. 

It’s far more pat and satisfying to go all-in at Rockets management for making General Manager Daryl Morey apologize for his tweet over the weekend in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. 

“I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China,” he said in a statement.
And, boy, isn’t it an easy viral sound clip to accuse the entire NBA of “blatant prioritization of profits over human rights,” as O’Rourke did, and call it an embarrassment, simply because the league called the incident “regrettable” and tried to patch things up with Chinese dictators?
You want to be angry at the NBA for cowering in the face of China’s authoritarian regime? 

You want to accuse NBA Commissioner Adam Silver of supporting a murderous dictatorship simply to further business interests in China? 

Fine. 

Good for you.
But understand the NBA is only imitating that smooth move patented by dozens of other fine, flag-waving American corporations in their dealings with China. 

A half-dozen American corporate sponsors set the template a decade ago at the Beijing Olympics, when they colluded in the silencing of U.S. athletes and were far more directly complicit in a host of human rights violations.
Remember what champs Visa and General Electric were when the Chinese refused to grant entry to American athlete Joey Cheek because he had been too audible of an activist against abuses in Darfur? 

And how about the courageous support Coca-Cola gave to Chinese dissidents when Beijing authorities cracked down on them in advance of those Games?
Never forget the standup position Johnson & Johnson took when Steven Spielberg quit as artistic director of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies because Beijing not only failed to honor a single one of the reform promises it had made in procuring the right to host the Games but actually went on a terroristic bender against its own citizens, destroying whole neighborhoods, enlisting slave labor and throwing anyone who didn’t like it into a camp.
Ford. 

GM. 

Starbucks. 

Papa John’s. 

All of them do massive business with China. 

Abercrombie & Fitch. 

Boeing. 

Procter & Gamble. 

Start with them. 

All of them have long known what the conditions and equations are for doing business in the China market.
Australian journalist Geremie Barmé, who has covered China for many years, sums it up in a phrase: “contentious friendship.”
“To be a "friend" of China, the foreigner is often expected to stomach unpalatable situations, and keep silent in the face of egregious behavior,” he has written. 

“A "friend" of China might enjoy the privilege of offering the occasional word of caution in private; in the public arena he or she is expected to have the good sense and courtesy to be ‘objective.’ That is to toe the line, whatever that happens to be. The concept of ‘friendship’ thus degenerates into little more than an effective tool for emotional blackmail and enforced complicity.”
Throughout the Beijing Olympics, American companies remained silent. 

So did IOC President Jacques Rogge. 

When Rogge finally did open his mouth to protest someone’s conduct, it wasn’t anyone in China’s leaderships. 

The man he decided to pick was Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, for his bad manners in celebrating too boldly. 

The outrage at the NBA is more than a little remindful of that.
Yes, the NBA has made a mutually beneficial commercial accommodation with China. 

There are 800 million Chinese viewers of the league, according to Time, and there is a 30-year media partnership. 

You have a problem with that or consider it gutless? 

Then you have a problem with literally hundreds of American companies.

Chinese spy arrested in Belgium and extradited to US on charges of stealing aviation secrets

By Katie Benner

Yanjun Xu, Chinese intelligence official, was charged with espionage and extradited from Belgium to the United States, law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — A Chinese intelligence official was arrested in Belgium and extradited to the United States to face espionage charges, Justice Department officials said on Wednesday, a major escalation of the Trump administration’s effort to crack down on Chinese spying.
The extradition on Tuesday of the officer, Yanjun Xu, a deputy division director in China’s main spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, is the first time that a Chinese intelligence official has been brought to the United States to be prosecuted and tried in open court. 

Law enforcement officials said that Xu tried to steal trade secrets from companies including GE Aviation outside Cincinnati, in Evendale, Ohio, one of the world’s top jet engine suppliers for commercial and military aircraft.
A 16-page indictment details what appears to be a dramatic international sting operation to lure Xu to what he believed was a meeting in Belgium to obtain proprietary information about jet fan blade designs from a GE Aviation employee, only to be met by Belgian authorities and put on a plane to the United States.
China has for years used spycraft and cyberattacks to steal American corporate, academic and military information to bolster its growing economic power and political influence. 

