RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Chinese Communist Party seems to have been buying up America. On July 23, 2023, US Rep. Mile Collins (R-GA) said on the floor of the House of Representatives:

“China owns $870 billion in U.S. Treasuries that finance our debt. And they either own or have a huge portion of the Chicago Stock Exchange, AMC movie theaters, General Electric’s appliance division, General Motors, and Smithfield Foods just to name a few.

“On another alarming note, folks. China owns 384,000 acres of American agricultural land. That’s a 30% increase just since 2019. And on top of that, they own land near an air force base in North Dakota. That’s a clear threat to our national security and that’s what the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill is going to address.”

In 2023, Texas State Senator Lois Kolkhorst filed a bill, SB 147 that would ban “citizens, governments and entities from China, Iran, North Korea and Russia from purchasing land in the state, part of what she and other Republicans have said will help stem foreign influence in Texas.”

Pastor Bob Fu was a student leader in China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. After fleeing to the US, he founded ChinaAid to promote religious freedom and the rule of law in China. On March 7, 2023, Fu wrote regarding the bill that “SB 147 is about the Chinese Communist Party, not Chinese people.”

“[In China] internal repression has dramatically increased with an extensive domestic surveillance system, a social credit system to suppress dissent, and concentration camps where the CCPs detain, re-educate, sterilize, de-Islamify, and kill China’s ethnic Muslim minority.

“What I fear most Americans do not realize the ambitions and goals of Xi Jinping. He and his thugs wish to bring our great nation under his control, and he’ll do whatever he can to accomplish that goal.

“The CCP not only poses existential threats to our freedom and way of life but also is actively exporting its threats transactionally in our soils. Emboldened by their economic power, the Chinese government seeks to weaken the United States through espionage and surveillance. They maintain control of Chinese citizens (work/education visa holders, lawful permanent residents/”green card” holders) and former Chinese citizens living in the U.S. through their embassy, consulates and overseas police stations. They monitor and harass those in the U.S. and threaten to penalize their families in China.

“The CCP dug its teeth deep into Texas long before anyone knew about overseas Chinese police stations. They financially infiltrated our great universities and institutions. They have been and wish to continue buying land in our state, particularly property near our military bases and other sensitive facilities and infrastructure. Any sensible person sees through this agenda and any effort against this bill as insanity.

“We cannot allow the CCP to build its physical bases on Texas soil any more than we can tolerate CCP spy balloons hovering in our sovereign country’s air space surveilling our military bases and strategic nuclear installations.

“As they seek to steal our military and industrial secrets, they also collect information to exert control over individuals by monitoring all activity, looking for those who can be bribed or extorted. This is not a hypothetical notion: from September to November 2020, the CCP organized groups to harass and stalk my family home in Midland. A favorite tactic of the CCP is to contact Chinese individuals living in the United States and threaten their family members back in China unless they do as the CCP says.

“It’s time for fellow Texans to wake up to the fact that the CCP and its established malignant groups have already penetrated deep into our society.”

Fu, said in January 2024:

“… Communist Party leaders… they are also suffering under this brutal dictator Xi Jinping. Nobody’s safe, you know, many of his right-hand men, left-hand men are being ransomed, imprisoned, forced to commit suicide. You’re talking about hundreds, many, I mean senior leaders end up now in prison or being killed, so nobody feels safe in the Communist Party regime.”

The totalitarian ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) includes instilling and exploiting fear to create discipline and generally control every step its population takes. Chinese President Xi Jinping has long engaged in efforts to try to export his dictatorial methods wherever possible. Perhaps this ideology was best described by George Orwell, who wrote: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

Such an oppressive regime based on fear, punishment, and total control of human behavior would bring an abrupt end to a free way of life. The international community needs to stand up to this ideology that virtually enslaves humanity by using methods that might seem benign — such as technology — presumably so they will fly under the radar before anyone takes notice.

For Communist China, America’s 170 million TikTok users are the equivalent of having 170 million spy balloons.

Meanwhile, cargo cranes from China with hidden listening devices are installed in US ports, and Huawei is an open line that could “disrupt US nuclear arsenal communications.”

Fu, in a recent interview with the CBN News, calls China “a real police state”. “There are two face recognition cameras following each citizen everywhere in China,” he said. Facial recognition cameras, he went on, are used to track every move of every person everywhere.

In a comprehensive report, journalist Alfred Ng wrote:

“China’s facial recognition system logs nearly every single citizen in the country, with a vast network of cameras across the country. A database leak in 2019 gave a glimpse of how pervasive China’s surveillance tools are — with more than 6.8 million records from a single day, taken from cameras positioned around hotels, parks, tourism spots and mosques, logging details on people as young as 9 days old…

“Chinese officials have used surveillance tools to publicly shame people wearing sleepwear in public, calling it ‘uncivilized behavior.’

“The punishing of these minor offenses is by design, surveillance experts said. The threat of public humiliation through facial recognition helps Chinese officials direct over a billion people toward what it considers acceptable behavior, from what you wear to how you cross the street.

“‘The idea is that the authorities are trying to put in place comprehensive surveillance and behavioral engineering on a mass scale,’ said Maya Wang, a senior researcher on China at the Human Rights Watch. ‘The authorities want to create a kind of society that would be very easy for them to manage.’

“The idea that China’s facial recognition would automatically put your name and photo on a billboard for jaywalking and privately text you a fine instills fear in people to behave a certain way, Wang said.”

