(PresidentialDaily.org)- According to a report, U.S. intelligence officials have been warning about Chinese Communist Party influence operations targeting more pliable local leaders for the last month.
The Democrat mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, recently met with the head of Beijing’s main influence operation.
During a 10-day trip to the United States last month, Chinese official media said that Lin Songtian, head of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (AFFC), visited Bass and California Treasurer Fiona Ma.
The meeting occurred shortly after the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) issued a report advising that Beijing had changed its influence efforts, directing them at local and state authorities.
Bass’s meeting with Lin went against the advice of US intelligence experts who have cautioned that the Chinese government is using the Chinese People’s Association to exert harmful influence over state and local authorities to forward China’s worldwide goal. The US government abruptly ended a decade-long agreement intended to foster subnational cooperation between the two countries in 2020.
Michael Sobolik, from the Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, has said that the LA officials were unwittingly involved in a CCP influence effort.
Sobolik claims that Lin’s agenda, which included talks on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, indicated a China influence campaign.
As members of the California Assembly in 2009, Bass and Ma thwarted the recognition of Tibet and the Dalai Lama motion from being voted on. According to local reports, diplomats from China lobbied hard in California to stop the bill.
NY Post reports that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer stated that in 2017, CCP-backed State Energy HK Limited, a company with ties to CEFC China Energy, wired $3 million to Rob Walker, a friend of the Bidens.
The money was split among at least three Biden family members and two other people with ties to the Biden family over three months.
In 2020, the Post was the first to report that Hunter Biden’s famous laptop had an email from 2017 suggesting that the “big guy” get 10% of the deal with CEFC. President Biden is said to be the “big guy.”
