The following are remarks from Secretary of State Pompeo at the Wisconsin State Capitol.
As Americans across the country were dealing with the pandemic that was released from Wuhan, they’ve been worried about their lives, their livelihoods. Senator Roth got an email from Wu Ting, a person who was in the consul at China’s consulate in Chicago – it landed in his email inbox.
Ms. Wu stated that she was “responsible for China-Wisconsin relations.”
The email included a draft resolution that she asked the Senator to pass – in this chamber – praising China’s response to the coronavirus.
I want to just take this second to read a few excerpts. She wrote:
“Whereas China’s action has been critical to the global fight against the epidemic, and China has adopted unprecedented and rigorous measures for disease control and preventio…Whereas China has been transparent and quick in sharing key information of the virus with the World Health Organization and the international community…”
Roger rightfully, thankfully, deleted the email, thought it was a hoax. I can tell you that the description, how she described the actions that the Chinese Communist Party took in response to the virus, were in fact all false.
Of course, he got a follow-up email. She helpfully “attached a revised version of the proposed resolution.”
Roger wrote a one-word response. He said: “nuts.” That has a lot of American history, that word and that response, and the chutzpah from an American who understood what it is that’s in the best interest of our country.
Look, the Chinese Communist Party knew early on how virulent the coronavirus was that originated in Wuhan. They did what authoritarian regimes do. They oppress – suppressed information, they censored, they disappeared courageous whistleblowers and journalists who tried to sound the alarm all across the world. And they allowed people from Wuhan to travel to Italy and abroad.
Ms. Wu was asking that we collectively whitewash the culpability for a global pandemic that’s killed more than 200,000 Americans, now nearly a million people across the globe, and has sent the global economy into a tailspin.
Roger didn’t take the bait. Instead, Roger presented a resolution stating that “the Communist Party of China deliberately and intentionally misled the world on the Wuhan coronavirus.” It’s true.
But here’s my question, and here’s where I want to launch today: How many of you would have seen that and thought something different or maybe even worked with her? I’m sure she’s a nice person.
It’s an uncomfortable set of questions when we think about what the Chinese Communist Party’s doing through their embassies here in the United States. But what happened here in Wisconsin is happening all across the world. It’s happening all across the United States. It’s happening in statehouses all across America.
In February of this year, I delivered a set of remarks to the National Governors Association about Chinese Communist Party influence operations right here inside the United States of America. And then subsequently, I organized a group – National Security Advisor O’Brien, FBI Director Chris Wray, Attorney General Bill Barr have all talked about this same set of challenges that we face here in the United States.
I want to distinguish importantly two things. First, look, plenty of countries try to influence our politics and our culture, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not worried about the Alliance Francaise or the National Italian American organization or an Irish group.
They’re fundamentally different than what the Chinese Communist Party is doing. It has a much more sinister view of this engagement. The party and its proxies aim to make Americans receptive to Beijing’s form of authoritarianism.
Now, I use this language carefully. I talk about the Chinese Communist Party because I have a second distinction I want to draw, which is between that party and the people of China, between the leaders of China and those who want to live in China as free peoples in peace and prosperity and take care of their families in the same way that we all do here in the United States.
Let me give you another data point on the Chinese Communist Party’s aims. In August, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping told a group of government economists and sociologists in Beijing, quote, “We must actively develop cooperation with all countries, regions and enterprises willing to cooperate with us, including states, localities and enterprises in[side] the United States.”
As the Secretary of State and as the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, let me to translate.
Xi knows that the federal government is pushing back again the Chinese Communist Party here in the United States and its malign influence, and it sees that here in the United States, and increasingly around the world, it can use subnational entities to circumvent America’s sovereignty. He thinks local leaders may well be the weak link.
For him, when he uses the word “cooperation” and “opening up” he means that the Chinese Communist Party wants to create arrangements that benefit the Chinese Communist Party. We know this because for decades, the Chinese Communist Party deployed friendly language while stealing from our innovators – property, jobs, wealth – from here in the United States. We know that they built their military strength and that they have co-opted elites all around the world.
