Report Links CCP to Anti-Israel Protests | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. More anti-Israel demonstrations at a California university. But is the Chinese Communist Party lurking in the shadows? A new report sheds light on the CCP's role in the unrest. Leveling the playing field with Beijing, the Biden administration is imposing tariffs on certain kinds of solar panels imported from China. From state-backed hacking to stealing advanced U.S. technology, a House hearing explores the growing cyber threat posed by Communist China. A new report is linking the Chinese Communist Party to anti-Israel protests happening in the U.S. in recent months. NTD's Daniel Monaghan has more on the findings published by the Network Contagion Research Institute. The report analyzes the activities and foreign relationships of the Shut It Down for Palestine movement since its formation in October 2023. It describes the group as an anti-capitalist, anti-police, and anti-government protest movement. The report says Shut It Down for Palestine functions as a network for organizing frequent demonstrations and using direct action campaigns to target critical infrastructure and public spaces. The report says members of the Singham network operate under the Shut It Down for Palestine umbrella. The Singham network is a global web of non-profits, financial sponsors, and alternative news sources connected to Neville Roy Singham. The New York Times wrote in April 2023 that the socialist Singham, quote, works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide. The Jerusalem Post wrote that Singham worked as a consultant for Huawei, lives in Shanghai, and shared office premises with a Chinese propaganda firm. He has also reportedly been spotted at CCP workshops and has been investigated by the U.S., Canada, and India for CCP operations. According to the New York Times, Singham denies working for any political party or government and says he is guided only by his own beliefs and long-held personal views. The report says the Singham network exploits regulatory loopholes in the U.S. non-profit system to move giant sums of money to organizations and movements that actively stoke social unrest at the grassroots level. According to the report, Shut It Down for Palestine has ties to extremist groups that embrace a violent single-state resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The report says the recent protests seem focused on Israel, but they are part of a well-funded initiative driving a revolutionary anti-government and anti-capitalist agenda. Senator Mark Rubio told Fox News Digital that he warned the Biden administration of the ties between the Chinese Communist Party and certain far-left organizations operating in the U.S. The report calls for more accountability from non-profits to ensure that they are not exploiting their position to support terrorist activities or enhance the agendas of foreign powers that are hostile to the United States. Daniel Monahan, NTV News. The White House Thursday is announcing new action to protect American solar factories from Chinese competition. First, Washington is scrapping a tariff exemption for double-sided solar panels from China. The panels only accounted for a small part of the Biden will also end a waiver on tariffs for solar panels made by Chinese companies in Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. On top of that, the White House plans to make it easier for projects that support American companies to claim subsidies. To get the benefit, they must source at least 40 percent of their parts from domestic companies. According to the S&P Global, solar panel imports have surged by over 80 percent in the past two years, with most of the goods coming from Chinese companies. President Biden's new moves could help him in the November election on multiple fronts, including the economy, climate measures and deterring China to protect the U.S. The Biden administration is also planning to place a series of restrictions on China-made vehicles. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Wednesday that new rules for Chinese vehicles are expected to come out this fall. Beyond the solar industry, another field is also amping up the pressure on U.S. companies to decouple from China. Washington added 26 Chinese textile companies to a blacklist Thursday. That's over alleged ties to forced labor. Blacklisted status bans a company's products from the U.S. market. The measure could affect U.S. supply chains. China is America's largest supplier of textiles, making up over a quarter of textile imports in 2022. But forced labor remains a concern. U.S. companies say Chinese firms exploit forced labor to unfairly compete. 90 percent of Chinese cotton is produced in Xinjiang. The region is in northwestern China and is known to its Uyghur population as East Turkestan. The U.S. says Beijing is committing genocide against a Uyghur ethnic group through mass detention, forced sterilization and forced labor. A U.S. law passed in 2021 effectively banned all imports tied to Xinjiang. The move has forced companies to take a new approach toward their supply chains. German carmaker Volkswagen said the U.S. confiscated thousands of its Bentley and Porsche branded vehicles, all because a part used in them was made by a blacklisted Chinese supplier. From state-backed hacking to stealing advanced U.S. technology, a House hearing is exploring the increasing cyber threats posed by communist China. NTD's Jeremy Sandberg has more. Thank you for the opportunity to share my