[Senate Hearing 119-33]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 119-33
THE MALIGN INFLUENCE OF THE PEOPLE'S
REPUBLIC OF CHINA AT HOME AND ABROAD:
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY MAKERS
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JANUARY 30, 2025
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
59-774 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho, Chairman
PETE RICKETTS, Nebraska JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
DAVID MCCORMICK, Pennsylvania CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
STEVE DAINES, Montana CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut
BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee TIM KAINE, Virginia
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
RAND PAUL, Kentucky CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
TED CRUZ, Texas BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
MIKE LEE, Utah CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
RICK SCOTT, Florida TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
JOHN R. CURTIS, Utah JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
JOHN CORNYN, Texas
Christopher M. Socha, Staff Director
Naz Durakoglu, Democratic Staff Director
John Dutton, Chief Clerk
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Statements
Risch, Hon. James E., Chairman, U.S. Senator From Idaho.......... 1
Shaheen, Hon. Jeanne, Ranking Member, U.S. Senator From New
Hampshire...................................................... 2
Witnesses
Mattis, Peter, President, the Jamestown Foundation, Washington,
DC............................................................. 4
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Stoff, Jeffrey, Founder, Center for Research Security and
Integrity, Herndon, Virginia................................... 20
Prepared statement........................................... 22
Hart, Dr. Melanie, Senior Director, Global China Hub, Atlantic
Council, Washington, DC........................................ 70
Prepared statement........................................... 71
Lind, Dr. Jennifer, Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth
College, Hanover, New Hampshire................................ 77
Prepared statement........................................... 79
(iii)
THE MALIGN INFLUENCE OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA AT HOME AND
ABROAD: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY MAKERS
----------
THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2025
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:42 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. James E.
Risch presiding.
Present: Senators Risch [presiding], Ricketts, McCormick,
Barrasso, Scott, Curtis, Shaheen, Coons, Kaine, Schatz, Van
Hollen, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES E. RISCH,
CHAIRMAN, U.S. SENATOR FROM IDAHO
Senator Risch. I want to welcome our witnesses here today,
and I want to thank you for being here today, for taking your
time to help us explore this important topic.
This is the first policy hearing in this Congress. We felt
it important to focus on the greatest long term threat to the
United States, that being China.
As both a public official and a private citizen I have
watched the Chinese government's malign influence grow. Their
political games, economic schemes, and military aggression has
only increased over the years.
The Chinese Communist Party has worked diligently to bring
China to what it is today and it did it the old fashioned way.
Chinese officials bribed, stole, and cheated at every
opportunity to ensure that China comes out on top, and we let
them do it virtually uninhibited.
This has to stop. I think all of us agree the threat of
Chinese influence on Western society is very real and needs to
be addressed.
The same Chinese government that commits genocide against
its ethnic minorities and dramatically oppresses the God given
freedoms of its people also attempts to influence America.
As we speak, they are working to undermine our national
security, our economy, and our values, and it is doing the same
to our allies. This is not just wrong, but most of all it is
dangerous.
Chinese influence spans industries from government to
academia, from research laboratories to farms and factory
floors.
No matter where, the Chinese government is determined to
use both our people and our institutions to achieve China's
political, economic, and military objectives.
China interferes in elections around the world including in
the United States. It skirts foreign lobbying laws to influence
democratic governments, and it woos State and city officials
with elegant trips to adopt pro-China policies in an effort to
pressure Federal Government.
It is no secret that the Chinese government conducts
espionage on American soil, but China goes far beyond this.
China siphons American technology and intellectual property
from companies it partners with, repurposing it for their own
economic benefit, and riding on the back of American ingenuity.
China pumps money into American universities and think
tanks, attempting to secure access to sensitive military
technology. Despite these threats, the previous Administration
just renewed a science and technology agreement that actually
encourages the very collaboration that could provide China with
more access.
Abroad, our allies face similar problems, often on a larger
scale. China co-opts international organizations like the U.N.
and ensures they never get a chance to address the many human
rights atrocities and military incursions China commits.
Sadly, while the Chinese government has improved and
redefined its tactics over the year, U.S. diplomatic tools and
laws have not kept pace to help manage these problems.
My goal today is to begin outlining what this committee can
do to push back on China's political, economic, and military
influence in our country and abroad.
To start, I hope that we can close the loopholes that allow
for foreign agents to lobby government officials, reform our
visa process to screen those who pose an intelligence risk, and
encourage our national security community to play a larger role
to counter the Chinese influence in American universities.
This work will take a whole of government approach but in
large part will be spearheaded by Secretary Rubio. I know
Secretary Rubio will use State as more than just a diplomatic
mouthpiece as has been the case.
I know he will operate the State Department as the United
States Government's expert agency on fighting foreign influence
and incorporate countering Chinese influence into every aspect
of its mission.
The Chinese will use every trick they can come up with to
undermine America and other freedom loving nations. But working
together across the aisle, across branches of government, and
with our allies across oceans, America has and always will beat
our authoritarian aggressors, and I have no doubt that we will
continue to do so.
With that, I will yield to Senator Shaheen.
STATEMENT OF HON. JEANNE SHAHEEN,
RANKING MEMBER, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE
Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to
each of our witnesses.
Thank you all for being here today.
I certainly think Chairman Risch has made some important
points that I agree with. We have worked closely together on
the Chinese Communist Party's--the CCP's--malign activities in
the past, activities like supporting Taiwan and Lithuania that
we have worked together on in the face of Beijing's economic
coercion, voting to protect America's user data from being
captured by the CCP on TikTok.
I think these concerns are, as so many of the concerns
about China, very bipartisan. Just last week at our hearing,
Senators from both sides of the aisle highlighted the danger
posed by China's efforts at the United Nations.
Today, China is targeting and exploiting open societies
with every tool that they have. They leverage corrupt
investments over decisionmakers in Africa and Latin America.
They have tried to buy off politicians in Australia and New
Zealand to undermine democratic elections. They control
strategic ports in places like Sri Lanka and Piraeus in Greece,
and they conduct covert espionage against American industries
from advanced science to aerospace to AI. Given the stakes, I
hope each of you today will share recommendations that we can
take as policymakers.
Something that I really want to zero in on is the growing
cooperation between Beijing and Moscow. At the summit here in
Washington last year, NATO labeled China a decisive enabler of
Russia's war in Ukraine. But as we have seen this partnership
goes both ways.
Russia has a lot to teach China when it comes to
disinformation campaigns. Even before the invasion of Ukraine,
Russia's Ministry of Digital Development, Communication, and
Mass Media was partnering with China's National Radio and
Television Administration.
So when Russia published lies about biolabs in Ukraine in
the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party outlet, picked up
the story, and last year we saw Russia and China working
together to spread disinformation and to destabilize the
Solomon Islands.
The Global Times amplified stories from the Russian state
controlled media agency Sputnik, saying the U.S. was seeking
a--I am quoting here--``a democratic transition by violent
means in the Solomon Islands.''
Before our diplomats could refute these allegations the
waters had already been muddled to Beijing and Moscow's
benefit.
China's leaders have made shaping global and local public
opinion a priority. They have bought up entire foreign media
companies located outside China to promote pro-Beijing
propaganda around the world.
They have also targeted fact based journalists with the New
Yorker, the Economist, the New York Times, the Guardian, and
others, and in many of the worst instances they have gone after
female journalists of Asian descent with harassment, trolling,
and threats.
Chinese diaspora and human rights groups are also targets.
According to the New York Times, they not only attacked a
writer living outside Philadelphia who criticized Xi Jinping,
they also posted sexually explicit and threatening comments
against his teenage daughter.
Beijing has used these tactics on its own population at
home, and it has refined them for export abroad. Taken
together, these malign actions are a threat to the United
States, and our efforts, sadly, in the information space have
not been very effective.
The Foreign Malign Influence Center made strides against
China and Russia in their attempts to undermine U.S.
presidential elections, but Congress' failure to extend the
Global Engagement Center last year I believe was a serious
setback for the State Department's ability to counter
disinformation and propaganda.
China is spending billions of dollars to amplify Russian
propaganda, and we need more tools like the Global Engagement
Center, not fewer.
Of course, as former Ambassador to China Nick Burns said
when I met with him recently on his way home from his
ambassadorship, when it comes to how the U.S. responds to
China, the devil is in the details.
I am deeply concerned by the Administration's stop work
order and foreign aid freeze, actions that can only lead to
human suffering and endanger our national security. They
undermine America's credibility, and they give an opening to
countries like China and Russia, who are very happy to fill the
void that we leave.
So I look forward to hearing from each of you today on how
we should think about tackling this complex problem.
How can we best defend our transparent, democratic nation
from China's malign influence? How do we position the United
States for a future that benefits all Americans?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Shaheen.
We will now proceed to our witnesses we are going to hear
from today, and let me say, first of all, that the issue as we
just heard is not a partisan issue but one that, as far as the
problem is concerned, we are very much in agreement on.
We have a really distinguished panel here today. We worked
together on a bipartisan basis to put this panel together. We
are going to hear from some people who are very schooled in
this issue, and it will be helpful to us and to the American
people.
So we will take them one at a time, and I will start with
Mr. Peter Mattis. He is president of the Jamestown Foundation.
He is a leading expert on the Chinese Communist Party and
its united front system, and has previously worked on these
issues in the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the
intelligence community and elsewhere.
Mr. Mattis, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF PETER MATTIS, PRESIDENT,
THE JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Mattis. Thank you, Chairman Risch, thank you, Senator
Shaheen, and all the other distinguished senators that are here
for drawing attention to this important issue because awareness
and expertise are two of the key factors in being able to
respond and to protect this country and also protect other
democracies and other countries that are standing up to protect
their sovereignty and standing.
The Chinese Communist Party's influence activities can
loosely be formed under the umbrella of united front work.
These can be described best as efforts to monitor, control, and
mobilize individuals, institutions, platforms, and other civil
society organizations outside the CCP to work on the party's
behalf.
So I think, to put this into kind of a context for you, it
would be that if you guys maintained your campaign
infrastructure in your State and then kept putting a committee
into every company, into every Elks Club, Kiwanis, every
school, every university, every research institute, national
lab if it is there, that would be kind of like what united
front work is.
It keeps moving out to make those institutions serve the
party's political purpose, and describing it in that context, I
think, should make it clear why this is not something where we
should describe interference or influence, but this is actually
a tool that is pernicious in undermining the very functioning
of institutions.
United front is also a way of looking at politics. It is a
very clear calculation by the party of who are our enemies, who
are our friends, and how do we mobilize those friends, how do
we recruit neutrals to isolate our enemies, to strike them, and
to make them ineffective.
It is also a huge policy bureaucracy. Now, sometimes people
say there is the united front work department, but which one?
The central one? The 31 provincial ones? The 300 municipal
ones?
The thousands of county level ones, or the ones in
companies, the ones in the China Academy of Sciences and China
Academy of Social Sciences? Which ones are we referring to?
This is a system that engages hundreds of thousands of
people very directly inside the party, on the fringes of the
party, and it keeps extending outward.
The CCP's united front--Xi's united front--has a tool to
achieve its objectives of national rejuvenation, and that
national rejuvenation can broadly be defined as, one,
comprehensive modernization, the second, unification.
Now, we think of this in Taiwan, in Hong Kong, but it is
really a political, economic, social, and cultural unification.
It is not just having control, and it is putting everything
together.
The primary targets of united front work are those
individuals and institutions and platforms that really make
democracy work--their social groups, their media, their
universities, their local and national political leaders, their
companies. Anything that can be leveraged by the party will be
leveraged.
What is the harm, if you will? The first is that in some
cases when an organization is taken over by the party, our own
citizens lose their voice to speaking to their own elected
representatives and their own government because you cannot
possibly meet every one of your constituents.
You rely on these groups to tell you what is going on in
your State, in districts when you were--if you were in the
House.
But if that community organization leader is someone who is
speaking for the party, you might think that you are hearing
from someone who is representing 500 people or a thousand
people, but really it is somebody who is representing the CCP
rather than their fellow Americans.
You can go down a list of things--the distortion of the
marketplace of ideas, the loss of technology, as Mr. Stoff will
cover, the facilitation of intelligence operations.
Pushing back necessarily requires sort of insider
information of institutions and organizations that are being
affected, and that person needs awareness.
They need something like a hearing today or other types of
information, whether it is RFA reporting abroad or any other
form of, say, a report from safeguard defenders or other civil
society organizations to say, wait a minute, there is a problem
here, and I can go out and find external expertise, which is
the next piece.
You need external expertise, and one of the ways in which
the United States is very different than the CCP is that we
support people who are trying to stand up for their own rights,
for their own countries, for their own sovereignty, and the
party is paying people to do their own bidding, that of the CCP
and not for the benefit of their citizens and fellows.
And last, you need political power, as when I worked with
Senator Cruz's staff in 2018 to keep the CCP out of the
University of Texas Austin. It took someone who is on the
inside, it took the outside expertise, and then it took someone
who was willing to draw attention to it and say there are
political consequences for this.
So to get through this in terms of recommendations,
anything that improves transparency such as FARA reform to make
things more accessible, to make sure that it is not a quarterly
update that is searchable, would be beneficial.
There is focus on the Chinese malign influence fund,
keeping it strategic rather than just repurposing funds for
existing programs, and I think it is worth thinking about what
are the ways to incentivize action within executive departments
such as the Department of State.
So that we are asking Congress or asking the State
Department to report when authorities are not used, rather than
sort of trying to avoid the congressional reporting requirement
of many things that are put forward.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mattis follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mr. Peter Mattis
i. overview
Chairman Risch, Ranking Member Shaheen, distinguished members of
the Committee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you.
Countering the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to build political
influence, recruit and mobilize civil society outside the borders of
the People's Republic of China (PRC), and shape the world in coercive,
corrupting, and covert ways is fundamental to U.S. success in this
rivalry. Any sustainable, long-term strategy for addressing China's
challenge requires the integrity of U.S. political and policymaking
processes--and those of our allies and partners. This requires
grappling with the challenges posed by the party's efforts to shape the
United States and others by interfering in our politics and domestic
affairs.
The United States, its political and business elite, its thinkers,
and its Chinese communities have long been targets for the Chinese
Communist Party. The party employs tools that go well beyond
traditional public diplomacy efforts. Often these tools lead to
activities that are, in the words of former Australian prime minister
Malcolm Turnbull, corrupt, covert, and/or coercive. Nevertheless, many
activities are not covered by Turnbull's three ``Cs'' but are still
concerning and undermine the ability of the United States, its allies,
and its partners to comprehend and address Beijing's challenge.
Most of my statement will focus on the policies and actions of the
Chinese Communist Party. Many Americans are still not prepared to
accept the Party has sought to shape and influence U.S. political and
business elite for decades. We are still in a process of building
awareness and consensus about the nature of the problem. We can know
the objectives of the Chinese Communist Party. We can understand its
organizations and its policies. And we can observe the Party's actions.
It is far harder to determine the motivations of our fellow citizens
and those in allied and partner countries, because they may have
sincere intentions coupled with naivete or they have only their private
benefit at heart. Although much more information is now available about
the Party's ambitions and activities, many still are not sufficiently
aware or do not know how to operationalize their knowledge. Hearings
like this one are a good step for raising awareness. Finally, The
Jamestown Foundation is dedicated to helping Americans (and our allies)
understand U.S. rivals in their own words and in their own terms.
Although I have personal policy views, the institution I lead focuses
on providing information, analysis, and context primarily about U.S.
rivals.
The central element to understanding on why and what the Chinese
Communist Party is doing to shape the world outside the party is united
front work. Mao Zedong described the purpose of this work as mobilizing
the party's friends to strike at the party's enemies. In a more
specific definition from a paper in the 1950's, the Central
Intelligence Agency defined united front work as ``a technique for
controlling, mobilizing, and utilizing non-communist masses.'' Put
another way, united front policy addresses the party's relationship
with and guidance of any social group outside the party. The most
important point here is that what needs to be shaped is not just the
Chinese people or world outside the People's Republic of China, but
rather those outside the party.
United front work also is a tool of political struggle. It is not
just a question of activities that we would call propaganda or public
diplomacy. Nor is it limited to what we would call covert action. As
Mao wrote in 1939: ``Our 18 years of experience show that the united
front and armed struggle are the two basic weapons for defeating the
enemy. The united front is a united front for carrying on armed
struggle. And the Party is the heroic warrior wielding the two weapons,
the united front and the armed struggle, to storm and shatter the
enemy's positions. That is how the three are related to each other.''
Mao's basic framing of united front work within the party's toolbox
remains the core understanding within the party today. Jiang Zemin, Hu
Jintao, and Xi Jinping all have characterized united front work as a
``magic weapon'' to facilitate China's rise in the midst of an
international ideological battleground.
CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has put particular emphasis on
this element of statecraft and party activity. During his first 3 years
in office (2012-2015), Xi launched three major initiatives that
correspond to Mao's three tools. The anti-corruption campaign was
intended to strengthen the party--a point that was made clear for those
in doubt in Xi's address to the 20th Party Congress in 2022. The PLA
began a major reform in late 2015 to bring the way the PLA intended to
fight into sync with its organizational structure. And finally, Xi
launched reforms of the united front policy system. In his speech for
the Party's centenary, Xi focused his remarks on these three areas:
party-building, the PLA, and united front. Although it is comforting to
think that Mao's words ``to storm and shatter the enemy's position''
belong to a bygone era, Xi has proved otherwise. He was explicit in a
speech to the Party faithful early in his tenure about the importance
of seeing the basic continuity across Mao's rule and the Reform Era.
United front activities help the party resolve several dilemmas of
the post-Mao era and that became ever more apparent after the Tiananmen
Massacre and the passing of Deng Xiaoping. These are fundamental
questions for the Chinese Communist Party, and they speak to why the
party must spend so much effort trying to shape the world beyond the
membership of the party.
1. How to motivate and mobilize the Chinese population without the
ideological fervor of the Mao Zedong era?
2. How to benefit from the outside world while screening out
influences and ideas that might damage the party's positions?
3. How to enlist the outside world in supporting China's rise and
keeping those doors open even as the party continues to be repressive
and becomes more aggressive internationally?
4. How to shape the world, its institutions and its leaders, so
that the CCP can achieve its objectives and they respect Beijing's
system of governance?
The Chinese Communist Party has put particular focus on targeting
people and institutions with united front work, because these are the
fundamental units of society. Controlling the platforms and social
groups where people congregate is how a totalitarian regime maintains
control even when there might be immense dissatisfaction. The Party's
methods at home and abroad have significant parallels. The Party's
targets also are the key to pushing back. Civil society organizations
and individuals--in some cases supported by the United States through
Department of State programs--have helped fight back. In some cases,
this means raising awareness and supporting journalistic
investigations.
In other cases, civil society organizations provide the first
warning of significant developments. For example, the human rights non-
governmental organization Safeguard Defenders exposed the existence of
``Chinese overseas police service centers'' set up by subnational
public security bureaus in blatant violation of the territorial
sovereignty and national security of other nations, including the
United States and many of its allies. These ``police stations'' were
set up in direct cooperation with united front-affiliates in target
countries. As a consequence of the expose, not only has a successful
prosecution taken place in New York and investigations remain ongoing
around the world. It has also spurred a previously non-existent debate
on the nature and activities of the united front in countries around
the world. An organization like Safeguard Defenders was only able to do
this because they engage in daily grassroots activities with members of
the targeted communities that allow them to pick up on developments
early on and develop them for further research.
As a general rule, successful pushback against specific instances
of CCP malign influence requires a combination of insider concern,
expertise, and political power. Someone inside an organization--whether
a civil society organization, a government body, a company, a
university, or any other institution--will be the first to become aware
of an emerging agreement with the CCP or one of its proxies. This
person and their knowledge are required to trigger any internal process
to bring in expertise, whether that expertise resides inside or outside
the organization. Someone or some group with expertise helps to
properly contextualize what is taking place and why the surface-level
view of the partnership with the united front system (broadly defined)
misses the real purpose and effects of that partnership or activity.
