According to a congressional report, they took money from the Chinese government via various groups.
One of the constantly repeated claims from the Hillary Clinton election loss seems to be the claim that there was some sort of ‘Russian collusion’ that put Donald J Trump into the White House. However, a story that doesn’t seem to get as much attention is various claims that other foreign nations are doing something to interfere with politics in the United States.
Now, a report from Bill Gertz, a writer over at the Free Beacon, suggests that there is a government trying to influence the American political landscape. It isn’t a Russian-led attempt, however; instead, it comes from the “highest level” of the Chinese government, according to his article. A well-connected organization pushing for “Progress” on the political left was among those organizations named, yet the media has been silent on the story.
According to his article at the Beacon, the Communist Party in China has been intensifying its various operations in the United States.
Among those efforts were things like funding think tanks in Washington D.C., as well as attempts to coerce ‘Chinese-Americans.’
Gertz also claimed that these operations are being conducted by the ‘United Front Work Department,’ an organ of the Chinese government that employs operatives who utilize both covert and overt methods and operations in order to promote ideas and policies that will benefit the government of China in Beijing.
All this information came from a congressional commission report.
But of the many think tanks in the Beltway Loop, who is taking the money?
No right-leaning organization at all. Rather, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, for an easy example, received money from Tung Chee-hwa, a member of China’s Communist party and the vice president of the group that manages the UFWD mentioned above.
Of course, the money was laundered, to avoid the appearance of impropriety. In the case of the money for Johns Hopkins, the funds came from a non-profit operated by Tung, called the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation.
The entity is a registered Chinese agent.
There were more organizations that received money from various Chinese agencies, in addition to Johns Hopkins, of course.
Other think tanks that received money from such foreign actors included the Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, Center for American Progress, EastWest Institute, Carter Center (the one founded by Jimmy Carter in 1982), and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
That list is interesting, because it is entirely filled with left-leaning organizations.
Perhaps most notably, the ‘Center for American Progress,’ a ‘progressive’ organization where John Podesta was a founder and President from 2003 until he left to run the Clinton campaign was allegedly on the receiving end of the Chinese cash.
A spokesman for CAP said that the country received no money from China, or from the CUSEF.
On the other hand, they did say that they cooperated with the organization to produce a ‘joint report’ in 2014, but they said that they got no financial contribution for it.
While the leftist media, and leftist politicians in the United States, continue to focus on talking about the ‘threat’ that Russia, a nation with one-eighth of the Gross Domestic Product of China, present to the United States, the fact is that China is doing many of the same things that Russia is accused of.
It is China that is building airstrips and expanding its land holdings, not Russia.
Perhaps a better question, though, is why it seems that the only person who’s talking about the story on a major media networks is none other than Tucker Carlson.
A congressional report suggested that a number of left-leaning ‘think tanks,’ including the CAP that John Podesta founded at worked at, received foreign money, but somehow that isn’t news.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media and the political left breathlessly report on claims that a ‘Russian agent’ met with republicans under the guise of being a pro-gun leader from Russia, or the idea that ‘Russian agents’ handed over derogatory information about Hillary Clinton to the Donald Trump campaign in Trump tower.
Finding out that a number of left-wing thinktanks may have taken Chinese money connected to the communist party apparently just isn’t worth reporting on.
Is it any wonder that trust in the mainstream media is so low in the United States?
How much money China funneled into the pockets of these think-tanks is up for debate, but it sounds like the report is fairly certain that money changed hands.
