As Xi Jinping was coronated the most powerful Chinese communist leader since Mao Zedong, his predecessor Hu Jintao was literally dragged from the Communist Party stage on Saturday. Then, on Monday, the Department of Justice announced various indictments against people involved in Chinese intelligence activities. Though separate and distinct, these indictments underline Xi’s obsessive ambition to establish his global political dominance.
The indictments are big news. The U.S. has charged two Chinese intelligence officers who paid an FBI double agent for what they believed was classified information related to a U.S. government prosecution against China’s Huawei telecommunications company. This public documenting of Chinese obstruction underlines how Huawei is not a private business so much as a not-so-deniable extension of the Chinese Communist Party. Deliberately riddled with network flaws that would allow for espionage activity, Huawei’s services exist to establish Beijing’s intelligence access to and technology influence over Western democracies. The Huawei announcement on Monday joins separate indictments, including against Chinese intelligence officers/agents who terrorized a U.S. resident in an effort to force him to return to China.
