Op-Ed: Rokita, Desantis-type comments on Chinese influence are politics. We need policy.
Washington’s China policies dominate the headlines, but last year saw a bevy of measures and laws in states such as Florida, Indiana and Missouri aimed at curbing domestic Chinese influence. This year is likely to see more such efforts.
Amid worsening U.S.-China tensions and documented overseas political interference by the Chinese Communist Party, there are valid reasons for subnational authorities in the U.S. to scrutinize their communities’ engagement with organizations and individuals employed by the Chinese party-state.
In several U.S. states, however, efforts to counteract Chinese influence have been overly politicized and insufficiently targeted, involving crude and harmful messaging.
The widely criticized call by Texas state House candidate Shelley Luther to ban Chinese students from all universities in the state, accompanied by an appeal for “No more Communists!,” is just the tip of the iceberg as far as inflammatory rhetoric.
Indiana state Attorney General Todd Rokita asserted that “the Chinese Communist Party operates in the state of Indiana via Valparaiso University” while launching an investigation into the school’s China-funded Confucius Institute in August 2021, even as his office declined to offer evidence of malfeasance. Days earlier, Rokita had used the term “China Virus” in a message to his staff.
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Of course, state and local engagement with China—in the form of economic development partnerships, educational cooperation, and people-to-people exchanges—has created potential vulnerabilities alongside its many benefits. As cities and states have deepened commercial ties with China, welcomed scores of Chinese students, and established forums for cultural exchange, a small subset of Chinese government-linked actors have sought opportunities to access sensitive information or exert political influence.
Federal investigators in recent years have prosecuted scientific researchers of Chinese and U.S. nationality failing to disclose direct links to the Chinese state or military. Organizations such as the U.S.-China People’s Friendship Association, which coordinates sister-city relationships, and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, which supports overseas academic communities, serve important social functions but have connections to China’s foreign policy system and the CCP’s United Front bureaucracy. They can be instrumentalized to promote political goals such as limiting Taiwan’s international space and stifling criticism of China’s human rights record.
But if state and local authorities overlooked such risks in the past, many are overreacting to them now. Adopting the hyperbole and blunt-force tactics of the former Donald Trump administration, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Rokita-style efforts to curb inappropriate Chinese influence in states and localities show a concern for populist point-scoring rather than responsible policymaking. They do a disservice to the interests of U.S. states and localities in three ways.
First, and most obviously, they fan a hyper-nationalism that spills over into xenophobia and guilt-by-association politics. Incidents of anti-Asian racism spiked under the Trump administration and its incendiary China rhetoric. A campaign by federal agencies and universities to crack down on China-linked scientific espionage and intellectual property theft has produced several convictions but also significant collateral damage, unfairly ensnaring scholars such as Anming Hu and causing large numbers of talented Chinese researchers to consider leaving the U.S. amid perceived racial animus. Authorities responding to perceived Chinese government meddling in states and localities should be mindful of these risks, minimizing the use of charged language and innuendo. Instead, state-level policy discussions should be oriented around specific and verified threats of foreign interference.
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Second, overzealous state-level policies toward Chinese influence render partisan what should be non-partisan and thus complicate federal-state-local cooperation. Both parties and the vast majority of U.S. citizens doubtless support limits on what types of activities authoritarian governments can sponsor within our boundaries. Insisting on transparency and reciprocity in state and local engagement with Chinese official actors and keeping track of who works in highly sensitive research facilities is not a political wedge issue; it is common sense. To effectively respond to Chinese government influence and espionage activity, coordination across different levels of government, different state and local jurisdictions, and both parties is crucial.
Third, there is a risk of throwing “the baby” of subnational U.S.-China cooperation out with “the bathwater.”. The relationships states and localities have built with Chinese counterparts support regional economic development, deepen
mutual
understanding, accentuate areas of bilateral cooperation such as climate policy and counter-narcotics work, and provide new angles from which to reimagine a deadlocked U.S.-China relationship.
Indiana, where I reside, exported $3.9 billion in goods and services to China in 2020 and the state’s universities, industries, and local communities benefit greatly from the presence of talented Chinese students and professionals. What is crucial is that subnational contacts with Chinese official actors are pursued in an informed fashion with proper oversight. This requires state and local policymakers to further educate themselves on contemporary China and U.S.-China relation and to set clear guidelines for what types of engagement are to be encouraged, undertaken with caution, or limited.
Properly conceived and carefully conducted, state and local interaction with China can be a boon to U.S. communities and a stabilizing force in U.S.-China relations. Badly executed, state-level policies toward China will amplify the nastiest parts of both U.S. domestic politics and U.S.-China competition.
Kyle Jaros is an associate professor of global affairs at the Keough School of Global Affairs and the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. An expert in Chinese politics, Jaros is currently a fellow in the National Committee on US-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Op-ed: Chinese government influence in Indiana policy
