Guest column: Why state Legislatures should heed China's influence in the US
The People’s Republic of China and its ruling Communist Party are the greatest national security challenge the United States has ever faced. Unlike the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party combines an authoritarian and expansionist ideology with a massive economy intertwined with the U.S. and nearly all of the world’s major powers. As the COVID-19 pandemic showed, global supply chains are dangerously interconnected, and China is at their center in far too many cases.
China has taken many of the Soviet Union’s old tricks and adapted them to the 21st century. While many observers are focused on Beijing’s military buildup, its threats against Taiwan and other U.S. partners in Asia, and its abysmal human rights record, China is actively seeking to undermine U.S. social, economic and governing institutions at home. Like the Soviets during the Cold War, the Chinese Communists understand that if they can weaken the United States internally, they are more likely to succeed in their goal of expanding Chinese influence in Asia and, ultimately, across the globe.
Beijing has been particularly successful at identifying the economic and financial leverage they can marshal against the United States, at the national, state and local levels. Most Americans do not realize that their hard-earned retirement savings are often being invested, through government pension funds and Wall Street money managers, in Chinese entities that directly support the Communist Party and its authoritarian agenda.
Until the Trump administration intervened, the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), retirement program for all federal government employees, was planning to invest about $5 billion of American workers’ savings in Chinese companies, many with direct ties to the Chinese military. The pension funds for public school teachers in New York and California were long invested in a company that made surveillance technology for the Chinese concentration camps in Xinjiang Province. California’s public employee retirement system has had a long and troubling connection to the Chinese Communist Party. These examples are likely just the tip of the iceberg.
Not only do such investments strengthen a potential adversary of the United States, they expose American workers and retirees to a dangerous and unstable financial and political system that lacks any transparency or oversight. American workers assume their retirement savings are being invested carefully and thoughtfully, not given to unaccountable Communist Party officials looking to gain an advantage over the United States. In the event of conflict between the U.S. and China, American retirees are dangerously exposed.
A similar danger is posed by the purchase of large amounts of American agricultural land by Chinese nationals. Oklahoma has seen thousands of acres of prime farmland purchased by mysterious entities, many of which have been traced to Chinese nationals, despite Oklahoma’s strict prohibitions against most foreign ownership of agricultural land. There has been considerable concern about Chinese involvement in marijuana cultivation, although the issue is much broader and more dangerous. Chinese ownership of Oklahoma’s agricultural land poses a significant food security issue in peacetime; in a conflict, it places critical parts of the state and national food supply under the control of a potential adversary.
The ways in which China seeks to exert influence over the United States, and states like Oklahoma, are long and diverse. From its efforts to steal cutting edge technology from our best research universities to recruiting scientists to move to China with their newest innovations to manipulating municipal governments through sister-city relationships and paid trips to China, Beijing is aggressively seeking to undermine democratic values and American security interests.
Yet far too many state and local officials believe this is simply a federal government issue. While the FBI says it opens a new counterintelligence investigation into China about every 12 hours, and Congress can more aggressively regulate foreign agricultural transactions, there is much that can be done at the state and local level. The Chinese Communist Party’s goal of undermining the American system of government is an attack on our institutions at every level, and it requires a proportional response.
The Oklahoma Legislature can start by getting a firm handle on the scope of the problem. At the federal level, Congress created the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2000 to do just that. A state-level equivalent, composed of experts from business, academia, state, local and tribal government, law enforcement and the military would evaluate all aspects of Oklahoma’s interaction with China and make recommendations to the Legislature and the governor. Protecting our state employees’ pensions, the sanctity of our agricultural land, and the productivity and innovation of our businesses and universities should be top of mind, and such a commission could advise elected officials on the best policies for the future.
The threat of the Chinese Communist Party is real and growing. Elected officials at all levels have an obligation to harden their communities against the real and dangerous influence of a predatory, authoritarian regime that is determined to undermine the American system of government and the well-being of all Americans.
Alexander B. Gray was most recently a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Oklahoma. He served at the White House under President Donald Trump, including as deputy assistant to the president and chief of staff of the National Security Council from 2019 to 2021.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Opinion: States should heed China's influence in the US
