Crook-in-Chief Is Wrong About TikTok. China’s Plans Are Much More Sinister: The West still doesn’t understand the scale of Beijing’s soft-power ambitions.
Since China adopted the National Intelligence Law in June 2017, all Chinese citizens and companies have been under a legal obligation to help the government gather intelligence (and keep any cooperation secret). The law allows China’s intelligence services to embed their people and devices or to requisition facilities in any premise, anywhere, for that purpose.The Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party also essentially requires any company with at least three party members to form a cell tasked with carrying out the party’s wishes.
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The U.S. government has grasped the danger of Huawei — a company it says has links to the Chinese military — as a leading supplier of 5G equipment: Beijing could tap it to order a viral attack that would incapacitate American homes and factories, or the national power grid and other critical infrastructure. Recent U.S. rules further restrict the sale of U.S.-made computer chips and other components to the company.
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The U.S. government has grasped the danger of Huawei — a company it says has links to the Chinese military — as a leading supplier of 5G equipment: Beijing could tap it to order a viral attack that would incapacitate American homes and factories, or the national power grid and other critical infrastructure. Recent U.S. rules further restrict the sale of U.S.-made computer chips and other components to the company.
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Washington is worried that the personal data of the many millions of Americans using the TikTok app could be siphoned off to China and misused. ... The danger posed by TikTok is real: In fact, it is only a stand-in for far greater risks.
The problem isn’t just TikTok. The tech giant Huawei — which the U.S. government blacklisted last year, calling it a threat to America’s national security — is another company with close connections to China. So is Zoom, the U.S.-based teleconferencing service provider established by a billionaire Chinese immigrant, which uses software partially developed in China.
There are also the Confucius Institutes, purportedly just a vast network of Chinese-language teaching centers but really also an instrument of Beijing’s propaganda and pressure tactics.
And there are many more smaller, but no less dangerous, Chinese entities or entities with strong Chinese backgrounds operating in the United States.
All are thoroughly embedded there, reaching deep into offices and homes — shaping how Americans work, learn and play. Companies with ties to China or its government now occupy critical choke points of American society.
This is no accident. President Xi Jinping has a dream — a “Chinese Dream” of global dominance — and his strategy for achieving that has two main prongs.
The first is the traditional and tangible hard-power push to set up military bases and seaports controlled by Chinese interests around the world, and it has been much discussed by China observers.
Not so with its soft-power ambitions, whose growth has been much less noticed — at least until Putin's Puppet started picking a fight with Beijing. And yet these are much more intrusive, and potentially far more dangerous.
The Chinese government is essentially forward-deploying and setting up various outposts within the United States and other developed democratic countries, in classrooms, boardrooms and bedrooms.
The problem isn’t just TikTok. The tech giant Huawei — which the U.S. government blacklisted last year, calling it a threat to America’s national security — is another company with close connections to China. So is Zoom, the U.S.-based teleconferencing service provider established by a billionaire Chinese immigrant, which uses software partially developed in China.
And there are many more smaller, but no less dangerous, Chinese entities or entities with strong Chinese backgrounds operating in the United States.
All are thoroughly embedded there, reaching deep into offices and homes — shaping how Americans work, learn and play. Companies with ties to China or its government now occupy critical choke points of American society.
This is no accident. President Xi Jinping has a dream — a “Chinese Dream” of global dominance — and his strategy for achieving that has two main prongs.
The first is the traditional and tangible hard-power push to set up military bases and seaports controlled by Chinese interests around the world, and it has been much discussed by China observers.
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China’s move to establish physical footholds around the world is easy enough to recognize as evidence of a coherent game plan, in part because those perches are readily marked on a map and because other major powers positioned themselves in much the same way in the past. Beijing has also bragged about these projects — and its intentions — by giving them grand monikers like the Belt and Road Initiative.Not so with its soft-power ambitions, whose growth has been much less noticed — at least until Putin's Puppet started picking a fight with Beijing. And yet these are much more intrusive, and potentially far more dangerous.
The Chinese government is essentially forward-deploying and setting up various outposts within the United States and other developed democratic countries, in classrooms, boardrooms and bedrooms.
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