Miranda Devine: Leaked Chinese Communist Party database shows infiltration at highest levels
A leaked database of Chinese Communist Party members has shown the extent of Beijing’s penetration of the West, writes Miranda Devine.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Now that the Electoral College officially has confirmed Joe Biden as America’s next president, the nation can get on with worrying about the serious threat posed by China.
Judging by Biden’s previous turn in power, as vice president and point man for China in the Obama administration, President Xi Jinping doesn’t have much to worry about.
Biden has boasted of “25 hours of private dinners” with Xi, more face-to- face time “than any world leader”.
But a fat lot of good that did America.
In 2013, Biden infamously flew to China aboard Air Force 2 with his drug-addled son Hunter in tow.
After two weeks of meetings with Xi and senior Chinese officials, Biden failed in his mission to stop China stealing America’s research and intellectual property or militarising islands in the South China Sea which pose a threat to Australia and our allies in the region.
The trip was more fruitful for Hunter who walked away with a reported $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of a Chinese bank.
America lost but the Biden family won, not for the last time.
So, Xi has the measure of the soon-to-be leader of the free world.
And if ever the world doubted China’s malign intentions, you only need to read recent bombshell reports of mass infiltration by thousands of Chinese Communist Party members into western corporations and consulates.
A leaked database of registered CCP members, first revealed by The Australian and UK’s Daily Mail on the weekend, has serious national security implications for America and Australia.
Boeing, Qualcomm and Pfizer are just three Shanghai-based US companies which have employed dozens of CCP members listed in the leaked database.
As well, three female employees of the US consulate in Shanghai have been identified in the list of 1.95 million registered party members which was provided to an international group of legislators, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which includes US Senator Marco Rubio and West Australian MP Andrew Hastie.
Another CCP member has reportedly been identified as having worked as a senior executive assistant at Australia’s Shanghai consulate.
While none of the people listed in the database has been identified as a spy, all CCP members swear an oath to “fight for communism throughout my life, be ready at all times to sacrifice my all for the Party and the people, and never betray the Party [and] guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party”.
Earlier this month, mounting concerns about CCP members from the US state department resulted in tightened new US visa rules. CCP members and their immediate families now are limited to one-month, single-entry US permits.
The database leak comes just days after a number of other disturbing revelations involving CCP infiltration of American institutions:
* US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe warned that China has targeted members of Congress and poses “the greatest threat to democracy and freedom” since WWII.
* Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned of China’s infiltration of US universities, which are “hooked on communist cash” and stifle criticism of Beijing.
* A year-long investigation by digital news outlet Axios revealed a honeypot-style spying operation run by China between 2011 and 2015 in which a glamorous spy named Christine Fang courted Californian politicians, including Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
* Joe Biden’s son Hunter was confirmed last week as being under federal investigation over tax fraud and potential money laundering over his foreign business dealings, including in China. The Biden-Haris transition team issued a statement saying Joe is “deeply proud of his son who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger”.
* The latest report of two Republican-led Senate committees, released last week, detailed disturbing Biden family financial ties to China. It found evidence of “consistent, significant and extensive financial connections among and between Hunter Biden, James Biden [Joe’s brother], Sara Biden [Joe’s sister-in law], Devon Archer [Hunter’s business partner], and Chinese nationals connected to the Communist regime.
“These connections and the vast amount of money transferred among and between them don’t just raise conflicts of interest concerns, they raise criminal financial, counter-intelligence and extortion concerns.”
The report also notes Joe’s repeated denials that he ever spoke to Hunter about his business dealings.
* Finally, a video played by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, and subsequently erased from YouTube, featured a speech given in Shanghai two weeks ago by prominent Chinese professor, Di Dongsheng, of the Renmin University’s School of International Relations.
Di confessed that China’s influence over America via its friends in Wall Street had waned under Trump but would improve with Biden back in power. “Wall Street couldn’t fix Trump,” he said.
Di specifically pointed to Hunter’s business deals as the conduit serving China’s political interests: “Trump has been saying that Biden’s son has some sort of global foundation… Who helped [Hunter] build the foundations? Got it? There are a lot of deals inside all this.”
Damning evidence about Joe’s potential involvement in the Bidens’ lucrative influence peddling schemes first emerged in New York Post stories in October about a laptop his son Hunter fecklessly abandoned at a Delaware Mac repair shop, and which was handed to the FBI last December. Those stories were ignored by most of the rest of the media and censored by Big Tech.
Further damning evidence emerged during the election campaign from Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski, who was interviewed by the FBI on October 23.
At the time, Bobulinksi said “Joe Biden and the Biden family is compromised,” by the CCP. He revealed that the “Big Guy” referred to in an email on Hunter’s laptop as the recipient of 10 per cent of a lucrative Chinese deal, was none other than Joe Biden.
There are reports this week of as many as four investigations into Hunter’s foreign business dealings, including in China, and potential money laundering.
One of the probes reportedly involves a 3.16 carat diamond Hunter said he received as a gift from Chinese oil company CEFC’s former chairman Ye Jianming. Photographs of the large diamond appear on Hunter’s abandoned laptop along with a December 2016 grading report which lists it as a “round brilliant” of Grade F with prime “VS2” clarity and “excellent” cut.
In another email on the laptop which emerged this week, Hunter referred to his father, Joe, stepmother Jill and uncle Jim Biden as “new office mates” along with Gongwen Dong, whom he describes as the CEFC “emissary” of Chairman Ye.
Now that the election is over, news organisations which previously ignored or decried the New York Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden scandal, have suddenly become curious about the story.
Being America, there’s a conspiracy theory for every occasion. In this case the theory is that Biden will be thrown to the wolves in order to install his younger and more avowedly left-wing vice president-elect Kamala Harris as president.
President Xi probably won’t mind.
Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph