Beijing Exploits Control of US Supply Chains for Military Preparedness, Expert Testifies
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China expert Cheryl Yu recently testified before the Wisconsin Legislature on Oct. 21 on how Beijing exploits U.S. supply chains for its military preparedness, warning that a Chinese logistics giant with ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is expanding its footprint in the state.
Yu, a Taiwan-born scholar and graduate of National Chengchi University, currently serves as a fellow at The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. She testified alongside Kelley Currie, former U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, before Wisconsin lawmakers.
Modern Logistics Could Become Wartime Supply Chain
During her testimony, Yu outlined the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) strategies of “military-civil fusion” and the United Front system—a network used to advance the Chinese regime’s political influence and to ensure civilian assets can be mobilized for military purposes when required.She said that in today’s China, there is no longer a clear separation between private enterprise and the military. The CCP’s objective, she said, is to ensure that industrial and infrastructure resources can be repurposed for defense whenever necessary.
Meanwhile, the United Front serves as the Party’s weapon to infiltrate, influence, and weaken democratic societies from within, advancing Beijing’s global ambitions, Yu said.
Yu further explained that the CCP operates under the guiding principle that assets are “not to be owned, but to be used.” In other words, the Party does not need to legally own assets; it only needs access to and influence over them. This makes it difficult to trace the background of CCP-linked entities.
She said the Chinese military applies this approach particularly in the logistics sector.
As an example, Yu said that a local company, Tian An Express, is a subsidiary of SF Express, which has ties to Beijing’s United Front system.
Yu also said that several Chinese-owned industrial and agricultural properties in Wisconsin have ties to United Front-related funding. Many of these facilities are located at strategic transportation and waterway nodes, she said, and some companies used their U.S. procurement capabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic to source emergency medical materials and ship them back to China.
“These companies collaborate with their base in China and deliver these materials inside China using their fleets,” she said.
“This shows exactly how the Chinese Communist Party’s military-civil fusion strategy functions in practice—a company that appears private abroad can be instantly repurposed for Party-directed logistics when necessary. If this network can be activated once, it can be activated again.”
20-Plus Subsidiaries in US
In her May 9 report in the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief, Yu wrote that SF Express operates through more than 20 U.S. subsidiaries and partners with WorldCPS, another major Chinese logistics company connected to the United Front system. Together, she wrote, they have been building infrastructure capable of dual-use under China’s military-civil fusion strategy.Her report also noted that since the launch of China’s military-civil fusion logistics system in 2016, SF Express has signed several logistics cooperation agreements with the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the PLA. One of these partnerships was with the CMC Logistics Support Department’s Transport and Delivery Bureau to establish an air cargo route between Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and Lhasa, Tibet.
SF Express also signed a five-year “Air Force Logistics and Military-Civil Fusion Strategic Cooperation Agreement” with the PLA Air Force Logistics Department, covering transportation, warehousing, procurement, information integration, research and innovation, capacity building, military support services, and related infrastructure.
Call to Support Assembly Bill 30
Yu concluded her testimony by urging Wisconsin lawmakers to support Assembly Bill 30, which would ban hostile foreign powers—including the CCP—and their state-owned enterprises or affiliates from acquiring new real estate within the state.“Assembly Bill 30 gives Wisconsin the legal tool to prevent these risks before they grow,” she said, adding that the purpose is not to restrict investments, but to safeguard national security and sovereignty.
“The bill,” Yu said, “aligns Wisconsin’s laws with federal national security policy, ensuring that farmland, water, and infrastructure cannot be turned into logistical nodes for foreign military or political systems.”
