NEW YORK’S CHINA SYNDROME

In the space of two days earlier this month, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) came out with two indictments that provide a snapshot of how foreign powers have used strategic corruption to attempt to shape US policy. One, the indictment of two Russian employees of Russian state-run media group RT, alleged that they funneled millions of dollars to an undisclosed US company that “published thousands of videos in furtherance of Russian interests”. Media outlets quickly pieced together the information in the complaint to report that the company involved was Tenet Media, a firm that specialized in amplifying right-wing and pro-Trump media commentators. The second indictment, however, received far less national press. It chronicled how a senior aide to the current and previous governors of New York allegedly acted on behalf of the Chinese government, to, among other things, quash meetings with Taiwanese officials and ensure that state officials did not condemn human rights abuses against China’s Uyghur minority. Arguably this second campaign, spanning years, may have done far more damage to American interests than RT’s recent meddling.

Returning to the RT indictments, US influencers like Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and several others have denied knowing the source of their funding (and CNN reports they are keeping the money for now, at least). They have said they are cooperating with the FBI. The affair says less about Russia’s meddling in America’s already poisonous political discourse and more about the fact that Kremlin narratives and the view of a powerful subset of one of our two major political parties have appeared to coincide so regularly. It also testifies to the lack of transparency and institutional controls in new media, which ironically, spends much of its time condemning traditional media for being in hock to establishment politics. None of this new; the Tenet media allegations just suggest it has become even more brazen in the run-up to the elections in November.

In the New York case, however, we see the direct subversion of a state that plays an outsized role in American foreign policy and rivals the corrupt influence Egypt was able to exert by paying millions of dollars to convicted former senator Bob Menendez, the former head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Beyond the obvious point that New York City hosts the United Nations, the state plays a critical role in regulating US financial institutions and the American arms of foreign banks. The state’s GDP of US$1.8 trillion in 2013 was only behind California and Texas and is similar to South Korea’s. Despite decades of companies fleeing to New Jersey or further afield to cut costs, dozens of multinationals are based in New York City or Westchester County directly north. In short, New York State matters.

Damage control

Compared to Menendez or Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), the US Congressman indicted in May for taking payments from an Azeri oil company and Mexican bank, the subject of the New York case is relatively obscure outside of Albany. Still, Linda Sun, 40, was a rising star of state politics, working 13 years in senior levels of state government until 2023 when she was terminated for misconduct, the New York Times reported, citing the press secretary of New York Governor Kathy Hochul. The indictment also included her husband, Chris Hu, a Queens-based businessman. It should be noted that media outlets have cited a lawyer for Sun summarily denying the charges laid out in the 60-page DOJ filing. But the DOJ is pulling no punches: the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York said that “the couple worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP,” the latter a reference to the Chinese Communist Party.

Whatever her public profile, the case demonstrates China’s ability to influence the executive of New York State for two successive administrations is a stunning national security breach the implications of which will be felt for years to come. But it is also only one of multiple recent cases in New York and the surrounding Tri-State region involving Chinese government attempts to exert control over the country’s largest city and the fourth largest state in population terms. This focus is not exclusive in recent months, although January’s conviction of a Los Angeles councilman for tax evasion and racketeering for helping Chinese billionaires seems more business than geopolitics.

In the Eastern District of New York, a federal court convicted a Queens resident in August who infiltrated New York-based Chinese dissident groups to spy for the CCP. Last year, the same court convicted three men for stalking a New Jersey family for the Chinese government. In April 2023, the FBI arrested three men on charges of running a secret police station for China in Manhattan (illegal in the US but not, notably, in Hungary). These cases stand alongside a running tally of 224 cases the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has logged since 2000 of instances of uncovered Chinese espionage operations in the US.

Strategic aims

The recent New York cases highlight a worrying expansion of Chinese ambition in their strategic corruption efforts in recent years. Attempts to acquire US technology for commercial or military purposes are nothing new (the CSIS has logged more than 1,200 cases of US companies suing Chinese entities over intellectual property theft). Unlike the high-profile cases of proven Egyptian or alleged Azeri influence of sitting legislators, the goal is not to procure weapons or change a single set of policies (in Azerbaijan’s case, US financial and political support of Armenia is critical for them but a niche policy for most Americans).

Rather, these cases paint a picture of a long-term and multifaceted influence campaign, as the Sun case indictment has enumerated, aimed at furthering strategic goals and protecting the CCP’s long-term hold on power. This includes downgrading Taiwan in US policy and political circles and sapping US commitment to protect the island in the event of a future Chinese attack. It aims to neuter campaigns aimed at blacklisting Chinese and other companies that benefit from Uyghur slave labor. And it seeks to infiltrate, bully and discredit the émigré Chinese opposition to the CCP in the US.

The closest comparison is the Soviet Union until the late 1980s and Russia today. But after the failure and exposure of the Illegals Operation in 2010, Russia has taken a cruder and more direct approach. Namely, it has a moonshot program of trying to ally itself with a faction in US politics and try to bring them and their policies into Congress and the White House. And like the Soviet moonshot, it is likely to fail. Even if one were to make the unproven (given his many differing statements on the matter) assumption that a future Trump administration would carry out policies favorable to Russia like defund Ukraine, it is far from clear that Congress would accede. The Chinese approach is deeper and broader. It does not assume a US party would be favorable to Chinese interests in any overt way. Rather, the Sun case – if she and her husband are convicted – demonstrates that insiders on the payroll can sabotage policies from the state level. The absence of a governor’s meeting with Taiwanese officials or the lack of a strong statement or state procurement law regarding Uyghur slave labor is far harder to track than paying off influencers. So is the infiltration of the democratic opposition to the CCP based in the US. Both Russian and Chinese influence operations pose clear and present dangers to democracy and rule of law at home and abroad. But while Russian strategic corruption efforts, accompanied by shells bursting on the battlefields of Ukraine, are a more immediate threat, those conducted by the CCP are arguably more insidious – and thus more difficult to counter.