Later in that same set of remarks, General Secretary Xi said that in fact he explicitly confirms that the purpose of his entreaties is outreach, is to put China “in an undefeatable and invincible position.” His words, not mine.
The Chinese Communist party views itself as the true vanguard of Marxist-Leninist thought, which proposes that communist countries like theirs must struggle, must struggle and prevail against capitalist nations like ours.
This isn’t the Cold War. This is different in kind, to be sure. I was a young soldier; I patrolled the border between East and West Germany. This is different.
It’s why we have to have a conversation in our state legislatures about this China and this China challenge. And it’s important here in Wisconsin as it is in Washington.
The good news. The good news is that we’re starting to have these conversations all around America, and not a moment too soon. President Trump has made clear the expectations he has for our government, our administration, and how we’ll respond to this challenge to protect the American people, to create prosperity and grow our economy.
But we watch. We watch the CCP campaigns targeting state-level officials, local interests. We’ve seen them at PTA meetings. They have been in full swing for years, and they’re increasing in intensity.
Much of that activity revolves around pressing state governments not to recognize, trade with, or otherwise engage with Taiwan.
But that’s not all. I’ll give another example; and I could give many. In 2017, a California state senator proposed a bill merely expressing support for the Falun Gong practitioners in America and in China. It was oratory; it was a rhetorical resolution. These people that he was speaking to have suffered as tremendously under the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdowns on religious freedom as any others.
The Chinese consulate – that is, Chinese diplomats – in San Francisco responded by writing a letter to the state legislature. It denounced Falun Gong as an “evil cult” and claimed that the bill might “deeply damage the cooperative relations between the State of California and China, and seriously hurt the feeling of Chinese people and the vast Chinese community in[side of] California.”
Unfortunately, the California State Senate bowed to the CCP pressure and shelved the proposed bill.
It’s just one example. The reality is that most every state legislature in the country has probably received a letter from the CCP much like Senator Roth’s email as part of coordinated propaganda campaign. The Chinese consulate in New York, for instance, is incredibly politically active.
Then there is the next level down – CCP influence and espionage campaigns at the municipal and city levels.
Just this week, you would have read in the papers the Department of Justice charged a New York Police Department officer and Army reservist with allegedly acting as an illegal agent of China. He is accused of reporting on the activities of Tibetans living in the United States back to the Chinese Communist Party. How telling. He even provided CCP officials with access to senior-level NYPD personnel through invitations to official events. Sound familiar to anyone? He told his handler that officials in Beijing, quote, “should be happy…because you have stretched your reach into the police,” end of quote.
And we see it all over. We see it all over in America in sister-city programs – like the ones in Door County, La Crosse, Milwaukee, and Richland Center. They fall under the authority of something called the Chinese People’s Association of Friendship with Foreign Countries. Sounds benign. But that group is part of China’s United Front Work Department – the CCP’s official overseas propaganda tool. It’s one of the CCP’s three “Magic Weapons,” in the words of Chairman Mao, along with “armed struggle” and “party-building.”
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In other words, it may have “friendly” in its title, but it is not so when it comes to American interests.
But the federal government can’t police every bit of this predatory and coercive behavior. We need your help. And the beauty of our federal system is that we don’t have to. You all can take up this mantle.
Protecting American interests requires vigilance. Vigilance starts with you – and all state legislators, regardless of party.
Know that when you are approached by a Chinese diplomat, it is likely not in the spirit of cooperation or friendship.
Know that if you’re offered a trip to China when the pandemic travel restrictions are lifted, that you should ask who is paying for the trip, and if that person is linked – directly or indirectly – to the Chinese Communist Party.
Know too that these approaches may happen from Chinese nationals or Americans working with CCP-linked interests.
When you’re in your districts, make sure other local officials know of these risks as well.
And there’s a lot you can do. There’s a lot you can do in this very chamber.
You can pass laws to codify closer cooperation with federal agencies to assist them in the protection of intellectual property and investment screening and counter-infiltration operations.