Sometimes, political power is required to make the risk of proceeding
untenable. That could be the threat of executive branch action or some
sort of investigation. It also could take the form of congressional or
media scrutiny. In the case of the University of Texas-Austin rejecting
an agreement with the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation in 2018, the
combination of congressional and media scrutiny provided the necessary
pressure on university leadership to reject funding that came with
conditions that many faculty realized were incompatible with the
university's values and stated mission.
The infrastructure and organizations to maintain this expertise
are, in a way, the industrial base of strategic rivalry. While we need
the defense industrial base to deter and, if necessary, fight a war
with the PRC, we also need the people necessary to maintain the
strength and integrity of the United States, our allies, and our
partners.
ii. magic weapon for national rejuvenation
Achieving the ``Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation'' [Chinese
characters were inserted here] has two significant components. The
first is making China a great power with global reach. The second is
doing so with the Chinese Communist Party at the helm.
The party defines the ``Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation''
as having three components. The first is building ``a great, modern
socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally
advanced, harmonious, and beautiful.'' Although many of these words are
self-explanatory, others like democratic, culturally advanced, and
harmonious mean something very different in the party's context than in
the American context. ``Democratic'' is consultative democracy in which
the party leads, and other political inputs are provided through
controlled mechanisms like the united front policy system. ``Culturally
advanced'' and ``harmonious'' define the party's relationship with
society and the ways in which Chinese people conduct themselves. The
second is national reunification of all areas claimed by Beijing,
regardless whether they were traditionally part of China. The third is
China's emergence as a global leader in terms of comprehensive national
power and international influence.
The following quote from Xi Jinping in 2016 explains what united
front work is intended to accomplish in bringing together a unity of
effort. When U.S. intelligence officials describe Beijing as presenting
a ``whole-of-society'' challenge, they are describing an important
element of what the united front policy system is doing:
``Attaining the `Two Centenary Goals' requires that our entire
society works together in one heart and one mind. It requires that
people of all ethnic groups focus their thoughts and their efforts
toward the same goal. A society that lacks common ideals, goals, and
values, and that finds itself in permanent disorder will never achieve
anything. China has a population of more than 1.3 billion people, and
neither the people nor the country would benefit if we ended up like
that. To attain our goals . . . [we must rally] all Chinese people
under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and motivating all
parties to engage in a concerted effort to bring about the rejuvenation
of the Chinese nation.''
The United Front Work Department, the executive agency for
conducting and coordinating these operations, provided a similar
description of its purpose and activities:
``The history of China and foreign countries shows that whether a
political power or a political party is good or not, its success or
failure ultimately depends on the back of the people. Paying attention
to the people's sentiments, obeying the public's will, striving for the
people's hearts, maintaining proper flesh-and-blood ties with the
masses, and winning the sincere support of the masses is a solid
foundation for our country's long-term stability and a fundamental
guarantee for the sure victory of our cause.''
The second important component of the ``Great Rejuvenation of the
Chinese Nation'' is maintaining the leadership of the Chinese Communist
Party. The most important threats to party that must be addressed are
the diaspora communities and potentially threatening great powers. The
former have the cultural knowledge to introduce subversive ideas that
resonate. The latter have the material power to undermine or topple the
party-state.
The desire to control the political landscape and protect the
party's position found clear definition in China's National Security
Law (2015). The law describes security in broad terms that go well
beyond physical threats to the territory of the PRC. Security comes
from the inside out. Articles Two and Three of the law state:
``National security refers to the relative absence of international or
domestic threats to the state's power to govern, sovereignty, unity and
territorial integrity, the welfare of the people, sustainable economic
and social development, and other major national interests, and the
ability to ensure a continued state of security. National security
efforts shall adhere to a comprehensive understanding of national
security, make the security of the People their goal, political
security their basis and economic security their foundation; make
military, cultural and social security their safeguard . . . ''
This definition has two notable features. First, security is
defined by the absence of threats, not by the ability to manage them.
This unlimited view pushes the Chinese Communist Party toward
preempting threats and preventing their emergence. Second, security
issues extend to the domain of ideas--what people think is potentially
dangerous. The combination of these themes--preemption in the world of
ideas--creates an imperative for the party to alter the world in which
it operates--to shape how China and its current party-state are
understood in the minds of foreign elites.
One way of making this more concrete is to look at party documents
about security threats. In April 2013, ``Document No. 9''--``Communique
on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere''--identified ideas that
undermine the party-state's security. Among them were the promotion of
constitutional democracy, civil society, and Western concepts of
journalism. In the circular's final paragraph, it stated the party
should ``allow absolutely no opportunity or outlets for incorrect
thinking or viewpoints to spread.'' Although it would be easy to
dismiss this document as a one-off or unenforced, in 2015 Beijing
abducted and held five Hong Kong booksellers, including foreign
passport holders, who sold books ostensibly banned in China. Moreover,
Beijing issued new regulations on counter-espionage last December that
clarified the Counter-espionage Law (2014) and defined activities
threatening national security apart from espionage. Among these was
``fabricating or distorting facts, publishing or disseminating words or
information that endanger state security.'' Influencing the outside
world, therefore, is not just a historical activity of the party, but
an ongoing requirement for national security as defined by the party-
state. Over the last decade, the international element of Beijing's
repression has grown immensely, involving convictions on U.S. soil,
reports of CCP-instigated violence, arrest warrants and bounties for
Hong Kong exiles whose activities were entirely legal at the time of
the action, and much more. During his confirmation hearing, Secretary
of State Marco Rubio also highlighted the plight of Uyghurs in Thailand
who faced forced repatriation, but this is a phenomenon that has been
well reported around the world.
iii. intrinsic to the party's day-to-day operations \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Much of the following sections draws from my previous testimony
to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Alex Joske's
report entitled "The Party Speaks for You: Foreign Interference and the
Chinese Communist Party's United Front System" published by the
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (June 2020), Matt Schrader's
report entitled "Friends and Enemies: A Framework for Understanding
Chinese Political Interference in Democratic Countries" published by
the German Marshall Fund (April 2020), and a forthcoming report from
The Jamestown Foundation on united front activities in democratic
countries by Cheryl Yu.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Chinese Communist Party's management of political influence
operations--evaluated on the basis of the united front policy system--
runs to the very top of the arty, involving senior leaders directly.
The policy system extends through the party's hierarchy and spills over
into the government ministries of the People's Republic of China as
well as other state-owned and -administered organizations and
enterprises. Put simply, united front work is conducted wherever the
party is present. Moreover, united front work is not an ``influence
operation'' or a campaign. It is the day-to-day work of the party.
There are not special orders explaining what to do to achieve what
objectives or the equivalents of a presidential finding.
At the leadership level, four elements point to the importance of
united front work and shaping the world outside the Chinese Communist
Party.
1. A Politburo Standing Committee Member Oversees United Front
Work: The senior-most united front official is the Chinese People's
Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) chairman, who is the fourth-
ranking PBSC member. A look at the leaders who have held the CPPCC
chairmanship suggests that Western observers have been far too quick to
condemn the CPPCC as a mostly useless advisory body. The list is a
who's who of the party, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng
Xiaoping, and Li Xiannian. The current CPPCC chairman, Wang Huning,
continues a tradition of competent leadership at the top of the united
front system. He exemplifies the need of united front personnel to be
highly disciplined party cadre, who are nonetheless capable of handling
themselves among diverse people and feigning ideological flexibility.
2. A State Council Vice Premier Has a United Front Portfolio: The
vice premier position serves as the bridge between the party center and
the State Council ministries. The vice premier provides prestige to the
united front system as well as a necessary position of authority to
direct and coordinate the ministries' united front activities. The
position often looks as though the portfolio covers education and
culture, because of the overlap with united front work. At meetings of
the united front policy system, this vice premier appears in protocol
order between the CPPCC chairman and United Front Work Department
director. Currently, the position is held by Ding Xuexiang.
3. Two Members of the Central Secretariat Have United Front Policy
Roles: The directors of the party's United Front Work Department (UFWD)
and Propaganda Department serve on both the Politburo and the
Secretariat of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of
China. Because the Politburo does not meet regularly--its far-flung
membership includes both central party bureaucrats and provincial party
secretaries--the secretariat is empowered to make day-to-day decisions
related to policy that has already been settled. This group is also
responsible for moving paperwork among the central leaders and
coordinating the party's actions. Secretariat membership is not related
to relationships that the current UFWD and propaganda chiefs--
respectively, Shi Taifeng and Li Shulei--have but rather reflects the
structure of post-Deng Xiaoping politics. Their presence on the
Secretariat is more institutional than political.
4. In 2015, Xi Jinping Established a United Front Leading Small
Group: As part of the effort to revitalize and better coordinate united
front activities under Xi Jinping, the party established a leading
small group. It functions as a platform to coordinate and raise the
status of united front work across the bureaucracy, bringing together
senior officials from numerous state and party agencies for united
front study tours across China. Interestingly, the last time the party
created a united front leading small group--in 1986 under the
leadership of Xi Jinping's father Xi Zhongxun--it coincided with a
similar description of problems to be resolved: expanding scope and
responsibilities coinciding with a lack of central direction.
The Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy at the central level has
four key bodies for building and exercising political influence outside
the party--and especially outside China. The United Front Work and the
Propaganda departments also have subordinate elements at the provincial
and local levels.
1. United Front Work Department: The UFWD is the executive and
coordinating agency for united front work. It has a variety of
responsibilities at home and abroad, including in the following areas:
Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan affairs; ethnic and religious affairs;
domestic and external propaganda; entrepreneurs and non-party
personages; intellectuals; and people-to-people exchanges. The
department also takes the lead in establishing party committees in
Chinese and now foreign businesses. The UFWD operates at all levels of
the party system from the center to the grassroots, and the CCP has had
a united front department dating to the 1930's.
2. Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC): The
CPPCC, according to the organization's website, is ``an organization in
the patriotic united front of the Chinese people, an important organ
for multiparty cooperation and political consultation.'' The advisory
body mediates between important socials groups and the party apparatus.
The CPPCC is the place where all the relevant united front actors
inside and outside the party come together: party elders, intelligence
officers, diplomats, propagandists, military officers and political
commissars, united front workers, academics, and businesspeople. They
are gathered to receive instruction in the proper propaganda lines and
ways to characterize Beijing's policies to both domestic and foreign
audiences. Many of these individuals, particularly if they hold
government positions, are known for their people-handling skills and
have reputations for being smooth operators. CPPCC membership offers
access to political circles, political protection for business, and
minor perquisites like expedited immigration. The CPPCC standing
committee includes 20 or so vice chairpeople who have a protocol rank
roughly equivalent to a provincial party secretary. At the central
level, the CPPCC includes more than 2,160 members, but the provincial
and local levels include another 680,000.
3. International (Liaison) Department: The International
Department, founded in 1951, is the party's diplomatic arm, handling
relationships with more than 600 political parties and organizations as
well as individual, primarily political, elites. The department
previously handled the CCP's relationships between fraternal Communist
parties and cultivated splinter factions of Moscow-dominated Communist
parties after the Sino-Soviet split. The activist bent of the
International Department disappeared as the department began re-
establishing itself in 1970-71 following the tumultuous early years of
the Cultural Revolution. Interestingly, the department originated as a
UFWD bureau before being carved out into an independent entity.
4. Propaganda Department: The Propaganda Department has been a core
part of the CCP since 1924. The official description of its duties
includes conducting the party's theoretical research; guiding public
opinion; guiding and coordinating the work of the central news
agencies, including Xinhua and the People's Daily; guiding the
propaganda and cultural systems; and administering the Cyberspace
Administration of China and the State Administration of Press,
Publication, Radio, Film, and Television. The Propaganda Department
cannot be regarded as an entirely internal organization that broadcasts
outward to the extent that it is involved in influence-building abroad.
For example, China Radio International developed in the 2000's a covert
international network of radio stations to hide the CCP's direct role
in broadcasting Chinese-language propaganda inside target countries.
The Propaganda Department presumably also plays a role in the co-
optation, intimidation, and purchase of Chinese-language print media
outside China.
The State Council ministries and many other organizations with a
party committee also conduct united front work. These organizations all
offer unique platforms and capabilities that the united front policy
system can draw upon for operational purposes. Below are a few of the
examples of the organizations outside the party that perform united
front work or have united front work departments attached to their
party committee:
1. Ministry of State Security
2. Ministry of Foreign Affairs
3. Ministry of Civil Affairs
4. Ministry of Education
5. Ministry of Culture and Tourism
6. Chinese Academy of Sciences
7. China Baowu Steel Group
8. China National Overseas Oil Corporation (CNOOC)
9. State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission
(SASAC)
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) deserves special mention,
because it operates both inside and in concert with these other
influence-building actors as well as outside this system. During the
Chinese Revolution, the PLA served almost as the party's expeditionary
arm. It duplicated all of the party's functions within a military
organization. The PLA was and remains the armed wing of the Chinese
Communist Party and not China's national army. As the party's armed
wing and as the ultimate guarantor of the party's power, the PLA still
mirrors the party structure from leadership to leading agencies to
tactical execution.
1. Central Military Commission: Headed by Xi Jinping, the Central
Military Commission serves as the nexus between the party and military
leadership. Historically, the two military vice chairmen included an
officer who had risen through the PLA's political work system; however,
since 2012, two experienced operations officers have held the vice
chairmenships. The CMC also includes the minister of national defense
and the director of the Political Work Department. The former, like the
vice premier for united front work, serves as the link between the PLA
and the State Council. The latter oversees the bureaucracy responsible
for military propaganda and political influence operations. Currently,
however, Dong Jun, who is the minister of national defense, is not
listed as part of the CMC. Miao Hua, who was the director of the
Political Work Department, was suspended and put under investigation in
November 2024 for corruption. As of January 21, 2025, Miao is still
listed as a member of the CMC.
2. Political Work Department: This department is the successor to
the General Political Department, which was dissolved in the
reorganization of the PLA launched in November 2015. The department's
Liaison Bureau is the military agency that contributes most to the
party's united front work. It operates much like an intelligence
service with officers using official and non-official cover, but
focused on strategic targets relevant to military operations. Two of
the Liaison Bureau's most notable targets have been Taiwan and Okinawa.
3. Information Support Force and Cyberspace Force: The creation of
the Strategic Support Force as part of the 2015 reforms integrated the
PLA's signals and electronic intelligence capabilities with its
tactical information warfare elements. In April 2024, the PLA
eliminated the Strategic Support Force and created the Information
Support Force, the Military Aerospace Force, and the Cyberspace Force.
This restructuring reflects the PLA's continued emphasis on information
warfare and battlespace information control in multi-domain integrated
joint operations.
iv. vectors and mechanisms
The Chinese Communist Party's political influence operations
target: community organizations, wealthy proxies, universities, local
governments, exchanges, and consulting agreements. Initially, these
entities are themselves targets of cooptation and/or coercive efforts.
Once properly developed, they become additional vectors in the Party's
arsenal to further develop other relationships. The party openly
exploits (and sometimes subverts) the constitutional freedoms offered
by democracies like the United States: many of these avenues for
influence are not illegal by themselves. Often only a few individuals
camouflaged by the myriad China engagements are working directly on
behalf of the united front system, but they might be difficult to point
out without implicating individuals who are guilty, if anything, of
nothing more than naivete or being the victim of the Party's coercion.
1. Overseas Chinese Community and Other Civil Society
Organizations: The Chinese communities outside the PRC contain an
alphabet soup of ethnic community organizations, including chambers of
commerce, hometown associations, friendship societies, and cultural
promotion centers. These organizations exist for all the same reasons
that ethnic community organizations come together. They provide useful
community resources and services, even as ones tainted by the united
front system bring the party's influence along with them. In most of
the problematic organizations, the majority of membership probably is
unaware of the connections. The leadership sitting atop co-opted
organizations become the community leaders through which politicians
engage their local Chinese communities. They also can be quoted in
media as being community leaders, even in cases where the organization
exists in little more than name.
There are several indicators for whether a community organization--
or rather its leadership or other important member--is working on the
party's behalf. None of these indicators by themselves is sufficient,
but, taken together, they are strongly suggestive. The first is whether
the organization's officers participate in united front delegations and
conferences back to the PRC. Sometimes these officers have special
advisory roles with united front work units. The second is contact with
the local PRC embassy or consulate, and whether these officials
participate in the organization's events. The third is the
organizations' goal and leader remarks alignment with the Party's
narratives. The fourth is the activities the organization hosts often
have a tendency to amplify Party narratives. The fifth is that the
organization becomes a key voice and proxy for the Party at times when
the Party deems to be critical. The sixth is whether the organization
hosts delegations of party and/or state officials, often at subnational
levels of the party-state. Provincial and local level united front
elements have become more and more active internationally, and greater
attention should be paid to their activities. Changes, such as a shift
from using traditional characters to simplified characters or visible
changes to the amount of money used to put on events, is another
indicator.
2. Wealthy Proxies: Wealthy businesspeople working on the party's
behalf are one of the most important vectors for the party's influence
abroad. Although many of these individuals are PRC citizens or emigres,
some businesspeople from other states are influenced, coopted, or fully
recruited to the party's cause. Their primary value is the ability to
move money quickly outside of China and, in democratic societies, the
ability to spend that money legitimately without generating the alarm
that comes with more direct state activity. Where the united front
system is active, two or more businesspeople will provide a significant
chunk of the financial support for large united front-linked community
organizations as well as other relevant political or social causes. For
example, in Australia, Chau Chak Wing and Huang Xiangmo appear to have
been the most active financial supporters of Beijing's efforts to
interfere in Australian politics. Their money bought access to the
major political parties, platforms for pro-China voices, and supported
community groups like the Australian Council for the Promotion of
Peaceful Reunification.
The easiest group of these proxies to identify come from Hong Kong.
Their wealth has been built with the party's assistance. Although their
families may have built successful businesses in one or two industries,
a hallmark of these businesses is sprawled across numerous, unrelated
industries. These businesspeople often can be identified because they
are members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
and the National People's Congress system. Their Hong Kong residency
gives them legitimacy and credibility that their counterparts in China
do not have. For example, former Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-
hwa has been able to reinvent himself as a philanthropist to donate
money to U.S. think tanks, academic programs, and sponsor trips for
journalists, students, and politicians to China. Tung, however, became
Beijing's man in Hong Kong after the party bailed his company out of
bankruptcy in the mid 1980's, and he began representing the party's
interests to the British. Tung now serves as a vice chairman of the
CPPCC, which gives him standing within the party at roughly the level
of a provincial party secretary.
The CCP also cultivates relationships with prominent Western
business leaders through high-level meetings and economic incentives to
advance its interests internationally. For example, in March 2024, Xi
Jinping met with US representatives including those from the business
community. He encouraged the companies to participate in Belt and Road
cooperation, attend large-scale business events such as the China
International Import Expo, and continue to invest in China. Attendees
included people like the Chair of the Board of Directors of the
National Committee on U.S.-China Relations Evan G. Greenberg and
President of the U.S.-China Business Council Craig Allen.
3. People-to-People Exchanges/Diplomacy: The united front policy
system sponsors and arranges hundreds of trips to China each year.
These trips are used in a myriad different ways to earn good will and
to influence analysts and politicians. They offer opportunities for the
party to persuade them of China's rectitude or to refute critical
arguments. Even if the latter does not persuade the critic, their
fellow participants may be persuaded or inclined to see the critic as
needlessly provocative. The trips also give party officials evaluate
potential targets personally. Not only is there personal interaction,
but there often is substantive discussion of ideas and policy
positions.
4. Consulting Agreements: Hiring senior officials after they retire
has become common practice. Beijing may have pioneered the process
decades ago, pressing companies that wanted to do business in China to
hire their favored former officials to close business agreements.
Perhaps the most noteworthy recent example is former Australian trade
minister Andrew Robb's $880,000 (AUS) salary for minimal work on behalf
of the Chinese firm Landbridge. Robb resigned from this position ahead
of the deadline to register under Australia's new transparency scheme
for former officials. In some cases, former officials work for Chinese
or Hong Kong businesspeople through their personal consulting
companies, obfuscating the sources of their income.
