Chinese Peril

Freedom House calls for oversight on China's efforts to influence media abroad

By Cate Cadell

BEIJING -- U.S. democracy watchdog group Freedom House urged governments on Wednesday to impose penalties on Chinese officials and tighten broadcast regulations amid a “dramatic expansion” in Chinese efforts to influence media overseas.
“When Chinese diplomats and security agents overstep their bounds and attempt to interfere with media reporting in other countries, the host government should vigorously protest,” it said in a report, adding that such officials could also be expelled.
It also said the United States and other governments should support policies that require Chinese media to disclose spending on paid advertorials, ownership structures, and other economic ties to Chinese state actors.
In recent years, Chinese state media and private internet companies have invested heavily overseas, prompting concern from lawmakers and rights groups that Beijing could remotely curtail criticism and expand its sphere of influence.
“While some aspects of this effort are in line with traditional public diplomacy, many others are covert, coercive, and corrupt,” said Freedom House, which is mainly financed by the U.S. government.
China has previously denied the accusations and has in turn criticized foreign social media companies for curtailing the voices of people who are supportive of the Chinese government.
Twitter and Facebook said in August they had dismantled a network of accounts that were part of a Chinese state-backed coordinated effort to undermine the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Freedom House was among several U.S. NGOs sanctioned by China in December over what Beijing says are efforts to interfere in its internal affairs.
On Sunday the head of Human Rights Watch, another U.S. NGO hit by the sanctions, was barred from entering Hong Kong ahead of the release of its global report, which strongly criticized China.
China says the NGOs are inciting criminal activity by supporting pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong.
In 2016 Chinese dictator Xi Jinping urged state media to grow their overseas influence to “promote positive propaganda as the main theme” and “tell the China story well”.

Republic of China

President Tsai Ing-wen Calls on Beijing to Treat Taiwan as a Sovereign State

By Hsia Hsiao-hwa and Chung Kuang-cheng 

President Tsai Ing-wen talks during a graduation ceremony for the Investigation Bureau agents in New Taipei City, Taiwan, December 26 , 2019. 

President Tsai Ing-wen said on Wednesday that the democratic island would only deal with China on an equal footing, and would continue to insist on its freedom, democracy and sovereignty in the face of a growing threat from Beijing.
In her 2020 New Year's Address on Jan. 1, President Tsai called on China to recognize the existence of the Republic of China, founded after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and relocated to Taiwan after Chiang Kai-shek lost the civil war to Mao Zedong's communists in 1949.
She said China has used diplomatic offensives, military threats, interference and infiltration to try to force the island to compromise its sovereignty.
But President Tsai said Taiwan would never agree to becoming part of the communist People's Republic of China.

"Democracy and authoritarianism cannot coexist within the same country," President Tsai said.

"Hong Kong's people have shown us that 'one country, two systems' is absolutely not viable," she said, in a reference to the separate legal framework and maintenance of traditional freedoms promised to Hong Kong ahead of the 1997 handover, a distinction that has been gradually eroding in the face of political pressure from Beijing.
"China must face the reality of the Republic of China's existence, ... respect the commitment of the 23 million people of Taiwan to freedom and democracy, and handle cross-strait differences peacefully, on a basis of equality," she said.
"We must be aware that China is infiltrating all facets of Taiwanese society to sow division," President Tsai warned. 

"We must establish democratic defense mechanisms to prevent infiltration."

She said the Anti-Infiltration Law passed by Taiwan's Legislative Yuan on Tuesday was aimed at protecting its freedom and democracy, not hampering genuine economic and cultural exchange across the Taiwan Strait.
"Taiwan's democracy and freedom cannot be undermined," President Tsai said.

China stepping up 'United Front' work
The Anti-Infiltration Law was passed following repeated warnings from Taiwan's national security agencies that China is pouring in backdoor resources and stepping up "United Front" propaganda work to boost support for the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT), or nationalist party ahead of the Jan. 11 general election.
The new law forbids any organizations or individuals sponsored by China from providing political contributions, campaigning, lobbying, or disseminating fake news meant to interfere in elections.
Lawmakers in the U.S. and Australia have enacted similar legislation to prevent foreign interference and to monitor Chinese influence.
The bill, which passed by 67 votes to zero despite opposition criticism, was fast-tracked by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after the KMT nominated at-large candidates for the legislature with close ties to China's Communist Party, including retired Taiwan generals.
Professor Tung Li-wen of the Asia-Pacific Elite Interchange Association said President Tsai's tougher line on Beijing had come after Chinese dictator Xi Jinping's Jan. 2, 2019 speech insisting that Taiwan "unify" with China under "one country, two systems," and refusing to rule out the use of force to annex the country.
"I think President Tsai Ing-wen is very disappointed in Beijing and in Xi Jinping," Tung said.
"Back in the 2016 election, President Tsai was talking about preserving the status quo in cross-straits relations, and was hoping for dialogue with Beijing."
He said her hand had been forced by the uncompromising tone of Xi's Jan. 2 "Letter to our Taiwan Compatriots" speech.
"This made President Tsai Ing-wen feel that there was no way to back down, and that she had to state Taiwan's bottom line very clearly," Tung said.
"[Her speech] comes against this background."
President Tsai looks set to win a second term when the country goes to the polls on Jan. 11.

Media control
Prosecutors in December detained 10 people, including a former KMT staffer, on suspicion of falsifying documents to bring thousands of mainland Chinese to Taiwan, including some who were collecting intelligence.
Concerns have also been raised about Beijing's influence over Taiwanese media groups, many of which are owned by corporations with ties to China.
Support for the pro-China KMT, the party that fled to Taiwan after losing control of China in 1949 and still wants it to be part of a "unified" China some day, is at a new low ahead of next month's election.
The Global Views Research annual public opinion survey said the violent suppression of Hong Kong's anti-government protests had sparked growing fears for Taiwan's national security and democracy, although an internal power struggle in the party had contributed.
Currently, only 4.5 percent of Taiwanese support the idea of "unification" with China.
President Tsai has been a vocal supporter of Hong Kong protesters' aspirations for full democracy, and against the use of police violence and political prosecutions to target protesters, and told a recent presidential election debate that China is the biggest threat to Taiwan's way of life.
Taiwan was ruled as a Japanese colony in the 50 years prior to the end of World War II, but was handed back to the Republic of China under the KMT as part of Tokyo's post-war reparation deal.
It has never been controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, nor formed part of the People's Republic of China.
Taiwan began a transition to democracy following the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo in January 1988, starting with direct elections to the legislature in the early 1990s and culminating in the first direct election of a president, Lee Teng-hui, in 1996.

A Country Under the Influence

Australia’s China Challenge

With Beijing pushing as far as it can wherever it can in the era of Xi Jinping, Australia has become a global case study in Chinese influence.
By Damien Cave

Australia's Chinese fifth column: Beijing Bob and his gang

SYDNEY, Australia — In a gold-curtained meeting room in Sydney, the Chinese consul general appealed to a closed-door gathering of about 100 people, all of them Australian residents and citizens of Chinese ancestry.
He called on the group to help shape public opinion during a coming visit of China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, in part by reporting critics to the consulate. 

Rallies in support of China should be coordinated, he suggested, and large banners should be unfurled to block images of protests against Beijing.
“We are not troops, but this task is a bit like the nature of troops,” said the diplomat, Gu Xiaojie, according to a recording of the session in the consulate obtained by The New York Times and verified by a person who was in the room. 

“This is a war,” he added, “with lots of battles.”
The previously unreported meeting in March 2017 is an example of how the Chinese government directly — and secretly — engages in political activity in Australia, making the nation a laboratory for testing how far it can go to steer debate and influence policy inside a democratic trade partner.
It is a calculated campaign unlike any other Australia has faced — taking advantage of the nation’s openness, growing ethnic Chinese population and economic ties to China — and it has provoked an uncomfortable debate about how Australia should respond.
Many countries face the same challenge from China, an authoritarian power pushing its agenda inside and beyond its borders.
In Asia, China has been funneling funds to the campaigns of preferred presidential candidates in Malaysia and Sri Lanka. 

In the United States, there is concern about Beijing’s efforts to stifle dissent on college campuses. And in Europe, Chinese companies and organizations tied to the ruling Communist Party have held events for political leaders and donated millions of dollars to universities.
China once sought to spread Marxist revolution around the world, but its goal now is more subtle — winning support for a trade and foreign policy agenda intended to boost its geopolitical standing and maintain its monopoly on power at home.
The contours of its playbook are especially visible in Australia, where trade with China has fueled the world’s longest economic boom. 

