The Daily Signal - What You Need to Know About Chinese Spying on US Politicians

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Christine Fang is a Chinese national who is suspected of being a spy and has had ties to American mayors and other politicians, including Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. Swalwell has said he has cooperated with law enforcement and cut off all ties to Fang once he knew there were concerns she was a spy. However, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has said Swalwell shouldn’t serve on the House Intelligence Committee, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has defended her fellow California Democrat. What questions should Swalwell face about his relationship with Fang? Does it raise any national security concerns? What is China’s strategy here, and does it have a “long-term” approach? Dean Cheng, senior research fellow in the Asian Studies Center in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss. We also cover these stories: Former Vice President Joe Biden says his cabinet will look like and represent the people of America.  President Trump is not pleased with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to refer to Joe Biden as "president-elect." A new poll reports 62% of Americans are concerned that government leaders will hold onto their “pandemic powers” even after the virus subsides.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, December 17th. I'm Prudena Allen. And I'm Kate Trinco. Today, Rachel Del Judas talks with Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Dean Chang about Representative Eric Swalwell's ties to a possible Chinese spy and the presence of Chinese spies in the U.S. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts

and encourage others to subscribe. Now on our top news. Former Vice President Joe Biden says his cabinet will look like and represent the people of America. Speaking in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware on Wednesday, Biden said, by the end of this process, this cabinet will be the most representative of any cabinet in American history. We'll have more people of color than any cabinet ever. We'll have more women than any cabinet ever. We'll have a cabinet of barrier breakers, a cabinet of first.

Biden gave the remarks as he nominated the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg to the position of Transportation Secretary. If confirmed, Buttigieg will be the first openly gay person to be confirmed by the Senate to lead a cabinet position. President Trump wasn't pleased with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's decision to refer to Joe Biden as president-elect earlier this week. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted, referring to how many votes he had gotten, Mitch, 75-9. million votes, a record for a sitting president by a lot. Too soon to give up. Republican Party must finally learn to fight. People are angry. According to the Cook political report, 74.2 million Americans voted for Trump. A new poll conducted by Just the News Daily poll with Scott Rasmussen reports that 62 percent of Americans are concerned that government leaders will hold on to their pandemic powers

even after the virus subsides. The poll was taken of 1,200 American voters. As mayor, governors, and other government officials have closed businesses and implemented stay-at-home orders under COVID-19, the poll reveals a genuine concern in America over the growth of the government's power during the pandemic. Next up, Rachel Del Judas will talk to Dean Chang about the role of Chinese spying on the United States.

conservative women, conservative feminists. It's true, we do exist. I'm Virginia Allen, and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories and interviews that are a particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to, to policy and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcast. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Dean Chang. He's a senior research fellow in the Asian Studies Center in Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Dean, thanks again for coming on the Daily Signal podcast. It's always great to have you.

Thank you for having me. Well, something that is hot in the news right now is Axios reported last week that found the suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed an extensive. ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, and what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China's main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, and the Axis found this over a year-long investigation. Dean, can you impact just to start off what all is going on here? Well, as always with intelligence investigations, we're getting only some of the details. But what appears to have been going on is that

A Chinese woman, a Chinese citizen, who goes by name Fang Fang, apparently established, was here in the United States as a student, and while she was here as a student, seems to have established ties to a variety of people, some of whom have become more senior politicians since. The most prominent example, of course, is Representative Eric Swalwell of California, who happens, I believe, to be on the House Intelligence Committee, but also with certain mayor, people who are now mayors,

and other political representatives is quite likely in the process given she was, I believe, in San Francisco, probably also established ties to people in the tech sector as well. Well, Axis reported that Christine Feng, as you mentioned, is a Chinese national. Do we know anything else about her and what her goals were in this endeavor? Well, I believe that she has gone back to China. No surprise, she didn't respond apparently to any exios inquiries.

So it's an interesting question. Was she, did she start off as a potential Chinese intelligence officer? Did she get recruited after she came to the United States? All of these are important questions, but without. access to more specific details, a lot of that is going to be speculation. What we do know, more broadly, is that China engages in what sometimes turned the million grain of sand approach, that they basically collect data through a variety of means, students, professors, business people, journalists, as well as intelligence officers, that often seem to be minor details, or just

inconsequential. But the Chinese approach is that if you hoover up, if you literally vacuum up enough data and you keep at it over time, you can create very impressive, very detailed dossiers, models, and pictures of everything from scientific projects to individual personalities to how organizations are structured to decision-making processes. Well, what did this whole situation, Dean, say about how China has tried to gain access to and influence U.S. political circles? What we need to recognize is that China views the world very differently from us. One of those aspects is that there is no civil society. Nothing is beyond the reach of the Chinese Communist Party.

What that means, in turn, is that they can employ a far wider variety of means to gather information. The second thing to keep in mind is that China has a very long-term view of the world. For the United States, we are governed by our political process. Two-year House of Representatives terms, four-year presidential terms, six-year senatorial terms. Xi Jinping was going to be in power for at least 10 years, and now he basically has ended term limits in China. So he will be in charge for as long as he wants. Chinese programs regularly are 10, 20 years long. One of their big science and technology programs began in 1986 and is still running 34 years later.