5. Universities: The united front system targets foreign
universities, leveraging their access to cutting-edge technologies,
talents, and opportunities to cultivate relationships that align with
China's interests. By engaging with academic institutions, Beijing
seeks to gain access to sensitive intellectual property and recruit
scholars and students for its broader objectives. The CCP also tries to
co-opt academics to build discourse power, reinforcing preferred
narratives and whitewashing its track record.
On cultivating relationships, in September 2024, the
``1+10'' Sino-U.S. University Presidents' Dialogue was hosted at the
University of Chicago. Wang Dinghua, CPPCC member and secretary of the
Party Committee of Beijing Foreign Studies University, gave a keynote
on promoting academic cooperation between Chinese and American
universities, including people-to-people exchange and the development
of joint research initiatives. The event was attended by U.S.
universities such as Harvard University, Yale University, University of
California, Los Angeles, Carnegie Mellon University, and Georgetown
University at least one of which has programs funded by united front-
affiliated actors.
The Confucius Institute program--ostensibly under the
Ministry of Education and Hanban--creates a beachhead in university
administration through which the party's influence can expand. Although
a Confucius Institute appears focused on language training and cultural
programming, they sometimes provide opportunities for staff to move
into influential positions. Confucius Institute directors can be found
on faculty committees and advising engagement offices on how to handle
China. In some cases, the institutes have given Beijing a voice in a
university's hiring decisions for China-related faculty and affected
the kind of speakers invited to the university. Australia's John
Fitzgerald, an astute observer of the party's influence operations,
wrote that accepting a Confucius Institute signaled a university was
``prepared to make an exception for China on questions of academic
freedom, teaching curriculums, and research integrity.'' Not every
Confucius Institute has proven to be problematic, but it has depended
on whether the university avoids exceptions and ensures the institute
operates within the agreement. The 2021 National Defense Authorization
Act prohibited the Department of Defense from providing funding to U.S.
institutions hosting a Confucius Institute. It encouraged most
universities to shut the institute down, but the network it has built
remains active The universities maintained close relationships with
their Confucius Institute partners.
6. Companies: The Party targets foreign companies for their
financial resources, and global networks through investments,
partnerships, and financial incentives to deepen economic ties. In some
cases, corporate revenues inside the PRC are used as a threat to
pressure the companies into lobbying their home governments for policy
changes, as Ericsson was reportedly pushed to do on Huawei's behalf in
2020.
7. Politicians and local governments: The united front system
targets politicians and local governments to push its narratives and
agenda abroad. Other mechanisms for building relationships with
politicians and local governments include establishing sister states
and cities partnerships and hosting economic forums and delegations to
the PRC. These partnerships create opportunities for the united front
system to influence local policies, shape public opinion, and
marginalize competing narratives.
In March 2023, Associated Press reported that China has
successfully influenced lawmakers and has been able to promote China-
friendly policies and narratives in Utah. Through Le Taowen, professor
of information systems and technologies at Weber State University and a
CPPCC overseas delegate, the PRC was able to establish friendly local
government relationships, organize friendly visits, and pass
resolutions such as promoting the Chinese language education system in
Utah and bills that support friendly relationships with China.
A recent case is Linda Sun, a former employee of the New
York State government. Sun acted as an agent under the direction of the
PRC representatives to push for the PRC agenda, including blocking
Taiwanese government from accessing New York State officers and
providing unauthorized invitation letters to PRC officials from the
office of New York State officers to facilitate their travel. Sun often
attends united front organization events that carry narratives that are
pro-Beijing.
8. Congress: Congressional members are another key target with
which the united front system aims to build relationships. By
leveraging lobbying efforts, donations through intermediaries, and
coordinated outreach by united front-linked organizations, Beijing
seeks to shape legislative decisions and promote narratives favorable
to the PRC. The PRC also uses the so-called ``civic organizations'' in
China to engage with congressional members and staffers. The Chinese
People's Institute of Foreign Affairs, affiliated with multiple united
front officials and aims to ``dedicated to enhancing people-to-people
friendships'' and ``establishes and strengthens connections and
exchanges with prominent political and social figures, parliaments,
think tanks, media organizations,'' is one of the first to engage in
friendly exchanges with the U.S. Congress. This organization alone has
hosted at least approximately 500 U.S. Congressional delegations to the
PRC.
v. what is the harm?
The harm caused by Beijing's political influence and united front
operations takes several forms, even if many of these problematic
activities do not meet a current threshold of illegality. Moreover,
Beijing would not allow many of these activities to occur inside its
borders with any foreign involvement without first being co-opted by
the party-state. The lack of reciprocity helps reinforce the imbalance
in most countries' relationship with the PRC. We should not accept many
of these activities as being legitimate actions of a foreign state
inside the United States or other countries, because the nature of the
Party's objectives and united front system's explicit role in political
struggle mean that they are not acceptable for democratic societies
even when they are not illegal.
1. Western Politicians Become Symbols for the Chinese Communist
Party's Rule: By using party-controlled community organizations for
their outreach to ethnically Chinese constituents, Western politicians
become propaganda fodder for the Chinese Communist Party. Politically
aware Chinese in the People's Republic of China (and sometimes abroad)
can recognize these groups for what they are: pawns of the party. The
reason for the publicity surrounding these meetings and fundraisers is
to broadcast back into China the message that Western politicians care
about liberalism at home, but not for Chinese people, and that they
stand on the side of the party. They reinforce the image of the party's
strength.
Vaclav Havel captured this dynamic in his essay The Power of the
Powerless by describing a greengrocer placing a slogan of regime
loyalty in his shop window. He does not believe in the regime or its
ideology, but he does so to make his life a little bit easier. Nor do
people necessarily notice or read the slogan, because similar slogans
can be ``found in other shop windows, on lampposts, bulletin boards, in
apartment windows, and on buildings.'' The presence of these slogans
becomes part of the ``panorama of everyday life.'' This panorama
``reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It
tells them what everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they
must do as well, if they don't want to be excluded, to fall into
isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the
game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquility and security.''
By participating even inadvertently in united front-sponsored events,
U.S. politicians and their foreign counterparts help the Chinese
Communist Party build Havel's ``panorama of everyday life'' for the
Chinese people and their own ethnic Chinese citizens.
2. The Chinese Communist Party Mediates Between Chinese Citizens
and Their Elected Representatives: The network of united front
``community organizations'' creates a fake civil society. The community
which is supposedly represented is supplanted by the Chinese Communist
Party, unless politicians reach directly to membership or deal with
uncompromised organizations. The party's interests become the
constituency interests that are presented to officials.
3. The Marketplace for Ideas Is Distorted: Having a pluralistic,
democratic society means engaging with differences of opinion. There is
a natural ebb and flow. As noted above, the defining feature of the
party's united front operations is the effort to control platforms
rather than just the narrative. As platforms are compromised, the
voices and messages they carry change. They may not specifically
represent the Chinese Communist Party, but they will avoid criticisms
or subjects that are intrinsically damaging to the party's image,
standing, and legitimacy.
4. The Party Suppresses Discussion of China's Future: The Chinese
Communist Party's control inside China means that any version of
China's future without the party must be discussed and decided beyond
China's borders. The extent to which the party monopolizes the social
space of Chinese people--especially those who would like to return to
their home country--is the extent to which the party can preempt the
transmission of liberal political values into China and discussion of
China without reference to the party.
5. Undermining the Integrity of Policymaking: At its worst, the
party's political influence and united front operations distort
policymaking and the process of gathering information to feed into the
policy process. The primary targets of united front work are socially
influential individuals, such as politicians, prominent businesspeople,
intellectuals, and sometimes even celebrities.
There is some reason to suspect that the united front system plays
a role in feeding foreign intelligence services information. In
conversations with former U.S. intelligence officials and serving
foreign ones, they described questionable sources over the years whose
information seemed too good to be true. The sourcing for their
political reporting appeared sufficiently plausible and good to
encourage officers to avoid placing too much scrutiny on the policy
implications of the reporting or the light in which that reporting
seems to paint around the Party's politics and positions. Such
reporting can shape the perceptions of U.S. policymakers, reinforcing
Beijing's preferred view about the Party's intent or presenting
opportunities where none exist to lead policymakers to waste time and
energy.
6. Facilitating Intelligence Operations and Technology Transfer:
The united front network of organizations and relationships in overseas
Chinese communities has been used to facilitate the theft and transfer
of technology from the U.S. companies and research institutions. There
are numerous cases of technology theft in which the risks posed by the
individual were foreseeable because of their direct connections to
united front organization or because they had established their own
united front organization to identify and mobilize others to support
their illegal activities. Among the many examples are the following:
Tan Hongjin, who pleaded guilty of trade secret theft,
transmission, and possession in 2019 that was worth more than $1
billion, was the president of CalTech Chinese Association and received
the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students
Abroad.
Huang Leping, General Manager of General Technology
Systems Integration Corporation (GTSI) who was charged in October 2010
for illegally exporting high-speed analog-to-digital converters to the
PRC through the PLA-linked China Electronics Technology Corporation's
24th Research Institute, was the president of the U.S. Wenzhou
Association and the U.S. Zhejiang Commerce & Culture Association.
Li Tao, who pleaded guilty for conspiracy to steal trade
secrets from GlaxoSmithKline to benefit his own China-based
pharmaceutical company Renopharma in September 2018, was a Science and
Technology Committee member of united front-linked Jiangsu Overseas
Chinese Entrepreneurs Association and was part of several other talent
programs.
Current and former intelligence officials inside and outside the
United States believe the Chinese intelligence services make use of the
spotting and assessing opportunities created by united front system-
sponsored visits to China for education, culture, and business. Alex
Joske showed how the UFWD system provides cover to Ministry of State
Security intelligence officers operating from within the PRC and
abroad.
vii. the role of the u.s. department of state
The U.S. Department of State plays several important roles in
countering united front work and the CCP's other political warfare
operations, particularly outside the United States. First, U.S.
diplomats are America's eyes and ears on the ground for identifying and
observing CCP influence and other related activities around the world.
They might well be the first to spot new trends, developments, or the
evolution of CCP tactics. Many developments in united front work or
other CCP influence operations are first used outside the United
States. Diplomats and their local contacts may well provide the
earliest warning of new tactics and techniques being used by the Party.
Second, the State Department identifies, supports, and maintains
connections to local civil society organizations, individuals, and
other partners who are working to counter CCP interference. This is
about helping those who are trying to help their own country resist the
Party's interference and manipulation. It is consistent with long-
standing U.S. practices going back to the beginning of the cold war
with the Soviet Union. Third, the department should be coordinating the
U.S. Government's international activities toward a common purpose. It
is easy to fall into the trap of acting as a traffic cop, simply
providing ``stop'' and ``go'' commands. The State Department in
conjunction with the White House should be providing clear guidance
about what kind of activities support U.S. objectives, counter the
CCP's activities, and support the local partners standing up for their
own country's sovereignty and interests.
From a historical perspective, we should remember the American way
of modern political warfare emerged from the State Department. Many of
the initiatives, like the Marshall Plan and support to democratic
parties in Europe and elsewhere, were, at least internally, understood
as coordinating the non-military elements of national power to counter
the Soviet Union. The State Department needs to reclaim this
generalship today, which is more a question of priorities, interest,
and guidance than it is of authorities. When the Secretary of State
emphasizes these activities, especially in the information space, and
takes a personal and supportive interest in them, then the United
States performs well. The American approach to political warfare has
been underpinned by the idea of providing a true experience of
Americans to the world and that supporting people's hunger for truth
and meaning in their lives will create better conditions for U.S.
national interests to be achieved.
viii. guiding principles in responding
It is impossible to provide a comprehensive list of policy
recommendations, and many of those recommendations could be hypotheses
about what works to counter the CCP's efforts to shape foreign
perceptions and mobilize people on its behalf. Nor could one individual
provide an exhaustive list. Below I outline several principles that are
consistent with democratic values and my own understanding of what has
been successful in specific cases of countering CCP united front
operations. These principles provide a framework for generating and
evaluating policy recommendations.
1. Transparency: Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Out in the
open, people have to make choices about whether to continue on in their
conflicts of interests or compromised relationships. This applies
equally to government and law enforcement responses to political
interference. Administrative responses done quietly are not as
effective as public prosecutions and explanations, which help create
risk and inject new information into the public sphere for discussion.
2. Conversation and Debate: The legislature draws the line between
legal and illegal. Federal Government resources always will focus
predominantly on the illegal side. In a democracy, we would not want it
any other way. What is unacceptable or improper, however, is not
necessarily what is illegal. Civil society must be able to discuss in
reasonable terms what is taking place
3. Protect Space for Critical Discussion of China: Whether it is
Chinese-language media outside of China, university spaces, or any
other platform where discussion of contemporary China takes place, they
all are vulnerable to the party's pressure. And they all are targets of
the Chinese Communist Party. They need support, protection, and
sometimes even cultivation.
4. Consequences Create Risk: Until the Chinese Communist Party
faces consequences for its actions, they are not in danger of
overstepping the mark or overestimating their ability to influence or
intimidate. Without successfully taking cases to and winning at trial,
without administrative penalties, Americans who actively assist the
Chinese Communist Party at the expense of U.S. interests will have no
reason to scrutinize their actions or to desist. Risk is required to
deter behavior that undermines democracy.
5. Civil Liberties as much as National Security: Because the
Chinese Communist Party puts so much emphasis on overseas Chinese
communities and individuals, countering Beijing's efforts means
ensuring ethnically Chinese citizens and residents can enjoy equal
protection under the law. National security and the resources brought
to bear in its name are negative, defensive powers rather than positive
or creative. Civil liberties protections and the resources deployed for
this purpose, however, are the latter. They serve to guarantee
constitutional freedoms, creating and preserving the free space for
speech and association. Enabling democratic practices is at least as
important as preventing the exploitation of democracy.
6. Maintain the Integrity of Rules and Processes: When
relationships with Chinese Communist Party organizations go awry or
become exploitative, most cases--excepting those involving recruited or
compromised agents--involve foreign partners who do not monitor and
enforce their own guidelines and procedures. To protect against
conflicts of interests and outright compromise, organizations that seek
to do business, promote exchanges, collaborate on research, or
otherwise have institutional relationships need to establish and stick
to rules and procedures. Exceptions and exemptions need to be done in
the open with clear explanation; otherwise, it is too easy to slip
toward compromise and exploitation.
ix. recommendations for congress
1. Revise the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) to include more
robust reporting requirements, more robust penalties for non-
compliance, and a publicly accessible data base of FARA registrants
updated frequently.
Others have more fully outlined the fixes that need to be made
related to the Foreign Agent Registration Act, but I would like to
emphasize a few points. First, the reporting requirements for
describing the activities are quite minimal. Companies and individuals
that wish to be safe provide more; however, that is not the general
rule. Expanding the reporting requirements to include more substance
and specificity about the messages delivered or services provided would
make the reporting mechanism more transparent. Separately, additional
reporting could be made a part of congressional ethics standards.
Second, non-compliance with FARA seems to have few if any consequences.
The current approach to enforcement is largely about voluntarily self-
policing. Third, the United States should revise its approach to
presenting FARA data, modeling its public-facing data base on the
Australian Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (FITS). The FITS data
base is updated on a regular, rolling basis rather than the quarterly
approach to FARA. The data base and accompanying documentation is
comparatively clear and accessible.
2. Request a review of the Department of State's Countering
People's Republic of China Influence Fund (CPIF) and new strategic
guidance on how the funds are applied.
The CPIF fund is the product of bipartisan recognition that funds
need to be devoted to the purpose of countering CCP malign influence.
Anecdotal evidence from the State Department suggests that much of the
funds goes to existing programming that may or may not be directed at
the Party's influence and interference. A Confucius Institute in a
foreign city or university does not make an English-language program in
that city or university an initiative to counter Beijing.
New strategic guidance will necessarily be broad, but should
include at least some of the principles outlined above. Moreover,
priority should be given to programs that interrupt the political
process through which the CCP builds power. When the United States or
its allies wait too long and allow the CCP to become too established,
they end up deflecting tactical efforts. While this sometimes is
effective in the short term, it requires forewarning to take action and
over time a relentless CCP will succeed in achieving its objectives,
whether a military base, a policing agreement, or a telecommunications
deal. This has been seen over and over in places like the Solomon
Islands and the fights over whether a country recognizes the People's
Republic of China or Taiwan.
Such guidance also could carry over to the U.S. Agency for Global
Media and its media outlets, such as Voice of America and Radio Free
Asia. The law is clear about the separation between USAGM content and
U.S. Government direction, preserving journalistic integrity and the
desire to ensure that these are not simply U.S. propaganda outlets,
equivalent to Xinhua, the Chinese Global Television Network, China
Radio International, and the like. However, the law is also clear that
these organizations should report on news relevant to U.S. policy, that
the U.S. Government thinks is important, even if the content is
independently produced and reported. Exposing the CCP for what it is
and the perniciousness of its activities is in the U.S. interest.
3. Invest in expertise building inside and outside the U.S.
Government.
Countering the CCP's interference and malign influence requires
country-specific expertise, even if the laws and regulations are
country agnostic. U.S. access to the PRC, however, is becoming more
constrained for both the public and private sectors as Xi Jinping has
tightened security measures and the U.S.-PRC relationship has become
more fraught. Fewer Americans are studying China and Chinese
language(s). And the United States does not have the expertise it needs
to enforce the policies it already has.
In the 116th Congress, none of the various U.S.-PRC competition
bills included investments in developing expertise and language skills.
This stands in stark contrast to the early cold war, when the White
House and Congress realized the need to invest in expertise. The
National Defense Education Act of 1958 created substantial investments
in area studies, particularly related to the Soviet Union, and the
United States continued such programs through Title VI of the Higher
Education Act. 45 Congress should create and fund educational programs
to support mid-career expertise building and language skill
maintenance. Existing programs focus almost exclusively on
undergraduate and graduate students at the beginning of their careers.
Creating space and time for experienced professionals to brush up on
language skills or pursue useful personal projects would help ensure
continued learning. Government employees have some access to similar
programs, but there needs to be greater recognition of the value of
education and being away from the desk. Private sector employees need
new programs and sources of support to be able to take the time to
study and return to work.
4. Reverse reporting requirements on sanctions and other
congressional authorities relevant to executive branch actions, so that
agencies like the Department of State have to report when authorities
go unused.
Congressional reporting requirements often create a perverse
incentive for the Department of State and other executive departments
to not take action using the authorities provided by Congress. As a
general, U.S. Government officials do not like providing congressional
reports on their activities. As a result, significant authorities have
gone unused because they do not want to go through the process of
providing the report to Congress. Alternative authorities are applied
or nothing is done at all. By requiring U.S. officials to report to
congressional oversight every 90 days or some other appropriate length
of time that the authority goes unused, Congress will strengthen its
oversight of U.S. policy and create a better incentive for U.S.
officials to follow congressional intent.
5. Congressional reporting on CCP malign influence should focus on
enabling action rather than situational awareness.
Most congressional reports required of the executive branch are
requests for situational awareness. This has overburdened the
departments and, in many cases, Congress would be better served turning
to the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability
Office, or universities, think tanks, or other external research
organizations. The problem of CCP malign influence is well known, and
many aspects of it have been catalogued in detail by The Jamestown
Foundation, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Sinopsis
(Czechia), Safeguard Defenders, and many individual analysts. Where
once there was a paucity of information, analysis, and expertise, there
is a growing global network of analysts, journalists, and officials who
can provide the general information usually required in congressionally
mandated reports.
Instead, congressionally mandated reports should request
information that enables action, like targeting packages for sanctions,
entity lists (such as those at the Departments of Defense, Commerce,
and Homeland Security). Congress cannot require the executive branch to
take certain actions. There is a bipartisan presidential consensus, for
example, that Congress cannot require the executive branch to place
sanctions on companies or individuals. Presidents claim that is not a
congressional power. And practice has made this a reality. However, by
demanding the compilation of materials required for specific executive
actions, Congress will create reports that entrepreneurial U.S.
officials can leverage to drive action either in the moment or at some
time in the future.