You can ignore CCP threats and encourage mayors and businesspeople to engage more broadly around the world.
And as I told the nation’s governors, you can scrutinize your state pension funds. As of its last report, the Wisconsin Retirement System is invested in China Mobile and China Telecom. Both are state-owned giants and they’re an integral part of Chinese Orwellian surveillance system. Do you want your teachers, your firefighters, your policemen invested in those kinds of activities?
You can also work to ensure your state colleges aren’t improperly influenced by CCP-linked organizations like the Confucius Institutes and that pro-democracy students from China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan studying in Wisconsin are not harassed. We want them here. Make sure they’re not being threatened by pro-Beijing elements on your campuses.
Telling the truth about China isn’t remotely partisan. It’s principled. And it protects our people.
Remember Ms. Wu at the consulate?
Well, on April 2nd of this year, she forwarded a letter from her husband to the consul general in Chicago, to the district director of a great Wisconsin congressman named Mike Gallagher.
The letter is full of CCP propaganda and disinformation about the pandemic, just like the one that was sent to Senator Roth.
But what caught my eye in this missive was her declaration. She said, “We are firmly opposed to racial discrimination and xenophobia against the local Chinese community and stigmatization of China and the Chinese people over [this] virus.”
They try to shape the storyline. They want you to believe that America’s righteous anger at the CCP over its handling of the coronavirus has something to do with race. It does not. It has everything to do with citizens who are no longer with us, children who aren’t able to go back to school, and jobs that have been lost.
And importantly, the Chinese Communist Party knows this. The CCP thinks it can drown out American cries for accountability with shouts of racism. We won’t let that happen. We can’t.
The CCP wants to foment the kind of strife we’ve seen in Minneapolis and Portland and Kenosha.
That’s disgusting. We can’t let it happen.
I’m confident it won’t. I’m always an optimist about America.
There’s a reason that we remain the greatest nation in the history of civilization. Because Beijing’s best-laid plans are no match for American determination.
The Trump administration rejects the idea that Beijing is destined for hegemony. No top-down totalitarian regime can ever best the ingenuity, will, power of the American people.
We know that our system is more attractive to others. I see it wherever I go. People want to be connected to the United States of America. They want to join with us freely because they know that we too stand for freedom alongside them.
And we’re not going to allow the CCP to interfere in our domestic politics either. We’ve put restrictions on Chinese diplomats that mirror the ones American diplomats are subject to inside of China. It’s remarkable. For years our diplomats were – couldn’t move around in Beijing, couldn’t meet with local officials, while Chinese diplomats ran free all across our country. Fairness, reciprocity, equality – that’s how diplomats will be treated in the Trump administration.
We want to confirm American business is successful above all because of its moral standards. We’ve warned our businesses and universities to make sure that they aren’t unwittingly supporting the mass human rights abuses happening in Xinjiang province right now even as we’re here together today.
Right now the FBI opens a China-related intellectual property theft case about once every 10 hours. Staggering. We at the State Department just revoked visas for about 1,000 Chinese nationals suspected of raiding our intellectual property on university campuses all across America.
We want to make sure we protect our children from the CCP’s malign influence. We’ve formally designated the Confucius Institute’s U.S. headquarters as a foreign mission, and encouraged universities to shutter the doors on these programs quickly.
And right now the State Department is reviewing the activities of two United Front Work Department organizations operating inside the United States: one, the U.S.-China Friendship Association; the other the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification.
These organizations include or have apparently attempted to exert influence on groups all across the public sphere, including in our schools, in our business associations, impacting local politicals – politicians, media outlets, and Chinese groups here inside the United States.
We want to make sure that we get it all right, that we’re fighting to protect our wallets, our hearts, our minds, and our freedoms.
Each of us – each of us as public officials must never be complacent or complicit in the CCP’s campaign to fracture American society and to silence American voices.
Every one of us – and I know you’ll join me in this – must stand up for our sovereignty and for American values themselves.
Photo: Wisconsin State Capitol
