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.

Han peril: China’s island chain plans

Beijing’s not just keen to annex the South China Sea and Taiwan — it has its eyes set on whole other island chains to dominate the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
By Jamie Seidel

Beijing wants to be an international super power.

To achieve this, it needs to carve out a vast swath of economic and military influence. 

And it has a plan.
A recent US Defense Intelligence Agency analysis of China’s growing strength and expanding international ambitions judged Xi Jinping wants to project power far beyond its shores.
The China Military Power report delves into deep detail about what is known about Beijings capabilities and intentions.
“China is rapidly building a robust lethal force with capabilities spanning the ground, air, maritime, space and information domains designed to table to impose its will in the regional and beyond,” A DIA spokesperson told media at its launch.
Beijing is seeking to ‘unchain’ itself from what it sees as the shackles of Western cultural, military and economic dominance.
To do this, it has its eyes set on a series of five ‘island chains’ over which it seeks to exert its national interests.
Any one of them could be the spark of an international crisis.
And the talk has been getting tough.

The US Naval Base at Guam’s Apra Harbor.

RESTRAINING CHAINS
Beijing’s ‘Belt and Road initiative’ is an expansive project to connect China’s expansive economy with the rest of Europe and Asia.
But there are ‘choke-points’.
On land, the narrow mountain passes of China’s East Turkestan colony (where the suppressed ethnic Muslim Uighurs reside), along with Pakistan and Afghanistan, funnel road and rail traffic with the Middle East.
At sea, Singapore and the slender Malacca Straits is an unavoidable bottleneck in the flow of shipping between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
And then there is the small island democracy of Taiwan, the last outpost of pre-Communist China, acting as what Beijing believes as a link in a chain holding it back from the broader Pacific.

It already dominates what has been defined as the “First Island Chain”: the waters of the East and South China Seas following a rough ‘nine-dash line’ from Japan in the north, past Taiwan and the Philippines down to Singapore and Malaysia.
It’s achieved this through a rapid build-up of its navy and long-range strike aircraft, along with the internationally condemned construction of artificial island fortresses on remote reefs also claimed by neighbouring countries.
Now this victory of might over right has been achieved, analysts believe Beijing is setting out on its next objective: dominating the “Second Island Chain”.
Meanwhile, it’s begun defining the next boundaries of its desired influence … a ‘Third Island Chain’ (encompassing Alaska, Hawaii and New Zealand), a ‘Fourth Island Chain’ (Linking Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldive Islands and the US/UK military facility at Diego Garcia in the midst of the Indian Ocean), and, finally, the ‘Fifth Chain’ extending from Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, past Madagascar to South Africa.

US strategic bombers on the island of Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

DANGEROUS IDEAS
Every island chain represents a sphere of influence over the nations they encompass.
Every island chain has at least one major US military base.
Every island chain is a potential flashpoint for international tensions.
All affect Australia: they fall to the north, east and west of the remote island nation.
But the nations most fearful of a dramatic shift in regional power dynamics from Washington to Beijing are Singapore and Japan.
Both could rapidly find themselves encompassed by seas dominated by China’s navy and skies by its air force.
Australia and New Zealand would soon follow.
But it’s the remote islands that are most at risk of conflict.
The United States has long since built up a strategy of using island bases to project power over a region.
Warships and combat aircraft can be based there.
But, most importantly, they can be used as launch pads for strong ground-based forces (such as troops and tanks).
Beijing has followed this line of thinking.
Its artificial island fortresses in the South China Sea are bristling with missiles, guns and military radars.
Their airfields and ports are military-grade.
They have strong garrisons.
All that is missing — for the time being — are permanently stationed combat aircraft and warships.
And it’s keenly aware of the strategic geographic importance of the Pacific island chains.
Which is why there’s a diplomatic land-grab underway.
Australia and the US have moved to head-off Beijing’s interest in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, making a last-minute deal to reactivate the old World War II naval facility there as a forward operating base.
A recent change in government in Micronesia upset Beijing’s ambitions there, and resulted in what is in effect an economic embargo — the suspension of government-sanctioned holiday tours there.
It’s a similar story in the Indian Ocean, with a democratic change of government stifling Beijing’s growing economic dominance over the Maldive Islands.
Such ‘push-back’ has led some international affairs analysts, including in China, to suggest Xi Jinping has ‘overextended’ himself.
He’s moved too hard, too early — and is meeting an unexpected backlash over his plans to make China great again.
The question is: how will he react?

