OPINION:
Washington is a financial fantasyland.
No one knows this better than the communists who run China and oversee its pools of cheap forced labor and millions of consumers. As a Chinese professor candidly said in a televised speech in November, if there is a problem for China in D.C. throw dollars at it.
You go to three places to get rich fast in America –– Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the law firms, PR shops, consultancies, and lobbyists who make up the D.C. establishment, AKA “The Swamp.” Spend a few years in Congress or the executive branch and push the ejection button into the land of millionaires.
A ripe example: Former Federal Reserve Chair and now Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen raked in $7 million in just the last two years giving talks to Wall Street and big corporations, Politico reported.
Washington is awash in Chinese money. One of the first places Hunter Biden went hunting for cash once his dad became vice president was China. Six trips, one on Joe’s official jet. Read the Grassley-Johnson report on Hunter’s windfalls.
This China-America money nexus helps explain why virtually no Democrat has criticized China for leaking a deadly virus to the world and then repeatedly lying about it. It’s not contagious to humans, Chinese officials assured us — even though they knew it was.
The World Health Organization (WHO) repeated the lie in an official tweet. Virus czar Anthony Fauci said as late as Feb. 29, 2020, that Americans had little to fear from the new coronavirus. Four million people worldwide have died since then from COVID-19.
China’s deep propaganda machine, including components right here in Washington, told the world the virus was imported to Wuhan by the U.S. military. Another big Beijing lie.
Congressional Democrats are not only unwilling to criticize China, but they also won’t investigate Beijing’s war crimes against humanity. That job has been left to an ad hoc Republican task force which convened on Tuesday for the first time.
China does more than puff up the wallets of the Democratic ruling class in D.C. It delivers millions in propaganda advertising dollars to friends at the New York Times and Washington Post, the Daily Caller reports.
Chinese cash makes its way indirectly to Democratic Party candidates and various left-wing activists through huge corporate oligarchs, some of whom profit greatly from Chinese consumers and laborers.
Let’s look at Microsoft and founder Bill Gates. Microsoft was one of the first big U.S. tech firms to become a player in China’s cyber adventures. Microsoft’s second-largest R&D center, after the U.S., is its Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group in Shenzhen, with over 3,000 scientists and engineers. Mr. Gates himself has publicly praised Beijing’s COVID-19 response.
Microsoft employees gave huge amounts of cash to Democrats in the 2020 election cycle, according to the nonprofit research arm OpenSecrets.org. Of $21 million in contributions, most went to Democrats, including President Biden ($2.4 million) and the party’s candidates ($14 million). Microsoft employees also pumped $1.8 million into the Democratic National Committee and financially aided left-wing activists such as Georgia’s Stacy Abrams.
Then there is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation’s employees and subsidiaries gave over $900,000 to Democrats and just $200,000 to Republicans, filing records show.
The research website FactSet estimates that 10% of Microsoft’s annual revenue of $125 billion derives from Chinese business.
In Washington, China has hired a number of advocates, according to public filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) maintained by the Justice Department.
One example is Mercury Public Affairs, a national PR outfit featuring as co-chairs prominent Democrats former California Sen. Barbara Boxer and former Rep. Toby Moffet. The company sends out a steady stream of announcements of former Obama administration appointees joining the Mercury team.
Mercury represents China’s state-owned Hikvision. With a $42 billion market value, the company is a colossus globally in selling surveillance gear to keep homes, businesses, and parking lots safe. But Hikvision also helps the Chinese communist regime keep an eye on its citizens and it has ties to the People’s Liberation Army as well.
In FARA disclosures, Mercury reports it received over $2.7 million in income from Hikvision in 2018-20, according to OpenSecrets.org.
In addition to registered foreign agents, Washington-connected Democrats make profits advising China, a role that does not require FARA compliance:
- Former Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana formed the Baucus Group after leaving his post as U.S. ambassador to China in 2017. Among his clients are Chinese businesses. During the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, he took to China’s propaganda arsenal, such as Global Times and CGTN, to bash America’s response, according to the Washington Free Beacon. Among other things, the ex-senator said the idea that the virus may have leaked from a research lab in Wuhan that was experimenting with bat-derived coronaviruses “makes no sense.”
- Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright quickly formed a consulting firm upon leaving Foggy Bottom and embraced China as a prime client. Today, China hosts Albright Stonebridge Group’s single largest country presence, operating two offices and employing 30 professionals who consult with Chinese businesses. One objective, the firm’s website says, is “raising positive profile and investor interest in China” and its Chinese operations are run by a former regime official and diplomat, Jin Ligang. Albright-Stonebridge was also successful in stocking the Biden transition team and then placing senior firm members inside the administration in crucial posts: Wendy Sherman for deputy secretary of state; Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.N. ambassador; and two National Security Council policymakers, Yahoo News reported.
- Democratic billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also heavily committed to China, providing his data and financial news computer terminals. “Bloomberg has established itself as a trusted financial news, data, and analytics provider for China’s final markets,” the company said in 2010. A decade later, presidential candidate Bloomberg told PBS that Chinese President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping “is not a dictator,” despite the fact that China has no competing political parties or a free press, blocks Internet news sites, condones slave labor and, the U.S. says, is committing genocide against Muslims Uyghurs in Xinjiang. By some measurements, Mr. Bloomberg, his Bloomberg LP and affiliate employees are the Democratic Party’s and liberal PACs’ largest donors collectively. They gave over $157 million in the 2020 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org. Democratic PACs got more than $93 million; Stacy Abrams’ Fair Fight PAC $5 million, and Planned Parenthood Votes $4 million. The Democrats’ House Majority PAC received $25 million. In the 2018 congressional elections, Bloomberg PACS poured $95 million into Democratic coffers and the party won back control of the chamber.
Another example of China’s influence and clout is Apple, one of Beijing’s friendliest big tech firms. The company’s popular iPhones and iPads are made by China’s cheap, cheap labor pool, driving up Apple CEO Tim Cook’s take-home pay. Among its $8.7 million in political donations, Apple’s top 10 recipients, led by Mr. Biden at $1.8 million, are all Democrats except one. The No. 2 recipient is socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, followed by the Democratic National Committee.
The bottom line: Democrats have to be thinking, why risk the money flow by delving into one of the deadliest pandemics ever and finding out China poisoned the world? If China retaliates, perhaps the Democrats’ corporate donors would find less cash to spread around. And Democratic consultants, PR maestros, and lawyers would be out of a job.
Why distract from the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riots and hand Mr. Trump a victory by investigating whether the virus did come from the Wuhan lab — as he and his supporters have long argued?
As vice president, Mr. Biden traveled in China in 2011 to tell the communist rulers how important they are to him: “In order to cement this robust partnership, we have to go beyond close ties between Washington and Beijing, which we’re working on every day, go beyond it to include all levels of government, go beyond it to include classrooms and laboratories, athletic fields and boardrooms,” he said at the time.
That pretty much amounts to a green light for complete Chinese infiltration, at a time when son Hunter Biden was visiting China in search of tycoon cash for his personal business endeavors.
In November, Americans were treated to a candid description of how China has exploited Mr. Biden’s carte blanche. Di Dongsheng, a professor, and think tank director who advises the iron-fist Politburo, gave a televised talk in Shanghai. He boasted of China’s ability to control Washington from the inside ––– at least before Donald Trump arrived.
“I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here,” he said. “It’s just because we have people at the top. We have our old friends who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence. We have our old friends.”
He added, “There’s nothing that dollars can’t handle. … If I can’t do it with one stack of dollars, I’ll do it with two.” He praised the ouster of Mr. Trump with the observation that Mr. Biden will resurrect “the traditional elite, the political elite, the establishment.”
As Mr. Di’s cockiness spread across the globe, the communist government did what it usually does with unwanted content. It disappeared his talk from the Web.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist at the Washington Times.
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