observations. The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday sat down with intel experts to discuss solutions to Beijing's cyber warfare. The hearing comes as U.S. and U.K. officials are sounding the alarm over rising cyber threats from communist China. In fact, if you took every single one of the FBI's cyber agents and intelligence analysts and focused them exclusively on the China threat, China's hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1. From unfair trade practices to advanced technologies to transnational repression, the Chinese Communist Party is reaching its hands into every sphere of U.S. society. Sophisticated surveillance balloons across our sovereign land, technical surveillance stations just 90 miles away in Cuba, maritime port threats, Huawei, strategic land purchases near military installations, fentanyl. I'm not even addressing space, deepfakes, or 5G or genomics. Earlier this year, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned of a Chinese state-backed hacking campaign named Volt Typhoon. The group reportedly targeted critical U.S. infrastructures including oil pipelines, water treatment plants, and telecommunications. Testifying before the House Select Committee on the CCP, Wray said the goal of the operation was to, quote, wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing. It's estimated that 80% of American adults have had all of their data stolen by the Communist Party of China. The other 20%, just most of their data. Adding the CCP's crippling stranglehold to so many critical aspects of our supply chain and what results is domestic vulnerability we have not seen in generations, if ever. Last September, Chinese state-backed hackers reportedly breached multiple U.S. government agencies and stole roughly 60,000 emails from State Department officials. It took place just before Secretary of State Antony Blinken's China visit. The attackers accessed the inboxes of the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, the U.S. Ambassador to China, Congressman Don Bacon, and key State Department employees. Experts said the federal government needs to incentivize updates in the cybersecurity space. They said in doing so, it would encourage the private sector to do the same. Jeremy Sandberg, NTD News. Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to Beijing early Thursday. The two reaffirmed their no-limits partnership during their meeting as the two sing the praises of friendship. Analysts expect the West to draft sanctions for the pair designed to tackle the China-Russia alliance. Here's more. At their summit in Beijing, Putin thanked Xi for China's proposals for ending the war in Ukraine. China proposed a peace plan last year, calling for a ceasefire and direct talks between Russia and Ukraine. The proposal did not require Russia to leave occupied parts of Ukraine. Ukrainian and its Western supporters rejected China's proposal. Ukrainian President Zelensky has declined to negotiate. Unless Moscow withdraws its troops, releases all prisoners, establishes a tribunal for those responsible for the war, and provides security guarantees to Ukraine. Retired Colonel Grant Newsham told NTD the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are also drawing U.S. focus away from China. The more the fighting goes on in Ukraine, the more the Americans have to focus on that, and things are getting pretty dicey there. You're emptying out American arsenals. The same thing goes with Gaza. It's a huge political issue in the United States. It's caused chaos in parts of the U.S., certainly on some college campuses. It has handcuffed U.S. political movement. The administration clearly is trying to thread a needle unsuccessfully and play both sides of this. Back to Xi and Putin's meeting. Putin said they discussed nuclear cooperation plans. China and Russia also criticized U.S. military alliances in the Indo-Pacific, thus following U.S. warnings to Beijing to stop its aggression in the region. The U.S. military has participated in multiple joint drills with countries threatened by Beijing's troops, including the Philippines. Back in the U.S., the Director of National Intelligence says China is growing increasingly confident in its ability to influence elections. A Senate hearing on foreign threats to the 2024 elections is exposing the Chinese regime's tactics being used in the U.S. NTD's Jeremy Sandberg has takeaways from the hearing. A Senate hearing Wednesday on foreign threats to the 2024 elections exposed tactics the Chinese Communist Party is using to influence public opinion in elections in the U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines says the CCP has perfected influence operation tools through AI and big data analytics. I think they're growing, we assess, really increasingly confident in their ability to influence elections, but remain concerned about the possibility of blowback should they be discovered. Haines says Beijing targeted congressional candidates to meddle with U.S. elections, and exerted influence over elections in Canada, Australia, and Taiwan. The National Intelligence Director says global tactics include bankrolling candidates, using deep fakes, and collecting polling data to find targets. She says China's military will take over and operate social media accounts on different platforms. When we get intelligence that indicates that the PRC is, for example, taking on social media accounts or things like that in a platform, we then pass that information through the FBI is able to provide that to the companies to take action. The Chinese Communist Party in