Commentary
The “united front” was one of Mao Zedong’s “three magic weapons,” with the other two being party-building and armed struggle.
Mao created the United Front Work Department (UFWD) to focus domestically on establishing and strengthening the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) control over all Chinese citizens.
In 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping expanded the UFWD’s mission to include foreign objectives such as “the co-optation of elites, information management, persuasion, and accessing strategic information and resources” with the express purpose of “influenc[ing] the decision-making of foreign governments and societies in China’s favor,” according to the blog Power 3.0.
“Co-optation of elites” is a direct reference to bribery and other aspects of influence peddling to coerce foreign leaders into furthering communist China’s geopolitical policies. Toward that end, it has long been pointed out that the current president and his family could have been directly implicated and compromised by China. When President Joe Biden was vice president under the Obama administration, he would have been a logical target for the CCP, as his role included managing the U.S.–China relationship. What better way to manage the relationship to Beijing’s benefit than by involving Biden family members in sweetheart business deals with Chinese business concerns?
For example, Fox News reported in 2022 that President Biden’s son Hunter Biden received $100,000 from the state-controlled Chinese energy company CEFC for “services rendered.” More recently, The Washington Free Beacon reported on March 1 that “CEFC China Energy paid Hunter and Jim Biden [Joe Biden’s brother] $5 million as part of a joint venture to find investments for the Chinese firm.”
The Washington Times reported on Feb. 26 that a former Hunter Biden business associate confirmed that President Biden, then the vice president, was allegedly linked to this corruption. The associate “overheard Hunter Biden updating his father [during a 2014 telephone call] on progress in landing a business partnership with Harvest Fund Management, a $300 billion Chinese financial services company closely connected to the Chinese Communist Party,” according to the report.
Has President Biden been “co-opted” by Beijing, as Mao himself might say? Have benefits accrued to communist China because of Biden administration policies?
Let us examine the topic.
Early Biden Policies Benefit China
Since January 2021, President Biden’s executive orders and actions have greatly benefited China. A few of the big-ticket items included the following:Executive Order 13390 shut down the Keystone XL pipeline and U.S. domestic oil and gas production, driving energy costs sky-high. High energy costs are a drag on the U.S. economy, which plays into China’s drive to eclipse the United States as the largest economy in the world. In January 2023, it was reported that Canadian oil intended to be transferred via the XL pipeline will now be shipped across Canada via the Trans Mountain pipeline to China! That’s a twofer for Beijing.
Executive Order 13988 bypassed Congress to implement domestic pro-LGBT anti-discrimination policies throughout the federal government, including federal contractors. Coupled with EO 14004, which facilitated military service by transgender personnel, this has led to increasing divisiveness within the military services, problems with recruitment and retention, and a significant decrease in military readiness—diminishing the capabilities of the U.S. military and undermining the United States from within having been top CCP objectives for several decades.
Executive Order 13993 effectively suspended the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement of U.S. immigration laws and set the table for 64 policies detailed by House Speaker Mike Johnson in February that have created the open border crisis (which is the No. 1 domestic political issue in 2024). The result has been a flood of millions of illegal aliens—including tens of thousands of military-age Chinese men—into the United States, a corresponding flood of fentanyl and other drugs that continue to kill thousands of Americans per year, and unknown numbers of criminals and terrorists, all of which aid and abet the CCP’s long-term goal to undermine U.S. national security.
The passage of the Democrats’ main policy goal, the “Green New Deal (GND),” through language included in a gargantuan “infrastructure bill” and the “Inflation Reduction Act,” incentivizes the importation of Chinese-made green tech, and adds to the U.S.–China trade deficit.
As The Wall Street Journal reported last month, a major U.S. policy goal under GND policies has been to develop a homegrown American solar industry—except that the Chinese are incentivized to “build a lot of it.” This plays directly into China’s economic goals, which is the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar panels.
Recent US Policy Gifts to China
In December 2023, the War Room reported that “the White House secretly established an Agricultural Working Group with the Chinese Communist Party [despite increasing congressional] concerns over the national security risk posed by China’s foray into America’s farmland and food supply.”On Jan. 1, state-run China Daily reported that President Biden and Xi exchanged “congratulatory messages” marking the 45th anniversary of formal diplomatic relations having been established. The messages were a diplomatic victory for Xi and marked a continuation of President Biden’s efforts to restore the pro-China engagement policies that existed before the Trump administration.
On Jan. 12, the Biden administration provided Xi with another diplomatic victory. The New York Post reported that Secretary of State Antony Blinken “rolled out the red carpet” for Chinese envoy Liu Jianchao, who is “the architect of its global scheme to kidnap and silence anti-Communist dissidents.”
The article pointed out that “under Operation Foxhunt, Chinese operatives hired US private investigators to help track down dissidents in the US.”
Since when does the U.S. government offer the gift of idly standing by while communist operatives target anti-communist dissidents in the United States?
On Feb. 25, Reuters reported that the U.S. Department of Transportation granted permission for Chinese airlines “to boost their weekly round-trip U.S. flights to 50 starting on March 31.” Full speed ahead on Chinese engagement policies on all fronts, as well as more potential Chinese spies traveling to the United States!
Concluding Thoughts
In summary, a continuing stream of Biden administration policies has benefited communist China from January 2021 to the present while being simultaneously detrimental to U.S. economic and national security.Whether President Biden is fully compromised by China hasn’t yet been proven in a court of law. However, in the court of public opinion, Americans increasingly believe that despite his repeated denials, the president was involved in his son’s business dealings with China (and other countries), as noted by a CNN poll last September.
The big question is this: What more would the Biden administration do to benefit communist China?
It seems Mao’s united front, as tweaked by Xi, is working as intended, unfortunately for the United States and the world.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
