Congress Eyes Sanctions on China’s Political Warfare Machine
Bill targets China’s propaganda networks
The Washington Free Beacon learned that Republicans in both the House and Senate have introduced legislation on Wednesday which will impose unprecedented sanctions against a number of Chinese entities who are known to wage political propaganda war against the United States.
According to a copy provided by the Free Beacon, the bills would require the Biden administration issue sanctions against any Chinese individual or entity who “knowingly commits an act of significant political warfare” (or terrorism) against the United States. The bill would also prevent Chinese officials or citizens who are known to be involved in these plots, from obtaining U.S. Visas and entering the United States.
Jim Banks, R-Ind. and Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark. Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) is also a target.
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The move comes amid growing concerns that China, and its social media network, which includes TikTok will try to interfere in the 2024 presidential elections. The U.S. Intelligence Community revealed earlier this week how TikTok had been used to influence the results of the midterm elections in 2022. On Wednesday, the House passed a bill that would ban TikTok unless ByteDance’s parent company divested from Beijing.
Banks’s House bill will receive widespread Republican support, as the focus is on China’s propagandistic campaigns in the United States. Cotton’s bill is also expected to be supported by Senate Republicans, and a handful of Democratic China hawks may help pass the bill in both chambers.
The United Front Work Department of China is destined to become the next battlefield in the fight to stop Communist propaganda spreading throughout America. The bill mandates that the secretary of State examine whether the CCP entity in question “meets criteria for sanctions application” under the new powers granted by the legislation – dubbed Countering China’s Political Warfare Act.
Banks, member of the House Select Committee on China told The Free Beacon that the United Front Work Department had targeted universities, local and state legislators, business associations, and even Congress. This bill provides the tools necessary for America to fight back against Communist Party influence in the US.
According to the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission, Beijing’s government used the United Front Work Department for decades to “coopt and neutralize potential sources of opposition to its policies and authority,” including the Chinese Communist Party.
The propaganda network has a good position to mainstream the propaganda around the upcoming American election. The propaganda network played a key role in spreading misinformation about the pandemic of coronavirus.
According to Banks’s bill, the United Front Work Department “played an important role in coordinating a multifaceted political war campaign to blame the United States” for the spread of COVID-19 while covering up “China’s negligence response to the pandemic.”
Cotton, in a written statement to The Free Beacon, said: “The Chinese Communist Party is proving that it will spread lies and disinformation any way they can. From the oppression against Uyghurs through the origins COVID-19 to its accessing data from Americans who use TikTok.” “Anyone or any group that spreads the Chinese Communists propaganda, such as [the United Front], must be sanctioned.”
United Front is accused of spying on U.S. campuses through Confucius Institutes in China, an educational initiative that propagates Communist propaganda. The agency funds a number of think tanks in Washington D.C.
The United Front also carries out a propaganda campaign to oppress the Uyghur minority in China, and even tries to conceal the genocide perpetrated by Communist China.
Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, has called the agency a “magic tool” that will help bring about “the great revitalization of the Chinese people.”
