Devin Nunes and fellow Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are investigating China’s efforts to manipulate and coerce U.S. businesses and warning that Beijing has launched a “campaign of malign influence across a wide range of U.S. economic sectors.”
The House Republicans on the Intelligence Committee have drawn “preliminary conclusions” and warn that U.S. companies are being manipulated into helping Beijing carry out its anti-American agenda.
“Chinese President Xi Jinping has stated that Beijing’s strategic goal — becoming the dominant world economic and military leader by 2049 — broadly depends on acquiring national power across multiple domains: military, technology, diplomacy, and information,” read a document on the GOP House Intelligence investigation obtained by the Washington Examiner. “The Chinese government’s grip on business is a powerful platform for malign influence. Beijing’s control over Chinese industry and investment enables the acquisition, transfer, and theft of U.S. innovation, technology, and intellectual property.”
China aggressively works to influence and shape events and public opinion to undermine U.S. national and economic security, according to the document. American businesses often help China carry out its dangerous agenda, whether knowingly or not, it said. One key method, the document states, is to entice or coerce collaboration with U.S. entities in order to acquire intellectual property and technology.
The House Intelligence Committee Republicans said they are looking at China’s influence across a wide range of economic sectors, including pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, agriculture, entertainment, media, finance, sports, and technology. They intend to probe how vulnerable key U.S. companies are to Chinese theft, what firms are doing to protect their technology from being stolen, how and why China influences U.S. businesses, and the vulnerability caused by China’s role in the U.S. supply chain.
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Nunes publicly announced the China investigation in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News.
“We’ve been actually building this investigation for a while, and the sectors we’re going to look at are fairly broad and very concerning — and the American people should be concerned. It’s not just the things you’ve heard about, like sports and entertainment. There’s also sectors of the economy like technology, agriculture, pharmaceuticals,” the California Republican said. “So we’re going to be looking — we’re going to start with about a dozen U.S. entities that we’re going to investigate — probably, we’ll reach about four dozen by the time it’s all over with — and we’ll be notifying those companies this week. Hopefully, they will participate in this investigation because the Republicans here in Congress, in order to do real oversight, we need to be able to get into the weeds to truly understand what are those supply chain concerns.”
Nunes added: “Should these corporations really be relying on supply chains and Chinese influence, and what does that do for the United States of America? It could, I think, really put us in a national security danger — in fact, I know that’s the case.”
There has been growing concern about Chinese influence within the United States, with a couple of recent examples highlighting the issue.
John Donahoe, the CEO of Nike, raised eyebrows on a Thursday earnings call when he said his company is “of China and for China.” The brazen statement came as he defended the sneaker company’s business in China despite the country’s human rights abuses against the Uyghur population.
TikTok, deemed a national security threat by the Trump administration, picked as its CEO in April a man who has held leadership positions in Chinese companies blacklisted by the U.S. over security concerns and Chinese military links. Shouzi Chew, who already served as the CFO of Beijing-based ByteDance (which owns TikTok), will simultaneously serve as the chief executive officer for TikTok, solidifying the influence of the Chinese parent company over the wildly popular social media app.
House Republicans say U.S. businesses are “being manipulated and/or coerced into sharing key technologies with China” and are “receiving guidance and direction from Chinese officials to influence business operations.” U.S. banks are investing heavily inside China even as Chinese firms “are exploiting U.S. financial markets to raise funds and enhance their international credibility,” according to the preliminary report.
The House Republicans also said that the Chinese Communist Party “influences U.S. industry and financial leaders to pressure local, state, and federal executives and legislatures to take actions that benefit Beijing.” Threats to cancel contracts or withdraw access to Chinese markets are used to suppress negative comments, and Beijing routinely uses its leverage to influence coverage of China by U.S. media and entertainment organizations, they said.
The report also indicated that U.S. companies’ dependence on China for supplies leaves them vulnerable to pressure and that China knows that “its position in the U.S. supply chain could be exploited to jeopardize U.S. national security.”
Then-Attorney General William Barr gave a speech last June condemning China for its actions at home and abroad and accusing Hollywood, Big Tech, and other U.S. companies of “kowtowing” to Beijing.
The Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Chinese communications company Huawei and other Chinese firms are working hand-in-hand with Beijing, potentially giving the country’s surveillance state access to hardware and networks around the world. In February 2020, the DOJ unveiled a superseding indictment of its 2019 charges against Huawei, accusing it of racketeering and conspiracy to steal trade secrets.
The Federal Communications Commission declared Huawei a national security threat and denied it access to federal funding.
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The DOJ’s China Initiative, launched in 2018, has been shining the spotlight on the CCP’s coordinated efforts to steal research and technology from academic institutions across the country, with prosecutors mounting aggressive efforts over the past few years to crack down on Chinese malign influence at U.S. universities and focusing on rooting out academics concealing their ties to the People’s Liberation Army or China’s Thousand Talents Program.
Last summer, the Defense Department released a list of nearly two dozen companies operating in America that the Pentagon believes are tied to the People’s Liberation Army.
The Washington Examiner also recently detailed how the Chinese investment firm that Hunter Biden continues to hold a 10% stake in has invested in CCP-linked firms that the U.S. has sanctioned.
