Episode 2814 - September 17 - Tiếng Anh - Trường hợp ở New York - Vina Technology at AI time - Lê Quang Văn | Podcast - Nhac.vn

In New York Case, Signs of a Familiar China Playbook.

New York Times. September 16, 2024.

A prominent lawyer in Britain, accused of trying to advance Beijing’s interests in Parliament.

An aide to a far-right politician in Germany, suspected of passing information about the inner workings of the European Parliament to China.

A politician in Canada, accused of receiving help from the Chinese Consulate organizing busloads of international students from China to vote for him in party elections.

Even before Linda Sun, a former senior aide in the New York governor’s office, was charged this month with using her position to benefit the Chinese government, suspected cases of Chinese foreign meddling had been on the rise in Western democracies.

Allegations of Chinese political interference have also surfaced in Australia, New Zealand, France, Belgium and the Netherlands in recent years.

The clandestine activity usually follows a pattern, analysts said. China recruits members of Chinese diaspora communities to infiltrate halls of power, or to silence Chinese dissidents and other critics of Beijing.

Covert Chinese operations abroad have long centered on seizing industrial secrets and technology in sensitive sectors such as the military, aviation or telecommunications, with the aim of trying to erode the United States’ edge.

What Ms. Sun is accused of doing is part of a different side of Chinese intelligence work — one that is focused on influencing political discourse so that it leans more favorably toward China’s positions on contentious issues like the status of Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by Beijing, or the repression of China’s ethnic Uyghur minority.

Federal prosecutors said Ms. Sun, who served as a liaison to the Asian community, blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office and removed references to Taiwan and Uyghurs from state communications. In return, prosecutors say, she and her husband, Chris Hu, received millions of dollars in benefits.

“These are classic tactics that we are seeing,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a political scientist at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, who specializes in Chinese influence efforts, referring to the allegations against Ms. Sun. “China is very proactive at trying to make use of overseas Chinese communities and ethnic Chinese politicians and officials to get information and shape policy.”

Fanned by Geopolitical Tensions

China’s attempts to interfere with Western democracies are likely to grow more acute as relations between Beijing and the West fray, Ms. Brady said. Not since the Cold War have two powers like the United States and China competed so fiercely for global influence.

Finding it harder to sway national governments in such an environment, the Chinese government has instead directed its attention to local, county and state governments, which are not as savvy at detecting such efforts, experts say.

Chinese leaders and intelligence officials may feel emboldened if their interference efforts exact little cost to Beijing, analysts say.

No Chinese diplomats at the New York consulate, for example, have been expelled from the United States despite four officials being implicated as co-conspirators in the indictment against Ms. Sun and her husband. In contrast, as recently as 2019, two Chinese officials suspected of espionage were secretly expelled from the United States for driving onto a sensitive military base in Virginia.

“The point we should be making about this case is not that a Chinese American allegedly committed this crime, but that the P.R.C. Government, and its senior officials, intentionally sought to place an American citizen into this position,” said Matt Turpin, former director for China at the National Security Council and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, referring to the People’s Republic of China. Mr. Turpin said the Biden administration should have declared the four diplomats included in Ms. Sun’s