The Feds Should Get Tougher on the CCP’s Interference in New York Politics
Udumbara
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China’s election interference is global, brazen, and growing.
The report found 53 organizations with links to Beijing, 19 of which allegedly electioneered for particular candidates. Many of the groups are tax-exempt nonprofits, which would make their alleged support of particular candidates illegal. There are other allegations of threatened violence, the bribing of journalists in a New York mayoral election, and a state governor’s apparent kickback to an organization run by a convicted heroin trafficker and smuggler of Chinese citizens into the United States.
In one case, Chinese spies allegedly hired an investigator to use a prostitute to lure a Chinese dissident and anti-CCP politician into a compromising situation in which he could be beaten so badly that he would not be able to continue his run for the U.S. Congress.
In another case, $300,000 in New York City government funds were reportedly donated to Chinese American nonprofit organizations. Most of the money went to organizations linked to Beijing.
Those local politicians who play ball with the CCP get help with their elections and fundraising. They can give kickbacks to the clubs in the form of government grants totaling millions of dollars. These Beijing-aligned politicians could go on to bigger and better things in national politics, making their potentially illegal compromises early in their careers a CCP hook for future influence at the highest levels in Washington, D.C.
Most of the Chinese groups in New York City under the influence of Beijing are hometown associations linked to a particular city or province in China. The more a Chinese individual abroad, including leaders of the associations, has family and financial investments on the mainland, the more leverage the CCP has to force this person to do the CCP’s bidding. That includes setting them against fellow U.S. citizens, Chinese dissidents, and politicians critical of the CCP.
It is time to describe the CCP’s influence for what it is: criminal election interference.
There is little time left for democracies and newspapers of record to continue the underemphasis of the CCP’s crimes. Above all, the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation should use every tool at their disposal to turbocharge their investigations and prosecutions of all of the CCP’s alleged criminal activities on U.S. shores.
The CCP has become a mafia-like organization in China and abroad. It cooperates with other organized crime and drug smugglers to kill tens of thousands of Americans with fentanyl annually, and is paralyzing our defenses by interfering in our elections. As with all organized crime, the CCP uses political influence to achieve its goals.
American democracy is our last line of defense against the CCP’s racketeering and power grabs. Starting yesterday, the United States and other democracies should take far stronger action against Beijing’s influence operations. Until the illegality ends, the United States should close China’s consulates, ban CCP diplomats, increase sanctions and tariffs, indict U.S. collaborators, and consider removing China from the SWIFT international banking network.
Tough measures are needed to send Beijing a clear message: get rid of the CCP and democratize, or face global isolation as a mafia state. U.S. collaborators should be locked up as a threat to all law-abiding Americans. Any complicit organizations should be permanently closed.
If tougher sanctions on the CCP mean less trade with China, so be it. That trade leads to even more powerful CCP influence in Washington through American CEOs who do business in China. Our American freedoms are more important than any trade under the control of an authoritarian government. The time to act is now.