But apprehending an accused Chinese spy — all others charged by the United States government are still at large — is an extraordinary development and a sign of the Trump administration’s continued crackdown on the Chinese theft of trade secrets.
The administration also outlined on Wednesday new restrictions on foreign investment aimed at keeping China from gaining access to American companies.
The arrest of Xu “shows that federal law enforcement authorities can not only detect and disrupt such espionage, but can also catch its perpetrators,” Benjamin C. Glassman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, said in a statement.
The coming trial, in federal court in Cincinnati, could further expose China’s methods for stealing trade secrets and embarrass officials in Beijing — part of what current and former administration officials said was a long-term strategy to make stealing secrets costly and shameful for China. 

Federal prosecutors will have to present additional evidence to prove their case, which could include intercepted communications between government officials or even testimony from cooperating witnesses.
“If you can make it less expensive in terms of money and reputation to instead invest in R&D, the country’s behavior can and will change,” said John Carlin, the former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, referring to research and development.

The indictment outlines China’s courting of the GE Aviation employee starting in March 2017. 

The company, a subsidiary of General Electric, was a ripe target because it builds airplane and helicopter engines for the Pentagon.
An individual identified as an unindicted co-conspirator invited the GE Aviation employee on an all-expense trip to China to meet with scientists at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. 

Once there, the employee was introduced to Xu, who continued to be in touch by email after the trip.
In January, Xu invited the employee back to China and told him that he should bring information about GE Aviation’s “system specification, design process.” 

Over the next two months, Xu asked the employee for more details, including what the indictment said was proprietary information about fan blade design.
Xu and the GE Aviation employee discussed increasingly specific pieces of data that Xu wanted, and the employee even sent Xu a file directory of documents on the employee’s company-issued laptop.
The two never met again in China, but set up a meeting in Belgium for the employee to pass more secrets to Xu. 

In preparation for the employee’s trip to Europe, Xu asked the employee if he would use an external thumb drive to transfer information from the employee’s work computer when they met in person.
It is unclear from the indictment if the employee at this point was cooperating with the F.B.I. as part of the sting operation, and it is unclear if the employee ever traveled to Belgium. 

On Wednesday, the Justice Department praised GE Aviation for its cooperation in the investigation and internal controls that the department said “protected GE Aviation’s proprietary information.’’
Xu was arrested on April 1 in Belgium and remained in custody there until Tuesday. 

He is now being held in Cincinnati.
Employees of large American corporations traveling to countries like China are often targets for information theft because their devices can be hacked remotely and because they can speak too revealingly of their work while being wined and dined, said Joseph S. Campbell, the former head of the F.B.I.’s criminal investigative division who is now a director at Navigant Consulting.
“Employees who think they’re sharing unimportant information don’t realize that they’re adding to a broad matrix of knowledge,’’ Mr. Campbell said. 

“Even with unclassified information, China can put together a fuller picture of a company’s sensitive information.”
The government indictment against Xu leaves open the possibility that the government investigation is continuing. 

The document says that an unindicted co-conspirator referred to as CF brokered the meeting between Xu and the GE Aviation employee; it mentions that Xu was communicating with other Ministry of State Security agents about the spy operation.
The Justice Department is pursuing other thefts of trade secrets for prosecution, said John C. Demers, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. 

Together, he said, they show that China has a policy of developing its economy to the detriment of the United States.
“This case is not an isolated incident,” Mr. Demers said. 

“It is part of an overall economic policy of developing China at American expense. We cannot tolerate a nation’s stealing our firepower and the fruits of our brainpower.”
China has also been targeting General Electric’s turbine technology. 

The F.B.I. arrested in August a dual citizen of the United States and China who worked at General Electric, charging him with stealing the company’s technology for the purpose of helping Chinese companies.