So the Chinese approach to intelligence gathering and influence operations is you start collecting as soon as possible as early as necessary. And who knows what fruit might be born, 20, 30. years later. And I think that, you know, insofar as there is a tie between Representative Swalwell and Christine Fong, that would be a payoff. They didn't necessarily know that there would be a payoff 30 years ago or 20 years ago or 10 years ago or five years ago. But eventually, if you back enough horses, some of them will win. Well, Christine Fung recently had sexual relationships with two mayors. Dean, why would mayors be targeted by China and what kind of information could China be wanting to gain from them? Well, I'm certainly not going to start talking about

recruitment methodologies. Suffice to say that there are a wide variety of those. Why would you target mayors? Because mayors, sometimes that's the end of the line. That's all you're going to be. But sometimes you wind up becoming, you know, you use the mayor-maurality as a platform for leaping ahead. Look at Michael Bloomberg. He was mayor of New York City, but he ran for president. If you look at other politicians, you see people who were once mayors of cities who then become governors and presidential candidates or become representatives and senators. So the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, was a mayor, but he too was a presidential candidate and may well have future prospects as well. Christine Fung also had ties to Congressman Eric Swalwell. He's a Democrat of California.

Swalwell had said that he has cooperated with the government and cut off ties to Fung once he knew that were concerns that she was a spy. however House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said Swalwell shouldn't be on the House Intelligence Committee while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has defended Swalwell. What questions should Swallow face Dean about his relationship with Thun and does it raise any national security concerns? Well, obviously, and this will probably occur behind closed doors, there needs to be, you know, a thorough vetting of, you know, what was it from, Watergate, what did you know and when did you know it? What was the extent of your relationship? When did you start it? What did you talk about when you were together? When did you end it? And with any intelligence-related investigation, it's also relationships. So did you get introduced to any other people? Did, now this is going to be a little harder, did other people perhaps in the

employee as Christine Fong or, you know, somehow linked to Christine Fong, donate to your campaigns. What did your local offices, your campaign offices, have in terms of interactions, not just with Ms. Fong, but also with potentially other people. Because we know that, as with Senator Diane Feinstein, there was the problem there of her driver, turned to. out to be a Chinese spy. So these sorts of relationships go far beyond just direct to also more extended, if you want. What do you think overall, Dean, is China's strategy here? And what is the long-term approach? A China's strategy is they see the United States as their primary competitor, frankly as a fundamental threat to the Chinese Communist Party. And they are

moving a variety of pieces to try and influence both the United States and its friends and allies and also third parties to one downgrade the threat perception of China that is not to view China as a threat certainly not to act against Chinese interests and that spans a variety of things everything from export controls to tariffs to whether Huawei should play a role in 5G networks the Chinese want all of these sorts of things to not be a factor. They want to buy influence, and they're not unique in that regard. Many players domestic and foreign want to do that. But they clearly, in particular, want to make sure that the United States is as muted,

as limited a challenge, a threat, a rival to China as possible. How many spies, Dean, could there potentially be in the U.S. U.S., and do they follow a similar modus operandi to fung or do different spies approach situations differently? If we're talking about the range of foreign spies in the United States, let's be up front. Every country spies on every other country. That's just simple reality. So there are probably thousands and thousands of people who are being employed by a variety

of foreign governments from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. you know, including allies, including neutrals, including poor countries and rich countries. Everybody does espionage. And because the United States is the largest economy, is certainly one of the most, if not the most powerful country in the world, every other country is going to want to know,

what is the U.S. thinking? What is the U.S. doing? What are various key power players thinking and doing? Will you act against me? Will you sell me out? Will you care if I get invaded? So there are, I think, I could say with confidence, spies from every country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe,

and they use everything from money to sex, to compromise, to open recruitment, to try and gather information about the United States. Lastly, Dean, how should Congress respond to threats such as these? And what about other government agencies? Well, security, you know, internal security is first and foremost the responsibility of the FBI, at least against espionage. Obviously, at the state level, you need cooperation with local law enforcement. The FBI does nowhere near the manpower necessary to track the thousands and thousands of potential spies from all of these various countries. but what we also need to do, and this is not just Congress, is to recognize that there are espionage threats to the United States.

What we should not do is take the attitude, oh, spying is icky. Spying is, I mean, famously Henry Stimson, I believe, shut down our nascent signals intelligence efforts in the 1920s on the grounds that gentlemen do not read each other's mail. We deliberately blinded ourselves. And there's the organizational aspect, but there's also just the personal idea that, oh, well, you know, this person, that person couldn't possibly be a spy.

Because yes, they could be. And more to the point, well, but, you know, if I sleep with this person, if I take a little bit of their money, if I pass them a couple of documents, what's the harm? And the harm is maybe nothing at the moment. But you never know when down the road, that might well come back to bite you. What Congress needs to do, I think, is to recognize that internal security is, you know, that the threat here is so expansive and, in my personal opinion, is at least as great, if not greater,

than what DOJ and others have kept harping on for the last three or four years, which is supposedly, you know, radical nationalism. alt-right groups in the U.S. Is that really the threat, or is Chinese, Russian, espionage, Cuban, Syrian, et cetera, Iranian, more of a threat? That's something for Congress to decide, but I know where I stand. Well, Dean, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast and unpacking this. We really appreciate having you with us.

Thank you again for having it. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. You can find The Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, and please encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening, and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark, Mark,

Johnny and John Pop. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.