The Ever-Expanding Influence of China

by Michael Swartz: Depending on your preferred source of news, you may not have heard about the messy entanglements that Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and his family are engaged in with our greatest geopolitical foe: China. Those business dealings have allegedly placed the Biden clan in the exclusive company of the 1%. But, more important for our nation’s security and prosperity, they’ve compromised a potential American administration to a brutal and ambitious communist Chinese regime. It’s reminiscent of the Soviet threat we felt for the latter half of the last century, which finally ended under the leadership of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The Chinese are nothing if not shrewd students of history, so the lessons they learned by watching the Soviet Union during the Cold War have informed their efforts to undermine the United States, which has been a campaign of several stages. Nearly 50 years ago, when the Chinese opened up their nation to Richard Nixon, they saw the benefits of our capitalist system and soon afterward adopted the portions of it their regime could control. Beginning in the 1980s, American manufacturing began leaving the states and moving to China to take advantage of its low wages and lax environmental standards. This led to a massive influx of our capital — an influx that its government used in part to improve living standards for the average Chinese citizen.

That Western revenue stream, however, was also used for more nefarious purposes, and one of those is the subject of this story. This week the Department of Education finalized a report that showed American colleges and universities “failed to report $6.5 billion in foreign gifts and contracts.” As John Hinderaker of Power Line explained, “The Chinese Communist Party has spread billions of dollars among many American politicians and institutions, considering such spending to be a wise investment. With hindsight, it seems clear that they are right.”

The Chinese have also applied this Western funding toward students studying at American universities. About one-third of the 1.1 million student visa holders attending school here come from China, and while the vast majority are legitimately here to learn, an alarming number have hidden their connections to the Chinese Communist Party and its military in order to gain access to our research and steal our intellectual property. Six of those cases were recently documented by The Daily Signal.

Color us shocked that our mainstream media is taking a pass on these potential Pulitzers by keeping their collective heads in the sand. But perhaps there’s an explanation for that, too.

Sixteen years ago — when many of our journalists were coming up through college — the Chinese government began to place what are called Confucius Institutes within a number of our colleges and universities, ostensibly to promote Chinese language and culture. In practice, though, they provide an outlet for parroting Chinese government propaganda to students, softening them up to believe whatever the propagandistic party line happens to be. Thus, American students never hear about abuses such as those perpetrated against China’s Islamic Uyghur population in Tibet, or China’s essential role in the introduction and cover-up of the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Back in April, as our Arnold Ahlert wrote about a Senate report, an affiliate of the Chinese government “provides colleges between $100,000 and $200,000 in start-up costs, and a large amount to teaching supplies. It also chooses a director and teachers at no cost to the university. Those teachers sign contracts pledging not to undermine China’s national interests, and the Chinese government gets to approve every teacher, event, and speaker at the institutes. ‘Such limitations,’ the report says, ‘attempt to export China’s censorship of political debate and prevent discussion of potentially politically sensitive topics.’” This product of a Homeland Security subcommittee also pointed out that China doesn’t allow a reciprocal organization promoting our American interests to operate in China.

When Ahlert wrote his article back in April, he noted there were 86 Confucius Institutes operating around the country. However, that figure has since been whittled down to 65, with more slated to close in the coming months.

China has taken full advantage of our open society in its effort to undermine us while hiding the flaws and abuses within its own system. Ever since President Nixon visited China in 1972, we’ve operated under the belief that exporting our culture and way of life to the massive communist country would bring it around, but China has instead worked to subvert us.

Donald Trump is the first president to take a harder stance against the Chinese in over a half-century. The communist Chinese regime, however, long ago purchased the services of Joe Biden. The question is whether that investment will pay off handsomely next Tuesday.
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Michael Swartz addressing forign policy on The Patriot Post.

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