6. Use Congress's institutional powers to press the executive
branch for transparency on actions taken against China, especially
where the actions are administrative.
American opinions are shifting about China, but much of the public
discussion remains caught in limbo between the old policy paradigm and
the uncertainty of today's new era of competition. Consequently, the
administration needs to be more transparent than the executive branch
typically is inclined.
The visa denials for Chinese scholars is a perfect example from
recent news. Many U.S. and international scholars have been dismayed by
the news, and the merits of excluding those individuals or revoking
their visas is not obvious to the public. The particular of case of Zhu
Feng, a Nanjing-based professor, having his visa revoked shows why the
executive branch needs to be more transparent publicly. Although he is
a well-known scholar known for his amiable humor, Zhu also has been
supported by and done work for the political warfare element of the
People's Liberation Army. This is available from open sources. Putting
a few simple criteria out in public for visa denials and alerting
inviting institutions what criteria was triggered would be a useful
positive step for handling the visa issues going forward. Without such
information, many otherwise knowledgeable people about China assumed
the worst about the administration's intentions and actions.
The administration also should be encouraged to use the legal
system and press charges where appropriate. The legal process forces
the U.S. Government to commit to a course of action and make some
information public. That information, especially after a conviction,
becomes as close to ground truth as possible on sensitive subjects for
which there is not much clear, public information.
Senator Risch. Thank you very much, Mr. Mattis.
We will turn now to Mr. Jeffrey Stoff. He is the founder of
the Center for Research Security and Integrity. He previously
spent nearly two decades in government focused on risks to the
security and integrity of research from adversarial or
authoritarian nations. He now advises academia, governments,
and businesses on these matters.
Mr. Stoff, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF JEFFREY STOFF, FOUNDER, CENTER FOR RESEARCH
SECURITY AND INTEGRITY, HERNDON, VIRGINIA
Mr. Stoff. Chairman Risch, Ranking Member Shaheen, and
distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today on this critically important
topic.
Now that I no longer work in the government I can speak
very candidly about the PRC's method to exploit our innovation
ecosystem and the failures within both the government and
academia to address this problem.
Over the last 15 years I have studied China's research
ecosystem and how the party state exploits our innovation. I
worked closely with most Federal agencies that fund scientific
research as well as law enforcement and intelligence
components.
That support has exposed me to a range of deficiencies and
failures of the U.S. Government, which were a source of my
frustration and the reason I resigned from Federal service in
2021.
Today, neither academia nor governments of liberal
democracies have sufficiently adapted to a contradictory
reality. One of the most significant participants in the global
scientific enterprise is also our greatest adversary, an
extremely oppressive regime that seeks to dominate and displace
the U.S. technologically and militarily, to reshape the world
order, and to preserve the Communist Party's interests.
It is past time to have candid and uncomfortable
conversations about the current state of how the PRC's
unfettered access to our research ecosystem and its malign
influence activities have profound effects on our national and
economic security and the corrupting and corrosive effects that
are enabled by the negligence of U.S. partners.
U.S. universities are run like businesses with the primary
objective of generating revenue. Academia's incentives are
often not aligned with U.S. national security and economic
interests.
Systemic noncompliance on Federal research grants and its
willingness to accept and fail to report PRC sources of funding
often run counter to the values of transparency and integrity
that academia espouses.
My written testimony shows examples of academia's
widespread disregard for security or ethical concerns. I
provide low estimates of over 27,000 articles published just in
the past 5 years involving collaboration between U.S.
institutions and PLA medical entities, weapons design and
production facilities, state owned defense enterprises that
supply the PLA, key defense research universities, and entities
that develop and deploy mass surveillance technologies to PRC
public security organs enabling human rights abuses.
Much of this research is funded by Federal agencies,
private foundations, and corporate sponsors with few
restrictions or regulatory oversight.
The U.S. Government has done little to deter academia from
failing to comply with Federal research grant rules such as
failing to disclose PRC money and support, which sometimes
appear to be an attempt to disguise contracted research for the
PRC as unrestricted gifts.
This, combined with PRC programs that task and incentivize
U.S. faculty members to bypass merit based hiring decisions,
conduct research projects at the PRC's behest, and a swath of
other malign activities, create corrosive secondary effects as
well.
These include a vicious cycle of inequity in the system.
Smaller schools that are being honest but denied Federal
funding have smaller budgets and fewer resources to hire Ph.D.
students, attract top talent, et cetera, which then makes them
less competitive on future grant proposals. This also
translates to fewer opportunities domestically and an erosion
of STEM talent pipelines.
Compounding these problems are abject failures by the FBI's
near exclusive focus on criminal investigations as a hammer
looking for a nail that fails to protect earlier stages of our
research ecosystem as well as the intelligence community's
failure to adapt to post-cold war realities and the asymmetric
threats posed by China, which only seldom involve espionage
activities.
The scale and scope of China's predations in our research
ecosystem are largely unknown, making it impossible to
determine the level of influence the PRC exerts over U.S.
research that overwhelmingly benefits China.
My testimony discusses issues that go beyond the
jurisdiction of this committee. My recommendations seek to
close regulatory gaps and bolster compliance and enforcement
mechanisms, and have State Department play a much larger role
in many of these areas to ensure that real costs are imposed to
the PRC when it violates commonly accepted norms and values of
scientific research.
To effectively counter the PRC's malign influence, we must
find the courage to break down silos and build new paradigms
for cooperation among and between Federal agencies, legislative
committees, and our key allies and partners around the world.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Stoff follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Risch. Thank you very much.
We will now hear from Dr. Melanie Hart. She is the senior
director of the Global China Hub at the Atlantic Council.
Immediately prior she served at the Department of State and
played a central role on U.S. responses to Chinese economic
coercion as well as strategy and international engagement on
semiconductors.
Dr. Hart, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF DR. MELANIE HART, SENIOR DIRECTOR, GLOBAL CHINA
HUB, ATLANTIC COUNCIL, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Hart. Senator Risch, Ranking Member Shaheen,
distinguished members of this committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today.
The U.S. and China are engaged in systemic competition. It
is a competition over which model prevails--the U.S. model of
political and economic development or China's. If China
prevails, the U.S. and the world will be less free, less
prosperous, and less safe.
Beijing is deploying a range of tactics to achieve its
objectives. Some constitute traditional diplomacy. Some
constitute malign influence. The State Department must be
empowered to fight on both fronts.
I would like to make five key points. First, showing up in
the traditional diplomatic arena is foundational to America's
success. Our diplomats must be resourced to show up and pull
every lever to advance U.S. national interests. When they do,
they win.
In 2020 China held four of the 15 leadership roles across
the U.N. specialized agencies. Today, Beijing is down to just
one.
The department made those positions a priority, starting
with the International Telecommunication Union. The department
identified and ran compelling candidates and launched a whole
of department effort to rally the votes needed to win.
Diplomacy works.
Second, when combating malign influence, transparency is
our super power and Beijing's kryptonite. Beijing knows the
China model is deeply flawed. That is why Beijing resorts to
malign influence.
It relies on information control to hide the costs
associated with the China option and coercion to force others
to bear those costs.
Examples include engaging in widespread graft to sway
foreign official decisions in Beijing's favor, filing libel
suits against PRC critics to silence them, engaging in economic
coercion and disinformation, and electoral interference.
Boosting transparency should always be step one when
combating malign influence. These tactics are covert by design,
so exposure often neutralizes them.
Third, the global information space is an active
battlefield that impacts every arena of U.S.-China competition.
Beijing engages in information warfare. It seeks to control
information at home and abroad and use that control to advance
its objectives at America's expense.
The now shuttered State Department Global Engagement Center
was the primary U.S. mechanism for combating China's
information warfare. GEC enabled Washington to broadcast its
own messages to the global public, sharing our vision and
exposing the truth about China's.
GEC was not just a government megaphone. It provided grants
to third party researchers around the world, empowering an
entire global army of counter malign influence warriors to
combat CCP disinformation.
That is why the Chinese foreign ministry has referred to
GEC as Washington's command center of perception warfare.
I urge Congress to reauthorize the Global Engagement
Center. Keeping these counter influence warriors off the
battlefield boosts Beijing at America's expense.
Fourth, economic coercion requires active defense. During
the Biden administration, the department launched an internal
unit to provide support to nations facing Chinese economic
coercion.
That effort was wildly successful, so much so it neared
case capacity due to the number of nations coming in for
assistance.
At present, there is no single state department, FTE, or
office with authorization and appropriations to counter Chinese
economic coercion. I urge Congress to provide dedicated
resources for this effort.
Fifth and finally, I would be remiss in my duty to this
committee if I did not raise the current foreign assistance
freeze, which is hobbling America's ability to compete with
China in every domain.
Over $1 billion in foreign military financing for Taiwan
frozen. NDI and IRI are shutting down global operations. Human
rights organizations frozen. Washington has effectively
abandoned the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement.
I understand the need to maximize strategic focus and
foreign aid. I applaud Secretary Rubio's steps to lift some
restrictions. But this broad freeze hobbles America at a moment
when we are in the battle of the century.
It is a massive gift to Beijing. The longer it goes on, the
harder it will be to regain the grounds we are already losing
today, tomorrow, and this week.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look
forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hart follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Melanie Hart
Senator Risch, Ranking Member Shaheen, distinguished members of the
committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
The current global system is rules-based. Beijing is promoting an
alternative vision in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
determines--at a global level, not only in China--whose interests
prevail. Some of the tactics Beijing deploys to push this vision
constitute legitimate diplomacy. Beijing also deploys ``malign''
influence tactics, which are not legitimate. Australia has defined
those tactics as ``foreign influence activities that are in any way
covert, coercive or corrupt.'' \1\ Unlike legitimate diplomacy, malign
influence tactics aim to subvert nation-state sovereignty, distort
public information, and undermine the function of key political
systems, particularly democratic systems. To prevail in the global
competition with China, the United States must fight effectively on
both fronts: advancing our interests and maximizing our own attractive
power through smart diplomacy; taking targeted action to directly
counter Beijing's malign influence activities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Malcolm Turnbull, ``Speech Introducing the National Security
Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017,''
December 7, 2017, https://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/speech-
introducing-the-national-security-legislation-amendment-espionage-an.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My testimony will cover five main points:
1.We are engaged in a global governance competition that will
define which system prevails--ours, or Beijing's. Step one is showing
up. We cannot vacate key diplomatic battlefields.
2. When combatting malign influence, transparency is our superpower
and Beijing's kryptonite.
3. The global information space is an active battlefield that
impacts every arena of U.S.-China competition. If the U.S. stands on
the sidelines, we cede that field--and the upper hand in other arenas--
to China.
4. The United States must directly--and robustly--counter PRC
economic coercion.
5. Congress should empower the State Department for full-spectrum
competition.
(1) The United States has the upper hand in global governance
competition--to prevail, we must compete at full strength.
The United States and China are promoting alternative global
visions. The U.S. vision is rooted in democracy. It is based on
individual rights, freedoms, and a separation of powers. It is a vision
in which all nations and individuals have a voice in determining their
own fate. Beijing's vision is rooted in autocracy. It is a vision in
which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decides which interests
prevail. It does not support individual rights or freedoms, or any
limits on what the CCP can do to pursue its own interests. It does not
respect nation-state sovereignty when another nation's sovereign
decision conflicts with CCP desires.
Beijing is battling to advance its global vision on two fronts:
legitimate global governance competition and malign influence. The
United States must fight effectively on both fronts for the U.S. model
to prevail. Between these two systems, the U.S. version--the democratic
version--provides better outcomes for a larger majority. In contrast,
the Beijing model depends on information control to hide the costs many
individuals pay as the powerful pursue their own interests. That gives
the United States the upper hand in global governance competition. Step
one is showing up to advocate for that vision diplomatically. When the
United States does not show up--for example, when we disengage from
international institutions--we cede the playing field to China despite
our comparative advantages. For example:
Engaging diplomatically in international organizations.
Nations that provide funding to international organizations, promote
their own nationals to key staff and leadership positions, push a
positive agenda, and engage partners ahead of key votes to advocate for
that agenda shape global rules. \2\ Beijing is maximizing every one of
these levers on issues ranging from human rights to setting global
technology standards to shaping how the international community views
Taiwan. If we cede that field to Beijing, every element of competition
will become an uphill battle.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ As one State Department official plainly stated: ``[O]ur
influence at the U.N. is greatest when we pay our bills in full and on
time.'' U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International
Organization Affairs, Michele J. Sison, Testimony to the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, ``Renewed American Engagement with International
Organizations: Goals, Priorities, and Successes,'' February 15, 2022,
https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/hearings?ID=5E89A2AC-7A9E-46E0-A0B1-
2007FF2E0C5E.
Providing commercial incentives to help companies and
standards compete for global market share. The United States and China
are in a global battle to determine which companies, technologies, and
standards shape global infrastructure. The Development Finance
corporation (DFC), the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and the U.S. Trade and
Development Agency decrease the cost of choosing to partner with U.S.
companies over PRC competitors. Trade deals create a similar pull, as
they lower the cost of doing business with covered partners. Beijing
deploys its own banks and trade policy to lower the cost of doing
business with Chinese companies and make it harder for U.S. and other
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
foreign companies to compete.
Using educational diplomacy to attract top global talent.
The United States is competing with China and other nations for top
global talent, particularly STEM talent. Nations with a global talent
strategy and education policies (including streamlined visa programs)
to attract top talent outperform others at doing so. The United States
is currently lagging behind other OECD nations on this front.
When the United States competes in these arenas at full strength,
we generally prevail. For example, the United Nations International
Telecom Union (ITU) sets global telecom standards. PRC national (and
former PRC telecom ministry official) ZHAO Houlin served as ITU
Secretary-General from 2015 to 2022, giving Beijing an avenue to shape
global telecom standards in ways that favored Huawei and ZTE over non-
PRC firms. The Biden administration made ITU leadership a priority from
day one. The State Department identified and ran a compelling
candidate, Dorreen Boden-Martin, in the leadership election, and
launched a whole-of-Department effort to support her candidacy. In
September 2022, she won the member state vote for ITU Secretary-
General, defeating Russia's (and China's) attempt to put a former
Russian telecom ministry official and Huawei executive in that
position.
In 2020, China held four of the 15 leadership roles across the U.N.
specialized agencies. Today, Beijing is down to one (the Food and
Agricultural Organization, or FAO). In addition to the ITU election,
the State Department successfully supported U.S. candidates at the
International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the International
Court of Justice (ICJ).
When the United States does not compete at full strength--or does
not show up--we cede these playing fields to Beijing. For example, for
decades, Washington did not prioritize supporting U.S. companies to win
global infrastructure projects in the developing world. Beijing stepped
into that void with the Belt and Road Initiative, which provided state-
backed loans and other incentives to support Chinese infrastructure
bids. The result: Beijing gained a dominant position in global port and
telecommunications infrastructure. Today, the United States is once
again showing up. Washington is deploying the DFC and other U.S.
Government levers to help U.S. and allied companies compete for global
infrastructure projects. \3\ That progress is slowly pushing the global
system back toward U.S. and allied standards. \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Elizabeth Economy and Melanie Hart, ``America's China Strategy
is Incomplete: Putting Beijing on the Back Foot Requires Economic Tools
Beyond Tariffs,'' January 14, 2025, Foreign Affairs, https://
www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-china-strategy-
incomplete.
\4\ For example, The DFC joined forces with Japan's development
bank to help Australia's Telstra acquire telecom assets in the Pacific
Islands, outbidding a Chinese state-owned enterprise and successfully
keeping those networks out of Beijing's hands. DFC also financed the
winning bid that acquired the Elesfsina shipyard in Greece, keeping a
strategic port asset out of Beijing's hands.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(2) When combatting malign influence, transparency is our
superpower and Beijing's kryptonite.
Beijing knows the China model is deeply flawed. Economically,
growth has stagnated and youth unemployment is soaring. The party
maintains significant control over various sectors of society and
government--when the party issues an order, all must obey. That is not
something other nations and peoples would opt into if given free
choice. Thus, Beijing resorts to coercion--malign influence tactics--to
undermine free choice. The difference between legitimate diplomatic
competition and malign influence is that the latter is by design
``covert, coercive, and corrupt.'' It forces acquiescence through
coercion instead of inducing it through attraction.
Examples of Beijing's malign influence tactics include:
Elite capture: influencing political decisions through
graft. In Malaysia, Chinese officials offered to undermine a graft
investigation into former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak
(including by deploying China's security services to find out who was
leaking his activities to journalists) in exchange for preferential
access to infrastructure contracts. \5\ The U.S. Department of Justice
has uncovered evidence of PRC corruption campaigns compromising U.S.
Government officials, including an IRS agent and a high-ranking New
York State government employee. \6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, ``WSJ Investigation: China Offered
to Bail Out Troubled Malaysian Fund in Return for Deals,'' January 7,
2019, Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-china-
flexes-its-political-muscle-to-expand-power-overseas-11546890449.
\6\ ``Two Men Plead Guilty to Acting as Illegal Agents of Chinese
Government and Bribery,'' U.S. Department of Justice Press Release,
July 25, 2024, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-men-plead-guilty-
acting-illegal-agents-chinese-government-and-bribery.; ``Former High-
Ranking New York State Government Employee Charged with Acting as an
Undisclosed Agent of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese
Communist Party,'' U.S. Department of Justice Press Release, September
3, 2024, https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/former-high-ranking-new-
york-state-government-employee-charged-acting-undisclosed.
Using open academic systems to steal intellectual
property: the U.S. Department of Justice has publicized cases of
People's Liberation Army officers entering the United States and
enrolling in U.S. universities as ``students'' to gain access to U.S.
academics and proprietary academic information. \7\
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\7\ ``Harvard University Professor and Two Chinese Nationals
Charged in Three Separate China Related Cases,'' U.S. Department of
Justice Press Release, January 28, 2020, https://www.justice.gov/opa/
pr/harvard-university-professor-and-two-chinese-nationals-charged-
three-separate-china-related.
Lawfare: Chinese companies hire U.S. law firms to attack
U.S. China-watchers. \8\ These lawsuits appear intended to deter U.S.
researchers from publishing negative information about PRC companies
and their ties to Beijing. For example, Chinese auto company BYD hired
U.S. libel attorney Charles Harder to file suit against the Alliance
for American Manufacturing (AAM) and individual AAM staffers, accusing
them of ``libel'' for publicizing information about BYD's CCP ties. \9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Bethany Allen, ''Libel Lawfare: Is there a Legal Risk to
Criticizing Chinese Companies?'' July 28, 2024, The Wire China, https:/
/www.thewirechina.com/2024/07/28/libel-lawfare-chinese-companies-
defamation-suit-anti-slapp/.
\9\ ``Supreme Court Rejects Meritless Libel Lawsuit Filed by
Chinese Company BYD Against AAM,'' Alliance for American Manufacturing,
https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/press-release/supreme-court-
rejects-meritless-libel-lawsuit-filed-by-chinese-company-byd-against-
aam/.
Economic coercion: Beijing uses its commercial ties with
other nations to force them to abide by its political edits. Many cases
are never made public. Beijing threatens to take these measures, and
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countries comply to avoid economic damage.
Disinformation and election interference: China seeks to
sow discord and undermine faith in democratic elections--including our
own. The Atlantic Council's DFRLab uncovered a network of pro-PRC
accounts, known as ``Spamouflage,'' that engaged in opportunistic
amplification of disinformation on the day of the 2024 U.S.
Presidential election. One campaign featured a deepfake video that
first appeared in Russian networks of then FBI Director Christopher
Wray claiming the U.S. system was ``overrun'' with thousands of fake
ballots. Other campaigns focused on swaying the results of down ballot
races, targeting voters with disinformation and false claims of
financial fraud against PRC-skeptical congressional candidates.
Boosting transparency should always be step one when combatting
malign influence. These tactics are covert by design. Exposure often
neutralizes them. For example, when corrupt officials are exposed,
Beijing loses that avenue to exert influence (as it did in Malaysia and
in the U.S. IRS case). When visa officers and universities know a
``student'' applicant is a PLA officer, they have the information
needed to decline admittance. When the public knows information is
coming from the CCP they are more likely to distrust the message.
