The Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to stifle dissent do not stop at the Chinese shore. According to three criminal charges revealed the other day, covert Chinese agents were proactively involved in targeting and harassing political opponents here in the United States. Among the schemes included a previous leader of the Tiananmen Square student democracy demonstrations who fled to America and has recently become a candidate for political office in New York.
“Another target was a Democratic candidate for Congress in New York, Xiong Yan, according to officials familiar with the case. Yan was involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Court documents say the Chinese agent, Qiming Lin, contacted a private investigator in New York and encouraged him to “find dirt” in order to discourage Yan from staying in the race.
“Can we manufacture something?” the agent asked, according to court documents. Lin recommended hiring a prostitute and even suggested that the private investigator could figure out some say to injure Yan. “Right now, we don’t want him to be elected,” Lin said, according to the documents.”
What the Chinese agent Qiming Lin didn’t recognize until far too late is that the investigator he hired was connected with the FBI.
“The private investigator, however, was an F.B.I. source and, according to the complaint, kept the authorities apprised of the efforts. In a voice mail message quoted in the complaint, Mr. Lin suggested that the investigator physically attack Mr. Yan, saying, “beat him until he cannot run for election.”…
Mr. Lin remains at large, the authorities said. He faces two counts related to conspiracy to commit interstate harassment.”
So it’s no overstatement that the Chinese agent was prepared to have a naturalized United States citizen (that is likewise a veteran who offered in Iraq) beaten on United States soil in order to stop him from running for office. It’s the very definition of blatant foreign election interference. Yan stated he knew nothing about the plot until reporters started asking him about it Wednesday.
“He said he had not witnessed any harassment or intimidation and had not been contacted by the FBI or Justice Department, and that he did not know why the Chinese government would be interested in his campaign for Congress.
“This has nothing to do with them. Why they do that, I can’t understand,” he said. He added: “I’m getting mad. I have nothing to do with them. I’m a purely American citizen.”
One more complaint shows Chinese representatives targeted a dissident artist living in California.
“Fan “Frank” Liu, the president of what prosecutors described as a “purported media organization,” and Matthew Ziburis, a former Florida correctional officer working as a bodyguard, are accused of trying to discredit or gather intelligence on dissidents in New York, California and Indiana…
Mr. Liu and Mr. Ziburis also targeted the dissident artist directly, according to the complaint, by having Mr. Ziburis pose as an art dealer to gain more information about his artwork and photograph his home. Mr. Ziburis also put a GPS device on the artist’s car…
The artist is unnamed in the complaint, but it meets the description of Chen Weiming, a Chinese-born sculptor known for his political activism and artistic protests against the Chinese government.”
Chen produced a provocative sculpture of Chinese President Xi Jinping depicted as a virus himself entitled “CCP Virus.” It was put on display in the California desert last year. It didn’t last long and was likely another target of agents from the Guó’ānbù, the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
The CCP Virus Sculpture by @CHENWEIMING2017 is quite some masterpiece. pic.twitter.com/QD1Y0rzhGW
— Asian American Conservative (@FactcheckingCon) June 5, 2021
Not long after it was unveiled, it was burned to the ground in an apparent arson. It’s unclear if the agents referred to above were accountable for the vandalism as well. They were all apparently in New York when it occurred, however, a text from Mr. Sun did ask Mr. Liu to “Destroy all sculptures and things that are not good to our leaders.”
There are several more incidents (Fang Fang with Rep. Eric Swalwell and Sen. Feinstein’s former driver come to mind.) but these criminal complaints do show that China has no compunction about using spies and agents on American soil to ‘deal with’ with anyone they consider a dissident from the CCP.
H/T HotAir