Chinese officials have also forced churches to install cameras on pulpits and at church entrances. Churches that refuse to install cameras are shut down.

Jin Mingri, who is also known as Ezra Jin, was the pastor of the Zion Church of Beijing, with nearly 1,500 members, one of the largest house churches in China’s capital. In 2018, the authorities shut down the church for refusing to install surveillance cameras in its sanctuary and put the pastor under house arrest. The church was banned, and its materials confiscated, reported Reuters.

According to Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China:

“‘After the cameras were installed, nobody dares to talk about politics, the government, Hong Kong, or any other such topics in the church,’ said a deacon from a Three-Self church in Guangdong Province‘s Shenzhen city. ‘Churches hire security guards to disperse congregants talking in groups, for fear that they say something against the government, and the cameras would capture this. Such incidents may cause a lot of troubles for churches.’

“‘Three cameras have been installed in our small church, watching us at all times,’ a church member complained. ‘We are horrified. We have no freedom at all under this surveillance.’

“‘Over the past few years, the government has intensified control over churches,’ the director of a Three-Self church in Henan’s Luoyang city commented. ‘Having facial recognition cameras in churches means complete domination.'”

In 2022, a New York Times analysis of more than 100,000 government documents found that China’s ambition to collect digital and biological data from its citizens is more expansive and invasive than previously known.

According to a 2019 report by CNBC, China’s surveillance tech was fast spreading globally:

“The world’s second-largest economy has built a vast surveillance state comprised of millions of cameras powered by facial recognition software. The devices, perched on lamp posts and outside buildings and streets, are able to recognize individuals.

“Some of China’s most valuable technology firms have been involved in such projects across the country. But this technology is now being exported as the nation’s technology firms expand their global footprint.

“Chinese tech companies — particularly Huawei, Hikvision, Dahua, and ZTE — supply artificial intelligence surveillance technology in 63 countries, according to a September report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank. Of those nations, 36 have signed onto China’s massive infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, the report said, adding that Huawei supplies technology to the highest number of countries.

“Some of these so-called ‘smart city’ projects, which include surveillance technologies, are underway in Western countries, particularly in Europe, including Germany, Spain and France, according to analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

‘Samantha Hoffman, a fellow at ASPI’s Cyber Centre, cited laws in China that appear to compel Chinese firms to hand over data to the government, if asked.

Hoffman said that what matters is who has access to the collected data:

“‘If it’s a Chinese company like Huawei… data goes back to China and can be used by party in whatever way that it chooses.’

“‘I think we don’t even quite understand the full scale of the problem that we are dealing with when it comes to Chinese surveillance technology when it is exported. It’s not just that other regimes can use it in similar ways, it’s that when it’s exported the (Chinese Communist) Party can attach its interests as well,’ Hoffman added.”

In 2019, a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute highlighted other concerns from China exporting its surveillance tech, including being able to undermine democracies, and to get an edge on new technologies and the military.

“You know, domestically and globally, it (Chinese Communist Party) plans to use technology as [a] way to both protect and expand its power,” Hoffman said. “Globally, the implications of that are that the party is trying to reshape global governance in a way that… will ensure the party’s power.”

Hikvision and Dahua are Chinese companies that currently dominate the business of video surveillance.

Deutsche Welle reported on March 29, 2023:

“[W]hile Chinese companies like Huawei are increasingly seen as a security threat in European countries, the two surveillance giants have received relatively little attention – even as their equipment watches over airports, train stations and even government buildings all over the world. Tens of thousands of Hikvision devices are currently in use in Germany, including in police stations and ministries, according to recent media reports.

“The Chinese government owns parts of both companies, and their presence in critical infrastructure has led to worries about potential espionage. Critics warn that their systems may have built-in back doors, through which Beijing could secretly syphon off sensitive data.

‘”If we look at the Chinese laws, it is very clear,’ says Antonia Hmaidi, a researcher at Berlin’s Mercator Institute for China Studies. ‘Every Chinese company has to cooperate with the government and hand over data, if asked. This includes data stored in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] that was gathered abroad.'”

Meanwhile, since last year, there has been a huge influx of Chinese citizens illegally entering the United States from the southern border.

“The number of migrants arriving at the southern border is unprecedented,” reported CBS News on February 4. The fastest growing group among them are Chinese migrants.

In 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 37,000 Chinese citizens were apprehended crossing illegally from Mexico into the U.S.

Pastor Bob Fu, founder of ChinaAid, confirms these reports:

“I was teaching English in the Communist Party School before I was arrested in Beijing as an underground Church leader, so I know how the communists operate. I mean we know that they will not lose any chance of taking advantage of this open border policy, so in the past 12 months or so over 25,000 military aged Chinese men crossed the border illegally from Mexico to Texas.

“I’m very sure some of them were deliberately sent by the Chinese Communist Party security apparatus as sleeping cells, as terrorists, as a future kind of disturbers or instigators. So something has to be done to stop this [open border policy].”

This year, so far, more than 24,200 Chinese citizens have entered the U.S. illegally across the southern border, plus more than 5,000 across the US northern border, for a total of more than 66,000 for 2023-24 so far. Even if just 1% of them are here to subvert America, that amounts to more than 660 potential saboteurs.

“All warfare is based on deception,” wrote Sun Tzu in The Art of War.

“Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”

Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.