In some cases, active defense measures are also required to prevent
Beijing from using our open systems and society against us. For
example, transparency is not enough to protect the U.S. electoral
system; the United States is also strengthening cyber security
protocols to make it harder for Beijing to intervene. Targeted visa
restrictions are key to protecting certain U.S. academic sectors from
covert PRC intrusion. Active defense is also required for
disinformation and economic coercion, as will be discussed in the
following sections.
When engaging to shore up systemic defenses, it is critical to
avoid measures that reduce the benefits the U.S. gains from our open
democracy and society, or that undermine U.S. efforts in other
battlegrounds (such as promoting our system over China's or attracting
global STEM talent). In education, for example, the now-shuttered DOJ
``China Initiative'' fostered fear throughout the Chinese American
scientific community that U.S. national academics could be targeted
based on their race or country of origin, and that they could face
civil rights abuses. Those fears triggered an exodus of scientific
talent. \10\
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\10\ Yu Xie, Xihong Lin, Ju Li, Qian He, and Junming Huang,
``Caught in the Crossfire: Fears of Chinese-American Scientists,'' June
27, 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 120,
No. 27, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216248120.
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(3) The global information space is an active battlefield that
impacts every arena of U.S.-China competition. If the U.S. stands on
the sidelines, we cede that field--and the upper hand in other arenas--
to China.
Beijing engages in political warfare. In the Chinese system, every
security institution answers to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and
its primary mandate is to keep the party in power. In the early days of
the CCP, that warfare was primarily about protecting the Party from
domestic challenges. Today, Beijing is taking that fight global: it
engages in political warfare in the international arena to advance PRC
objectives at U.S. expense. \11\ The United States tends to view
warfare in simplistic military terms: one military engaging in kinetic
action against another. China's military is weaker than ours, so
Beijing moves that battle to fields where it holds an advantage. The
information space is one such battlefield. The People's Liberation Army
(PLA) has a ``three warfare'' concept that applies both at home and
abroad: public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal
warfare. \12\ At home, if the Party can keep its own people under
control through public opinion and psychological means, it can stay in
power without having to resort to kinetic force and paying the costs
that come with that (such as scaring foreign firms and capital out of
the China market). The same applies globally. In a Taiwan contingency,
for example, if the PRC can use public opinion warfare, psychological
warfare, and legal warfare to scare the global community into staying
on the sidelines in a future Taiwan crisis, Beijing can likely take
Taiwan. \13\ Within Taiwan, Beijing could deploy these same methods (as
it is already doing in Hong Kong) to create enough pro-China sentiment
and political instability to justify its takeover, effectively
neutralizing the Taiwanese resistance.
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\11\ Catherine A. Theohary and Martin A. Weiss, ``What is
`Political Warfare,' '' updated January 9, 2023, Congressional Research
Service, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://
crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/
IF11127#:?:text=In%20broadest,to%20achieve%20its%20national%20objectives
\12\ Peter Mattis, ``China's `Three Warfares' in Perspective,''
January 30, 2018, War on the Rocks, https://warontherocks.com/2018/01/
chinas-three-warfares-perspective/.
\13\ Dan Blumenthal et al, ``From Coercion to Capitulation: How
China Can Take Taiwan Without a War,'' May 13, 2024, American
Enterprise Institute, https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/
from-coercion-to-capitulation-how-china-can-take-taiwan-without-a-war/.
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Washington tends to assume private-sector media are enough to
expose Beijing's actions around the world and convince other nations to
support our objectives rather than China's. The problem is that no U.S.
media company has the resources to stand up against the entire CCP war
machine. Furthermore, their interests are profit-driven: independent
media outlets do not take on national security objectives.
In the economic space, we now recognize that expecting individual
U.S. companies to compete against a whole-of-government CCP effort is a
losing battle. Thus, the United States and many other nations are
deploying government tools to level the playing field. The same applies
in the information space. The United States has world-class independent
media organizations, including both traditional and social media. But
those organizations cannot compete with the massive CCP info-war
machine. Just as it is doing in the economic realm, the U.S. Government
must deploy state tools to level the playing field.
The now-shuttered State Department Global Engagement Center (GEC)
was the primary U.S. Government mechanism for public diplomacy and
combatting China's information warfare. When it was active, GEC enabled
the U.S. Government to broadcast its own messages to the broader global
public. The aim of that messaging was to convince people around the
world to pursue the same outcomes the U.S. was pursuing. The State
Department also engages in government-to-government diplomacy to push
messaging with partner governments; public diplomacy aims to do the
same with their publics, creating an environment in which entire
nations are rowing with us. \14\ Critically, GEC was not simply a
government megaphone. GEC provided grants to third-party research
institutions in the United States and abroad, empowering them to do
their own due diligence on China's actions and expose that information
to inform their own publics. That third-party voice was critical. Local
publics view their own local think tanks, academics, and NGO's as more
credible than the U.S. Government. When local organizations conduct
their own China due diligence and share that information in their own
voice, that resonates in a way U.S. Government messaging cannot. It
also exposes PRC actions the U.S. government--and U.S.-based
researchers--cannot, because local researchers have unique access to
their own officials, institutions, and local PRC actors. Third-party
grants (with appropriate safeguards in line with the Smith-Mundt Act)
were a huge force-multiplier for U.S. counter-malign-influence efforts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ Joseph S. Nye, ``Public Diplomacy and Soft Power,'' The Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 2008,
Vol. 616, pp. 94-109.
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The former GEC office also directly investigated and exposed PRC
disinformation to expose malign influence tactics at critical moments
in U.S.-China competition. For example, the former GEC team tracked and
publicly exposed how Beijing repeated Russian propaganda regarding its
invasion into Ukraine. \15\ That public exposure--which tied specific
PRC Statements to specific Kremlin talking points--helped demonstrate
to European audiences, in particular, the degree to which China was
complicit in the invasion.
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\15\ ``People's Republic of China Efforts to Amplify the Kremlin's
Voice on Ukraine,'' May 4, 2022, U.S. Mission China, U.S. Department of
State, https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/peoples-republic-of-china-
efforts-to-amplify-the-kremlins-voice-on-ukraine/.
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(4) The United States must respond robustly to support target
nations in resisting PRC economic coercion.
China's economic might is its biggest lever for global influence.
For many nations, China is their largest trading partner and/or largest
foreign direct investor. Beijing can exert control over all lanes of
commerce, including the companies buying from, selling to, or investing
in partner nations. It frequently orders PRC companies to halt those
activities to force other nations to abide by Beijing's political
edicts. Some of these cases are public. Beijing used economic coercion
to target Canada over the potential extradition of Huawei's Meng
Wanzhou, Australia over Canberra's call to investigate the COVID-19
pandemic origins, Lithuania over its Taiwan office, South Korea over
the THAAD missile defense system, and the Philippines over its actions
to assert its rights in the South China Sea. Some cases are never
publicized, because the threatened nation backs down in response to
Beijing's economic coercion threats.
The State Department is ideally placed to push back--not only after
coercion has already occurred, but beforehand, when nations are facing
economic coercion threats. During the Biden administration, the
Department launched an internal unit to provide support to nations
facing Chinese economic coercion. \16\ That effort was wildly
successful. Over a dozen nations engaged the Department for support,
and State Department support enabled those nations to stand firm in the
face of PRC coercion.
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\16\ Peter Martin and James Mayger, ``US Creates Team to Counter
China's Trade `Coercion' Tactics,'' April 28, 2024, Bloomberg News,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-28/us-firm-steps-in-
when-china-is-seen-as-a-bully-not-a-partner.
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(5) Congress should empower the State Department for full-spectrum
competition. We are battling to determine which system--ours or
Beijing's--prevails. The stakes are astronomical. This is not the time
to keep major levers of U.S. national power on the sidelines.
Re-authorize the Global Engagement Center (GEC) to empower
the United States to engage in effective public diplomacy and
information competition. Due to the recent lack of re-authorization,
there is currently no U.S. Government entity with both the capability
and the credibility to effectively combat PRC disinformation. GEC
grants to third-party entities in the United States and other nations
were critical for exposing and neutralizing PRC disinformation efforts,
which are key to the covert nature of PRC malign influence. According
to a recent Congressional Research Service report, the State Department
inspector general found GEC to be ``generally effective'' in achieving
these objectives. \17\ That effectiveness is why the Chinese government
referred to GEC as Washington`s ``information warfare'' unit and the
``command center of perception warfare.`` \18\ Shuttering GEC--and
keeping these counter-influence warriors off the global battlefield--
boosts Beijing at U.S. expense.
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\17\ Matthew C. Weed, ``Termination of the State Department's
Global Engagement Center,'' December 26, 2024, Congressional Research
Service, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://
crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12475.
\18\ For example, see: Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's
Regular Press Conference on August 29, 2022, in Chinese at https://
www.mfa.gov.cn/fyrbt_673021/202208/t20220829_10757191.shtml, and
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Remarks on the US State Department's
Report Targeting China,'' September 30, 2023, in English at http://
us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zmgx/zxxx/202310/t20231005_11154911.htm.
Provide the funding and personnel resources needed to
directly--and rapidly--counter PRC economic coercion. At present, there
is no single FTE or office at the Department with authorization and
appropriations to counter Chinese economic coercion. During the Biden
administration, the internal counter-coercion unit neared case capacity
due to the number of nations coming in seeking assistance. Congress
should empower the Department to counter PRC economic coercion by
providing dedicated resources and FTE for this effort. In particular,
it should fund the Office of the Chief Economist (OCE), which is a
critical first step in coercion response. [Note: OCE also plays a key
role in mapping PRC sanctions evasion, which is a complementary
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effort.]
Empower U.S. State and local governments to make informed
decisions about the PRC. Across the United States, most State and City
governments do not have a single person dedicated to international
affairs. (Some larger cities have a single person dedicated to both
international affairs--with all countries--and immigration.) State and
local governments do not have the capacity to track Beijing's influence
tactics and do full due diligence on what may be involved in economic
offers from Chinese companies. The State Department Special
Representative for City and State Diplomacy and the Subnational
Diplomacy Unit can fill this gap. Instead of seeking to staff all city
and State governments across the nation with China experts, the
Subnational Diplomacy Unit can serve as their gateway to existing
expertise. During the Biden Administration, the Subnational Diplomacy
Unit served that role; it also provided targeted China briefings to
Governors and mayors offices that requested them. This office enables
the Department to efficiently fill Chinese influence analysis and push-
back needs across the nation, without requiring every mayor and
Governor nationwide to hire their own experts. \19\ Running these
engagements through a single office also enables the Department to
track Chinese influence trends and tactics, which it can then use to
warn local officials what to expect and watch out for. Congress should
strengthen the Subnational Diplomacy Unit to make its counter-China
efforts more robust.
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\19\ Kristen Edgreen Kaufman, ``Why The Next Trump Administration
May Prioritize City-Level Diplomacy,'' December 18, 2024, Forbes,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristenkaufman/2024/12/18/why-the-next-
trump-administration-may-prioritize-city-level-diplomacy/.
Provide the authorization and appropriations for the
Department to proactively engage partner nation officials and
scientists in strategic technology sectors. At present, the majority of
funded science and technology partnerships run through the NSF, NIH,
DOE, NASA, or DOD. DOE and DOD bring a national security nexus to that
engagement, but DOE is limited by its energy focus and DOD by its
warfighting capability focus. Congress should empower the State
Department to actively engage partner nations in sectors critical for
U.S.-China competition. \20\ Many of the most critical advancements are
occurring in the commercial space, e.g., in quantum, artificial
intelligence, cyber security, 6G development, and biotech. There is a
need for proactive engagement among U.S. and allied researchers to
build trusted research ecosystems that promote collaboration in ways
that exclude the PRC. State is well-positioned to do the horizon-
scanning engagement needed to promote science and technology
collaboration, working with key allies to identify leading-edge
researchers among allied nations and bring them together to help the
U.S. and its allies compete effectively with China.
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\20\ ``NSTC: Biennial Report to Congress on International Science &
Technology Cooperation,'' February 29, 2024, The White House, https://
bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/ostp/news-updates/2024/02/29/biennial-
report-to-congress-on-international-science-technology-cooperation/.
Support U.S. students to study China and the Mandarin
language, developing specific capabilities that fill gaps in needed
U.S. Government China expertise. The number of U.S. students studying
in China has fallen dramatically in recent years. That is partly due to
the growing difficulties of traveling to and studying in China (which
include detention risks and an increasingly draconian security
environment). The students who still pursue China analysis also
recognize that their best job prospects may be with the U.S.
Government, which will require a security clearance, and many fear
China travel will make them ineligible. Congress should provide
authorization and appropriations for the Department to launch a China
studies fellowship program aimed at building the bench the United
States will need for U.S.-China competition. That program should
identify key functional needs (e.g., science and technology or public
diplomacy) and offer a three-step program to fill them: 1 year of
funded language study at an approved language/exchange program in China
or Taiwan, followed by continuing study at the Foreign Service
Institute during the second half of the fellowship; a paid 12-month
fellowship during which cleared students work in State Department China
programs, which could include DC-based offices (sanctions, export
controls, etc.) or field offices (supporting Regional China Officers or
U.S. embassies/consulates in China); language testing at the end of the
fellowship to provide verified scores for U.S. Federal Government jobs.
This program should run at a post-graduate level and aim to provide
Federal Government on-ramps for rising China experts in their mid-20's.
Students participating in this program should receive a waiver for
residency requirements that disqualify U.S. Government job applicants
who have lived in foreign destinations (such as China) prior to
submitting their application; other U.S. fellowship recipients (e.g.,
Boren Fellowships and Critical Language Scholarships) should receive
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similar waivers.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Dr. Hart.
We will now hear from Dr. Jennifer Lind. She is an
associate professor of government at Dartmouth College. She
also is a faculty associate at Harvard University and the
author of a forthcoming book on the rise of China and the
future of great power competition.
So with that, Dr. Lind, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF DR. JENNIFER LIND, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF
GOVERNMENT, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Dr. Lind. Thank you, Chairman Risch.
Chairman, Ranking Member Shaheen, and distinguished members
of the committee, thank you for having me today.
What I would like to talk about is China's malign influence
operations and influence operations more broadly, and let me
talk about what these operations are and what makes them
malign.
Although all countries seek to build their influence
through a range of policies that we call public diplomacy,
malign influence operations are a very different matter. The
CCP conducts extensive influence operations that are malign
both in terms of goals and methods.
Such operations seek to bolster authoritarianism, discredit
democratic governance, reshape global norms in China's
interest, and silence China's critics.
In these operations proxy organizations obscure ties to the
CCP while they buy media companies and fund research and think
tanks.
Cyber units employ illegal cyber espionage and hacking
operations, and Chinese agents coerce American citizens into
promoting Beijing's interests by threatening their family back
in China.
China's influence operations are thus threatening because
their goals run counter to U.S. interests and because of the
covert and illegal methods on which they rely.
Furthermore, they are threatening because they are massive
in scope. They are run through a huge government bureaucracy
consisting of numerous different agencies at all levels of
society.
The budget for these operations is said to exceed the
budget of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is not
geopolitics as usual. This is an unusually aggressive and well
funded effort.
Now, how should the U.S. respond to these malign
operations? In my written statement I introduced a framework
for thinking about U.S. policy.
Its goal is not only to defend the United States from
hostile Chinese operations, but also to convince Beijing to
rein in its activities and thus to establish some rules of the
road to stabilize our strategic competition.
The first step toward creating those rules is for U.S.
leaders to identify which of China's activities are regrettable
but normal great power competition.
For example, although we do not like it, and although we
should maintain as good a defense as possible, we can probably
tolerate cyber attacks, pro-CCP fake accounts on social media.
But the second category of activities is different. These
are the policies or behaviors that U.S. leaders decide are
intolerable.
Such activities might include election interference,
abductions, and operations that coerce American citizens. So
step one is to distinguish between regrettable but tolerable
operations versus intolerable ones.
Step two is to develop a tool kit that we are willing to
use to shape Chinese behavior, actions that the CCP would view
as intolerable.
The U.S. Government would convey privately to Beijing that
if it violated the bounds of acceptable activities we would
respond in kind. That is, we would cross some of Beijing's red
lines.
This is not an escalation. It is how great powers establish
the rules of the game. Beijing's bright red lines--the
absolutely ``intolerables''--relate to China's domestic
stability. Specific policies would have to be figured out at
the classified level.
But once again, the core idea is not only to play defense,
but to make the CCP feel the costs of its aggression and to
encourage it to moderate its behavior. This sounds delicate and
dangerous and hard, and it is actually harder.
Let me conclude by noting that not only do we have to
manage this challenging strategic competition with Beijing, but
in that competition lurk potential dangers to the rights of
millions of Americans, Chinese Americans in particular.
Our adversary is already--at this early stage and in
peacetime--coercing good Americans to work against their
country on its behalf.
As we formulate our responses to Chinese malign influence
operations U.S. leaders should think about previous situations
such as World War II, Japanese internment, and cold war
McCarthyism, and think about when our institutions protected
our people versus failed them.
In other words, U.S. leaders should think not only about
this important strategic interaction with Beijing, but whether
our policies in that interaction uphold our values.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Lind follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Jennifer Lind
Chairman Risch, Ranking Member Shaheen, and distinguished members
of the committee: thank you for the invitation to testify before you
today. My name is Jennifer Lind: I'm a professor at Dartmouth College
in New Hampshire where I teach courses on great power politics, East
Asian international security, and U.S. foreign policy toward the
region. My recent research and forthcoming book focus on China's rise
to become a great power and technological leader.
In my testimony today I will briefly cover four topics. First I
will discuss what are influence operations and when are they malign.
Second, I will comment on how threatening we should view Chinese
operations. Third, I will offer a framework for thinking about U.S.
responses: one that relies not only on defense but on more assertive
measures as well. Finally, I conclude with thoughts about responding to
Chinese influence operations in ways consistent with U.S. values.
(malign) influence operations
Every country to some extent engages in activities to communicate
its views, frame its actions in the best light, and shape policy
outcomes to reflect its interests. China is no exception in pursuing
what we call public diplomacy or soft power. The Chinese Communist
Party (CCP), like other governments, engages in numerous mundane
influence activities: it extends aid and loans to other countries; it
promotes a positive narrative of China overseas; China's government
sponsors educational and cultural activities abroad; Chinese diplomats
write op-eds in foreign newspapers and promote the national interest
within international organizations. In the United States, Chinese firms
hire lobbyists to influence U.S. policy; China's government hires PR
firms and offers all-expense-paid trips to China to influential
Americans. All of these activities are routine in international
relations. To be clear, we don't like these Chinese activities because
of the agenda they advance. But they are standard public diplomacy:
business as usual in international politics.
However, malign influence operations are a different matter. The
CCP conducts extensive influence operations against the United States
and the broader international order that are malign in terms of goals
and methods. Such operations seek to bolster authoritarianism,
discredit democratic governance, and reshape global norms in China's
interests. China exploits its economic leverage, such as market access
and investment, to coerce businesses and governments to behave in
accordance with Beijing's wishes. The CCP employs propaganda and
disinformation campaigns, relying on social media manipulation to sow
division and weaken democratic resilience. Cyber-enabled espionage and
intellectual property theft bolster China's military and technological
power. CCP co-optation--of NGO's, academics, political and other
leaders--seeks to silence criticism of China. In many of its influence
operations, the Chinese government coerces Chinese citizens living
abroad as well as Chinese Americans.
the threat of chinese malign influence operations to the united states
The CCP clearly conducts a mixture of mundane and malign influence
operations. Is China's level of activity in this domain unusual or
unexpected? Are its operations particularly malign? Such context is
important because if China's actions seem unusually aggressive, that's
an important threat indicator.
A look at Chinese influence operations suggests their extent is
vast. The CCP conducts such operations through a massive government
bureaucracy that includes agencies such as the United Work Front
Department, the Propaganda Department, the Ministry of State Security,
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Chinese People's Association
for Friendship with Foreign Countries. The CCP also directs influence
operations that recruit Chinese businesspeople from both the State and
private sectors.
