By Jimmy Quinn
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Beijing’s influence in the United States has become
the subject of intense scrutiny by the current Congress. But one House member’s
controversial relationships to Chinese Communist Party front groups have
complicated fellow lawmakers’ drive to identify and counter CCP efforts to
influence American politics.
Representative Judy Chu (D., Calif.) has faced criticism
for her well-documented interactions with groups linked to Beijing’s United
Front Work Department (UFWD), a vast CCP bureau, with a budget larger than that
of China’s foreign ministry, that seeks to influence foreign elites and certain
demographics within China. Over the past several weeks, Chu has neutralized
this criticism by labeling all discussion of her ties with the front groups,
which take direction from the party and advocate its stance toward Taiwan and
other topics, as racist, xenophobic, and McCarthyist. That set off a flood of
sympathetic media coverage that’s effectively kept most other lawmakers from
speaking about it.
Few Americans are familiar with the United Front Work
Department, and that’s by design. United-front work — that is, the work carried
on by the UFWD and the individuals and groups that follow its directives — is
part of a strategy that the CCP has used since the earliest days of its
existence to eliminate political threats. One of the world’s leading experts on
the party’s influence, Alex Joske, has described united-front work as
“co-opting representatives of ethnic minority groups, religious movements, and
business, science, and political groups.” The party thereby “claims the right
to speak on behalf of those groups and uses them to claim legitimacy.” While
much of this happens in China, much of it also happens abroad, through the use
of seemingly independent civic groups that are actually serving Beijing’s aims.
In Western democracies, this has taken the form of influential individuals who,
while appearing to be independent of the party’s work, in fact use their sway
to campaign for pro-Beijing candidates or push policies that benefit the
Chinese regime.
Consider some recent cases. Over the past several months,
a steady drip of reporting has revealed that Canadian intelligence has warned
about blatant Chinese electoral interference in our northern neighbor’s two
most recent elections. This interference took the form of efforts by Beijing’s
consulates in Toronto and Vancouver to funnel illegal campaign contributions to
its favored candidates through prominent community members and groups
affiliated with the united-front system. It hasn’t received much attention in
the U.S., but the allegations are roiling Canada’s politics. Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau is facing criticism that his government was asleep at the switch
while this was taking place. A member of parliament from Trudeau’s Liberal
Party relinquished his party affiliation after it was reported that he advised
Chinese diplomats that Beijing should hold on to two Canadian hostages it had
in its custody at the time.
Blatant Chinese political interference in North America
is not limited to Canada, though. We are learning about widespread political
meddling efforts here. Shortly before this issue of National Review went
to press, the Associated Press published an investigation of how Beijing’s
numerous proxies in Utah have shaped state politics to such a degree that
they’ve effectively written and secured passage of legislation. “If the Chinese
can succeed in Salt Lake City, they can also make it in New York and
elsewhere,” a former FBI counterintelligence agent told the AP.
By coincidence, the allegations against Representative
Chu have also begun attracting attention at the federal level recently, though
they came to light separately from these other controversies.
Starting in late January, the Daily Caller’s
Philip Lenczycki put out a series of stories linking Chu to CCP front groups.
The first explained that, in 2012, Chu was named “honorary president” of the
All America Chinese Youth Federation, a nonprofit organization linked to
united-front groups by its other leaders’ affiliations. Perhaps even more
noteworthy is that Chu was named “honorary chairwoman” of a group called the
“Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China” — which is part of a broader
organization that the U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission has
described as “directly subordinate to the UFWD” and that promotes Chinese rule
over Taiwan. The subgroup in which Chu apparently has membership is one of 33
similar united-front subsidiary organizations.
Lenczycki was able to connect Chu to this group based on
Chinese-language websites of media outlets presumably backed by Beijing, as
well as the website of an anti-Taiwan group in the U.S. These websites discuss
Chu’s affiliation with the group or attendance at its events. A picture on the
website of a Chinese media outlet shows Chu at a 2019 ceremony held at a hotel
in Monterey Park; in the picture, she is holding a certificate with the name of
the “Peaceful Reunification” group and its logo. At that event, Chu allegedly
said she hopes for China and Taiwan “to become one family,” the Daily
Caller reported, citing a summary of the event on the website of
Alliance for China’s Peaceful Reunification USA (a sister organization to the
Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China). The congresswoman was also a
“witness” for the ceremony and “supervised” the passing of power to a new
chairman, that web page claims.
Despite the explosive implications of reports tying a
sitting member of Congress to a CCP front group that seeks to undermine U.S.
support of Taiwan, the reporting received very limited attention at first.
Then, Lenczycki and Representative Lance Gooden (R., Texas) appeared together
on Fox’s Watters’ World program to discuss Dominic Ng,
President Biden’s appointee to run a council advising the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation group. Lenczycki had reported that Ng, a large donor to President
Biden’s 2020 campaign, had served as the “executive director” of the Chinese
Overseas Exchange Association and in an identically named role at the China
Overseas Friendship Association, both of which are united-front groups.
About halfway through the segment, Gooden lobbed a
grenade at Chu, who along with three other lawmakers of Asian ancestry had
signed a statement defending Ng. Responding to a question about whether Chu
should be investigated, Gooden accused her of standing up for the CCP and said,
“I question her either loyalty or competence.” He added: “If she doesn’t
realize what’s going on, then she’s totally out of touch with one of her core constituencies,
and I think she has drug along the other Chinese-American members to sign this
letter.” (One of the signatories, Mark Takano, is actually of Japanese
descent.)