Australian intelligence agencies have warned of Beijing’s efforts, and the issue is likely to be contentious for Australia’s conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, who won a surprise victory in elections Saturday.

Labor Party senator Sam Dastyari did China’s bidding at the behest of Chinese donors.

Chinese representatives routinely lobby Australian politicians behind closed doors without disclosing their activities, often by threatening economic punishment and persuading Australian business and academic leaders to deliver their message.
The Chinese and their supporters have also sought to suppress criticism and elevate its views in the Australian news media, by suing journalists and publishers for defamation, financing research institutes and using advertisers to put pressure on Chinese-language outlets.
Beijing has even promoted political candidates in Australia with these outlets as well as via the United Front Work Department, the party’s arm for dealing with overseas Chinese, and with campaign contributions made by proxies.
Last year, after a scandal involving donors with ties to Beijing forced a senator to resign, Parliament approved an overhaul of espionage laws making it illegal to influence Australian politics for a foreign government.
Australia’s new government — led by Mr. Morrison, who has been vague about his plans for foreign policy — must now decide what to do next at a time when the public is divided: Many Australians fear China but also favor good relations to maintain economic growth and regional stability.
“There is a lot to unravel with the China story here,” said Mark Harrison, a China scholar at the University of Tasmania.
The Communist Party, he said, is essentially trying to enforce the same bargain with Australia that it has with the Chinese people: a promise of prosperity in exchange for obedience and censorship.

The new master: Xi Jinping addressed the Australian Parliament in 2014.

Weaponized Economics
China’s economic bonds with Australia can be traced to the 19th century, when a gold rush drew Chinese immigrants to the continent. 

Now, China is an engine of economic growth for the country and its largest trading partner by far, accounting for 24 percent of Australian imports and exports.
With that reliance comes an implied threat: China can take its money elsewhere.
The problem, current and former Australian officials say, is the Chinese government rarely discloses its lobbying activities. 

Australian businesses linked to China often lean on politicians without public scrutiny, leading security agencies to warn about Beijing manipulating politics.
“In no country is there such a profound rift between business community and security,” said Linda Jakobson, founding director of China Matters, a nonprofit policy group based in Sydney.
China has exploited that rift — and even tried to use its economic leverage to punish Australia for adopting the new law requiring those working on behalf of a “foreign principal” to register their activities.
In June, Australian winemakers said they were facing problems with their exports to China, and a major deal to expand chilled beef exports into China — negotiated during Li’s visit — stalled. 

In January and February, China also delayed coal imports from Australia at some ports.
It hardly the first time Beijing blurred the lines between business and politics.

In 2009, the Australian government rejected a bid by a Chinese state-owned firm to purchase 18 percent of Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining giant, after officials argued privately that the sale would give China too much power to set prices.
Beijing’s response was an early version of what has since become common in the relationship: a campaign to pressure the Australian government via China’s business partners.
Chinese officials and investors “put the weights on the relevant Australian executives,” Kevin Rudd, the prime minister at the time, recalled in an interview. 

“The whole idea at that stage was to maximize business lobby pressure on the government.”

Chau Chak Wing, a billionaire property developer with Australian citizenship, is one of at least two wealthy political donors who have filed lawsuits against media companies in Australia for reporting on donations and links to the Chinese government.

Silencing Dissent
In May 2018, two children in Rockhampton, a rural capital of beef production, painted tiny Taiwanese flags on a statue of a bull during an event celebrating the town’s diversity. 

There were flags from many countries, but the local government painted over those from Taiwan to avoid offending Beijing, which says the self-governing island is part of China.
“What they want are pre-emptive concessions to Chinese interests,” said Peter Varghese, a former head of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Beijing tries both to suppress speech in Australia that undercuts its priorities — such as the diplomatic isolation of Taiwan — and to promote its own agenda.
One prominent example is the Australia-China Relations Institute, a research organization in Sydney led until recently by Bob Carr, a former foreign minister and outspoken defender of China’s positions. 

The institute was established with a gift from Huang Xiangmo, a Chinese real-estate developer who had donated generously to both of Australia’s main political parties.
Australia recently rejected his citizenship application and revoked his residency.
China has also had success shaping news coverage in Australia, especially in Chinese-language outlets.
Maree Ma, general manager of the company that owns Vision China Times, a newspaper in Sydney and Melbourne, said Chinese officials successfully pressured businesses in 2015 and 2016 to pull their ads because of its critical coverage.
And before Saturday’s election, on WeChat — the Chinese social media platform, which is also popular in Australia — accounts affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party mocked the conservative government, disparaging Australia as “a country whose head has been kicked hard by kangaroos.”
English-language outlets are not immune to the pressure. 

In 2017, Australia’s largest independent publishers delayed publication of a book examining Chinese influence in Australian institutions.
Because Australian law favors plaintiffs in defamation suits, such cases — including a large payout in February to Chau Chak Wing, a Chinese-born property tycoon and political donor — have had a chilling effect on reporting and public protesting that might anger Beijing or its allies.
At the Chinese consulate in 2017, organizers showed photos of pro-China activists in Australia roughing up protesters from the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China.
The audience applauded.

Running for Office
China’s playbook prioritizes one particular group: Australia’s growing ethnic Chinese population, a group of more than one million people, about half of whom are immigrants from mainland China.
The Chinese government treats Australian citizens of Chinese ancestry as if they’re still subject to its rule. 
Critics of Beijing are pressured.
In January, Yang Hengjun, an Australian writer and former Chinese official, was arrested on dubious charges of espionage while visiting China.
More often, Beijing tries to woo people like Yongbei Tang.
Tang moved to Australia 23 years ago with her husband, an electrical engineer, settling in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, where she started editing a newspaper called Chinese News Tasmania. 
Last year, she ran for the City Council.
“All the people in the community know me,” she said, when asked why.
“I’m a media person. Influential.”
Tang had also helped start a local chapter of the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China, which promulgates Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China.
The group was established by Huang, the donor whose residency was revoked, and it is an arm of the party’s overseas influence efforts.
That connection and others made Tang, an Australian citizen, a subject of intense debate during the campaign, which she lost.
Several local Chinese leaders published an open letter condemning her “hiding of titles of many organizations including her association with the Chinese Government.”
Cassy O’Connor, the leader of the local Greens Party, accused her of being part of an attempt by Beijing to dominate the Tasmanian tourism and property investment. 
“The Chinese government actually picks off smaller states like Tasmania, with smaller economies,” she said.
What Tang actually reveals is the Chinese party’s ability to recruit sympathizers around the world, many of whom gravitate to Beijing’s orbit less because of ideology than the potential for wealth and influence.
Even after her loss, she received favorable coverage on state television in China.

Chinese Peril

China's Spreading Influence in Eastern Europe Worries West
Associated Press
In this photo taken Friday, March 1, 2019, a woman walks by Chinese flag placed on a street in Belgrade, Serbia.

BELGRADE, SERBIA — Coal-powered plants, mobile networks, major bridges, roads and railways: Chinese investments have been booming throughout Central and Eastern Europe's cash-strapped developing countries, even as European Union officials scramble to counter Beijing's mounting economic and political influence on the continent.
EU member Croatia is hosting a summit Thursday between China and 16 regional countries -- the 8th so far -- that focuses on expanding business and other links between China and the region, which Beijing sees as a gateway into Europe.
The gathering in Dubrovnik of the so-called 16+1 initiative consists of Central and Eastern European countries that have endorsed China's ambitious global "Belt and Road'' investment project, which has triggered concerns among some key EU states about increased Chinese political and economic clout in the region.
China has already invested billions of dollars in various infrastructure projects in Central and Eastern Europe. 

Western leaders worry that further investment in the states that are EU members -- or those hoping to join -- could mean lower environmental and other standards than those in the rest of the bloc.
Thorny issues include the flouting of EU competition rules, potential over-borrowing by some of the states, the quality of constructions, and security concerns over high-speed 5G network technology supplied by Chinese companies. 

Critics also say that in return for allowing Chinese expansion into the region, Beijing should give better reciprocal access for European companies to Chinese markets.
Top Chinese officials have sought to alleviate EU fears of unfair competition from Chinese state-controlled companies, which benefit from the government's financial backing. 

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping agreed during a recent visit to Paris to work with European leaders to seek fairer international trade rules.
French President Emmanuel Macron, Xi Jinping and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker hold a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris, France, March 26, 2019.