January during Taiwan's presidential election swarmed the internet with AI-generated videos, audio clips, and texts. Chinese regime operatives drove false claims on YouTube and TikTok, suggesting the party more critical of Beijing cheated with the United States' help. Senator Angus King says he doesn't want the U.S. to become the truth police. He wants attribution of sources, so people know if information is coming from a foreign government. Senator James Lankford agreed attribution is the challenge. He asked Haines what's being done to stop influence operations in the 2024 elections. We are identifying specific, credible intelligence. We are passing that to the companies or exposing it publicly, as the case may determine. In Canada, a government commission on foreign interference this month named China as the most persistent and sophisticated foreign influence threat to the country. The commission's report says the CCP's long-term game includes incentives like paid trips, business opportunities, prestigious invitations, and political support, along with disincentives like visa denials, harassment, and intimidation to retaliate if a candidate doesn't play along. Jeremy Sandberg, NTD News. To talk more about the threats the Chinese regime poses to Election Day 2024, NTD's Evelyn Li spoke with Stephen Yates. He's a former White House Deputy National Security Advisor and now China Policy Initiative Chair at the America First Policy Initiative. First, could you talk to me about your takeaways from that hearing and your main concerns now? Well, my key takeaway was there are two separate things they were talking about. One was somewhat this long-term effort at influence operations that have a fairly familiar pattern to them of trying to get close to people in office or running for office, offering them inducements, access, opportunities if they play well, and then trying to harass or penalize them if they do not perform as they have been asked to or encouraged to do with regard to the People's Republic of China's interests. And so that, I think, has been a long-term game. We've seen some examples in Congress and elsewhere where they've had staffers or personal relationships or other kinds of things that have fallen into this influence operation category. The second part is the technological weaponization of that, where they're talking about taking over social media accounts, taking on the persona of people, creating deep fakes that could trick people and try to steer opinion close to election time. Now, Americans of various stripes have perfected how to do this in the dirty wars of politics getting close to the election date. It is troubling that people in the CCP have perhaps picked up on this and may either hire or use those same Americans or do so themselves via technology to try to shape outcomes. And I just emphasize they don't just focus on offices that are important like the presidency. They can also do this at the level of city council, county commissioner, state legislature, trying to groom influence from the grassroots up. Right. That's a very good point to make. Now, I want to talk more about the second part with the election around the corner. Talk to me how well you think the U.S. is prepared to counter these technological threats and get ahead of those malign actors, especially since we know now with them being able to operate at a higher volume and scale through using AI. Well, this is a great place of inequality between the systems of the United States and the system that the Chinese Communist Party uses. In China, they sort of have a civilian government fusion where everyone basically works on the same sheet and everyone knows who their boss is. In the United States, we have a real private sector and a real government sector. There have been problems in the recent past about the government engaging, I think, inappropriately in trying to collaborate with big tech in shaping American political opinion. That is a hindrance in their effectiveness in 2024. But really, in this regard, we have to rely heavily on the effectiveness of our private sector and these big platforms on their own. Got it. Thank you so much, Stephen Yates. Appreciate it. Thank you. That's all for today's China In Focus on YouTube. We're now sharing a shortened version of our program here after being demonetized for three years. If you'd like to support us, consider donating. Find us at donorbox.org slash china-in-focus or subscribe to our partner platform, Epic TV, where you can watch our full episodes. Just click the link down below. Here's what to look out for in our second half. Washington is cutting cash flow to a non-profit for allegedly funding dangerous virus research in China. Officials say the organization poured money into the lab without monitoring its compliance with U.S. regulations. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon describing Beijing as a fierce competitor, but not an enemy of the Western world. More on his statements. I think the American government is doing the right thing to fully engage. That doesn't mean the Chinese like everything we do, just like we don't like everything they do. But it doesn't have to be war. It could be tough competition, and we should be prepared for that. And millions of unsold homes in China may soon get unexpected buyers, local authorities. Peña report sheds light on a desperate plan to rescue the country's real estate market. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. Thanks for watching China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. See you tomorrow.