Chinese Spies…Everywhere
Even in the CIA.
By Michael Ledeen
The United States has taken a dramatic step against a Chinese penetration of American schools and universities. Known as Confucius Institutes, these—numbering some 75 across the country—have set up shop in our educational institutions in order to spread propaganda and suppress free speech.
The Washington-based nonprofit Confucius Institute U.S. Center (CIUS) promotes Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms in universities and schools across the United States.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the designation recognizes “CIUS for what it is: an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K–12 classrooms.” The designation restricts the CIUS’s operations and staffing levels in the country.
“Confucius Institutes are funded by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and part of the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence and propaganda apparatus,” Pompeo said in a statement.
Secretary Pompeo announced that the Confucius Institutes would be treated as foreign intelligence operations, and their employees would be targeted as spies. In retrospect, it’s amazing that American counterintelligence failed to understand what the Chinese were up to from the earliest days of Confucius. But then, it was only part of a massive penetration of the American scientific establishment, and we are only at the beginning of a serious response.
It is important to keep in mind that the Chinese are not primarily motivated by a concern for human life, but rather by an urgent need to keep key persons alive, regardless of the cost to others. This principle was clearly illustrated by the case of Sun Lingling, who was saved by a heart transplant earlier this summer after she contracted a rare incurable autoimmune heart infection on a trip to Japan. She was flown back to China, where, in the space of a very few days, she was provided with a new heart, and quickly began a spectacular recovery.
In fact, she had a choice among four hearts. The abundance of transplantable organs raised questions about China’s supply of such materials.
…with China’s voluntary organ donation system still in its nascent stage, experts questioned how the hospital was able to source Sun’s matching organs so quickly—a concern at the core of allegations that the regime is engaged in the grisly practice of forced organ harvesting: killing prisoners of conscience to sell their organs for profit.
In other words, Sun was saved by the Chinese supply of fresh hearts, and experts from around the world marveled at the phenomenon.
“The question is: who is the source for these 4 hearts,” said Dr. Torsten Trey, executive director of the medical ethics advocacy group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting. In the United States, patients generally waited for around 6.9 months for a matching heart donation, according to the latest government data from 2018. At this rate, to get four matching hearts for the same person…may take around two years, he noted.
The Chinese saved Sun in a matter of days, leading experts from the United States and Israel to conclude that organs were “harvested” from the bodies of arrested dissidents and then implanted to the needy.
The experts believe that China views the bodies of dissidents as fair targets for transplants, and they are frequently said to engage in harvesting organs as needed. As Newt Gingrich writes, the Chinese are at one with Biden and Kamala Harris on this subject.
US Sen. Kamala Harris is the most openly anti-Catholic bigot to be on a national ticket in modern times.
Her record is perfectly clear. She is openly anti-Catholic in confirming federal judges, wanting to prosecute the Little Sisters of the Poor, closing Catholic Hospitals who don’t join her union allies, and favoring tax paid abortion up until birth (in fact, she has twice voted against bills that would ensure that babies who lived through abortion procedures got medical care).
Harris has made her anti-Catholicism explicit by fighting against the confirmation of Brian Buescher in 2017 as a member of the US District Court, where he now sits. As Gingrich put it,
The most explicit example of Sen. Harris’s anti-Catholic bigotry was her treatment of now-US District Court Judge Brian Buescher during his confirmation hearings. Specifically, she questioned Buescher’s membership in the Knights of Columbus – a faith-based charitable organization which feeds the poor, assists in disaster relief around the globe, provides scholarships for struggling students, helps refugees fleeing violence and persecution, and a host of other philanthropic efforts.
Senator Harris joins an imposing list of Chinese spies, many of them from the heart of the dark state. As Pompeo was announcing the mounting crackdown on Confucius, the Justice Department confirmed the arrest of a twenty-year veteran of CIA.
It’s a target-rich environment.