The Democratic fanfare over every Russian attempt to influence American elections is a convenient tool to use against the GOP. Were the concerns sincere, however, it would lead to a deep Democratic reflection on the far greater influence China has on our government and, more specifically, on the Democratic Party itself.
President Joe Biden’s Justice Department made a big show of calling out Russia for trying to involve itself in the 2024 elections. That includes recent indictments against two Russian nationals who were funneling money to an American company to pay conservative “influencers” for favorable content on social media.
Russia’s attempts to wade into American political waters are well-documented, and they are weak. The grand 2016 incursion that Democrats complained cost them the election amounted to a bunch of memes that almost nobody actually saw. None of that stopped the Democratic media parade of “Russian collusion” stories that painted former President Donald Trump and the rest of the GOP as beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While Russia spends its time and money on internet-obsessed conservative podcasters and social media memes, China has been getting far more bang for its buck. Federal prosecutors recently brought charges against Linda Sun, who served as an aide for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and deputy chief of staff to his successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY).
Sun is accused of using her position to sabotage a meeting between New York state officials and representatives of the Taiwanese government. She allegedly pushed Cuomo and Hochul to praise the Chinese government during the COVID-19 pandemic, for which it was responsible. She is accused of pushing Hochul not to mention human rights in a Lunar New Year video and of providing “unauthorized invitation letters from the governor’s office that helped Chinese officials enter the U.S.”
Hochul and Cuomo haven’t been the only targets, either. A Chinese agent managed to get close to Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), formerly a member of the House Intelligence Committee, to the point that she helped place an intern in his office. The late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was once the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had a Chinese spy working for her for 20 years.
All of this is far closer contact between Democrats and Chinese operatives than anything that has been proven between Republicans and Russia — recall that special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. That is before you even get to the questionable business ties that President Joe Biden and his family have with China and the fact that Biden has been soft on the Chinese Communist Party for his entire political career, even asserting during his presidential campaign that China is “not bad folks, folks.”
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, also has ties to China. Walz honeymooned there, has visited around 30 times, has heaped praise on the Chinese government’s handling of society, and helped secure funding for a medical research center that has a history of working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab that likely gave the world COVID-19.
China’s incursion into American society does not stop with politics, either. China has been operating secret police stations on foreign soil around the world, including in New York City, designed to find and harass Chinese dissidents or fugitives of the Chinese government. American universities have also partnered with Chinese state-run centers known as Confucius Institutes, a far more effective and invasive foreign influence operation than Russia funneling money to conservative social media figures or boosting memes from bots.
Democrats do not seem to think so, though. Biden threw out a Trump-era proposal that would require universities and K-12 schools with foreign exchange programs to disclose financial ties they have to Confucius Institutes.
As another example, take Florida’s attempts to ban Chinese land grabs. China has been buying up American land near military bases and acres of American farmland, posing national security threats in the form of espionage and jeopardizing American food security. Florida, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), passed a law banning Chinese nationals, and citizens of a select few other enemies of American values, such as Venezuela and, yes, Russia, from buying farmland or properties within 10 miles of military installations.
This seems like an important matter on which the president should be leading, but instead, Biden’s Justice Department has called on the courts to strike it down, asserting that allowing Chinese nationals to buy up large chunks of farmland or land adjacent to military installations will “undermine constitutional rights” and “will not advance the State’s purported goal of increasing public safety.”
Now, picture for a second that any of this was flipped. Pretend that it was Trump’s Justice Department fighting against laws to stop Russian nationals from buying up land around American military bases. Or that Russian spies were found in the offices of DeSantis or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Or that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate, had a long history of vacationing in Russia and securing funding for groups working with Russian state medical labs that caused a global pandemic.
Or, imagine for a second that Trump allowed a Russian spy balloon to float over the country, with a view of sensitive military sites, and refused to shoot it down until it completed its journey. How do you think the reaction would compare to Democrats forgetting about the Chinese spy balloon Biden watched traverse the country the day after it happened?
By every available measurement, China poses a bigger threat to American interests abroad and to politics on American soil than Russia. Even if you stake your claim on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine being the single most important issue of our lifetime, as Democrats are wont to do now in their only effort to pretend they aren’t weak on the global stage, the fact remains that China is a “decisive enabler,” according to NATO, and that China is looking to initiate a conflict for the exact same reason as Russia with its goal of conquering Taiwan.
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The disproportionate focus on Russia coupled with the relative silence on China from Democrats and their media allies would be bad enough on its own, given just how deeply ingrained China is in our politics along with our culture through Hollywood, the NBA, and other cultural institutions. But the use of national security as a partisan tool, used to claim that “Putin co-opted the Republican Party,” while Democratic politicians have actually been co-opted by Chinese agents infiltrating their staffs and influencing their rhetoric, and, possibly, their policies, makes the whole exercise all the more obnoxious.
If Democrats truly want to focus on foreign influence operations targeting our political systems, then it is well past time for a reevaluation of the party’s stance on China and why its prominent politicians are so susceptible to Chinese operations. After all, as Democrats have said since Trump came onto the scene, it is important that we put “country over party” when it comes to our politics. And no, the country in question is not China.