HMAS Choules pictured at the Manus Island Lombrum Naval Base, Paupa New Guinea. The US and Australia are planning a joint military facility there to stave-off Beijing’s interest. 

THE NEXT CRISIS
China’s own 2015 Military White Paper outlines a mission statement: “It is a Chinese Dream to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The Chinese Dream is to make the country strong …”
It’s already been enacting this mission through the building of extensive artificial island fortresses in the South China Sea, as well as establishing its first foreign military places at locations including Djibouti and Pakistan.
But military analysts are worried this expansion is set to accelerate.
With the European Union hobbled and distracted by a shambolic ‘Brexit’ divorce with the United Kingdom, and President Donald Trump’s insular ‘Make America Great Again’ perspective, Beijing has sensed an opportunity.
This has Australian, Singaporean and Japanese strategic think-tanks worried: can we rely on our treaties and relationships with the US, UK and Europe in the face of growing Chinese ambition?
Or will they retreat from their old island chains of influence?
The next real test will be the ‘Second Island Chain’.
This is defined as a wavy line starting in the middle of Japan, weaving through the scattered islands of Micronesia (including the major US military base of Guam) and down to the Indonesia’s Western New Guinea
Its growing naval and missile strength appears designed to project power at this scale.
Aircraft carriers can provide protection and strike power for naval formations.
Swarms of long-range guided missiles can force back larger US carrier battle groups.
Beijing’s already working to extend its diplomatic influence into the region.
As its hydrographic survey ships plough the waters to the north of Papua New Guinea and through Micronesia, it’s also pushing hard to establish a strong economic and diplomatic foothold in these Pacific states as well as the Philippines.
The major US defence facility on the Japanese island of Okinawa is grappling with deep unpopularity among the island’s residents.
Ties with Thailand are being cultivated, with talk of a possible canal to bypass Singapore.
And Xi is becoming increasingly vocal over ‘reunification’ with Taiwan — whether it wants it or not.

Han Peril: How China Brings Us Together

An existential threat for the 21st century.
By David Brooks

I’ve always thought Americans would come together when we realized that we faced a dangerous foreign foe. 

And lo and behold, now we have one: China. 

It’s become increasingly clear that China is a grave economic, technological and intellectual threat to the United States and the world order.

And sure enough, beneath the TV bluster of daily politics, Americans are beginning to join together. Mike Pence and Elizabeth Warren can sound shockingly similar when talking about China’s economic policy. 

Nancy Pelosi and Republicans sound shockingly similar when they talk about Chinese human rights abuses. 

Conservative and liberal policy thinkers can sound shockingly similar when they start talking about how to respond to the challenge from China.
For the past few decades, China has appeared to be a net positive force in world affairs. 

But a few things have now changed. 

First, instead of liberalizing, the Chinese regime has become more aggressive and repressive.

The launch of new 5G Huawei products in Beijing last month.

Second, the Chinese have changed their economic focus so that their economy can directly replace ours. 

The regime’s “Made in China 2025” policy is an attempt to go up the value chain and dominate high-tech industries like aerospace, robotics and biotech.
According to a report just released by Marco Rubio, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, China’s artificial intelligence industry has grown by 67 percent over the past year and has produced more patents than its U.S. counterparts. 

One estimate suggests China is investing as much as 30 times more capital in quantum computing than the U.S. 

My colleague Thomas L. Friedman notes that China already has the No. 1 and No. 3 drone manufacturers in the world, and it is way ahead of us on technologies like facial and speech recognition.
All this would be fine if China were simply competing, but it’s not. 

