We’ve covered China Joe extensively here at The Drill Down, highlighting each time he makes a policy decision that results in our greatest enemy the upper hand —that’s China, by the way.
If you’ve read Peter Schweizer’s excellent book Red-Handed, then you already know how accommodating the Bidens are of the Chinese and how Joe and Hunter seemed happy to be in bed with the CCP.
But what was once a behind-closed-doors influence-peddling scheme, has become a striking display, by Joe Biden, of how quickly you can make America look weak on the world stage.
Spy balloons trips; U.S. farmland grabs; military base communications intercepted; major hacking backed by the CCP —Joe is pretty cool about all of it.
He even shut down the China Initiative, remember?
More than a year ago today, The Drill Down staff made a pitch to preserve and improve the Trump-era China Initiative —an initiative focused on identifying and prosecuting CCP trade theft and economic espionage. Here’s what we said at the time:
Since the year 2000, there have been 160 reported instances of Chinese espionage directed at the United States and 1200 cases of intellectual property theft litigation against Chinese entities (these are just the ones we know about). FBI Director Christopher Wren says, “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China.”
The China Initiative also kept a watchful eye on universities. Here’s then-AG Jeff Sessions back in 2018: “Today, we see Chinese espionage not just taking place against traditional targets like our defense and intelligence agencies, but against targets like research labs and universities, and we see Chinese propaganda disseminated on our campuses.”
True. But now we’re learning that the Biden Administration has made it easier for Confucius Institute affiliate schools, usually tied to the CCP, to receive federal funding.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, “The Defense Department in late March announced that it would grant waivers to allow schools to host chapters of the Confucius Institute, a Chinese Communist Party-backed program that Beijing uses to peddle influence and steal intellectual property from American universities. The department’s waiver program is a response to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which barred American colleges and universities from receiving federal dollars if they maintain Confucius Institute chapters.”
Not surprisingly, China hawks are pissed.
“The Chinese Communist Party is subverting U.S. institutions and Joe Biden is sabotaging legislation to stop them,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), a member of the House Select Committee on China, said. Banks added that the Biden administration has essentially “greenlit China’s espionage and malign influence operations on college campuses.”
Joe Biden seems soft on China. Why would that be?
