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--:-- Host: President Biden is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in person for the first time in his presidency at the Group of 20 Summit in Indonesia on Monday. The face-to-face meeting comes as relations between the U.S. and China grow increasingly strained. In light of this meeting, we're taking a look back at a previous Sunday edition of Morning Wire, where we discuss the growing threat of China and their espionage abroad.
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--:-- Host: Here to discuss the rising China threat is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: All right, Cabot, so you've talked to a host of experts on this topic. Give us some context on China and their efforts to replace the U.S. as the dominant global force.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So by now, most people are well aware of the fact that China is one of our leading adversaries from a foreign policy perspective. But most people would be shocked if they knew the lengths that the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, is willing to go in their efforts at world domination and just how close to home many of those efforts now are.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Right now, the Chinese are actively spying on universities and paying American professors millions of dollars in exchange for their sensitive research. They're stealing billions of dollars worth of intellectual property through cyber attacks. They're dispatching spies to observe our farming practices. And they're even expanding their reach in South and Central America to gain a foothold in areas that are close to the U.S.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I'll get into the details on each of those points. But first, I think it's helpful to understand how they view themselves on the global stage.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Chinese leaders and their culture more broadly are deeply proud of their role throughout history as one of the oldest and most powerful civilizations on Earth. And after falling behind Western nations over the last few centuries, they're now intent on reviving a new golden age, as their president Xi Jinping calls it. And they're willing to play the long game.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That's key. I talked to Dean Chang. He's the senior research fellow at the Heritage Asian Studies Center. Here's how he put it.
--:-- Dean Chang: So from China's perspective, all they're saying is, you know, we had this bad period, the so-called center of humiliation. We lost out to the West, but we're back. And we appreciate you, the West, keeping our seat warm, so to speak. But we'll take it from here.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So what is it that they want to do? They want to be the absolute dominant power in Asia. They want to be first among equals among the great powers They seek to by the mid conveniently the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People Republic of China in 1949 they want by 2049 to be a superpower realistically only rivaled by the United States, if even the U.S.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Let's get to some of the specifics. What can you tell us about China's influence on American college campuses?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, this is one of the areas where the CCP is especially brazen. Officials there have openly referred to American universities as soft targets for espionage, research theft, and the spreading of propaganda.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to the U.S. Department of Defense, China steals $136 million worth of American intellectual property every single day. That amounts to about $50 billion a year, and much of that theft takes place on college campuses, where American academics are essentially paid off in exchange for sensitive research and other information.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Over the last five years, there have been dozens of instances where professors, researchers, and even students have been caught secretly transmitting materials to the CCP, often in exchange for cash payments or grants.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So this is a lot of money we're talking about here. What are some of the examples of what they're transmitting?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the most high-profile case came from Harvard University. In 2020, Charles Lieber was arrested after it was discovered that he'd been secretly sharing sensitive research with the Chinese in exchange for $50,000 a month.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And it's worth pointing out, Lieber was not some random professor either. He was the chair of Harvard's chemistry department. And according to the FBI, he was even paid by the Chinese to help their scientists open up a lab at the Wuhan University of Technology. Wuhan. Yes.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Lieber was eventually convicted on six felony charges after it was proven that he falsified IRS documents to hide the money he was getting from the Chinese, and that he also lied under oath multiple times regarding his affiliation.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But that is just the tip of the iceberg. There was a professor at UCLA who was convicted of smuggling research on guided missiles and fighter jets to the Chinese. Another at West Virginia University who was convicted after taking paid paternity leave, but instead of helping raise a child, traveling to China to share American research and help develop the Chinese Academy of Sciences, all in exchange for a quarter million dollars.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: One professor at Ohio State had received a $4.1 million federal research grant for immunology, but it turns out he was employed by the Chinese all along and was secretly transmitting all of that taxpayer-funded research over to the CCP.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: When a co-worker called on to what he was doing, that professor hopped on a chartered flight to Alaska with a series of Chinese passports, cash, hard drives, and other material, but thankfully he was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The list really does go on and on. You can get into a bunch more cases, and unfortunately, students are often caught up in the espionage as well.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, this is a touchy subject. It really is. What do we know about student involvement?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So, look, it's no secret that many international students on U.S. campuses come from China. In 2021, there were 317,000 Chinese students on campus. That accounts for 35% of all foreign students in America.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Sadly, these students are often taken advantage of by their government. According to Human Rights Watch the CCP will often force international students to return back to China with sensitive research or other intellectual property and threaten their families at home if they don't come back with it
