Foreign Agents Registration Act and Chinese government records show that Mercury Public Affairs LLC is working for a company that is partly owned by a serving member of the Communist Party’s national legislature in Beijing.
Moreover, that company is supporting the Communist Party’s ethnocide against the Uighur people of Xinjiang province. Despised by Xi Jinping’s Communist Party for their culture, more than 2 million Uighurs have been sent to reeducation camps, some have been sterilized, and many hundreds of thousands have been forced into near-slave labor. Fortunately, both the Trump and incoming Biden administrations have sought to draw international scrutiny toward these policies.
On Tuesday, the Daily Caller reported that as part of her role with Mercury, former Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer recently registered under FARA to represent Hikvision’s U.S. subsidiary. This bears note because Hikvision is a critical element of China’s industrial base for facial recognition and other intelligence collection tools. The Trump administration has sanctioned Hikvision for facilitating the repression of the Uighurs. Later on Tuesday, Axios reported that the Biden Inaugural Committee had returned a $500 donation by Boxer in response to her work for Hikvision.
But there’s more to this story. Mercury is also working for another Chinese company involved in the Uighur repression. This is the company partly owned by a serving Communist Party delegate to the National People’s Congress in Beijing.
In a Dec. 24 FARA filing, Mercury declared a $100,000 contract to represent Jinko Solar USA. But as a Dec. 12 FARA filing from Mercury confirms, Jinko Solar USA is actually a wholly owned subsidiary of Jinko Solar Holding Company. That holding company was identified in a recent investigative research report, findings supported by Chinese government records, as the beneficiary of Uighur forced labor.
Back to Mercury’s Dec. 12 FARA report: Mercury notes that “certain operational decisions of Jinko Solar USA require approval of [Jinko Solar Holding Company].” But Mercury adds that it has “no direct information indicating there is government control, direction, or supervision of [Jinko Solar Holding Company].” This is a rather interesting assertion. Just below its FARA clarifications on Jinko Solar USA’s filing status, Mercury lists who actually owns Jinko Solar Holding Company. Guess who is the second-largest share owner?
Chen Kanping. Who is Chen?
Chen isn’t just a Communist Party member, but an actual delegate of the current 13th National People’s Congress (Chen was also a member of the 12th Congress). The Communist Party’s primary legislative body, this Congress is China’s version of the U.S. House of Representatives or the British House of Commons — without the democracy, of course. Regardless, Chen isn’t shy about linking his business interests to the good service of the people. Last May, he pushed his fellow legislators to advance ultra-high voltage solar generation efforts in provinces including Xinjiang. Chen’s renewable energy innovation in support of repression will certainly have pleased Xi. After all, Xi’s top domestic priority is his assurance of absolute authority over Chinese lives — regardless of human rights or international treaty obligations. Even better for Chen, one of Xi’s top foreign policy priorities is his dangling of fictitious carbon emission commitments so as to earn Western appeasement on other issues. Chen’s activities thus make him a pure party specimen on both domestic and foreign concerns! And seeing as Chen is only in his forties, he has ample time to rise to higher levels of the party ranks.
Why is Mercury willing to support these Chinese Communist Party’s activities? Activities, that is, by an adversary that threatens our closest allies with trade wars and America with actual war.
Mercury didn’t respond to my request for clarification. But as with the European Union and New Zealand, it seems possible that Communist Party money talks and morality walks. As noted, Jinko Solar is paying Mercury $100,000. FARA filings from 2018 list Mercury’s work for Hikvision as worth $55,000 a month to the firm.
