Biden-Harris administration caught flat footed on China threat: Oversight Committee report

House Republicans delivered a stark warning last week that the Biden-Harris Administration failed to marshal the federal bureaucracy to combat Chinese secret influence and delivered a striking assessment of federal agencies’ lackluster response to the threat. 

The investigation shows a federal bureaucracy caught flat-footed even as experts have increasingly sounded the alarm about Chinese efforts to undermine the United States' interests. 

On the eve of the election, the report also raised specific concerns about Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz as an example of how Chinese influence operators can target state and local officials with potential to grow in power and influence in hopes of receiving future favor – a strategy called "elite capture" – at a time when Walz is poised to be the vice president if Democrats win the national contest. 

The House Oversight Committee says its interviews and briefings with officials show a “majority of agencies do not have a cohesive strategy to identify, counter, and deter CCP political warfare—too often because CCP influence operations have interfered with the judgment, discretion, and fulfillment of duties by federal agencies themselves.” 

The wide-ranging, 300-page report stems from the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into 25 government sectors and their response to the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. The probe was launched in March to expose China’s efforts to infiltrate and influence the United States amid increasingly dire warnings from all corners that China was fighting a new cold war with unconventional means. 

“The House Oversight Committee has exposed the CCP’s political warfare and is working to ensure the federal government formulates a cohesive strategy to combat CCP threats and protect all Americans. The CCP is successfully infiltrating and influencing communities and critical sectors across this nation and the Biden-Harris Administration is asleep at the wheel,” Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a press release. 

“Today’s report details how federal agencies have failed to understand, acknowledge, or develop a plan to combat CCP political warfare and Americans are left to fend for themselves,” he added. “It is past time for federal agencies to take this threat seriously and fulfill their responsibilities to the American people.” 

You can read the report below: 

Political warfare

The report delivers a hard-hitting assessment of a federal bureaucracy frozen by ignorance or aloofness in the face of China’s political warfare against the United States. 

Political warfare, also known as disintegration warfare, was described by one Chinese army source as a strategy which “consists of degrading the enemy’s resolve and impeding its mobilization capacity by sowing divisions within the enemy camp and wooing critical elements over to one’s own side.”

Despite countless assessments from experts, think-tanks, and former intelligence officials that the China has engaged in this strategy with the United States, the Oversight Committee found many federal bureaucrats were completely unfamiliar with the term and its implications. “A State Department official had to ask the Committee to define political warfare during a briefing about CCP political warfare and the department’s response to it,” the committee wrote. 

This was not the first time a State Department official was ignorant of China’s strategy. When former counterintelligence officer and expert on Chinese political warfare, Kerry Gershaneck, asked the State Department how it taught the subject at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, “they had no idea what [he] was talking about,” according to Gershaneck. 

One of the main organs for political warfare identified by researchers is China’s United Front work system, which President Xi Jinping calls the CCP’s “magic weapons” designed to “undermine the sovereignty and integrity of the political system of targeted states.” 

The system includes the United Front Work Department, Chinese intelligence agencies, and a network of CCP-connected military and civilian organizations across the world. 

It presents a specific threat to the United States because of our open political and economic system and is a driver of “technology transfer, surveillance of Chinese diaspora communities, promotion of favorable narratives about the PRC” in the country, according to a a House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party report. 

Yet, despite Chinese leadership so clearly identifying its purpose, just one federal agency out of the 23 which presented to the Oversight Committee mentioned the united front when it briefed lawmakers on Chinese political warfare. 

Targeting and infiltrating

Local and State governments are also in the “crosshairs” of CCP influence operations, but the committee found the Commerce Department “has been silent on the issue.” 

“The CCP has been successfully targeting and infiltrating U.S. state and local government officials for decades. Yet, the Commerce Department has been silent on the issue—despite the clear nexus between CCP influence operations and economic activity with China across the country,” the committee wrote. 

Recent examples abound of the threat Chinese influence operations can pose to all levels of government. The committee pointed to Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party as an example, and a warning, of how the country seeks to influence U.S. politicians, even those at the state and local levels.   

Developed through his many trips to the country while leading student excursions that were funded in part by the Chinese government, relationship, the committee says, is prime example of China’s influence operations and serves as a warning for state and local officials about Chinese intentions. 

“State and local government officials’ connections to the CCP, like Walz’s, make U.S. government officials vulnerable to the Party’s strategy of elite capture, which seeks to co-opt, manipulate, and influence prominent individuals to shape American discourse and decision- making to the benefit of the communist regime and to the detriment of America,” the committee wrote in its report.

A new investigation found that in addition to Tim Walz’s numerous trips to China with students, he also welcomed a delegation of Chinese Communist Party officials to his classroom in Nebraska when he was a teacher there, the Daily Caller reported. Walz also reportedly praised the Chinese communist system, saying “everyone is the same and everyone shares” in China.

In New York, a former aide to both Governor Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul—Linda Sun—was indicted for alleged attempts to use her role in state government to benefit the Chinese Communist Party. She has pleaded not guilty in the face of the allegations.

Bribery, employment and relationships

In Michigan, the committee highlighted the government’s role in supporting investments from CCP-connected companies in the state. The most controversial of the projects, the proposed Gotion battery plant has been the subject of local backlash and accusations that company officials may have bribed or induced a local government to approve the project, Just the News previously reported.  

In May of last year, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., was probed by House investigators over his interactions with a suspected Chinese spy, Christine Fang, had worked on Swalwell’s campaign and had targeted up-and-coming politicians in California, including Swalwell. The House concluded the investigation in a secret letter and did not take further action, according to The Hill.

Influential Democratic Party leader Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., was found to have employed a Chinese spy as her personal driver for more than 20 years, CBS News reported in 2018. 

Former Ambassador and Director of the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group Joseph Cella has been working to galvanize public opposition to the Michigan Gotion plant through his think-tank, highlighting the national security risks of the CCP-tied company and criticizing Michigan state and local officials for failing to protect their citizens.

“The nature of the CCP is well captured in the report, as is how the CCP is on the hunt and the threat it presents to the United States, and the opportunities and imperative to counter it,” he told Just the News in a statement. 

“With federal agencies currently not enforcing standing rules and robustly counter various threats from the CCP, and various sectors of society such as state and local government and academia defying directives and counsel for our national security and intelligence agencies, this will be a long and complex fight, but must be met head-on,” he continued.