​Of the 16 participating countries -- Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia -- 11 are EU member states, and the remaining five want to join.
Beijing has marketed its expanding initiative as a way to give some of Europe's neediest countries a financial boost, helping them gain access to more trade and investment. 

That has been mostly welcomed by the Central and Eastern European nations.
Major Chinese-led infrastructure projects in the region include a planned high-speed railway from the Hungarian capital, Budapest, to Belgrade in neighboring Serbia. 

The line will link up with the Chinese-controlled port of Piraeus in Greece as an entry point for Chinese goods to Central and Eastern Europe.
The project has drawn scrutiny from the EU because Chinese state-owned banks would provide financing, and Chinese companies would supply technology and the actual building. 

That conflicts with EU rules requiring public works to be broken into segments small enough to attract multiple bidders.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose own government often has been criticized for anti-democratic policies, says Hungary's relations with China should be based on "mutual respect.''
Hungary last year did not sign an EU report criticizing China's human rights record and business policies.
In Serbia, an EU membership candidate, Chinese companies are building major bridges and highways. 

They are also constructing a large coal-powered electricity plant even as China is trying to curb pollution at home by implementing renewable energy projects and reducing the use of lignite, by far the most polluting fossil fuel.
Power grid stand against the residential and office buildings in Beijing as the capital of China is shrouded by mild pollution haze on June 5, 2017.

Serbian analyst Mijat Lakicevic said the strategically-located Balkan country situated between East and West is a perfect place where "China can realize its economic concept, the way it wants to enter (Eastern European) markets,'' without much concern over fair bidding processes or pollution standards.
Bosnia, a potential EU candidate, is at odds with the bloc over its decision to issue a public guarantee for a 600-million euro ($676 million) loan from China's Export-Import Bank to expand Bosnia's largest coal-fired power plant.
EU's energy watchdog has warned that the move could eventually harm Bosnia's bid to join the EU because the agreement violates EU's subsidy and environment rules. 

Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn has said the issue "raises serious questions'' about the Balkan country's "commitment to international treaties (and) European rules.''
Chinese companies are also involved in the construction of a $380-million Peljesac bridge in Croatia, which links two coastal parts over the Adriatic Sea, as well as a highway linking the Adriatic in Montenegro to neighboring Serbia.
In the Czech Republic, the National Cyber and Information Security Agency followed U.S. authorities' warning against the use of hardware or software made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE. 

That, however, did not change Czech President Milos Zeman's positive stance toward Huawei.
Zeman publicly criticized the Czech watchdog, saying it harms the Czech Republic's business interests as it could affect Huawei's plan to invest $370 million in 5G networks in the Czech Republic.
U.S. officials mounted an international campaign to keep Huawei gear out of any foreign 5G network that might carry sensitive U.S. intelligence.

China's State terrorism: Anne-Marie Brady living in fear of Beijing

Chinese intimidation tactics she has studied are now being used against her

By Eleanor Ainge Roy in Christchurch

Anne-Marie Brady, professor at the University of Canterbury. Chinese harassment has put a strain on her family life.

It’s just gone midday at Canterbury University and Professor Anne-Marie Brady is rock-hopping across a crystal clear stream.
The life-long academic takes an overgrown bush track to reach the Okeover community gardens, her eyes scanning the sky for native birds. 

It’s the height of summer in Christchurch and the garden is filled with rhubarb plants, clumps of chewy spinach and spring onions whose tips have turned white in the sun.
“I used to spend a lot of time here,” says Brady, 52, examining the beds, ploughed by academic staff and students wanting to unwind. 

“I don’t any more.”
Brady has spent more than 25 years researching the Chinese Communist party (CCP), using her base in New Zealand as a refuge to work on her books, cook elaborate meals for her family and tend her vegetable and flower gardens.

But since the publication of her 2017 paper Magic Weapons, which details the extent of Chinese influence in New Zealand, Brady’s life has been turned upside down, becoming the target of a campaign of intimidation and psy-ops directed by Beijing towards her and her family. 

The Chinese government has not responded to requests for comment.
Beginning in late 2017, Brady has had her home burgled and her office broken into twice. 

Her family car has been tampered with, she has received a threatening letter (“You are the next”) and answered numerous, anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night, despite having an unlisted number. 

The latest came at 3am on the day her family returned home after a Christmas break. 

“I’m being watched”, she says.
A self-described “stoic”, Brady has had to draw on her experience of PTSD after the 2010 Christchurch earthquakes to help her handle the harassment.
“I have already protected myself in terms of all my information, and the rest is a mind game. It is meant to scare me… to cause mental illness or inhibit the kinds of things I write on – to silence me,” says Brady, her voice quavering slightly. 

“So I win by not being afraid.”
Close associates of Brady’s have also been visited by the Ministry of State Security in China.
Brady’s employer, Canterbury University, recently hired a security consultant to protect her office. New locks were fitted, CCTV introduced, and encryption software installed.
Despite three requests for expert government assistance, Brady and her husband – an artist from Beijing – have had to learn on the hoof how to protect their home, a suburban spot where they raise three teenage children, whose unease about the situation occasionally “manifests”, Brady says.

China scholar Anne-Marie Brady in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.

“New Zealanders have a deep sense of complacency about their security and feel that they’re very far away from the problems that we are seeing unfold in other parts of the world – that’s just not true any more,” says Brady, sitting on a bench in the gardens, where her interview with the Guardian cannot be overheard.
“We are part of the international environment too, and what happened to me – having my home and workplace invaded – is a wake-up call for people.”

Watcher becomes the watched
In the past few months Brady has begun using humour to counter the fear, has seen a counsellor on police advice, and consciously “lives in the moment”.
Brady has studied the Chinese government’s propaganda and intimidation tactics for decades, so there is a level of irony to seeing it in her own life. 

The watcher has become the watched.
Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China academics around the world are experiencing increasing intimidation. 

Some refuse to speak publicly for fear of reprisals or being refused visas to China.
“Kill the chicken to scare the monkey” – Brady says, quoting a Chinese idiom.
Dr Kevin Carrico, a lecturer at Macquarie University, has had sensitive segments of his lectures in Australian classrooms reported back to Beijing, whose officials have then visited the China-based parents of some students.
“People have come to realise that there’s no longer any kind of great firewall between academic practice in China and academic practice outside of China,” Carrico told Inside Higher Ed.

China a ‘challenge to our sovereignty’
Brady and her husband rejected overseas job offers to stay in New Zealand and raise their children in a “high-trust society”. 

That belief is slowly souring.
“We are so proud that we punch above our weight internationally, that we have a moral authority on the world stage.But in the last year I have really wondered about that,” says Brady.
“Here is an actual challenge to our sovereignty – and a New Zealand family who have had their safety threatened – and our government is not defending them.”
New Zealand police say they continue to investigate the malicious acts against Brady and that the case remained of “strong interest”.
A spokesperson for prime minister Jacinda Ardern said she “has not received any reports that there is an issue attributable to China”.
Since the intimidation started, Brady has pinned an image of New Zealand world war two spy Nancy Wake above her desk, and sought courage in the writings of George Orwell.
“My main job is to look after myself and keep doing what I’m doing, because it must surely matter if so much attention has been directed at me” she says, chuckling.
Brady has repeatedly been encouraged by government insiders to keep reading, digging, and publishing. 

“I know the research I do is valued by our government, and my courage in speaking up is valued as well,” says Brady.
“But I am part of a changing geopolitical situation and my family is, too. And I have to handle that at the same time as be a mum, an academic, a colleague, a person who is at the supermarket … I have to be normal as well.” 

Criminal Negligence

The United States Is Not Doing Enough to Fight Chinese Influence
Beijing’s authoritarian political warfare demands a strong response.
BY THOMAS G. MAHNKEN 

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence addresses the Hudson Institute in Washington on Oct. 4. 

Earlier this month, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington that drew needed attention to China’s efforts to influence the United States. 

“Beijing has mobilized covert actors, front groups, and propaganda outlets to shift Americans’ perception of Chinese policy,” he noted. 

The remarks came on the heels of President Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, where he called out Beijing for interfering in U.S. domestic politics.
Although new to many Americans, none of this came as a surprise to those who study Chinese influence operations abroad. 

Extensive research by enterprising and courageous scholars such as Anne-Marie Brady, Clive Hamilton, and John Garnaut has documented a pattern of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) activity in New Zealand and Australia, and, more recently, reports by U.S. scholars and journalists have begun to document the influence of Chinese government-affiliated Confucius Institutes on American college campuses, Chinese funding of universities and think tanks, the distribution of CCP propaganda through U.S. news sources, and lobbying efforts by former U.S. elected officials on behalf of the Chinese government. 