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Basically, if a student doesn't comply, then their parents could be thrown in jail, have their businesses shut down by the Communist Party, or face other forms of persecution.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For example, one student who had been working as a research assistant at a hospital in Boston was caught trying to smuggle 21 vials of sensitive cancer research on a flight to China. and he claimed he was forced to do so by the CCP.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Wow. Now, you mentioned propaganda efforts on campus. Can you elaborate on that?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah. Back in 2004, the Chinese government began sponsoring so-called Confucius Institutes on hundreds of campuses around the world, including many here in the U.S.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, according to the Chinese, Confucius Institutes are simply centers of cultural exchange. They offer Mandarin courses, Chinese cooking lessons, and other harmless-sounding events.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But according to our DOD and intelligence community, these centers are actually CCP hubs designed for spreading Chinese propaganda, engaging in academic espionage, and monitoring the activities of Chinese students on campus.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: By 2018, there were over 100 of these institutes here in America. A hundred. Yeah, they were quite widespread.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, the Chinese often reserve the right to handpick the teachers used in these centers, meaning American students are learning about Chinese history and culture from professors chosen by the CCP.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And those faculty are also typically used to influence the curriculum regarding China to shape what students are learning in other departments.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And the CCP doesn't really make an effort to hide the true intention of these centers, which is to spread propaganda.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For example, in 2011, Li Chengchun, who was at the time the leader of China's propaganda department, said this, quote, the Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for expanding our culture abroad. It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power. The Confucius brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, he mentioned soft power there. How is their approach in the U.S. different from other countries?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, it's really important to understand how the Chinese are expanding their efforts in the Western Hemisphere to gain a foothold closer to the U.S.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They've invested billions of dollars into what they call the Belt and Road Initiative, which is really just a clever way of getting developing countries deeply in debt to the Chinese Communist Party.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Essentially, China will go to a country and offer to build a highway system or power plant on credit so that governments in developing countries will take out billions of dollars in loans from the Chinese Export-Import Bank to pay for these projects, which they've been promised will pay for themselves through commercial profit and economic growth.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So a similar quid pro quo like they offer on American campuses. Exactly.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But what usually ends up happening is that the projects fail to offer a return on investment and leave these small countries hugely in debt to the Chinese government.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For example, Kyrgyzstan, which shares a border with China, took part in the Belt and Road Initiative in exchange for a railway system that stretches across the entire country.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They took out billions in loans for the project, and when it wasn't as profitable as they'd been promised, they're now unable to pay for it.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: As a result 42 of their national debt is now owed to China 42
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And if they default on payments by the way the Chinese government gets to seize control of that railroad and in turn gain a key spot of territory in the region
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So basically a trap posing as a jobs program. Essentially, yes.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The Chinese government and other supporters tout the initiative as a means of quickly building out the infrastructure of developing nations and expanding their trade opportunities.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But if you look closer, it's actually a form of what experts call debt trap diplomacy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here's how Dean Chang described the origins of the Belt and Road Initiative and how it's being used today.
--:-- Dean Chang: It started as the giant jobs program for China's steel and cement industries. They had built pretty much everything they wanted to build in China. They had all this industrial capacity. What to do with that? Answer, export it. Go abroad, sign contracts, build power plants, highways, fiber optic cable lines, railways in other countries using Chinese steel, Chinese cement. and, importantly, Chinese labor.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And as Chang describes, that's when they spring the trap.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: As they started doing that, what they realized was that a lot of these countries weren't particularly well off, so they'd have to finance. So the Chinese said, hey, we have huge capital account surpluses because of our trade surpluses, so we'll use that money to fund you, Kenya, you, Nigeria, you, Kazakhstan, to buy our steel, and cement, etc.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: At some point, they also realized, you know, if they owe us money, we have huge influence over them.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We've also heard a great deal about intellectual property theft. China's notorious for that. What more can you tell us about that issue?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, this is another area where they are extremely brazen. The Chinese government has employed a literal army of hackers to steal as much technology and information as possible from governments and businesses worldwide.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: One hacker group there, known as Double Dragon, has close ties to the Chinese Ministry of State Security and has reportedly stolen, get this, over a trillion dollars worth of intellectual property, including military blueprints, pharmaceutical formulas, and other sensitive material, much of which, by the way, has not yet been patented.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And that's just one group. Keep in mind, there are many of these groups throughout China, most of which are getting funding and support from the CCP itself.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, China is far and away the bigger cyber threat we face. I have a bigger hacking program than that of every other major nation combined. They have stolen more of Americans' personal and corporate data than every nation combined.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So as the war in Ukraine continues and Putin looks to expand his influence, do not forget China. They are more than happy to go under the radar, but they're still the largest threat that America faces on the global stage.
--:-- Host: Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That's Daily Wire senior editor, Cabot Phillips. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. From all of us here at Morning Wire, we hope you're enjoying the show.
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