“China – Communist Slave State”

In early 2013, as Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping prepared to assume the Chinese presidency, very few people in the West had any idea what kind of leader he was. In January of that year, the New York Times’ Nick Kristof, an experienced China correspondent, wrote that Xi “will spearhead a resurgence of economic reform, and probably some political easing as well.”

It was a radically mistaken assessment. But even inside the U.S. government, knowledge of China—and its intensions—was at a low point. During the 2000s, U.S. intelligence had operated with relative confidence against Beijing. But during China’s biggest political transition in decades, American officials were looking through an increasingly opaque glass.

The Chinese regime “struck paydirt” when one of its alleged spies got close to U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), said Bill Gertz, who is the national security correspondent for The Washington Times and author of the book “Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy.”

The alleged Chinese spy, Fang Fang, was the subject of an investigative Axios report detailing how she allegedly posed as a U.S. university student to focus on up-and-coming U.S. officials in the San Francisco Bay Area between 2011 and 2015. She was allegedly working for the Ministry of State Security, China’s chief intelligence agency.

Bob Iger, executive chairman of Disney, is reportedly “at the top of President-elect Joe Biden’s wish list” for several key ambassadorship positions, including the U.S. mission in China.

Such a pick would be an inversion of norms on Biden’s part. The allotment of ambassadorships in recent years has followed an unspoken set of rules: “difficult” assignments such as Russia or Saudi Arabia are given to career diplomats and political appointees with relevant experience, while cushy positions in places like Europe or New Zealand are given as rewards to prominent financial backers and bundlers. 

A China-based Zoom executive has been charged by the Justice Department with disrupting video meetings that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Reuters reports.

Why it matters: This case could shake the foundations of U.S. tech cooperation with China. Researchers and U.S. government officials have warned of the possibility that the Chinese government might require China-based employees to hand over private company data to Beijing. This indictment indicates that those fears are, in fact, a reality.