These efforts have sought to shape academic, political, and public discourse in ways that favor the CCP and muzzle debate over topics such as Taiwan, Tibet, and China’s continental and maritime claims, along with the CCP’s treatment of the Chinese people and Chinese economic practices.
It has become apparent that the CCP has been active not only in the continental United States, but also in the United States’ island territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa, along with the Western Pacific states that have compacts of free association with the United States—Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. 

There, the CCP has used economic power to buy political influence, to the detriment of the United States.
Exposure of this Chinese activity is welcome but by itself insufficient. 

These tactics are part of a broader strategy to strengthen the rule of the CCP at home and influence attitudes toward it abroad in ways that suit Beijing’s interests. 

As my colleagues Ross Babbage and Toshi Yoshihara and I argued earlier this year, the CCP’s tactics are part of a broader authoritarian political warfare strategy that Beijing is waging against the United States, its allies, and others. 

Its features include:

• A clear vision, ideology, and strategy.
• The use of overt and covert means to influence, coerce, intimidate, divide, and subvert rival countries in order to force their compliance.
• Strong centralized command of political warfare operations by the CCP through organizations such as the United Front Work Department.
• Capable bureaucratic instruments and implementation mechanisms.
• Tight control over the domestic population.
• Detailed understanding of targeted countries.
• Employment of a comprehensive range of instruments in coordinated actions.
• Willingness to accept a high level of political risk from the exposure of its activities.

Such campaigns are particularly difficult to counter because they exploit conceptual and bureaucratic seams in the United States and other democratic states. 

Whereas Americans tend to see a big distinction between peace and war, with peace as the norm, China’s leaders view struggle as the normal state of affairs. 

Whereas U.S. law draws boundaries between government and nongovernment actions, and between overt and covert ones, the Chinese leadership frequently ignores such distinctions. 

Identifying and responding to authoritarian political warfare is thus challenging.
More needs to be done to expose Chinese influence operations in the United States and abroad to build additional independent, nonpartisan sources of information on Chinese influence activities. 

Bringing to light such operations is a vital predicate to discussion and action.
The discussion of Chinese influence activities needs to be taken beyond elites in Washington to business leaders and to the American people. 

The public needs to understand the CCP’s efforts for what they are: an attempt by a foreign government to infringe on the sovereignty of the United States. 

Such activities ultimately pose a threat to U.S. values and institutions, whether through limiting free speech in the classroom or currying favor with business or political elites in ways that are harmful to U.S. interests.
Finally, the United States and its allies need to formulate counterstrategies to respond to Chinese influence operations. 

Any such efforts must have both defensive and offensive elements. 

On the defensive side of the coin, perhaps the most important way to reduce vulnerability is through increased transparency. 

Absent the ability to identify and expose the perpetrators, enablers, and mechanisms of manipulation, targets of political warfare may not realize they are being influenced—or, if they do, may not be able to engage in effective denial or credibly threaten serious punishment.
Defense alone is unlikely to be enough, however, and should be complemented by measures to raise the price of manipulating Western public and political opinion. 

Although authoritarian regimes might be difficult to influence and better equipped to address political warfare threats in comparison to their more open and less centralized democratic counterparts, they are arguably more fearful of those threats because of their tenuous legitimacy as well as their extreme concentration of wealth and power. 

Consequently, efforts to introduce new information into relatively closed societies—from sharing alternative perspectives on current events that differ from government-approved narratives to exposing political and economic acts of corruption—can be a method of competition that imposes significant costs on regimes that constantly worry about maintaining domestic control. 

The CCP has, for example, shown considerable sensitivity to the exposure of corruption among its leaders. 

It has also sought to exert a growing measure of control over Chinese civil society, including churches and other groups. 

Efforts, particularly by nongovernmental organizations, to provide the Chinese public with accurate sources of information may go a long way to counter the CCP’s efforts.
As the United States responds to this challenge, it needs to be careful as much as possible to achieve and maintain a political consensus in favor of action. 

Unlike the issue of Russian meddling, which has become dangerously polarized, to the extent possible Chinese political interference should remain outside the realm of partisan politics. 

It is a threat that demands a nonpartisan diagnosis and bipartisan response.

Australia And New Zealand Are Ground Zero For Chinese Influence

Australia's Quislings: More than 40 former and current Australian politicians are doing the bidding of China's government.

By ROB SCHMITZ

From a hill overlooking Canberra, Australia's landlocked capital, Clive Hamilton points to the National Carillon, a bell tower that happens to be striking noon, then to a massive glass and concrete monolith.
"That's where ASIO lives," he says, using the common shorthand for Australia's intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.
He then points out Australia's federal police building and to a compound in the middle, where China built its embassy.
"They picked that spot, and they have a lot of clout, they have a vast compound, and they kind of get what they want around here," he says.
When Hamilton, a professor at Charles Sturt University, first tried to publish his new book, Silent Invasion: China's Influence in Australia, the fear of China's Communist Party crept in, he says. Hamilton's original publisher, Allen and Unwin, informed him last November that it was canceling the book's publication because it feared legal action from what it called "Beijing's agents of influence."
"I was shocked," remembers Hamilton. 

"I felt betrayed. We knew this was a difficult subject. We knew that Beijing has some powerful friends in Australia. We knew that the Chinese government would be highly critical of the book and of me. Of course, it was great comfort to have a really good, solid publisher behind me, and all of a sudden I was left out there on the battlefield, looking over my shoulder, saying, 'Where is my support?' "

The original publisher of Clive Hamilton's book detailing Chinese influence in Australia canceled publication for fear of legal threats.

The episode was a vindication of the central thesis of Hamilton's book — that China's Communist Party has infiltrated Australia — but not one he expected to have to deal with personally.
"It's a massive red flag," says Hamilton. 

"And if Australia capitulates on this question, in other words, no book seriously critical of [the] Chinese Communist Party will be published in Australia. I mean, this essentially means we've sacrificed our democratic freedoms."

Australia fights back
China's rise under the Communist Party has had a profound impact on Australia. 

The country is Australia's biggest trading partner by a long shot, accounting for nearly a quarter of Australia's trade. 

China's demand for commodities like iron ore in the early 2000s fueled a mining boom in Australia that created jobs and steadily pushed up wages. 

Later, as China's urban consumer class grew, young professionals from Shanghai and Beijing turned to Australian steak, milk and wine. 

Nearly a third of Australian exports now head to China.
Wealthy visitors from China frequently travel to Australia as tourists or to buy property, leading to a historic rise in home values along the country's coasts.
But public intellectuals like Hamilton, and politicians, are beginning to question whether these economic benefits have come at too steep a price. 

Another Australian publisher eventually released Hamilton's book. 

But the impact a powerful foreign autocracy had on his work, inside his own supposedly free and democratic home country, left him shaken. 

It was a reminder of how deeply China's Communist Party has infiltrated Australian society.
Silent Invasion identifies more than 40 former and current Australian politicians who are doing the bidding of China's government.

China's Communist Party has infiltrated Chinese-Australian associations devoted to students and scholars, writers and religious activities. 

"From taking over Chinese associations, buying political influence, promoting Beijing-loyal people into elected political positions, buying influence in universities by sponsoring think tanks, cyber-intrusion operations, you name it, they're doing it," he says.
But Australia is beginning to fight back. 

Last December, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Australia's biggest overhaul in espionage and intelligence laws in decades, after a senator accepted illegal donations from a Chinese businessman with close ties to China's Communist Party.

Australia's former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced his country's biggest overhaul in espionage and intelligence laws in decades last December, after a senator accepted illegal donations from a Chinese businessman with close ties to China's Communist Party.

"Foreign powers are making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process both here and abroad," said Turnbull, announcing the bill. 

New laws, he said, "will protect our way of life, they will protect and strengthen our democracy and they will ensure that Australians make decisions based on the wishes of Australians."
The new package of laws, which Australia's Parliament passed in June, will require anyone in Australia working on behalf of a foreign power to declare that connection to the government. 

But in the case of Chinese citizens, state connections can be tricky to gauge.
"China's different in scale and it's different also in that it can integrate the private sector, education, civil society — all arms, if you like — of the state and the community with the objectives of the Chinese Communist Party," says Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australian National University. 

"We're not really dealing with a normal country here. We're dealing with an authoritarian party state, where in fact Chinese citizens owe a higher loyalty to the party than to the state itself. So what we're dealing with here is the largest secret organization in human history."

