Beijing waging political warfare against government, business, experts tell House oversight panel

China’s communist government is engaged in large-scale political warfare and influence efforts it calls united front operations that are seeking to subvert all sectors of the United States, according to an investigation by the House oversight committee.

“This is a huge problem,” said Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, during a hearing Wednesday that was the first public phase of a major investigation by the panel into Chinese influence operations.

Mr. Comer, Kentucky Republican, said the U.S. government has no plan to combat extensive Chinese influence operations and doesn’t appear to recognize the national security threat China’s activities pose.

Three former military and intelligence officials testified that Chinese influence operations are broad in both scale and targets and threaten the democratic system in the United States and throughout the world.

Retired Marine Corps Col. Grant Newsham, a former intelligence officer and expert on China, told the committee that China is working to break the two-ocean geographic barrier that has protected the United States from its enemies.

“The Chinese Communist Party is determined to take away that advantage,” Col. Newsham said. “Through a range of political warfare methods, it is embedding behind our lines, attacking us from the inside.”

Those attacks include chemical warfare through fentanyl exports; biological attacks through dangerous research such as the suspected laboratory leaks that likely triggered the COVID-19 pandemic; and economic warfare that uses trade and commerce to try to destroy the U.S. manufacturing and commercial sectors, he said.

“For the first time in our history, our distance can’t protect us,” he said. “We are being hit at home by a wide-ranging attack that is killing us by the tens of thousands and devastating our economies and society, and leaving us vulnerable at a national and personal level.”

Cyberattacks to steal technology and information with “territorial warfare” – purchases of U.S. land by Chinese-linked buyers — also are part of the political warfare, Col. Newsham said.

Infiltrating the United States is another element.

Col. Newsham said one of the more effective Chinese methods is psychological warfare.

“Psychological warfare is arguably the most important of the political warfare techniques,” he said. “Chinese psychological warfare seeks to change an opponent’s thinking and behavior in a way that is favorable to [People’s Republic of China] interests and objectives. It aims to weaken the opponent’s will and ability to resist through non-kinetic means.”

Chinese psychological warfare operations are designed to produce accommodation with the CCP and erode resistance to Chinese policies.

“It comes down to getting into our heads and disabling us from the inside,” Col. Newsham said.

Key CCP influence operations targeting the United States include several themes, including the ideas that “criticizing China is racist” and “the United States must have China’s help on climate change, North Korea, etc.,” he said.

“China has no intention of helping the United States on ‘climate change’ – since doing so would slow China’s growth – and, based on past experience, China doesn’t expect any real cost will be imposed on it for not complying,” Col. Newsham said.

Another theme is the false idea that China is no longer communist but capitalist, he said.

To counter Chinese political warfare, the government needs to relearn political warfare and repeal China’s permanent normal trade relations status. Chinese companies should be delisted from stock exchanges and all investment in China restricted and export controls strengthened, he said.

Peter Mattis, a former intelligence official who specializes in China affairs, said Beijing’s political warfare is strategic in seeking a new world order under control of the CCP.

China’s leaders seek “national rejuvenation” — a euphemism for global dominance — and a “community of common destiny for humanity” that seeks to extend the CCP’s rule over the rest of the world, Mr. Mattis said.

“To achieve these goals, Beijing harnesses all the tools of statecraft in a competitive endeavor — what we used to call political warfare,” he said.

“A key component of the CCP’s toolkit is united front work, which is a way of conducting policy, a theory of politics, and the policy bureaucracy to monitor, influence, and mobilize individuals outside the Party for its purposes.”

Chinese President Xi has called united front influence work to be a “magic weapon” for the CCP to overcome its capitalist enemies, Mr. Mattis said.

“Today we’re in a new Cold War,” said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding, a former military attaché in China.

Gen. Spalding said a relaxation of American security systems has made American society and the international system vulnerable to relentless political influence campaigns from China as well as Russia, North Korea and Iran.

“The Chinese Communist Party and its proxies wage a global political war to influence the face of human civilization, using the tools of statecraft, business, economics, trade, finance, academia, and especially technology,” he said.

Chinese companies under control of the Communist Party are influencing American businesses and financial institutions, he said. Those companies in turn are influencing the American political process in ways that seek to maintain economic connections to the CCP, he said.

Universities and the U.S. educational system also are under CCP influence through Chinese grants and tuition for Chinese students, and scientists are being influenced to move technology to China.

Politicians at the local, state and federal levels also are influenced by Chinese money and promises of producing jobs for Americans, he said.

Chinese applications for handheld devices, such as shopping app Temu, are stealing personal data, while other platforms such as TikTok are influencing the thoughts and behaviors of Americans, sowing distrust of the political system and indoctrinating young people to Chinese narratives, Gen. Spalding said.

“This is not by accident, but through a measured socio-political model developed after thorough study of how the Soviet Union succumbed to western liberalism during the first Cold War,” he said.

“The Chinese Communist Party recognized [that] to undermine our republic, they must first establish a façade of friendship and cooperation, positioning themselves as partners on issues such as climate change and peace, while clandestinely manipulating the mechanisms established in the aftermath of WWII to expand their influence and control.”

Gen. Spalding said to avoid a future Chinese-controlled international tyranny, all institutions within the non-communist world must be free of CCP influence or face the slow disintegration of the nation.

The CCP is waging “dozens of forms of warfare against America, seeking the “destruction” of America, Mr. Comer said.

“By waging political warfare, the CCP seeks to weaken America so that we cannot effectively fight in a kinetic war,” Mr. Comer said. “China’s goal is plain: to defeat America.”

The main vehicle is united front operations that seek to mobilize agents and organizations through proxies — business leaders, cultural and political leaders, and other influential people.

Mr. Comer rejected claims of critics who say that exposing Chinese influence activities is racist toward Asians. “To that it is somehow racist or inappropriate for Congress to investigate the CCP threat is playing directly into the CCP’s hands, and people who use this tactic are doing exactly what the CCP wants in order to avoid scrutiny of or accountability for the CCP,” he said.

The Oversight Committee, through its investigation, wants to show the Biden administration that the threat posed by the CCP is grave and must be countered.

However, many Democrats at the hearing, led by ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, disagreed with the focus of the hearing on Chinese influence operations.

Several said Russian influence operations pose a more significant threat than those of China and said Republicans and former President Donald Trump are promoting Russian propaganda and election interference.