Chinese Influence Ops In The US Are Blowback From Decades Of CIA Ops Elsewhere
The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission alleged that Beijing is running a massive influence operation inside of America’s institutions.
The recently released report raises the alarm about what its authors claim are China’s clandestine efforts “to outsource its messaging in part because it believes foreigners are more likely to accept propaganda if it appears to come from non-Chinese sources”, which has supposedly taken the form of an extensive campaign to, as Josh Rogin from the Washington Post puts in the passage that he’s cited in, “influence the influencers” and “get Americans to carry [China’s] message to other Americans”. Some of the mentioned examples include its purported financing of various Beltway think tanks and also the creation of socio-cultural NGOs that are accused of being intelligence fronts.
Although not openly stated, it’s strongly alluded that China is partaking in a so-called “long march through the institutions” in order to change American policies and perceptions from within. This notion was infamously abused during the McCarthyite witch hunts when the US “deep state” publicly purged a rival faction and its suspected civil society supporters on the basis that they were treasonously plotting to undermine the country. Something similar might be happening nowadays as well if the Trump Administration uses the commission’s findings to take action against its institutional foes and simultaneously send a signal to Beijing during the ongoing so-called “trade war”.
Even in the event that the accusations levelled against the People’s Republic are true, whether in whole or in part, it wouldn’t really be anything groundbreaking because the US has been practicing these sorts of influence operations against other countries for decades now.
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