"We're not really dealing with a normal country here. We're dealing with an authoritarian party state, where in fact Chinese citizens owe a higher loyalty to the party than to the state itself. So what we're dealing with here is the largest secret organization in human history," says Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australian National University in Canberra.

Medcalf says the problem is not China's people, but its Communist Party. 

Some of the most vulnerable victims of the party, he says, are Chinese people who left their country to live in democracies like Australia and New Zealand.

China's inroads in New Zealand
More than 1,000 miles across the Tasman Sea, Chen Weijian rests on his balcony, listening to the cicadas in a leafy suburb of Auckland, New Zealand.
He moved from China in 1991, escaping imprisonment for working on a pro-democracy newspaper. He restarted the newspaper in New Zealand, but even there, Beijing caught up with him: A pro-Chinese Communist Party newspaper in Auckland sued him for defamation after he criticized it for being too pro-Beijing. 

Ongoing legal fees forced his paper into bankruptcy in 2012.
"Their paper was funded by businesses supported by China's government," Chen says. 

"So an overseas Communist Party's propaganda wing crushed our democratic newspaper here in New Zealand."

Chen Weijian fled Hangzhou, China, for New Zealand in 1991, escaping imprisonment in China for working on a pro-democracy newspaper. Beijing caught up with him even thousands of miles away and sued his New Zealand newspaper out of existence.

Ever since, Chen says, he has watched as China's Communist Party makes deeper inroads into New Zealand's society and government, becoming a major trade partner and expanding beyond trade to finance, telecommunications, military cooperation and cooperation on the Antarctic. 

Last year, local media reported that a prominent, Chinese-born member of New Zealand's Parliament, Jian Yang, had lied to authorities about his education background on his citizenship application for New Zealand.
Yang, a member of the National Party, which led the government from 2008 to 2017, had worked for 15 years in China's military intelligence sector. 

He studied English at the People's Liberation Army Air Force Engineering University, taught at the college for five years after graduating and then obtained a master's degree at the People's Liberation Army University of Foreign Languages in Luoyang, one of China's best-known military intelligence schools.
Later, at the same institute, Yang taught English to students who were studying to intercept and decipher English-language communications on behalf of Chinese military intelligence.

China's most famous mole: Last year, New Zealand media reported that a prominent Chinese-born member of Parliament, Jian Yang, had lied to authorities about his education background on his citizenship application for New Zealand. He had taught and been a student at a Chinese military intelligence school.

Yang declined an interview request from NPR. 

He admitted to journalists last year that he was a member of China's Communist Party, though he insisted he has not been an active member since he left China in 1994. 

He has steered clear of the media spotlight since the scandal hit.
"Jian Yang is not just connected to China's Communist Party," says Chen Weijian. 

"He was sent here by them to spy on New Zealand. But people in Yang's party — the National Party — all think he's good for New Zealand-China relations. A lot of his party's donations come through him, and he often leads government trips to China to make lucrative deals there."
Yang, who has served in Parliament since 2011 and remains in office, played a prominent role during official visits to China in 2013 and 2016, sitting alongside then-Prime Minister John Key opposite Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and serving at times as interpreter during bilateral meetings.
As Yang's political influence grew, so did New Zealand's economic dependence on China. 

In 2008, New Zealand became the first developed country to sign a free trade agreement with China. 

As a result, trade between the two economies has tripled in the past decade, largely because of China's thirst for imported New Zealand milk: A quarter of all imported milk in China comes from the tiny island nation.
"A lot of countries ask: 'Why did China negotiate a free trade agreement with New Zealand? They're so small,' " says Charles Finny, a consultant with the Saunders Unsworth lobbying firm in Wellington who served as the lead negotiator for New Zealand in its free trade agreement with China. "The reason, I think, was that by negotiating an FTA with New Zealand, you learn how to do the negotiation. That's pretty good practice for when you actually get to negotiate with bigger players, and if you make a mistake, it's not going to be fatal for your economy."

Charles Finny served as the lead negotiator in New Zealand's free trade agreement with China. He believes China is using his country as a testing ground for diplomatic relations with other developed nations. "We're small, nonthreatening," he explains. "China, I think, wants to learn from us about how to deal with other, larger players."

Finny believes the same to be true in politics. 

He says China has most likely been using New Zealand as a testing ground for diplomatic relations with other developed nations.
"We're small, nonthreatening," he explains. 

"We're not as close to the United States. China, I think, wants to learn from us about how to deal with other, larger players. It's very common for Chinese leaders when they're just about to be appointed to a big position to come to New Zealand to learn about democracy, to learn about how to deal with the media, to learn there are going to be some protests — all these things that are going to be a much bigger factor in bigger relationships, they get to learn how to deal with it here."

The weakest link in the "Five Eyes"
After New Zealand's intelligence agency began looking into Yang's background in 2016, he was removed from parliamentary select committees on foreign affairs, defense and trade. 

But he hung on to his seat in Parliament, leaving some wondering why.
"The answer to that is not something that can be given today, but it is an answer that will soon have to come from our country and our system as to what our response is," Winston Peters, New Zealand's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, tells NPR. 

"At that level of growing public interest — and I would think intelligence interest as well — plus the shared intelligence from our closer allies, one would be naive in thinking that our response would not be forthcoming."

Some wonder why Jian Yang still serves in New Zealand's Parliament after questions arose over his connections to China's military intelligence. "The answer to that is not something that can be given today," Winston Peters (above), New Zealand's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, tells NPR.

Analysts in the U.S. and Australia have suggested the Yang case is evidence that China is exploiting New Zealand as a weak link in what's known as the "Five Eyes," the intelligence alliance including the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 

This angers Peters. 

He is the longest-serving parliamentarian in New Zealand's history and has long been vocal about his country's dependence on China, but he draws the line when his country is criticized for being used as a political tool for the Chinese.
"This country turned up to two world wars, two years before the United States on both occasions," he points out. 

"So we don't like that sort of talk down here."

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping "is running China in crisis mode," says New Zealand academic Anne-Marie Brady, "and China under Xi is following a very ambitious, a very assertive foreign policy."

"Magic weapons"
The work of a fellow New Zealander has shone the brightest spotlight on how cozier relationships with the Chinese government may be threatening New Zealand's democratic system.
In a report released last year, Anne-Marie Brady, a University of Canterbury professor in Christchurch, New Zealand, takes a deep dive into the activities of the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department — an agency Chinese dictator Xi has revived, directing it to guide, buy and coerce political influence abroad.
The report, "Magic Weapons: China's Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping," includes a comprehensive analysis of China's foreign influence operations under the Communist Party.
"Xi is running China in crisis mode," says Brady, "and China under Xi is following a very ambitious, a very assertive foreign policy. The United Front Work, when aimed at the outside world, is meant to support that."
In her report, Brady, a global fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., examines how the United Front operates abroad, helping influence media, politicians and members of the Chinese diaspora. 

Her detailed investigation of China's influence operations in New Zealand includes discussion of Yang and other Chinese-born members of Parliament and the fundraising efforts they're involved in for their respective political parties.
As she began researching United Front activities since Xi Jinping came to power five years ago, she says, she felt an obligation to write her report so other countries would understand the nature of the threat.
Brady's report has attracted the attention of governments and policy experts throughout the developed world. 

Earlier this year, Australia's Parliament invited her to speak, and she gave three talks in one day during a visit to Washington, D.C.
Her work has also attracted the attention of Chinese authorities. 

When she spoke at Australia's Parliament, Brady announced her office and home had both been burgled and that before one of the break-ins, she received a letter warning that she would be attacked.
"Items related to my work were taken, while valuables were not. It was a pretty unusual kind of burglary," Brady tells NPR.
Brady's laptops, phones and flash drives were stolen — everything, she says, that was directly related to her research into Chinese Communist Party influence operations in New Zealand. 

But Brady is continuing to investigate China's influence operations.
"If a country like New Zealand — a fiercely independent, democratic country like New Zealand — if we can't protect sovereignty and uphold the integrity of our political system at the same time as maintaining a positive relationship with China, then we've entered a very dangerous era in global politics," she says. 

"It should be possible for a small state or a medium-sized state or a large state to say to another state: 'It's not OK for you interfere in my politics' and continue to maintain a positive relationship with that nation."
In the summary of her report, Brady writes that democracies have magic weapons, too: the right to choose governments; checks on power; freedom of speech and association and a free press. 

Now, she writes, is the time to use them.