It’s stealing. 

A commission led by retired Adm. Dennis Blair and former U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman estimated in 2017 that the annual loss to the U.S. economy from Chinese intellectual property theft was between $225 billion and $600 billion.
Some of the theft is done through hacking. 

Some of it is done by surreptitiously buying tech firms through shell companies in order to seize the technologies. 

Some of it is pure espionage and thuggery. 

Sometimes China offers to give American companies access to its markets in exchange for the technology, and then after China has digested the knowledge it closes off access. 

This is not competition. This is replacement.

Third, Beijing is trying to seize the controlling centers of the new tech economy. 

If China can set the standard for 5G communication and dominate artificial intelligence and quantum computing, then it will be able to write the rules and penetrate the fibers of our society and our lives in ways that we cannot match.
Fourth, the Chinese challenge is no longer just economic; it’s moral and intellectual. 

It’s a clash of two value systems. 

And many people around the globe now believe that Beijing’s values are better.
We used to think China would democratize. Wrong. 

We used to think the regime would liberalize. Wrong. 

We used to think the Chinese people would rise up and join the free democratic world. Wrong.

A fascinating essay by Wenfang Tang in American Affairs makes for humbling reading for anybody who thinks we can take the superiority of our system for granted. 

Chinese people have more trust in their governing institutions than Americans do. 

In a 2008 study, 78 percent of Chinese said their government responds to their needs, compared with 33 percent of Japanese and 21 percent of South Koreans. 

Chinese society has much more trust and social capital than American society. 

China, Tang notes, has the second-highest level of social trust in the world, after the Netherlands.
If we don’t learn to make the case for our system, if we don’t make our system better, a lot of people everywhere will say: I’ll take what they’re having.
The big debate is: How do we respond? 

The Rubio report — “Made in China 2025 and the Future of American Industry” — makes for compelling and fascinating reading: “This report’s central conclusion is that the U.S. cannot escape or avoid decisions about industrial policy.”
Free-market Republicans used to fight against industrial policy — heavy government intervention to support key sectors — until their dying breaths. 

But the Chinese threat is already fundamentally changing thinking across the board. 

The Rubio report seeks to move beyond the free-market/statist dichotomy and find new ways to proceed.
The biggest change may be to the American identity. 

As Reihan Salam asks in The Atlantic, if China is the “other” against which we define ourselves, then who are “we”? 

If China is an existential threat to the liberal international order, do we have the capacity to improve our system so it can face the challenge — to invest in human capital, to reform our institutions, repair the social fabric and make our political system function once again?

China's Pacific Islands Push Has the U.S. Worried

The latest frontier in Beijing’s bid for global influence is a collection of tiny island nations.
By Jason Scott

In the gritty, steamy streets of Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby, signs of China’s push into the Pacific island nation are inescapable.
A Chinese worker stencils a logo for China Railway Group outside the new national courthouse it’s building; China Harbor Engineering Group laborers tar roads under the searing midday sun.
“Little by little they are taking slices of our businesses,” said Martyn Namorong, who campaigns to protect local jobs and communities as China ramps up infrastructure spending in the resource-rich nation, bringing its own workforce.

“My people feel we can’t compete.”
The nation of 8 million people is the latest frontier in Beijing’s bid for global influence that’s included building artificial reefs in the South China Sea, a military base in Africa and an ambitious trade-and-infrastructure plan spanning three continents.

Advertisement for China Construction Bank outside the airport in Port Moresby.

China’s thrust into the Pacific islands region, a collection of more than a dozen tiny nations including Fiji, Niue and Timor Leste scattered across thousands of miles of ocean, has the U.S. and its close ally Australia worried. 

The region played a key role in World War II and remains strategically important as Western powers seek to maintain open sea lines and stability. 

For Beijing, it offers raw materials, from gas to timber, and a clutch of countries who could voice support for its territorial claims.
“We’ve seen a huge surge in China’s state-directed economic investment and mobilization of an enormous amount of capital in the Pacific which clearly has a strategic intent,” said Eric B. Brown, a senior fellow in Asian affairs at Washington-based think tank the Hudson Institute. 