The annual budget for such activities is understandably hard to
assess but estimates range from about $3 billion to $8 billion. The
Jamestown Foundation's Ryan Fedasiuk reports that this exceeds China's
budget for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. \1\ From the extent of
China's influence operations we can infer the CCP's high level of
ambition and commitment to advance China's interests and undermine the
United States.
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\1\ Ryan Fedasiuk, ``Putting Money in the Party's Mouth: How China
Mobilizes Funding for United Front Work,'' China Brief 20, no. 16
(2020), https://jamestown.org/program/putting-money-in-the-partys-
mouth-how-china-mobilizes-funding-for-united-front-work/
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What can we learn from the types of influence operations that China
pursues? As noted, the CCP engages in operations that depart from
mundane public diplomacy activities, or even from the espionage common
to great power rivalries. First, many Chinese operations are malign
because they are covert rather than transparent. Proxy organizations
that obscure their connections to the CCP fund political contributions,
think tanks, and academic research. The Hoover Institution reports that
the CCP gained control of the Chinese-language media in the United
States as well as in other countries; ``Over the course of the last
decade, most of the independent Chinese language media outlets in the
United States have been taken over by businessmen sympathetic to the
PRC.'' \2\ China's government also seeks to shape public opinion
through social media operations that rely on fake accounts and
``hashtag storms'' to flood sites with pro-CCP content while burying
dissenting opinions and encouraging abuse of people who offer them.
Other examples of covert activities abound.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Larry Diamond and Orville Schell, eds., China's Influence &
American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance (Stanford, Calif:
Hoover Institution Press, 2020), p. 214.
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Second, many Chinese influence operations are malign because they
violate U.S. law and the rights of American citizens. Chinese cyber
units engage in operations to steal U.S. technology, gather
intelligence, and disrupt activities critical of the CCP. Such
operations rely on cyberespionage, identity theft, and hacking
operations that use malware and spear phishing techniques. Targets
include the U.S. Government, think tanks, NGO's, researchers,
activists, dissidents, and journalists.
Chinese agents also operate in the United States in violation of
the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They engage in surveillance and
intimidation campaigns against Chinese citizens (e.g., tourists,
students, businesspeople, and researchers) as well as U.S. citizens of
Chinese descent. The CCP harasses and pressures people to promote
Beijing's interests by threatening their families in China. In 2020,
the U.S. Department of Justice charged eight individuals who stalked
and pressured a Chinese dissident and his family in New Jersey, as part
of China's ``Operation Fox Hunt'': a program ostensibly aimed at
apprehending Chinese fugitives abroad, which has been turned against
dissidents and other ethnic Chinese.
In sum, this is not geopolitics as usual. China's influence
operations do seem unusually expansive, unusually well-funded, and
frequently conducted using covert and illegal methods that undermine
not only U.S. interests but the rights of American citizens and the
rule of law in our country. Although the United States previously
engaged in this kind of shadow conflict with the Soviet Union, this is
not your father's cold war. As a rich, economically central, and
technologically advanced country, China has a powerful toolkit to
exploit as it engages in influence operations in the United States and
around the world.
responses to chinese malign influence operations
How should the United States respond to Chinese malign influence
operations? Scholars and think tanks have produced many articles and
reports that detail the numerous U.S. Government agencies and programs
that monitor and counter Chinese activities. Such studies generally
emphasize defensive U.S. responses to blunt Chinese operations.
I would like to build on the valuable tools recommended in those
studies to introduce a broader framework for thinking about U.S.
policy. The goal of this framework is not only to consider how the U.S.
should defend itself from hostile Chinese operations, but how to
convince Beijing to rein in its activities. The United States is in a
great power competition with a very capable adversary; this is going to
be a long haul with a serious risk of crises and war. In the shadow
conflict of influence operations, the two countries--as the two
superpowers did in the cold war--should create some rules of the road
in order to stabilize their relationship.
The first step toward creating those rules is for U.S. leaders to
identify which of China's activities are regrettable but normal great
power competition. After all, China is a great power with its own
interests; China is allowed to do things even if we don't like those
things. So we should ask ourselves, which Chinese behaviors and
activities fall into that ``regrettable but acceptable'' category--
versus which activities do we view as intolerable? That's our first
challenge: to distinguish between the two.
Examples of ``regrettable but acceptable'' activities might include
pro-CCP fake accounts on social media, Chinese efforts to set agendas
in key international institutions, and Chinese aid for brutal
authoritarian leaders. To be clear, we disapprove of such activities;
we would keep playing defense and try to thwart them. But we would
understand that such operations are commonplace and, from our
standpoint, bearable.
The second category of activities are different: they are the
Chinese policies or behaviors that U.S. leaders view as intolerable.
Such activities might include election interference, abductions, and
operations that harass, coerce, or blackmail American citizens (of
Chinese descent or otherwise). These operations undermine the rule of
law in the United States and our responsibilities to protect our
citizens from direct harm by foreign adversaries.
Step two is to develop a toolkit that we are willing to use to
shape Chinese behavior: activities and policies that the CCP would view
as intolerable. The U.S. Government would convey privately to Beijing
that if their influence operations violated the bounds of acceptable
behavior, we would respond in kind: in other words, we might cross some
of Beijing's red lines. This is not an escalation--it's a negotiation.
This is how great powers establish the rules of the game--about what's
going to be normal conduct versus what's going to be out of bounds.
What are the CCP's red lines? Beijing would prefer that we wage the
shadow conflict far afield--in the United States, in third countries,
and no closer than Taiwan, Tibet, and so on. But Beijing's bright red
lines--the absolutely intolerables--relate to China's domestic
stability. The CCP worries about its people mobilizing, getting ideas
about democracy, and about economic and financial crises delegitimizing
the regime. If the United States were to push ideas about democracy, or
to take steps that undermine the stability of the Chinese economy--for
example, its real estate or banking sectors--that would be intolerable
to the CCP.
Identifying specific policy tools would have to be done by experts
doing very sensitive work at the classified level. At an unclassified
level we can't even talk about what are current U.S. operations, let
alone how one might want to shift them or scale them up. So today I
can't give you specific recommendations but rather offer this general
framework for thinking about U.S. responses.
Once again, that frame is: first, figure out what we view as
garden-variety great-power competition versus unacceptable Chinese
behavior. And second, figure out how we might respond using both
defense and offense--defense to protect ourselves from China's run-of-
the-mill activities, and more assertive steps designed to make the CCP
feel the costs of its aggression and to encourage it to moderate its
behavior. And over time the two countries would forge an equilibrium in
which hopefully both sides stay within the bounds of that agreement in
order to maintain stable relations.
living up to our own values
Let me conclude by noting that as we formulate our responses to
Chinese malign influence operations, U.S. leaders should be thinking
not only about this negotiation with Beijing, but also about whether
our responses uphold our own values. Among our people number millions
of Chinese American citizens. We find ourselves in a complex situation
in that our adversary is already--at this early stage and in
peacetime--harassing and coercing good Americans to work against their
country on its behalf.
As U.S. leaders evaluate policy responses to Chinese operations,
it's helpful to think about similar situations in the history of U.S.
national security policy, and to ask ourselves what we got right and
wrong. U.S. leaders should have this conversation (as indeed the
Committee is doing today) with members of America's free and vibrant
civil society: which sets us apart from authoritarian rivals and indeed
is one of our country's strengths.
In World War II, the U.S. Government imprisoned Japanese American
citizens in camps in violation of the U.S. Constitution. In the cold
war, the Red Scare of McCarthyism violated the rights and ruined the
lives of many people. The aftermath of September 11, 2001 in some ways
offers a more optimistic example. President George W. Bush made it
crystal clear to Americans that we were not fighting a war against
Islam, but against a terrorist group that had twisted Islam's
teachings. This kind of strong leadership was essential then and is
essential today.
It is important for Americans to recognize that in the security
competition with China lurk not only geopolitical dangers, but dangers
to our people and values. As that competition becomes more intense, and
as we get frustrated that an authoritarian society is exploiting our
free one, while we protect ourselves against Chinese influence
operations in the ways recommended here, we must also honor our own
values.
Thank you.
Senator Risch. Well, thank you.
First of all, I want to commend the panel. We get panels
through here all the time but this is probably as good a
presentation as we have had on an issue in a long, long time.
Part of this whole problem is the fact that convincing
America and different segments of America how dangerous of a
situation this is, and one of the ones I have been focused on
over the years and have been somewhat successful but not
completely successful is to get a better handle on what
colleges and universities are doing.
The colleges and universities, as all of you know, are a
really target rich place for the Chinese. They show up with
money, and as was pointed out here, colleges and universities
respond to money whether it is from their donors, from their
alumni, or from the Chinese showing up with money.
And most Americans are shocked to hear that we have
hundreds of thousands--hundreds of thousands--of Chinese
students studying here in the United States with only a tiny,
tiny fraction of U.S. students studying in China, and there is
a huge difference.
The Chinese students here are not studying ancient Greek
history. They are here with the STEMs and the national security
issues and everything else, and each and every one of them,
whether they like it or not, is an agent of the Chinese
Communist Party.
When they go back, we all know they get debriefed, and any
information that they have garnered here in the United States
becomes the property of the Chinese Communist Party.
So we have seen example after example of the Chinese
showing up at a university, coming up with millions of dollars,
and they get a chair--they get an endowed chair. They get an
entire institution within the institution focused on what they
want to have focused on.
So I guess the question I would have for all of you is--and
first of all, admittedly universities have an entirely
different view than we that work in the national security lane
do of this.
When you sit down and talk with them, they believe, and a
lot of them, I think, are very sincere in their belief that,
oh, in academia we are all together.
This is one big world and we should all use this knowledge
that we have and share it with each other regardless of the
national security implications of it, whether it is designing
computer chips or designing factories that manufacture arms.
So give me some thoughts. How do we bring the universities
on board to have a better understanding of, number one, how
dangerous China is, and number two, how they are exploiting us
even without our knowledge in a lot of instances in taking what
we have?
Mr. Mattis, let us start with you.
Mr. Mattis. Well, one thing I can tell you is that 10 years
ago this was a completely different problem than it is today.
There are actually resources, there are companies, there are
more experts, there are journalists, there are plenty of places
where universities can go.
So a dearth of expertise or a lack of information is no
longer the problem that they once faced, or it was not as
severe.
The second, as I think my friend Jeff has said, that the
grant reporting requirements from the Federal Government
actually have to be rigorously pursued and adhered to.
We would not--we would consider it corruption if it were a
defense contractor or others that were not providing the
correct reporting requirements, and because, as I think you
have heard from every single witness, the problem here is the
corruption of the rules and the corruption of the process, and
as long as that process is clear and has rigor, then it will
provide the basic level of protection.
I think the other piece that is there is to go back into
your home States and to talk to the public universities and
engage them on and ask, well, what have you done for
compliance? What do you do about these things? Because I know
from my time on Capitol Hill that those conversations actually
did bear fruit, and they did drive public universities to think
about this.
Senator Risch. That is a good suggestion. Thank you.
Mr. Stoff.
Mr. Stoff. Thank you for the question.
Yes, a lot of it--I agree, a lot of it has to do with
raising a level of understanding and awareness, and one of the
challenges is that the U.S. Government needs to share a lot
more information on the kind of investigations.
For example, the OIGs do a lot of interesting things that
are at civil and administrative levels that do not reach--that
are just simply not public record, right, because they are not
a criminal indictment, and that is not a bad thing.
But what happens is the universities are not seeing and
they are not really incentivized to see what is happening on
their campuses and the type of malign influence and the way
China can come in and divert and influence the research that is
going on.
There is some information that the government has that I
think needs to do a much better job in sharing that. There also
needs to be much more scholarship on the topic itself where we
demonstrate activities, and behaviors, that China exerts that
are fundamentally against the principles and values of academic
freedom, transparency, reciprocity, and integrity, which are
core to what universities talk about of their mission, and
there needs to be a lot more effort looking at where and how
this is being done to show this is affecting us all, including
on your campus, so that we take more collective action.
Thank you.
Senator Risch. Dr. Hart.
Dr. Hart. Thank you.
I endorse the comments that have come before and would like
to just add one point. We need a scalpel for this, not a sledge
hammer. It is in U.S. national interest to keep the student
pipeline open.
We are in a pitched battle for global tech supremacy. For
decades Beijing stole our IP. Let us steal their best
engineers.
You know, China's national engineers developed the DeepSeek
AI model that surprised the world this week. You know, we would
be better off if the engineers behind that were working here in
the U.S. and U.S. universities and U.S. companies. So it is
important to keep that in mind.
Those student exchanges are a way that we can siphon off
some of Beijing's top talent. So we want to make sure that for
the students that are here, for the researchers that we want,
that they feel they are safe in the United States, they
understand how to follow the rules, and they feel their civil
rights will be protected. We can beat Beijing at making Chinese
scientists feel safe.
Senator Risch. Well, thank you, Dr. Hart. There is a flaw,
however, in your suggestion, and I think probably everyone in
the room knows it.
When a student comes over here, they got to go back. If
they do not go back, there is a family there, and we all know
what the Chinese government does to families. They do it across
the oceans, and they do it even here in the United States.
So that is a great idea. The problem is we are dealing with
a malign institution here. We are not dealing with people like
Americans who say, oh yes, you are free to move and do whatever
you want to do.
They will take it out on the families. We have all heard
stories of that. But you know, your thoughts are well taken,
that it would be good if we could reverse the tables. I am not
so sure that we can do it in the same manner.
My time is up, and Dr. Lind, we will get to you too again.
We are going to do a 5 minute round, and if we have got time we
will back up.
So, Senator Shaheen.
Senator Shaheen. Well, thank you all.
Let me echo the Chairman on his appreciation for the
presentation from everyone and give a special shout out to Dr.
Lind from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
We just have to get that in, Dr. Lind.
Senator Risch. Look at the time.
[Laughter.]
Senator Shaheen. Senator Rubio, Secretary Rubio now,
introduced a bill back in July of the last session that would
have required the Secretary of State to work with the Ukrainian
government to establish a mechanism for reviewing PRC
investments in Ukraine.
Now, sadly, one of the results of this foreign assistance
freeze is that it is cutting off some essential services to
Ukraine at a time when we know not only is Russia looking at
how they can undermine Ukraine, but the PRC is starting to
invest there.
So, if our goal is to prevent Ukraine from accepting that
PRC investment, how does cutting off our own assistance move us
toward that goal? And are there incentives for Beijing to play
a productive role in trying to get to peace talks in that
conflict?
The President has raised that as a potential role for the
PRC. Do we think that is likely, Dr. Lind?
Dr. Lind. Thank you for your question.
On the broader issue of pausing U.S. foreign aid, I agree
with the sentiments that we have heard today so far that talk
about foreign aid as a really important arrow in the quiver of
U.S. national security, along with other tools such as
diplomacy, military assistance, and so on.
And so ideally we would want to be using all of our
different tools in a coordinated fashion to achieve our
objectives. So for that reason I think it is understandable if
the Administration wants to take a short pause and assess, are
we using the right tools in the right way, should we be using
some tools more than others, and so on.
But we should not be taking this important arrow out of our
quiver, and we should recognize the many areas across the globe
where it does so much good. We have talked today about
medicines going to waste on ports, talked about children dying,
right? So there are such implications to think about here.
So because of that, it is really important that we remember
there is important development assistance that this pause will
affect, and there are also strategic realms that we may not
have appreciated how consequential this aid pause would be such
as the conflict in Ukraine, for example.
Senator Shaheen. So, is there any incentive for the PRC to
help move negotiations around the war in Ukraine? Does anybody
on the panel think that there is a way that would encourage
them to do that?
Mr. Mattis.
Mr. Mattis. So, as president of the Jamestown Foundation, I
oversee a large network of analysts that are not just covering
China but focus on Russia as well, and it is hard to see that
the PRC has played any kind of neutral role, and even their
positioning in peace talks has not been neutral--it has been
reinforcing Russia's positions.
And I cannot help but think that at best getting them to
neutrality would require a lot of pressure and a lot of threats
to their system that we can still apply, and the question is
whether or not we would want to escalate in that way.
But barring some massive change Beijing is not neutral, and
they have put their support behind Moscow. So, anything there
they will try to bring pressure on Ukraine and to get Ukraine
to surrender.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
Dr. Hart, as you pointed out in your comments, and I
referenced in my opening statement, the PRC spends over a
billion dollars a year in promoting their messaging. The state
backed media outlets are found in every major hotel in the
world.
Chinese firms purchase local media outlets, and yet we are
woefully behind. You mentioned the Global Engagement Center,
also appropriations for U.S. Agency for Global Media entities
and networks including Radio Free Asia, Voice of America, Radio
Free Europe.
Those have declined by almost 12 percent in real terms over
the past decade, and as we all know America has a better story
to tell, but we need to be a lot better at telling it.
So what should we think about other than those two arenas
in terms of competing with China on their propaganda campaign?
Dr. Hart. Sure. I will make two points.
You know, China, as you said, is spending over a billion
dollars in getting its message out to the world. That is very
difficult to combat directly.
But one brilliant element of the former Global Engagement
Center is that it provided grants to third parties in the
United States and in other agencies to empower NGOs around the
world to do their own investigations and their own exposure of
what Beijing was actually up to.
So it was a massive force multiplier. It enabled the United
States to leverage voices around the world to combat Chinese
disinformation, and that third party element is really
critical.
And I would just add one other point, which is our online
spaces. Unfortunately, we are seeing quite a bit of
disinformation in social media and in other online spaces,
which again, the U.S. Government can be a bit slow in tackling
those spaces.
But there are third party agencies that are great at it.
The Atlanta Council has the digital forensic research lab, for
example, which is actively tracking Chinese and Russian
disinformation in U.S. and other social media domains. We want
to empower not just the U.S. Government but also every ally we
have in the field.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Shaheen.
Senator Ricketts.
Senator Ricketts. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you to our panelists for being here today.
Communist China is the single biggest external existential
threat we have to our nation. I believe that you are all making
the case for that, that this needs to be what we focus on, and
we have not been focusing on it.
And during his confirmation hearing, Secretary Rubio warned
that, quote, ``If we stay on the road we are on right now, in
less than 10 years virtually everything that matters to us in
life will depend on whether Communist China will allow us to
have it or not.''
Folks, right now we are facing that first real test of
whether or not we are willing to get off that road that we have
been on that has allowed Communist China to take advantage of
the world system and seeks to--and a country that seeks to
displace us, and that test is TikTok.
This app is just not another social media platform. It is
one of the apps that Communist China uses in its web of
diplomacy to push its propaganda, spy on Americans, and control
the narrative of why they think they are better than we are.
That is why we passed with bipartisan support a law that
required ByteDance to sell within 270 days, and the Supreme
Court, by the way, upheld that law unanimously.
The law is now moved or is in effect, and so what you are
seeing is TikTok has been removed from app stores, meaning that
not only can new users not download it, but you cannot get
updates, so effectively it will mean that the existing users
will see their experience degrade as well.
And as long as Communist China governed ByteDance controls
the app it is going to be a tool for the Communist Party in
China to try to exercise its malign influence here in the
United States.
TikTok has 170 million users. Fifty-two percent of them get
their news from it. That is over 88 million Americans that rely
on the app, and after October 7 we saw that there were 50 times
more views that were more pro-Hamas, pro-Palestine than pro-
Israel, despite the fact that polls show that Americans
overwhelmingly supported Israel.
And TikTok is--we talked about controlling the narrative--
China suppresses the information on there. So, for example, I
have seen different studies that show that, for example, if you
compare TikTok and Instagram, there is 80 times more mentions
of Tiananmen Square on Instagram versus TikTok, 180 times more
mention of the Hong Kong protests when that was going on on
Instagram versus TikTok, 400 times the amount of content
talking about Communist China being responsible for COVID on
Instagram versus TikTok, and when it comes to Uighurs about 10
times more information on Instagram versus TikTok.