Rogue Nation

President Trump is right that China uses its media to influence foreign opinion
By James Griffiths

Hong Kong -- US President Donald Trump went off topic in characteristic style at the United Nations Security Council this week, accusing China of using state media to meddle in the upcoming midterm elections.
His remarks derailed a meeting that was supposed to focus on issues of nonproliferation.

He later accused: "China is actually placing propaganda ads in the Des Moines Register and other papers, made to look like news. That’s because we are beating them on trade, opening markets, and the farmers will make a fortune when this is over!"

He was referring to an insert from the state-run China Daily placed in a recent Sunday edition of the Iowa paper, which featured stories promoting the benefit of US-China trade, warned of the potential market losses caused by a trade war, and highlighted Chinese dictator Xi Jinping's long relationship with the state, among other less news-worthy columns.
Political analysts largely agreed the insert was intended to put pressure on the White House by targeting key Republican districts that will be most affected by a drawn-out trade war with China.
"I think it's trying to maximize pressure on the administration to change its trade policies toward China by attempting to show White House and Republicans that they're going to pay a price with the mid-terms," David Skidmore, a political science professor at Drake University, told the Des Moines Register in a piece by the paper about the insert.
On Wednesday, Xi himself extolled state media's "contributions to the cause of the Party and the people," and praised television workers in "promoting in-depth integration and innovation in international communication to present a true, multi-dimensional and panoramic view of China."
Trump is thus absolutely correct that Beijing uses its media to shape foreign opinions of China.

Copies of China Daily's Africa edition. The state-run newspaper has invested heavily in targeting the continent.

Telling China's story
While it may have been a novelty to some newspaper readers in Iowa, China Daily is a major newspaper, founded in 1981 it is now published in 12 editions across Asia, Europe, Africa and the US.
Unlike most other English-language state media, like broadcaster CCTV or the Global Times, China Daily is not an offshoot of a domestic product but has always targeted foreign readers.
Today, it claims a circulation of around 800,000, with the majority of readers overseas. 

The paper's blue vending machines are ubiquitous in Washington DC and parts of New York and other US cities, and it is also often given out for free in hotels and by airlines around the world.
This reach is further extended by China Watch, which the newspaper describes as a "monthly publication distributed to millions of high-end readers as an insert in mainstream newspapers." 

These include major US and British titles, such as the Washington Post, and the UK's Daily Telegraph, giving the insert a reach of 4 million readers, according to China Daily.
By comparison, in 2016 USA Today, the top English-language daily in the world, had a circulation of around 4.1 million, while the New York Times had a circulation of 2.1 million.
China Daily did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Trump isn't the first to complain about China Watch. 

Critics have accused newspapers of failing to highlight to readers that it is a paid insert, or distinguish its content from their own, especially online. 

On the website of the UK's Daily Telegraph for example, branding is the same as stories produced by the paper's own journalists, except for a disclaimer in small text at the top of the page reading "this content is produced and published by China Daily, People's Republic of China, which takes sole responsibility for its contents," and a similar disclaimer at the bottom of the article.
The Daily Telegraph did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding their China Watch sections. 

A spokeswoman for the Washington Post said the section was clearly marked as not involving "the news or editorial departments of The Washington Post," adding the China Watch section differs in layout and format "from our editorial content in a number of ways, including headline style, body font and column width."
Of course, publishing something and having people read it are completely different things, as many media companies have learned to their chagrin. 

But no matter its reach, China Daily clearly has the backing of Beijing, expanding overseas staff and advertising even as other newspapers slash costs and lay off employees.

A man walks down the street as the iconic CCTV headquarters loom in the background in the central business district of Beijing on January 20, 2017.

Going out
While it was China Daily which drew President Trump's attention, it is not the most important outlet in Beijing's state media strategy. 

That title belongs to state broadcaster CCTV, and its international offshoot CGTN. (CNN has an affiliate relationship with CCTV.)
As Ying Zhu recounts in her book about the network, "Two Billion Eyes: the story of China Central Television," beginning in the early 2000s, Chinese state media was encouraged to "play in the same global pond as CNN, the BBC, and other big Western media firms."
This was influenced by then-President Jiang Zemin's call to "let China's voice broadcast to the world," a strategy which finally reached its zenith this year with the creation of Voice of China, a new super bureau combining three state-run networks, CCTV, China National Radio and China Radio International.
Of particular attention for this effort has been Africa, where CGTN, China Daily and state news agency Xinhua have all invested heavily. 

As I document in my book "The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet," this propaganda push has coincided with an increase in internet controls and censorship on the continent, actively assisted by Beijing.
Like China Daily, CGTN receives a large amount of state funding, which it has used to expand massively. 

It now broadcasts in more than 180 countries and regions around the world, and is currently building an expensive new London headquarters.
But as with its newspaper sibling, broadcasting in a country doesn't necessarily mean anyone is watching.
While accurate global viewership figures are difficult to come by, CGTN claims its English-language offerings can be seen in more than 140 million homes internationally.
By comparison, CNN International reaches more than 373 million households worldwide, while the BBC claims a global audience of 376 million.
Russian state broadcaster RT, a frequent bogeyman in US political discourse, also knocks CGTN out of the park on YouTube, where the Chinese network has around 800,000 subscribers across multiple channels, compared to RT's more than 3.3 million.
This could be down to content, while CGTN has relaxed considerably from its highly staid past, it lacks the type of slick appeal of RT, nor has it been so willing to host the type of conspiracy theorists who tend to do so well on YouTube.

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has made propaganda and media control a key priority of his administration.

Attention war
Whether or not its investment in China Daily and CGTN is paying off, Beijing clearly sees great value in promoting state media overseas, building on its effectiveness as a propaganda tool at home.
This effort has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, and US and Australian lawmakers especially have said they are uncomfortable with the role Chinese state media plays in their countries.
U.S. lawmakers such as Marco Rubio, chair of the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC), have long accused Beijing of using its influence around the world to stifle debate and promote its agenda.
"Chinese government foreign influence operations, which exist in free societies around the globe, are intended to censor critical discussion of China's history and human rights record and to intimidate critics of its repressive policies," Rubio said during a hearing on the "Long Arm of China" last year.
More recently, the US Department of Justice reportedly recommended CGTN and Xinhua be forced to register as foreign agents under an act designed to police lobbyists working for overseas governments. 

This followed similar restrictions placed on RT which caused the broadcaster to lose its congressional press credentials and were widely denounced by press freedom advocates.

White House Criticizes China Over El Salvador Recognition

By Austin Ramzy

El Salvador’s acting foreign minister, Carlos Castaneda, left, and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, at a ceremony in Beijing Tuesday to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

HONG KONG — The White House on Thursday accused China of “apparent interference” in El Salvador’s domestic politics after the Central American nation established diplomatic ties with Beijing this week.
The statement also sharply criticized El Salvador, saying the United States would re-evaluate its relationship with the country.
The Trump administration’s comments are its strongest pushback to date on China’s efforts to curb the international recognition of Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy Beijing claims as part of its territory. 

They also reflect a growing unease about China’s growing influence in a region where the United States has long been the dominant force.
El Salvador severed ties with Taiwan on Tuesday, leaving Taiwan with just 17 formal diplomatic partners. 

China has stepped up its campaign to woo Taiwan’s diplomatic partners since Tsai Ing-wen was elected Taiwan’s president in 2016, replacing a more pro-Beijing leader.
The White House comments were far sterner than those made by the State Department after other countries in the region, including Panama and the Dominican Republic, switched ties from Taiwan to China.
It accused El Salvador’s government of making the decision, which “affects not just El Salvador, but also the economic health and security of the entire Americas region,” without transparency months before an election.
“The El Salvadoran government’s receptiveness to China’s apparent interference in the domestic politics of a Western Hemisphere country is of grave concern to the United States, and will result in a re-evaluation of our relationship with El Salvador,” it said.
The White House’s toughened its tone toward countries that have shifted recognition from Taiwan to China this summer after Burkina Faso made the switch in May.
“Previously it was unusual for the U.S. government to make such remarks, if for no other reason that the U.S. itself made this switch in 1979,” said Ross Darrell Feingold, a Taipei-based consultant who advises on political risk in Asia.
Taiwan’s embassy in San Salvador. El Salvador’s decision to cut ties leaves the Taipei government with just 17 formal diplomatic partners.

When the United States established formal ties with the People’s Republic of China in 1979, it ceased formal relations with Taiwan. 