“The sovereignty of these nations could be compromised by these predatory economic methods. And that could create a military threat to countries such as Australia and effect the ability of the U.S. Navy and its allies to maintain freedom and order in the Pacific.”

Debt Trap
China’s lending practices related to the Belt and Road Initiative have raised concerns among the International Monetary Fund and the Trump administration that poorer countries wouldn’t be able to repay heavy debts. 

Sri Lanka is considered an example of what could go wrong for developing nations: China received a 99-year lease for a strategic port after the government in Colombo couldn’t repay loans.
Indeed China has overtaken Japan as Papua New Guinea’s largest bilateral creditor and by the end of the year PNG will owe it about $1.9 billion in concessional loans — almost a quarter of its total debt burden. 

Standard & Poor’s in April lowered the nation’s sovereign credit rating to B from B+, citing rising costs of servicing debt that’s climbed above 30 percent of gross domestic product and is expected to reach about 40 percent by 2021.

The IMF warns that other recipients of Chinese money in the region — tiny nations such as Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu — have moderate to high risks of debt distress.
While the largess flowing into the Pacific from Beijing is a fraction of the $350 billion of Chinese aid distributed globally since 2000, it’s still big money for the nations, most with populations under 1 million. 

In April, the French Polynesian government approved construction of a $320 million Chinese fish farm.

Military Presence
Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, says “there’s no doubt” China could seek to establish a military presence in the Pacific in the future, cashing in its influence with “one of these small, vulnerable states.”
“It intends to become the primary power in east Asia and the western Pacific,” White said.
Governments in the region have sought to strike a balance between accepting China’s cash and resisting moves that would raise concern among Western military powers. 

Vanuatu in April denied media reports that China had approached it to build a permanent military base in one of its harbors.

Peter O'Neill and Xi Jinping in July 2016.

The office of PNG’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, who’s due to meet Xi Jinping in China later this week, didn’t reply to repeated requests for comment. 

When O’Neill visited Beijing in 2016, he pledged support for China’s military build up in the South China Sea. 

In December, a month after China promised to construct $3.5 billion of roads, O’Neill said PNG will continue to be a “staunch partner.”
Beijing’s push into the Pacific islands risks further straining ties with key trading partner Australia — which views the region as its own diplomatic backyard and has been increasingly critical of China’s economic and military muscle-flexing.
During a visit to the region this month, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said “we want to continue to be the partner of choice for nations in the Pacific.” 

Her government on June 13 signed an agreement to build a new undersea telecommunications cable to the Solomon Islands, squeezing out a bid by China’s Huawei Technologies Ltd.
Papua New Guinea has traditionally looked to Australia — from which it won independence in 1975 — for a helping hand. 

Outside of the capital, the nation’s woeful roads network has helped push prices of food staples beyond what many can afford.

It’s also struggling with an illiteracy rate of 35 percent, poor tax collection and endemic corruption.

Australia is still its largest donor, contributing more than three-quarters of total aid and loans compared to China’s 14 percent. 

Yet the majority is directed to improving corporate governance, while Beijing has focused on infrastructure and major works.

‘Red Carpet’
Nursing a cool drink at a sports club in Port Moresby, British-born business adviser Paul Barker said China was stepping into a vacuum left by the west.
“The government in Beijing has rolled out the red carpet and our leaders seem to be a bit intoxicated by the experience,” said Barker, who’s lived in his adopted nation for more than four decades.
Australia’s assistant trade minister Mark Coulton acknowledged the merits of China’s investment as he sat in one of Port Moresby’s few five-star hotels near the Beijing-gifted convention center where APEC leaders will meet in November.
“You can’t deny your neighbor if someone is looking to build something they really need,” he said. “Our role is to give the PNG government and people the ability” to “handle influxes of foreign aid like those that are now occurring.”
China’s foreign ministry, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, in April said Pacific island nations weren’t in the “sphere of influence of any country” and called on Australia not to interfere.