Unsurprisingly, Gooden’s comment about loyalty
electrified the controversy, sparking a backlash and calling attention to
the Daily Caller’s reporting about Chu’s ties to united-front work
— or at least to Gooden’s comments on it. There followed sharply worded and
sympathetically reported statements from top Democratic lawmakers, such as Hakeem
Jeffries, the House minority leader, condemning Gooden for questioning Chu’s
loyalty.
Rather than parsing information that links a sitting
member of Congress to a CCP-backed nonprofit group, most mainstream outlets
focused on the Gooden controversy. In passing, they also waved away any
possibility that the Daily Caller’s reporting was correct. In the
lead paragraph of a February 24 article on the Chu controversy, the Washington
Post referenced “unsubstantiated reports in a conservative outlet” —
but then described the Daily Caller’s reporting in detail,
specifically mentioning the information associating Chu with the Forums for
Peaceful Reunification of China. The Post could just as well
have called the Daily Caller’s reporting “unrefuted,” because Chu
has still not given a plausible explanation for the photograph in which she
appears at an event for the group.
To be clear, there’s no indication that Chu has done
anything illegal or engaged in activities of similar severity to what’s been
reported in Canada or Utah. Nor is the Daily Caller alleging
that Chu is acting as a proxy of the CCP or that she holds pro-Beijing
sympathies — and the outlet certainly is not reporting on Chu out of any racial
animus. The public record reflects a troubling pattern of interactions with
CCP-aligned groups and individuals that members of Congress should have the
sense to steer clear of. That’s newsworthy, no matter the ethnicity of the
lawmaker in question.
While Chu has denied any wrongdoing with righteous
fervor, she has still not convincingly explained herself. In an initial
statement, prior to Gooden’s Fox appearance, Chu claimed that the All America
Chinese Youth Federation gave her the honorary title without her permission.
And without directly referencing the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of
China, she has also tacitly denied any association with that group, pointing to
her numerous votes in support of legislation backing Taiwan. She told the Washington
Post that she has “never made statements for a peaceful reunification
of China with Taiwan — not at this event, nor at any event,” apparently tacitly
confirming that she was present at the 2019 event. She went on to imply that
she asked the Forums to retract its claim that she had made such a statement:
“I have had no contact with this group ever since demanding the retraction and
have never attended an organizational meeting of this group.” (Chu’s office did
not reply to NR’s request for comment on the 2019 dinner.)
Instead of explaining the circumstances of that appearance,
she has assailed those who are questioning her apparent interactions with, and
reported leadership role in, the group, describing them as not just partisan
but racist and xenophobic. Gooden’s comments, she told the Post,
are “outrageous” and based on “false information spread by an extreme,
right-wing website.” She added, “I very much doubt that he would be spreading
these lies were I not of Chinese-American descent.” On March 6, she wrote an
op-ed for MSNBC with the headline “I am a target of the right’s new
McCarthyism.”
This isn’t the first time she’s claimed that her
political opponents are anti-Asian racists. Earlier this year, when Chu voted
against the creation of the new House Select Committee on Countering the CCP,
she similarly warned that it would intensify xenophobic rhetoric. She has taken
similar stances in opposition to a China-focused program at the Justice
Department that was shut down last year.
But Chu’s response to Gooden serves a particular purpose:
It casts legitimate scrutiny of her strange affiliations as a manifestation of
anti-Asian hatred and thus puts a chill on any conversation about the Daily
Caller’s reporting.
Democratic lawmakers who otherwise strike a tough posture
toward Chinese interference campaigns have preferred denouncing Gooden to
discussing united-front work, which is an entirely predictable response given
that one of their colleagues was the subject of sharp criticism. Interestingly,
some conservatives also blame Gooden for making clumsy comments that have, at
least for now, overshadowed conversation about potential legislation to counter
united-front activity in the U.S. “Gooden turned it from a legitimate policy
issue to a QAnon-like conspiracy theory,” one senior GOP aide told NR.
Only Chu knows why she would choose to associate with
these groups. Perhaps she was duped by constituents who appeared earnest and
doesn’t want to admit it, or perhaps the explanation is less benign. Either
way, she hasn’t offered a good-faith response to solid reporting of the ties,
and her claims of McCarthyism seem to have stuck.
That doesn’t bode well for a Congress in which China
hawks are rallying support for proposals to counter the CCP that were out of
reach in previous years. Chu isn’t the only actor instrumentalizing anti-Asian
racism to evade questions about questionable activities. Critics of the new
House Select Committee on the CCP have claimed that investigating and shedding
light on Beijing’s misbehavior is xenophobic and conspiracist. TikTok has used
a similar excuse to invalidate national-security concerns about the company’s
links to Chinese government entities. After the company’s CEO, Shou Chew, faced
tough questioning at a House hearing in March, another TikTok executive accused
Democrats and Republicans of asking questions “rooted in xenophobia.” TikTok is
already the subject of intense bipartisan criticism, and the company’s talking
point is part of a desperate backup plan. Thus far, the xenophobia claim hasn’t
backfired.
In a political and media environment where unsupported
and inflammatory claims of racism already seem to have set the tone, officials
committed to addressing Chinese interference now face an even tougher path
ahead.
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