This is part of how they are shaping the narrative, and it
is just the start. We see this in other applications as well,
obviously, with the announcement of a law going into effect on
TikTok RedNote saw a bunch of users, and of course, Dr. Hart,
you just talked about DeepSeek as well. China is lining up the
next apps to be able to control our things.
And by the way, folks, we do not allow foreign adversaries
or foreign companies to own our TV stations and radio stations.
You are limited to 20 percent of a direct foreign ownership in
a TV or radio station. We do not have such laws for streaming
services. That is one of the things, perhaps, we can take up.
So these applications are where people are getting news in
America. We have laws to block them in TV and radio stations,
but not for applications like TikTok.
Mr. Mattis, how relevant are these apps like TikTok to
Communist China's strategy to control the narrative, to be in
competition with us, to undermine us?
Mr. Mattis. So one of the points that I alluded to in my
statement, and that Melanie has spoken about, said this
narrative fight is actually not just a narrative on narrative,
but it is a competition for the platforms and the pipes, if you
will, that allow narratives to move and allow them to be pushed
out.
So if we go back, let us say, 40 years to the Soviet
disinformation effort to say that the United States was
harvesting organs from babies in Latin America or was the
source of AIDS as a biological weapon in Africa, those were
things that took years and years of effort, and now those
stories can be disseminated to 170 million people, essentially,
instantly and overnight.
This is the biggest change, and I think we have to keep our
eye focused on what those platforms are so that they can be
free flowing, that they are not distorted.
Because to me, I know it is easy to understand the privacy
issue of some of these apps, but it is the ability to distort
the messages that people hear that are the most important, and
everything that we have learned about cognitive psychology--the
way that we take in information, the way our biases become
anchored--the more closed off or the more you are sucked into a
particular information source, the easier it is to plant
something that will stick and that will be harder to pull
apart.
So we have to keep our eye--I focus less on the narratives
themselves and much more on the groups and the platforms. It is
first the medium, then the message is what the party is doing.
Senator Ricketts. And if I may, Mr. Chairman.
Just real briefly, what should we do about RedNote and
DeepSeek and other platforms like that?
Mr. Mattis. I think for those kinds of platforms you have
to adopt the same approach that was applied to TikTok, that it
either is sort of removed from their control, or it is no
longer available in the app stores.
Senator Ricketts. Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Mattis.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Risch. Thank you.
Senator Schatz.
Senator Schatz. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you to our panelists.
And I agree with the Chairman, this is an excellent group
to inform us.
Mr. Mattis, I want to just start with the Philippines. As
you know, they are one of our closest allies. We have economic
assistance arrangements. We have lifesaving support that we
provide, and of course, we have a security partnership that has
lasted generations.
If you were a senior CCP official, how would you view this
freeze in foreign aid coming from the United States?
Mr. Mattis. Frankly, I would be looking to exploit the
opportunity that is there, and over the years the political
fluctuations in the Philippines have offered those
opportunities.
They have disrupted the relationship. They have disrupted
partnership, and anything from Beijing's perspective, or if I
were in the senior official in the united front work department
I would be doing everything I can to exploit whatever chaos is
there in the U.S.-Philippine relationship.
Senator Schatz. What would that look like?
Mr. Mattis. Either/or sort of the traditional tools of sort
of corruption. I would be looking also to mobilize groups, to
lobby politicians to say, well, look, the U.S. is an unreliable
ally, and that you need to move in this other direction.
I would be looking to creating pressure about escalation
risks if the Philippines chooses to defend itself on Second
Thomas Shoal and other territories. It could go on a range of
things like that.
Senator Schatz. Sure.
Do you think this moment is particularly important? I mean,
it seems to me like tactically that if I were a senior CCP
official, I would be mobilizing this week to be making some
moves that are specific to the opportunity presented this week.
Not just as a general proposition in terms of great power
competition in the Asia Pacific region, but specifically to
seize this opportunity of us looking like an unreliable
partner.
Is that fair to say?
Mr. Mattis. When I look at the CCP, what I was alluding to
was a long term set of ambitions and clarity, and we may be
talking about this more, but it does not mean that 10 years ago
we did not know or we did not see these. It is just that we
were not looking.
Senator Schatz. No.
Mr. Mattis. So there are always opportunities to exploit.
Senator Schatz. So let us go to Papua New Guinea. A lot of
natural resources, but it is at risk of becoming a foothold for
PRC military expansion.
But right now it has the highest HIV incidence in the
Pacific, and it is rising. It also has a lot of unexploded
ordnance, and last year the Department of Defense signed an
$864 million defense deal with Port Moresby.
So it seems to me that the Philippines is one question. We
have a bilateral relationship that spans generations and is
sturdy. Like, under Duterte less sturdy but still solid, even
when we have a President who is an unreliable partner.
But in places like PNG where, to use the domestic
equivalent, they are sort of swing states. They are open for
business to being aligned with China, to being aligned with the
United States, to playing both sides against the middle.
I am particularly concerned about smaller countries for
whom withholding of economic or military or lifesaving support
is not something they can sort of weather, and so I am
wondering if you can talk about PNG in particular.
Mr. Mattis. I do not know specifically about this, and I
think it is the Secretary's job to determine how the priorities
go, because we cannot be everything to every country, and I
would hope that there is some systematic view of where do we
prioritize, what is important, where can we intervene
effectively, and where does an intervention simply sort of pour
bad money after bad.
Senator Schatz. Yes.
Ms. Hart, did you want to just comment just generally
speaking on the opportunity we are presenting to the CCP? And I
do not mean generally. I mean this week.
Dr. Hart. Sure. Basically, we have given Beijing a blank
check and kneecapped the United States and the entire global
pro-democracy movement.
If you want to talk about PNG and their need for medicines,
there is a very clear pattern that during the COVID crisis
Beijing forced nations around the world to carry out its
political edicts in exchange for COVID vaccines.
I have no doubt that Beijing is already showing up in
capitals where the United States is pulling back and saying,
here is your HIV medicine, and guess what? Here is the three
things you need to do for me today to get it.
Senator Schatz. Thank you.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Schatz.
Senator McCormick.
Senator McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you.
What a great and sobering panel.
Mr. Stoff, I would like to start with you and talk about
the CCP's IP theft in research security. I ran the Commerce
Department's export controls about 20 years ago, and even then
there were warning signs of the CCP's infiltration.
I remember giving a speech that talked about 90 percent of
Chinese software being stolen or acquired from--mostly from the
United States. Here we are two decades later, and that risk
seems more extreme and pervasive than ever.
When it comes to the CCP theft of U.S. research and IP,
where are we most vulnerable and are research security
requirements for sensitive dual use technologies, in
particular, keeping up?
Mr. Stoff. Thank you for that question, Senator.
First, I think we need to understand and frame the current
regulatory landscape that we operate in. Where we are most
vulnerable is in fundamental research domains as defined by
National Security Decision Directive 189. And basically, as you
probably know, Senator, export controls, largely, do not apply
in any case to any academic research that is designated as
fundamental.
And so that means that outside of a few appropriations
restrictions that have been put in place, particularly the NASA
Wolf amendment, there really is not any restriction of any
kind, and so this allows basically just a free for all--and
this was set up by design but now has become a much bigger
problem, and I think the problem that you are raising goes
beyond how we traditionally define and view IP theft at least
with the way our legal statutes are designed.
Particularly, 1831 and 1832 of the U.S. criminal code have
very specific requirements to prove that it is theft, and most
of the time a lot of what is happening in academia because of
the open nature of our system is not actually theft the way our
statutes define it.
As such, the entire early stage of our research and
innovation ecosystem is basically rife for complete
penetration, influence, and diversion of all of that technology
and research for China's benefit.
And as was pointed out earlier, I think Chairman Risch had
mentioned, when China comes in with lots of money, this is
irresistible, and the combination of those two things makes it
very difficult for U.S. policy to effect change because--
originally by design--there is not enough regulatory oversight
to do anything about it.
Quickly, I would say that, and in my recommendations in my
written testimony, I do think that we need to apply some of the
restrictions in our export control regimes--the Entity Lists,
or the BIS List, or the OFAC lists--those are already
established. The U.S. Government has already determined that
there are a number of entities, both research institutions and
companies, that conduct research that are a threat to our
national security.
Well, we should put restrictions in place if you are
dealing with those entities because the Government has already
decided that those entities are a problem. So a kind of
harmonizing our export control regime with our ecosystem will
help.
Senator McCormick. Yes. That makes a lot of sense.
Along those same lines, in December the Biden
administration signed a 5 year extension of the U.S.-China
science and technology agreement.
Was this a good idea? Is this part of the big gap in our
regulatory framework that you are referring to?
Mr. Stoff. To be honest, Senator, I am not familiar enough
with the details of that agreement to opine on whether this is
effective or not.
But the sense I get is most of the policy apparatus and how
universities and the government interact with each other, with
grant making agencies, et cetera, the things that I recommend I
do not think would have any bearing or effect on this larger
government-to-government science and technology agreement. I
think the things that I recommend would not necessarily
conflict with that agreement.
Senator McCormick. Thank you.
Mr. Mattis, just very quickly, we saw all the announcements
this week around DeepSeek-R1. Does the proliferation of open
source AI models that are trained to push the CCP's propaganda
advance the party's efforts to shape public discourse in the
United States, and how can this open source approach enable
future influence operations?
Mr. Mattis. So very quickly, I think there are two dangers
of platforms like this coming out of the PRC.
The first is that it is a data collection effort that the
more people interact with these systems the more that is
brought in, and this is something that is--you know, goes back
to, you know, sort of the back end software that are on Huawei
telecommunications and conference equipment--many other areas
where you can see the PRC putting things kind of astride those
pipes and platforms that allow them to benefit from the flow of
information. So that is the other piece.
The second is that the more that those models are trained
on an international set of data, the more we are able to see
things like the effectiveness of automated disinformation
systems or propaganda systems that we have seen the PRC use,
and the better those are, the harder it is to deal with, the
harder it is to recognize them, the harder is to shut it off.
Senator McCormick. Thank you.
Senator Risch. Thank you.
Senator Coons has yielded to Senator Kaine, as I understand
it.
Senator Kaine.
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to my
Delaware colleague, Senator Coons.
Thank you for being here.
I am interested in all of this topic. I am particularly
interested in Chinese influence in the Americas. I have
maintained during my now 12+ years here under Presidents of
both parties, and under Senates controlled by both parties,
that we do not spend enough time or attention in the military
space through SOUTHCOM or in the foreign assistance space; we
are not focusing enough on the Americas.
And China sees that as a huge opportunity area for them,
and my other colleagues who travel in the Americas, we see this
all the time. Investments in Panama, offers of, you know, 5G
systems to nations like Costa Rica, and we appropriately warn
allies in the region about the dangers of these, and we usually
hear the same thing--yes, we understand, but do you guys have
anything on the table for us?
And what we tend to say then is we kind of diplomatically
stumble over our tongues because we do not really invest.
I am very nervous about a recent statement of President
Trump's reported last week. We do not need Latin America--that
was widely reported. And then the foreign aid pause last week,
which did not just affect programs in Latin America. It
affected them everywhere.
But even setting those things aside, talk a little bit
about what you are seeing in terms of Chinese influence in the
Americas and how worried we ought to be about it.
Dr. Hart. So the Americas is currently our primary
battleground with Beijing. China sees our weaknesses there.
They see an opening. They are showing up across the hemisphere.
I think the recent port opened in Peru is a perfect
example. When we show up, we win, and one example--I would like
to thank Congress and this committee for authorizing and
appropriating the CHIPS Act which included $500 million for the
State Department to show up in Latin America and elsewhere and
partner with nations to support U.S. based semiconductor
manufacturing.
Senator Kaine. And just to use as an example, there was a
chips plant in Costa Rica that had closed, relocated to China,
but it is now back up and running in Costa Rica, and the chips
portion of the CHIPS Act that involved incentives for allied
nations to produce chips near shore if not onshore was a factor
in that decision.
Dr. Hart. And I would also like to add that that was a
factor in Costa Rica saying no to Huawei and going with Western
alternatives, because you cannot be a CHIPS recipient and have
Huawei as your 5G provider. I am quite confident that this
committee would rule as such.
And I would be remiss in my duty if I did not add there is
substantial amount of counter PRC malign influence activities
across the hemisphere that is currently frozen.
Senator Kaine. Please, Dr. Lind.
Dr. Lind. Thanks so much.
It is a really important question, and important to remind
us of how vital the Latin American region is and is going to be
in coming years.
We are in a superpower competition, and we remember the
last superpower competition that we were in, the number of
times that the United States was engaged in various activities
in Latin America, and the number of times the Soviets were as
well.
I mean, think about the Cuban missile crisis. So just the
fact that we are in a superpower competition again should cue
us to be thinking that Latin America and South America are
going to play a much larger role.
I would say that from China's perspective, it sees the
United States as very much operating in its back yard. We have
bases there. We have strong alliances. We have the U.S.
military flowing throughout the region, and so on.
So China has the perception that it wants to push the U.S.
out and a very keen way to do that--a very clever way to do
that is to start pressuring us in our back yard as, indeed, it
is already doing.
Senator Kaine. What is the Chinese assessment of our
response? I mean, they are pushing in our back yard, but to me
it does not look like we are really responding in a forceful
way. Is that how China sees it?
Dr. Lind. I could not tell you how China sees it,
unfortunately, but I think that when China looks at our
efforts, it sees both a very powerful adversary, capable,
technologically advanced, an adversary that has tremendous
assets around the globe and tremendous goodwill across the
globe and in the region that we are talking about, in many
ways.
So China sees that but it also sees vulnerabilities. And
the vulnerabilities are many of which we have been pointing out
today, and the vulnerability of the pause in foreign aid, for
example, that is a----
Senator Kaine. Or a refusal to confirm ambassadors in the
region. These are all kind of part of a fabric.
My time is over, so I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Senator Risch. Thank you.
Senator Scott.
Senator Scott of Florida. Thank you, Chairman.
Let me continue with what Senator Kaine was talking about.
I am from Florida, so what goes on in Latin America is a
big deal. We have a lot of people in my State that came from
Latin America, and so they are following what is going on down
there.
Not just--for sure the last 4 years but for quite a while
the United States did not put a lot of effort into what goes on
in Latin America, and as we have seen, whether it is Russia,
China, even Iran, you know, they have--they have actions down
there.
So it has been frustrating to get the Administrations to
really focus on what is going on in Latin America, and
hopefully, the next 4 years with Marco Rubio as the Secretary
of State and Michael Waltz, because he is from Florida and he
cares about it, as National Security Advisor we are going to
see a change. Hopefully, that is what will happen.
I do not believe China is our friend. I believe the
government of China has, clearly, decided to be our enemy. They
want to destroy our way of life, and I think if we do not wake
up it is going to be too late.
Mr. Mattis, in 2021 you wrote a piece in War on the Rocks
explaining Communist China's long-term strategy and ambition.
Giving that it is now 2025 4 years ago--4 years since, has your
interpretation changed of Xi Jinping's emphasis on the great
rejuvenation of the Chinese nation?
Mr. Mattis. I would say, if anything, my appreciation for
the clarity and long term thinking of the CCP and its focus on
these objectives has, I would say, gotten sharper than I put in
that piece.
Senator Scott of Florida. Do you think their ambitions are
regional or global?
Mr. Mattis. They are global. They have always been global.
I mean, if you look at the way that Mao launched the Great Leap
Forward, he was not talking about China becoming or the PRC
becoming the world's or Asia's largest steel producer.
He was talking about it becoming the world's largest steel
producer, and you can see from every leader from the CCP's
beginning to the present that they have always seen themselves
on the world stage and not simply a regional one.
Senator Scott of Florida. Mr. Mattis, the CCP has invested
heavily in military capabilities to challenge U.S. influence in
the Indo-Pacific.
I had the opportunity to go to the Philippines last year, I
think it was, to see what they are doing in the shoals down
there. How should the United States respond to these
developments to preserve the ability to operate in this region?
Mr. Mattis. Ultimately, this is a place where the--sort of
the tyranny of geography and time requires us to work with
allies and partners, and it requires us to make a greater
investment in the number of platforms and ships and planes and
drones that can be able to operate over those kind of large
geographical distances.
Senator Scott of Florida. There has been a lot of written
that China does not have the ability to execute, and so a lot
of people say, oh, do not take them seriously because, you
know, they are not very good at what they attempt to try to do.
Has that hurt us? Do you think there is a thought process
out there that they cannot do what they are trying to do?
Mr. Mattis. We have a logical fallacy in the way that we
have analyzed the PRC, which is that we use what we think their
capabilities are today to dismiss their ambitions for tomorrow,
and in 1993 when the new strategic military guidelines were set
out by Jiang Zemin in talking about fighting this kind of
precision warfare in an information rich environment and being
able to exploit that, it looked like science fiction for where
the PLA was.
No one is laughing now about where that is. And what I find
troubling is that when you look at a lot of analysis of the
shortcomings of the PLA, is that we are quoting them talking
about themselves.
I do not like that the PLA is a self-conscious and self-
aware actor that is seeing its problems and trying to fix them,
and they are talking about some of these problems in a way that
we do not actually know what their level of capability is.
So just to take an analogy and say we are talking about a
gymnast, every gymnast has some trouble with sticking the
landing. But the difference with sticking the landing between a
13 year old and with an Olympian medalist is a completely
different physics problem, and it is something completely
different. But it would still show up as there is trouble
sticking the landing. We do not know where the PLA's actual
capability in some of these things are.
Senator Scott of Florida. So, do you buy Chinese products
and services and do you think Americans should?
I can start with you, Dr. Lind. Do you buy Chinese products
and services?
Dr. Lind. I think nearly everything I am wearing and
carrying is probably from China, and I think that is the case
for many people here.
Senator Scott of Florida. Do you try not to?
Dr. Lind. No, not consciously.
Senator Scott of Florida. Dr. Hart.
Dr. Hart. I have young kids, and so I pay a lot of
attention to where things are made and what the quality is, and
that means that we tend to buy more from the U.S., and that
means, unfortunately, we pay more for it as well.
Senator Scott of Florida. Mr. Stoff.
Mr. Stoff. I echo Dr. Hart. I make great pains to try to
avoid when I can, but it is quite a big challenge. But I take
efforts to, yes.
Senator Scott of Florida. Mr. Mattis.
Mr. Mattis. I am in the same situation as Dr. Hart, and I
think it is important to pay attention to what you buy and
where it comes from. We should not care more about where our
coffee comes from than we care about where our T-shirt comes
from.
Senator Scott of Florida. Thank you, Chairman.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Coons.
Senator Coons. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you to all four witnesses, and I apologize for my
lateness in arriving to question. There is another
confirmation--there is a confirmation going on in another
committee.
I am particularly concerned about the possible expansion of
China's influence both at home and abroad as a result of a
freeze on our foreign assistance, and in particular the way it
is being implemented and its cascading effect.
There is nothing China wants to do more than limit the
reach of our global influence, than to reinforce their
impression that we are an unreliable partner with countries
throughout the world and particularly in the Global South, and
my concern is that we put our security, our economic, and our
diplomatic interests in danger with an abrupt pause that puts a
halt to actions to counter malign activity by the PRC, to
advance democracy, to invest in infrastructure.
Dr. Hart, you referenced in response to a question from
Senator Kaine the importance of our showing up in the CHIPS
Act. A bill that came out of this committee that President
Trump signed into law--the BUILD Act--helped create the
Development Finance Corporation. It has received robust funding
and support from both President Trump, President Biden. I am
hopeful that that will be part of our efforts to engage in
infrastructure and in showing our influence.
In the previous decade the Belt and Road Initiative spent
more than a trillion dollars on infrastructure projects to try
and buy influence and curry favor for the PRC.
But this suspension of our aid so broadly implemented
actually will not save money because the cost of shutting down
and restarting programs often exceeds the cost of a careful
review and then pivoting to more effective delivery.
And it may not be temporary. For many small contractors and
organizations, many run by foreign nationals, they will not be
around in 90 days. So I just want to ask you a few quick
questions, if I could.