China Railway Group signage at the construction site of the new national courthouse.

China is in the region to stay, said Jonathan Pryke of the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank.
“China has entered the Pacific in a significant way,” said Pryke.

“It’s upended the status quo and caused anxiety, because no-one knows what its end-game is."

The Han Peril: Born to Spy

"Chinese Students Are a Threat." --  FBI Director Chris Wray 

Daily Beast

FBI Director Chris Wray

China is massively exporting students-spies.

Sino-Americans are blasting FBI Director Chris Wray for telling Congress that Chinese students in the United States are covertly gathering intelligence for their government back home.

Wray’s comments came during the Senate intelligence committee’s annual open hearing on the greatest threats to the country. 

A host of Intelligence Community leaders shared a litany of concerns about dangers from around the globe. 

Then Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, asked Wray about “the counterintelligence risk posed to U.S. national security from Chinese students, particularly those in advanced programs in science and mathematics.”
Wray took it from there.
“The use of non-traditional collectors, especially in the academic setting—whether it’s professors, scientists, students—we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country,” he said. 

“It’s not just in major cities. It’s in small ones as well, it’s across basically every discipline. And I think the level of naivete on the part of the academic sector about this creates its own issues.”
What’s more, Wray added, the Bureau is actively investigating Chinese government-backed groups that "facilitate dialogues" between Chinese and American academics. 

It was a rare revelation of active FBI investigations—one that drew rage from Sino-Americans.

The FBI declined to comment on a request for additional details about Wray’s comments. 

A spokesperson for Senator Rubio did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wray isn’t the first FBI official to raise concerns about Chinese government activity and Chinese students spying for China.
Edward You, an agent in the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, told members of Congress last March that the Bureau has concerns about Chinese government-backed efforts to gather massive amounts of data on Americans’ health. 

In some cases, he said, Chinese government-backed hackers have stolen health data. 

But in other cases, Americans give away this data to Chinese government-backed labs that specialize in DNA sequencing and diagnostic tests, You said. 

American health and academic institutions work with these labs, sharing tens of thousands of Americans’ personal health information with these Chinese government-backed entities. 

He described the situation as “a ticking time bomb.”
Rubio spurred Monday’s comments, and said that while the Kremlin poses major threat, China is “the biggest issue of our time.” 

The Trump administration has considered curbing the number of Chinese students studying STEM to “ensure that intellectual property is not transferred to China.”
“They’re exploiting the very open research and development environment that we have, which we all revere,” Wray said in response. 

“But they’re taking advantage of this. One of the things we’re trying to do is to view the Chinese threat as not just a whole of government threat, but a whole-of-society threat, on their end. And I think it’s going to take a whole-of-society response by us. It’s not just the Intelligence Community, but it’s raising awareness within our academic sector, within our private sector, as part of defense.”
With Chinese students taking up a “large majority” of graduate STEM enrollment, it seems that the FBI has taken this to be an intelligence risk.
Intersections of the academic world and Chinese espionage aren’t unprecedented. 

In 2015, the Justice Department announced the indictment of six Chinese nationals, including two who met while working on a Defense Department-funded research project as students at a Southern California university. 

They later stole trade secrets from their employers, which they shared with a university in China, according to the indictment, which said that university went on to use the information to get military contracts.
Court filings show the prosecution is underway.
Espionage isn’t the only concern Rubio and Wray discussed at the hearing. 

Rubio asked Wray if he worries about the Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes, which partner with American universities. 

The senator said one concern, which he recently shared with Institute-partnered universities in Florida, is that these programs aim to covertly change American public opinion on the Chinese government by whitewashing its human rights abuses.
The FBI Director said the Bureau has opened investigations into some of them.
“We do share concerns about the Confucius Institutes,” Wray said. 

“We’ve been watching that development for a while. It’s just one of many tools that they take advantage of. We have seen some decrease recently in their own enthusiasm and commitment to that particular program, but it is something that we’re watching warily and in certain instances have developed appropriate investigations into them.”