The U.S. government has repeatedly called out Chinese influence groups, yet President Joe Biden’s picks for two key posts are both strategic advisers for a pro-China business group that collaborates with those same organizations.
Reta Jo Lewis, Biden’s nominee to run the Export-Import Bank, and Mitch Landrieu, the infrastructure czar, are listed as “strategic advisers” for the U.S. Heartland China Association, which regularly partners with organizations tied to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department — China’s foreign influence arm described by Xi Jinping as a “magic weapon.”
USHCA, whose CEO is former Democratic Gov. Bob Holden, has repeatedly partnered with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. The State Department said in 2020 that CPAFFC was “tasked with co-opting subnational governments” and “has sought to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda.” Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused CPAFFC of being part of the UFWD.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its November report to Congress that “Chinese Communist Party-affiliated organizations with a role in China’s overseas influence activities include” the UFWD and CPAFFC. The Heritage Foundation said in February that CPAFFC was “the public face” of the UFWD.
USHCA has also partnered with the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation and the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, both of which have CCP connections.
PRO-CHINA GROUP ADVISED BY BIDEN PICKS COMPARED DOJ’S CHINA INITIATIVE TO MCCARTHYISM
USHCA’S 2021 Agriculture Roundtable in March and April was co-hosted by Holden and by CPAFFC leader Lin Songtian. The roundtable’s “co-host” for the opening ceremony was CPAFFC. Lin, head of CPAFFC since April 2020, previously served as China’s ambassador to South Africa, where he pushed the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 originated in a U.S. military lab.
CPAFFC’s director-general of the Department of American and Oceanic Affairs also spoke at the event. The “co-organizer” of the event’s “Think Tank Dialogue” was the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, run by the State Council of the PRC.
The “event partners” for the USHCA panel included the China General Chamber of Commerce — USA Chicago, Greater Cleveland Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and Greater Columbus Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Newsweek has said the China General Chamber of Commerce was linked to the UFWD, something the group denied. The conservative Hoover Institution contends China “operates an extensive list of United Front organizations purporting to be regional chambers of commerce.”
Another “event partner” was the U.S. China Business Council, which represents hundreds of U.S. companies doing business in China. The group said it opposes the mistreatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, but it reportedly lobbied lawmakers against efforts to strengthen trade and finance rules in response to human rights abuses.
USHCA said the minister of China’s embassy in the U.S., director-general of the Department of International Cooperation in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China, consul general at China’s consulate in Chicago, and two deputy governors of Hubei Province also spoke. Executives at Chinese state-owned agricultural companies also spoke, and a speaker for multiple panel segments was Wang Lei, the director-general of the Bureau of International Cooperation for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The leader of the China General Chamber of Commerce spoke too.
U.S. politicians also provided prerecorded remarks, including Jason Hafemeister, the acting deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, and Republican Rep. Darin LaHood of Illinois.
Holden was also a panelist at an August 2020 meeting organized by the Carter Center and CPAFFC, where CPAFFC’s president delivered the keynote and its vice president gave the closing remarks.
CPAFFC attacked Pompeo’s actions in October 2020, saying that people like Pompeo “would only mislead the American people by creating tensions and fabricating lies.”
USHCA has also repeatedly partnered with the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation. USHCA set up a discussion in May 2020 where Holden said “we are grateful for the sponsorship” of CUSEF, and a June 2020 discussion was also sponsored by the CUSEF. Holden gave a speech at the 2021 Hong Kong Forum on U.S.-China Relations, which was put together by the USCHA in collaboration with CUSEF.
Tung Chee-hwa, who runs CUSEF, is vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. CPPCC describes itself as “an organization of the patriotic United Front of the Chinese people.” Alan Wong, a board member for the USHCA, is also a “special advisor” for CUSEF, which said in 2019 it had partnered with the USHCA.
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The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2018 detailed “the extent of CUSEF’s ties to the Chinese government and its involvement in influence operations.”
Biden’s CIA director, William Burns, served as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace since 2015, and he was grilled about the organization’s relationship with the CUSEF, which he told the Senate he ended because “we were increasingly worried about the expansion of Chinese influence operations.”