But the United States maintains a robust informal relationship with Taiwan, and recently unveiled a $250 million complex in its capital, Taipei, that serves as a de facto embassy.
The stronger U.S. tone likely reflects the influence of John R. Bolton, a staunch Taiwan defender who became President Trump’s national security adviser in April, Mr. Feingold said.
“Bolton has a long record of support for Taiwan, including changes to the traditional approaches to the trilateral U.S.-China-Taiwan relations, so it is no surprise that we are seeing something different by way of a U.S. response to China’s actions that reduce Taiwan’s international space,” he said.
The government of El Salvador, which is led by a party of former leftist guerrillas, has also been a frequent target of Republican critics.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said this week that he had spoken with President Trump about ending American aid to El Salvador after it established formal ties with Beijing, and he would join with a fellow Republican, Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, to carry that out.
Mr. Gardner told Reuters on Thursday that he would introduce legislation that would enable the State Department to use aid and other levers to encourage countries to maintain Taiwan ties.
Mr. Rubio wrote on Twitter that there “would be real consequences in our relationship with #ElSalvador if they broke with #Taiwan in favor of #China. They think we are going to react the same way we did to #Panama & #DominicanRepublic. They are very wrong.”
In January the Trump administration canceled a program that allowed 200,000 Salvadorans to temporarily live in the United States. 

That move prompted criticism that it would destabilize a country struggling with high levels of street crime.
President Trump has shown before that he is willing to shake up the traditional framework of ties between the United States, China and Taiwan. 

In December 2016, before he had assumed office, he took a congratulatory call from President Tsai, breaking with decades of precedent. 

He later said in a phone call with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, that he would abide by the “One China policy,” under which the United States does not formally recognize the government of Taiwan.
Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said Friday he was not worried that Taiwan could be used as a pawn of the United States in the current trade dispute with China.
“We understand Washington D.C.’s support of Taiwan continues to be very strong,” Mr. Wu told Bloomberg. 

“Taiwan is a positive element in the U.S. economy and I just don’t worry that Taiwan is going to become a chip to be negotiated with by the U.S.”

European Horses

China Seeks Influence in Europe, One Business Deal at a Time

By David Barboza, Marc Santora and Alexandra Stevenson

The Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, center right, welcoming Milos Zeman, center left, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2015. Ye Jianming, far left, headed CEFC China Energy, which spent more than $1 billion on deals in the Czech Republic.

PRAGUE — When Xi Jinping became the first top Chinese leader to visit the Czech Republic, he was accompanied by a mysterious Chinese tycoon with big political ambitions, money to burn and strong ties to the Czech president.
Ye Jianming was the sole businessman among the group of Chinese and Czech government officials who gathered two years ago outside the presidential summer residence where Xi and Milos Zeman, his Czech counterpart, planted ginkgo trees. 

For Ye, it was recognition of his role as a major power broker in Prague, having bought landmark properties, a local brewery and a much beloved soccer team.
The meeting — and the Ye's presence — cemented China’s newfound influence on politics and business in Zeman’s Czech Republic and signaled its broader ambitions in Europe.
In just two years Ye’s company, CEFC China Energy, had spent more than $1 billion on deals in the Czech Republic. 

He hired former Czech officials, including a onetime defense minister. 

Ye was even named a special economic adviser to Zeman.
Zeman, in turn, became a big backer of Beijing, tamping down domestic opposition to Chinese influence and taking up Chinese causes. 

He publicly supported China’s claims over Taiwan, the democratic island that Beijing claims as its territory. 

When Xi visited, police tried to keep protesters out of sight; some later accused the police of using violence to suppress them. 

The family of a prominent Holocaust survivor said Zeman withdrew a proposed medal for the man after his nephew met with the Dalai Lama, an exiled spiritual leader whom China considers a rebel.

China's fifth column: Xi's myrmidons demonstrated during his visit in Prague in 2016.

For China, the Czech courtship was an unqualified victory: It had won a sure friend in Europe, an American military ally and a country once seen as a bulwark for liberal democracy in a strategically important region. 

As Zeman declared, the Czech Republic hoped to become “an unsinkable aircraft carrier of Chinese investment expansion” in Europe.
Then, Ye was detained in China this year, exposing the Czech Republic to the perils of this new relationship and forcing the president to defend his quick embrace of the Chinese deal maker. 

While the reason for Ye’s detention was never made public, critics of the Czech president saw Ye’s disappearance as proof that the country shouldn’t have tied its future and its fortune to the Chinese.
An emboldened, globally ambitious China is using money, business deals and other incentives to extend its power abroad. 

The pitch can hold great appeal in a world shaken by Washington’s growing disengagement and Europe’s struggles.
But tighter ties to China mean greater susceptibility to an opaque political system where decisions are made behind the scenes. 

Investments can be driven by politics rather than economics, resulting in costly white elephants.
In the Czech Republic, Ye’s sudden disappearance took the country’s leaders by surprise. 

They couldn’t discern why that would happen to someone who seemed to have the government’s blessing. 

They had not pressed him on where he was getting his money to make big flashy deals in the Czech Republic and elsewhere. 

Officials also had difficulty answering questions about criminal allegations in the United States that a senior business associate of CEFC had tried to bribe his way into new business opportunities in Africa.
Zeman dispatched a team of officials to determine what the tycoon’s problems meant for the Czech Republic. 

He soon found out.
Prague was about to become even more enmeshed with the Chinese government. 

A state-owned company stepped in to take control of Ye’s empire, fueling suspicions that the company was politically important to the Chinese leadership.

Xi and Zeman during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2014. Zeman’s visit was the first by a Czech leader in nearly a decade.

Eastern Appeal
Early in his political career, Zeman, a blunt-spoken populist, warned against toadying up to Russia and China. 

Those seeking deeper ties with Beijing, he told a local newspaper in 1996, are “ready to go under plastic surgery to slant their eyes.”
But the realities in Europe were changing by the time he won the Czech presidency in 2013.
The global financial crisis had tested Europe’s unity. 

Refugees from Syria had begun to arrive, fueling nativist sentiment and pitting local politicians against the bloc’s leaders. 

Western Europe no longer seemed to be the only option.
At the time, Beijing was beginning to pour money and political capital into Eastern and Central Europe as part of a broad bid to increase its heft in Europe. 

China’s leaders see the region as potentially fertile ground. 

While Britain, France and Germany welcomed greater investments from Beijing, they still bucked China’s stances on issues like human rights and its claim to control almost all of the South China Sea. Eastern and Central Europe didn’t have the same qualms.
Looking for further inroads, China started what came to be called the 16+1 initiative, an effort to expand cooperation with more than a dozen Eastern and Central European nations. 

It became a forum for China to show off what it could offer the region, like access to technology for a high-speed rail system. 

Xi later included Eastern and Central Europe in his Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious plan to develop economic and diplomatic ties through infrastructure projects around the world.
China’s influence in Europe is already apparent. 

Greece last year blocked a European Union statement in the United Nations criticizing China’s human rights record. 

Greece and Hungary worked to water down a 2016 European Union statement regarding the South China Sea.
For Zeman, the courtship basically had to start from scratch.
The former Czechoslovakia recognized the Communist-led China in 1949, but a rift between Moscow and Beijing kept them apart. 

The post-Soviet Czech Republic, remembering the brutal 1968 Soviet crackdown on reform efforts in Prague and subsequent Communist domination, found common cause with Beijing’s critics.
Vaclav Havel, the anti-Communist activist and the country’s first leader after the fall of the Berlin Wall, invited the Dalai Lama to a state visit in 1990, angering Beijing. 

He had stern words for China. 

“Intimidation, propaganda campaigns, and repression,” he wrote, “are no substitute for reasoned dialogue.”

The Piraeus Container Terminal, operated by the Chinese state-owned shipping company Cosco in Athens. Greece, which has received significant Chinese investment, blocked a European Union statement in the United Nations criticizing China’s human rights record.

Zeman, a well-known smoker and drinker who once publicly denied that he showed up at his inauguration drunk, broke with that history. 

He rejected Havel-era support for the Dalai Lama and its close ties to the government of Taiwan.
He visited China in 2014, the first visit by a Czech leader in nearly a decade. 

A year later, he was the only European Union leader to attend a military parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. 

