Lethal, centrally controlled autocracy like China cannot be trusted

OPINION:

Chinese President Xi Jinping demands unquestioning obedience to his dictatorial regime. Mobilizing his police state to control China’s population and commit human rights atrocities, most notably against the Uyghurs, Mr. Xi has imposed an Orwellian level of ideological domination over the state unmatched since Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

Deliberately concealing the outbreak and severity of the COVID-19 virus, Mr. Xi — whose real power flows from his position as head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party — demonstrated that his tyrannical government bureaucracy exists only to defend his regime’s security, no matter the human cost at home or abroad.

In early January 2020, health officials in Wuhan were insisting that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission or any signs of doctors becoming sick. In fact, the disease was already spreading rapidly.

Projecting a false image of absolute state control by suppressing dissenting voices, China did not reveal any human transmission of the virus until Jan. 22, 2020 — even though we now know that alarm bells were ringing in Wuhan by the end of 2019 over the growing coronavirus caseload.

Communist Party minders assigned to every institution made sure that doctors who tried to warn of the dangers were arrested for “illegal activity.” To this day, Mr. Xi’s China continues to block any real investigation of the virus’s origin and refuses to publish accurate data.

The COVID-19 fiasco, which resulted in so much unnecessary illness and death, was an outward manifestation of China’s lethal, centrally controlled autocracy. There is arguably no greater contrast between the free and open U.S. democracy and Mr. Xi’s top-down dictatorship than in the comparison between how each system allows its citizens to access information and how each allows them to engage with one another.

Now in his unprecedented third term after amending the Chinese Constitution, Mr. Xi continues to place loyal party cadres in the country’s top bureaucratic posts and to spy aggressively on enemies at home and abroad. His goal is to transform China into the world’s dominant military and commercial power through an aggressive foreign policy designed to eliminate any economic or technological dependence on the West.

In China, there is no free and open exchange of ideas, no room to dissent from Mr. Xi’s uncompromising Communist Party line, and no free market where individuals can make their own decisions and pursue their own innovations. That’s why Mr. Xi must rely on his powerful intelligence services to steal valuable Western intellectual property, which China desperately needs but is incapable of developing on its own.

And now U.S. companies are squarely in the crosshairs of China’s Big Brother intelligence apparatus.

This past April, the National People’s Congress updated the country’s anti-espionage law to require that Chinese citizens report any suspicion of espionage to security agencies. U.S. businesses must now assume all Chinese nationals will cooperate with their country’s intelligence agencies — because they have no choice.

This is the new reality about doing business with Chinese companies: Both in Beijing (where they enjoy the home court advantage) and abroad, China’s intelligence services will conduct intrusive surveillance of foreign companies and their employees, steal as much information as possible, and recruit agents to gain long-term access to the companies’ inner workings.

U.S. companies must factor in these threats when assessing the risk of doing business with Beijing, and let’s keep in mind that this is not a fair fight. China is bringing the full force of its massive spying apparatus to target U.S. firms.

Companies that risk doing business with Beijing should ensure their employees have a secure channel based in the U.S. for reporting social engineering and technical attacks. Employers should report concerns to the FBI and request briefings from the U.S. intelligence community to counter China’s scrutiny.

Savvy businesses reduce their vulnerability with secure routers and servers, digital firewalls, sophisticated data encryption programs, and a robust “insider threat” program to help unwitting employees who require training and thwart malicious employees with ill intent.

But China has extraordinarily sophisticated spying capabilities, which means companies operating there should assume Chinese intelligence will have access to anything they say, write or store on their computers. Even American firms operating in the U.S. should not assume that geographic distance affords them significantly more security. Companies must wall off their intellectual property and other sensitive information to prevent unauthorized disclosure to China.

And finally, let’s be clear about the whole “de-risking” vs. “decoupling” debate when it comes to U.S. economic relations with Beijing. It is Mr. Xi’s police state that is altering the calculus of doing business with China.

Who can blame U.S. companies for not wanting to let China steal the rope that Mr. Xi would not hesitate to use to hang them?

• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. Follow him on X @DanielHoffmanDC.