Dr. Hart, how do you think the PRC would be viewing this
pause in our foreign assistance, and what impact do you think
it would have for our pro-democracy work, both the IRI, the
International Republican Institute, and the NDI, the National
Democratic Institute, to have a 90 day freeze on their spending
that would require them to lay off their employees, their
contractors, and cease all activity?
Dr. Hart. Thank you for the question.
You know, Beijing is viewing this as a blank check, a blank
check to take the space that we are vacating to pursue their
interests at America's expense, and frankly, this kneecaps the
global human rights and pro-democracy movement.
I can share that, you know, frontline rights defenders and
pro-democracy groups are closing their doors. NDI and IRI are
shutting down globally. The U.S. has effectively abandoned the
Hong Kong pro-democracy movement as the NGOs supporting that
movement have all ground to a halt.
We have basically put a blindfold over the global apparatus
that we use to track Beijing's rights abuses and hold them
accountable. This is a blank check, and I am quite sure Beijing
will seek to cash it.
Senator Coons. Mr. Stoff, one of the impacts of the
domestic funding freeze was to put at question research--
university research, medical research, research by literally
tens of thousands of different doctors and scientists across
the United States.
It has been temporarily paused, but it may well come back.
What is the impact in terms of our credibility domestically and
globally to have an across the board pause in Federal funding
for research?
Mr. Stoff. Well, I think just to echo Dr. Hart's comments,
whenever we do things like that, that provides more opportunity
for China to come in, and this is already a problem set in
terms of Chinese money and influence and a research ecosystem
that is not really systematically tracked or understood at all.
And so if we are kind of stopping this effort, it does give
China a lot more opportunity to come in and it also may give
the opportunity to message around the world to our allies and
partners that, oh, well, China has got the money. China can
support this R&D. Maybe the U.S. is not as serious about it
now.
So there can be secondary effects to this that we need to
very carefully consider.
Senator Coons. I will say I appreciate Secretary Rubio
reinterpreting the initial guidance so that it is broader. As
some of my colleagues have pointed out, the actual impact on
the ground in terms of its impact--who is being laid off, what
is being shut down--is broad and will echo.
When an organization like Freedom House that has long
enjoyed bipartisan support, that has long been on the front
lines of advocating for human rights and democracy, shuts its
doors. when the IRI and the NDI shut their doors, I think China
advances and we recede, and I think it is profoundly unwise.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Coons.
Senator Barrasso.
Senator Barrasso. Thanks so much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mattis, if I could--for you, I want to talk about
undersea cables. I mean, it is happening around the world, the
threats and the sabotage.
We know that on January 3 Taiwan's coast guard intercepted
a Hong Kong owned freighter after damage to an international
undersea cable was reported. Taiwan alleges that the Chinese
vessel cut the fiber optic cable by dragging its anchor across
the seabed.
It is not an isolated incident there. According to Taiwan's
national security bureau, over the past 3 years there have been
seven or eight of these undersea cable disruptions. Most of the
incidents can be held to the responsibility of vessels from
China.
We are also seeing it in the Baltic. Our NATO friends and
allies have had increased patrols to protect critical
infrastructure felt to be related to Russia's activities in
that area.
So while cable damage is not uncommon, heightened
geopolitical tensions have raised suspicion of sabotage, and
that is what I believe it is. So, what is China attempting to
accomplish through these efforts?
Mr. Mattis. So, if we are able to lay responsibility at
Beijing's door, or in the--and probably that they were
cooperating with Moscow on some of these operations, I think we
should understand these as trying to right now test the
response time of different actors to see what they can do, how
long does it take to become repaired.
In some sense, I think this is an area where we should be
looking at what is the state of the undersea cable industry--
who repairs, who maintains, who can lay this cable, and what is
the structure of their companies, what are those interactions.
Because this is probably an area to keep the PRC out.
And then with respect to Taiwan specifically, it is a
question of can they isolate Taiwan--can they cut it off from
the rest of the world, can they create what they would call an
information blockade so that Taiwan cannot function, cannot
interact.
Senator Barrasso. So, you detect, respond, and repair. And
is there something technologically that can help us do that
more actively or quickly? You know, how can countries better
protect their underseas communication infrastructure from this
potential sabotage?
Mr. Mattis. I am honestly not sure what the technological
solution is. I do know that this operates in kind of a legal
lacuna in the way that international law functions, as you can
see in the Baltic, when countries were having trouble figuring
out what is the justification to seize and search a vessel that
had clearly done something.
Senator Barrasso. Which leads to say what would be the role
then of international organizations in investigating and trying
to prevent these incidents?
Mr. Mattis. I think it is a country level investigation. It
is in international cooperation, and to the extent that there
is any international organization that has a role, they should
they should be involved.
And I think it is an important recognition for us that we
have to understand that such an investigation only works when
that organization has the integrity of its own processes, and I
think everyone here could give you an example of an
international organization where that has not kept that
integrity, and it has led to problems.
Senator Barrasso. Can I ask you a separate topic, which is
IP protection, because some of the nation's strategic
advantages that we have here come from our innovation, our
technology, as well as our research and development.
And in about 2019 America's intellectual property was
valued at almost $8 trillion. China poses, I believe, a serious
threat to our businesses and our academic institutions. The
Chinese Communist Party consistently steals intellectual
property, patents, other data.
In 2018 Chinese intellectual property theft was estimated
to cost our economy over $600 billion a year. No telling how
much these numbers have gone up since then.
Is there leverage that we have here in the United States to
help deter that threat?
Mr. Mattis. I think one of the most powerful tools that we
have is to deny the PRC a market because in some cases they are
stealing the intellectual property, they are turning around,
driving U.S. companies or other companies out of business, and
then they are able to sell it on our market. And this is one of
the key features that they are--that they need access to in the
world.
This is what allows them to have the over capacity is the
knowledge--the sure knowledge that they can sell those products
from sort of ill gotten methods on a U.S. market, on a European
market, and elsewhere.
Senator Barrasso. And a similar topic, are there things
that we can do better here at home to safeguard our
intellectual property and our research from China?
Mr. Mattis. There are many things that could do. As Mr.
Stoff alluded to, we have whole categories of research that are
not covered. We do not necessarily rigorously enforce some of
the reporting and guidelines that are there and we do not
necessarily require, for example, security training or
awareness for people that are involved in potentially sensitive
projects. I mean, we could go down a very, very long list of
potential options.
Senator Barrasso. One last question--I am running out of
time.
Can you talk about any recent actions by China? What we
have seen in their use of tactics against Taiwan that have
taught us about China's capabilities and objectives that we
might not have known?
Mr. Mattis. I think if you look at the military exercises
that have been launched around Taiwan, that you see an ability
to operate more ships and more planes with less of a lead off
time, which is sort of reducing our warning time, which when we
think about the geography of East Asia, we have much further to
go.
A second thing is that the National Security Bureau and the
Ministry of Justice investigation bureau have made a number of
arrests recently exposing sort of networks of CCP agents that
are actually there to stir up trouble, to be in place for
sabotage, and in some cases to instigate violence. And this is
something that has been there, but if they are making arrests,
this is a change in the scope and scale of that problem inside
Taiwan.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Risch. Thank you.
Senator Shaheen, did you have a comment?
Senator Shaheen. I did.
Senator Barrasso, I wanted to point out that the only U.S.
company that makes undersea cables is SubCom in New Hampshire,
and I would bet they would be happy to come down and brief us
on some of the challenges that Mr. Mattis identified and how
they would encourage us to respond to those.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Senator Shaheen. So, I am happy to help arrange that.
Senator Barrasso. Thank--no, I appreciate it. Thanks.
Senator Risch. Senator Barrasso, you pointed out a brand
new problem with China. I mean, we never heard of undersea
cables being disrupted. Now all of a sudden we get one right
after the other, and the finger always goes back to Moscow and
China combining to do it. So, somebody is going to have to hold
them accountable somewhere.
With that, Senator Van Hollen.
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank all of you for your testimony.
I think you are hearing a common theme, at least from this
side of the dais, that the Trump administration's freeze on
security assistance and many other forms of assistance is a
gift to Beijing.
And I have been listening by C-SPAN, and I think it is fair
to say that we would agree that if we want to compete with the
PRC for influence, we need to make sure that countries have a
clear alternative based on our values and our competitive
advantage as a nation.
You cannot beat something with nothing, and we have to be a
reliable partner. But this freeze, which we do not know how
long it is going to last, is already sending a terrible message
to our partners around the world who are standing up for their
countries' sovereignty against China's influence campaign.
These are civil society partners.
It has also been noted that putting a hold and disrupting
our security assistance sends a terrible message to our
partners, whether they are Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, the
Philippines, Pacific Island nations, others in the east Indo-
Pacific region.
These countries rely on that ongoing support, and cutting
it off without notice, without a clear idea when it is going to
resume, clearly puts us falling into China's hands.
Then there are the human rights defenders that people have
talked about. We know about PRC's transnational repression of
dissidents and how it has expanded, reaching dozens of
countries. Both the State Department and AID provide urgent,
lifesaving assistance to human rights defenders.
There is also the decision of the Trump administration to
withdraw from the World Health Organization which, again, is a
space that China will be happy to fill the void.
And we are also learning about this purge over at USAID,
where dozens and dozens of civil servants who have
qualifications in these areas are being summarily sent home and
sometimes with pay--contractors without pay.
So I guess my question is as I sort of listen to the
testimony so far, Ms. Hart, is--and I know Senator Schatz asked
a version of this question--but if you are President Xi, right,
are you looking to exploit this moment, and what would you be
doing to exploit the moment?
And do you agree that what we have seen is really an
unforced error and gift to President Xi and the PRC?
Dr. Hart. Absolutely.
So, first, I would like to acknowledge and thank Secretary
Rubio for the measures he has taken thus far. I would hope to
see them extended to cover other programs including the counter
China programs.
Basically, this across the board freeze has kneecapped
America in the global competition with China. We have talked
about how this silences and blindfolds our human rights
watchers, giving Beijing a blank check to commit human rights
abuses including forced labor abuses.
We have talked about, you know, the Taiwan military
financing freeze, which gives Beijing a blank check to ramp up
the coercion around Taiwan.
There are two others I would like to mention. Cyber
assistance is frozen. We are giving Beijing a blank check to
commit cyber attacks against some of our partner nations.
State's CDP--the Cyberspace Digital Connectivity and Related
Technology Fund--provides rapid foreign assistance to small
countries that are being targeted with Chinese and Russian
cyber attacks.
That is turned off. Beijing has a golden opportunity to go
after networks.
And another one that has not been mentioned thus far is,
you know, DFC over the past few years has been finally chipping
in in outbidding Chinese companies, even Chinese state owned
enterprises, in global infrastructure projects including ports
and telecom infrastructure.
That is where we want to put Beijing on our back foot. But
DFC is impacted by the freeze, and EXIM may not be directly
impacted, but any company has to look at U.S. financing
vehicles--any country has to look at EXIM and DFC and question
how reliable they are.
So it not just kneecaps us in human rights, in protecting
Taiwan, in resisting cyber attacks, it also undercuts our
ability to outbid Beijing in ports and telecom infrastructure.
Senator Van Hollen. Well, I appreciate that, and I know
that there have been lots of discussions with Secretary Rubio,
who was supported unanimously in the Senate.
There has been some clarification on the humanitarian aid
front, that it is not just limited to emergency food
assistance, other areas. But the rest of this freeze is still
in place, and you have described the really terrible
consequences.
So I hope we can end this sort of self--this forced error--
our own goal here and get back on track.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Risch. Thank you.
Senator Curtis.
Senator Curtis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member. It
is great to be with you.
Before I begin my remarks, it is important to me to lay
down some foundational principles that I believe all of us
operate on, and I will just tell you personally I have great
respect for the Chinese people, the Chinese culture, the
Chinese history.
I just want to make sure none of this this morning is about
any of that, but rather a dictatorship that is as hard on their
own people as they are on other people.
So let me jump in. Today, I introduced a bill aimed at
increasing pressure on Chinese--the way they address the theft
of our IP.
IP theft is one of the top issues I hear back about in my
district, small businesses to big businesses across the top,
and I understand it is estimated that we lose about $600
billion annually to this.
So, Mr. Mattis, to what extent is China's IP theft
explicitly backed by the government as a state sponsored
initiative?
Is it actively pursued by the government as a strategy, or
does the government simply turn a blind eye as long as it
targets Americans?
Mr. Mattis. It is a policy that is backed both by the party
and the state, and that party and state organizations are both
involved in actively organizing people to conduct that theft,
in creating--for example, one of the latest innovations is
overseas innovation centers to fund partnerships, and this is a
constantly sort of morphing problem that we cut off one avenue
and another one pops up.
They are a creative and prolific adversary, if you will, in
terms of finding the holes and trying to keep those things
going, especially when they can exploit third countries that
may not care as much about the protection of U.S. intellectual
property and U.S. technology.
Senator Curtis. Thank you.
Now, if I might, I would actually like to speak to my CCP
handlers.
I know you are listening. I know you try to read my emails.
I know you try to read my texts. I know you try to influence me
back in my home State and my staff here in Washington, DC.
So I have a word for you. [Speaks in Chinese.] is not
working. I am not intimidated, and I will continue to fight for
freedom and democracy around the world, especially in Hong Kong
and Taiwan.
Now, Mr. Mattis, can you help us describe a little bit what
subnational influence operations are and the influence that
targets people within a State, and how much of the goal is it
to influence State and local government, and how much it is to
influence Federal officials?
Mr. Mattis. The answer of whether or not it is also to
influence the Federal Government as well as State and local is
yes, because, I mean, think how many people in this chamber and
in the Senate at large began their careers as town council
members, as State legislators and others, because there is a
natural progression and a natural career path that people hold.
And when you look at, you know, the attempt that was widely
reported--a House member in the Bay Area, right--the Chinese
consulate was targeting a number of different politicians in
that area, and in your home State of Utah they have certainly
looked for specific connections back to the PRC and looked for
ways to shape government decisions.
And one of the other things that you can see there is it
can be regulatory. You know, some States required a change in
their laws to allow a Confucius Institute at those
universities. That has occurred.
You can see it in terms of trying to push government
procurement so that PRC products rather than from Huawei, from
Lenovo, from others, rather than others that might be safer are
put into government.
And I think anything that you can describe or that you have
heard reported as being directed at a national government has
been directed at a State and local, and the biggest difference
is they lack access to the staff resources and oftentimes the
knowledge to be able to push back effectively, although I think
your State has the most robust private sector in trying to
identify and push back on these threats.
Senator Curtis. Good. Thank you.
I would like to kind of end where I began and just double
down on this. Like, my goal is that we have a strong,
productive relationship with China. We do not need to be at
odds, but it has to be a relationship that is on the equal.
You cannot steal our intellectual property. You cannot take
advantage of our businesses and expect us to have the type of
relationship that we need to have for not just us, for them and
for the entire world.
And so, thank you all. Thank you for this hearing, and I
yield my time.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Curtis.
Senator Rosen.
Senator Rosen. Thank you, Chairman Risch, Ranking Member
Shaheen, for holding today's important hearing.
Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us today.
You know, with this Administration's disastrous decision to
freeze almost all foreign assistance, we all know this hearing
is a critical opportunity for us to highlight not just China's
harmful influence but also the opening this freeze gives to the
PRC to expand its foothold around the world, as many of my
colleagues have already spoken about.
We would be naive to think that desperate countries will
not turn to China to fill the gaps that our assistance has left
behind. And so, with that in mind, I am going to move on to my
first question which is PRC investment in the Middle East,
because in recent years China has deepened its ties with the
Middle East.
For example, the PRC has spent billions on projects in the
region including for infrastructure initiatives such as a high
speed rail line linking the Gulf Cooperation Council countries,
desalinization, solar plants, port modernization projects.
Meanwhile, the current Administration's foreign assistance
freeze, which already has broad reaching impacts throughout the
Middle East, threatens to leave a vacuum that the PRC can
exploit for further influence in this critical region.
So, Dr. Lind, what are the practical--practical
implications, practical effects, of Chinese investment in the
Middle East? Specifically, I would like to hear more about how
the PRC can leverage or might leverage its economic ties to
advance its regional interests.
Dr. Lind. Thank you for this great question.
I think it is clear from Chinese activities in the Middle
East that you describe--that we can see in China in its
behavior there as well as in other areas of the world--it does
have global aims.
It recognizes that this is an essential region for energy
security, and for influence, and so China wants to have
influence within that key region. So its actions tell us that
pretty clearly.
Getting to the practical implications of this, obviously
this is letting the United States know we need to be engaged in
this region if we want to maintain the influence that we have
had.
And then also on the theme of today's hearing, I think this
is a region where we particularly see the risk of China's
support for global authoritarianism. China is probably the
world leader in technologies of authoritarian repression, and
this is one realm in which it practices tremendous influence
around the world, and in this region in particular, there is so
much demand for what China is selling.
And by that I do not mean just Chinese technologies. I
mean, certainly, Chinese firms but also Chinese government
influence or Chinese government partnerships.
These are relationships that it seems to be sort of pushing
on an open door between like minded societies in many ways:
That some of these governments have an interest in acquiring
technologies and methods and expertise in repression, and China
holds that expertise and technologies and so on.
And so, those are, I think, among the biggest practical
implications of its involvement there.
Senator Rosen. Well, we have a lot of threats from China,
the threat of--countering the threat of opioids, countering the
threat of other types of competition.
But I want to move on to something in my last moment that
has a Nevada connection. It is the lithium competition, because
given the dual use potential economic importance of lithium ion
batteries, securing a reliable lithium supply is a national
security imperative.
Nevada is poised to be a global leader in this issue. We
are home to the highest proven lithium reserves in the United
States.
So, Dr. Hart, I am concerned that Chinese battery
exporters--you think about other ways they can influence us,
and we all like our phones. You know, people know about lithium
from that.
But deliberately lowering the price of lithium ion
batteries to undercut U.S. and allied manufacturers is a tactic
the PRC has employed in the past.
So, can you talk to us about how we can weather this unfair
practice and ultimately win the lithium ion battery race with
China?
Dr. Hart. Sure. So, where we have sectors that Beijing
controls global supply chains--and we are working very hard to
get alternatives online such as the projects in Nevada--getting
those alternatives online is step one.
Step two, I suspect we are going to need something like a
buyers club for these critical products, whereby the United
States and key allies and partners agree to buy from each
other, recognizing that we will not cut each other off.
Otherwise, if we have a completely open market, China will
do what China has done before, which is dump product on the
market to put these really important alternatives out of
business.
So, getting them online is step one. For step two we are
going to have to have some kind of multilateral arrangements or
buyers clubs to encourage and incentivize companies to buy from
Nevada instead of buying from Beijing.
Senator Rosen. And would you think it is a good idea for
the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce to
continue to fund the lithium loop that is in Nevada as a tech
hub that will help us fight China?
Dr. Hart. I think our national security may depend on it.
Senator Rosen. Thank you.
Senator Risch. Well, thank you very much.
I want to thank our panel.
Dr. Lind, you know, as we closed here you hit on a point
that I think really deserves underscoring, and that is the fact
between our cultures, and that is you were talking about the
technology they produce for, really, controlling populations,
and there is a real difference between autocracies and
democracies in that here--we in the United States and other
democracies we, the people, want to control our government, and
those autocracies are in the exact opposite business, and they
have a government that wants to control their people.
And it is a very, very different view of life from the time
you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed at
night, and that is the world we live in, and we are going to
have to figure out how we continue to live in a world where we
have such differences in our view of the importance of an
individual human being.
So, with that, thank you for the panel. This has been a
great panel that we have heard from today. We hear a lot of
them over the years. We have probably as good an expertise here
as I have seen on any issue that we have. So thank you all for
participating today.
I am going to leave the record open for 24 hours to submit
questions for the record. If we have some, I hope you will take
the opportunity to include answers to those in the record.
So, with that, Ranking Member Shaheen, any final thoughts
or--thank you.
Senator Shaheen. Just thank you to all of you.
Senator Risch. Thank you so much. With that, the hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:24 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
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