That helped him secure Xi’s 2016 visit to Prague.
“This is a restart,” Zeman told Chinese official media before Xi’s visit, adding that the previous government had been “very submissive” to the United States and the European Union.
“Now, we are again an independent country,” he said, “and we formulate our foreign policy, which is based on our own national interests, and we do not interfere with the internal affairs of any other country.”
His focus on China won wide praise from the Czech political apparatus.
“If anybody thinks that under current circumstances it is possible to create safe and prosperous world without cooperation with China, then he has missed the train long ago,” said Katerina Konecna, vice chairman of the Czech Republic’s Communist Party.
Zeman’s office said its efforts to court China were no different from the efforts of others.
“Those that have expressed such criticism offend our Western allies who collaborate extraordinarily tightly with the People’s Republic of China,” said Jiri Ovcacek, a spokesman for Zeman. 

Zeman’s office didn’t respond to further requests for comment.

CEFC’s European headquarters in Prague. The company bought a stake in one of Prague’s biggest office complexes. It invested in the Czech national airline, two hotels and a pair of Renaissance-era buildings. It also bought a brewery that traces its roots back more than 700 years.

A Shadowy Suitor
Zeman’s 2014 visit proved fateful for the Czech Republic. 

Among the business deals reached was a cooperation pact between a Czech financial firm and an up-and-coming energy company called CEFC.
It was led by Ye Jianming, who was born in a small village in the southern Chinese province of Fujian. 

He grabbed hold of assets once controlled by a notorious smuggler and in a few years parlayed them into a sprawling business empire with 30,000 employees. 

Ye traveled the world on his twin-engine Airbus 319 private jet, meeting heads of state, Russian oligarchs and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.
CEFC was modeled on Xi’s vision of a stronger China — and it went where Xi wanted China to go. It struck deals in the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan. 

It courted top leaders in places like Albania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Sudan and Uganda. 

Last year, it agreed to buy a $9 billion stake in Rosneft, the Russian oil giant, which put it firmly in the middle of the complicated but important relationship between Beijing and Moscow.
Its fast rise fueled rumors in China that Ye had ties to Xi, who once worked in Fujian, or other Chinese leaders. 

CEFC did little to discourage them. 

Ye was part of a group tied to the Chinese military, according to documents and experts. 

On its website, CEFC cited the military and Communist Party experience of its top executives.
The Czech Republic made a tempting target for CEFC’s international push. 

The country was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was disillusioned with the West and ready to do business.
CEFC bought a stake in Florentinum, one of Prague’s biggest office complexes. 

It invested in the Czech national airline, two hotels and a pair of Renaissance-era buildings. 

It bought a brewery that traces its roots back more than 700 years.
Zeman’s staff trumpeted the deals as proof that courting China made economic sense.
“People believed the rhetoric,” said Olga Lomova, the head of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation International Sinological Center of Charles University in Prague. 

“We have the Chinese. We will be happy again.”
CEFC also hired figures close to Zeman, leading to accusations from critics of a revolving door between the Chinese company and the president. 

Jaroslav Tvrdik, the country’s former minister of defense, was hired to run CEFC’s Czech operations while serving as an adviser on China to the government. 

Czech officials defended keeping Tvrdik as an adviser, saying the position was unpaid.
Miroslav Sklenar, Zeman’s protocol chief, left that position in 2015 for a role at CEFC. 

He returned to the presidential palace at the end of 2016.
Early on, CEFC worried that its growing involvement would upset the public. 

Its solution: Buy the local soccer team.

Slavia Prague had been on the brink of bankruptcy when CEFC purchased a majority stake in 2015. The team’s uniforms were changed to say “CEFC China” in Roman letters and in Chinese characters.

Slavia Prague had been on the brink of bankruptcy when CEFC purchased a majority stake in 2015. The team began to spend heavily under its new owner, retaining its star forward, Milan Škoda, and signing a Dutch player, Gino van Kessel. 

Last year, the club won its first league championship since 2009. 

Slavia Prague played in uniforms that said “CEFC China” in Roman letters and in Chinese characters.
CEFC’s deals made little business sense to observers. 

“So many of the acquisitions were made in a rush, and were nonsense,” said Ms. Lomova, of Charles University. 

“They were not investments that were able to pay for themselves.”
And CEFC acknowledged that its motivations went beyond business. 

“Our company cares about what we can do to bridge the cultural gap,” Jiang Chunyu, a senior executive at CEFC said at a forum in China in December.
Protestors carrying Tibetan flags shouted slogans against Xi during his visit in Prague in 2016.

Promises Undone
Xi’s historic 2016 visit to Prague showed the China-Czech relationship to be the closest in the history of the two countries. 

It also showed that cracks were forming.
Thousands of protesters tried to greet the Chinese leader as he met with Zeman in Prague Castle. Members of both the Czech and European parliaments joined. 

One lawmaker, who owns a home on the hill beneath the castle, set up a projector to cast the words “Truth and Love” on the castle wall — an invocation of a famous quote of Havel’s, who said that truth and love would vanquish lies and hatred. 

Flags lining Xi’s route from the airport were defaced.
Czech authorities, with the help of CEFC, tried to obscure the tensions. 

Police officers blocked demonstrators from getting too close to the castle, setting off complaints from protesters about police violence.
“Why are the police protecting the Chinese and limiting the ability of the Czech people to express themselves?” said Ondrej Kolar, the mayor of a Prague district.
Wherever Xi traveled, busloads of local Chinese supporters appeared, too.
Filip Lexa, a 33-year-old teacher and doctoral student studying Chinese literature, said he showed up with a flag representing the Uighur minority of western China, where the authorities there have cracked down on the local population. 

He said he was harassed by a group of Chinese men bused into the event.
“When I took the flag out, everyone attacked me,” he said, adding that he escaped serious injury. “They pulled me into the middle of this group and started kicking me and hitting me with the flag poles they were carrying. One even broke a pole on my back.”
CEFC played a major role in trying to make sure the Chinese dictator’s visit went smoothly, said Mr. Kolar, the mayor who was involved in preparations for the event because his district is home to a number of embassies.
“It wasn’t organized by the state, but by a private company,” he said. 

“CEFC organized the whole event.”
CEFC arranged for the display of Chinese flags along the route through Mr. Kolar’s neighborhood — flags with red and yellow color reminiscent of the Soviet Union. 

When some were defaced, CEFC workers replaced them.
“It felt like the ’70s or ’80s again,” Mr. Kolar said. 

“Then it was revealed that it was CEFC who paid for those flags.”
Many Czechs had other reasons to sour on the relationship with China. 

Investment figures have proved disappointing — Taiwan’s investment in 2017 was nearly three times that of China’s, according to data from Sinopsis, a research group focused on China. 

Zeman attributed the shortfall to new Chinese limits on money flowing abroad.
The revocation of an award to a famous Czech Holocaust survivor also set off outrage. 

George Brady, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, was set to be honored at a Czech state dinner in 2016 and receive a medal for his work. 

His sister, Hana Brady, died in the gas chambers in Auschwitz, and he had turned her story into a popular children’s book called “Hana’s Suitcase.”
But his nephew was the Czech Republic’s culture minister — and he was set to meet with the Dalai Lama. 

Before the ceremony, the nephew, Daniel Herman, received a call from Zeman’s office.
“I was told that if I went ahead with a meeting with the Dalai Lama, there would be no medal,” Mr. Herman said in an interview. 

He went ahead with the meeting. 

“And there was no ceremony,” he said.
Czech officials acknowledged that Zeman asked Mr. Herman not to meet with the Dalai Lama. 

They said the withdrawal of the medal was unrelated, although they did not specify a reason.

Zeman, right, and Xi on the terrace of the Strahov Monastery overlooking Prague. Xi’s historic 2016 visit showed the China-Czech relationship to be the closest in the history of the two countries.

But China’s biggest challenge to its Czech strategy began elsewhere.
In November, American authorities arrested Patrick Ho, a top executive of CEFC’s nonprofit arm, and charged him with offering bribes to officials in Uganda and Chad in exchange for oil rights.
Czech officials and one person with direct knowledge of Ye’s case say he was detained by the Chinese authorities after Ho’s arrest. 

A short time later, the company was hit with a number of problems. 

Its bid for a stake in Rosneft collapsed. 

And Chinese rating firms warned that CEFC had taken on considerable debt.
In April, Zeman met with officials from Citic Group, a state-controlled Chinese company that had agreed to buy just under half of CEFC’s Europe venture. 

While Ye’s ties to China’s leadership had been just rumored, Citic is a company firmly under Beijing’s control. 

Citic didn’t respond to requests for comment.
If a direct role for Beijing in Czech businesses bothered Zeman, he has shown little public sign. 

He is set to make another visit to the Chinese capital this autumn.

A security guard at the entrance of an unmarked building in Shanghai listed as an address for CEFC.