EXC: Biden Just Picked A CIA Director With a 7-Year-Long Relationship with Chinese Communist Party Fronts
NATALIE WINTERS JANUARY 20, 2021
Bill Burns – Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Central Intelligence Agency – serves as the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which has over a decade-long relationship with the China-United States Exchange Foundation and other Chinese Communist Party-linked groups.
Burns has served as President of the think tank since 2014, overseeing its involvement with the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) which dates back to at least 2009.
CUSEF – part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front effort that seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition” and encourage foreign actors to “adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies” – has sponsored trips for Chinese Communist Party officials to speak at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In 2009, the think tank hosted former Shanghai Mayor and Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Consultative Conference for a“keynote speech” on a trip paid for by CUSEF.
Similarly, two year later, CUSEF’s founder Tung Chee-hwa, who chairs the “highest-ranking entity overseeing” China’s United Front, spoke at a a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event according to CUSEF promotional brochures.
What’s more, the South China Morning Post describes the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as a recipient of “money from” CUSEF and often works alongside them on projects seeking to boost U.S.-China collaboration.
In 2012, CUSEF partnered with the think tank on the “US-China Security Perceptions Project” which analyzed the “views of the public and elites in five distinct categories – government, business, academia, the military, and the media – regarding a wide range of national security issues, from the nature of American and Chinese power, both globally and in Asia, to the images held of one another’s national character.”
Also in partnership with the China Strategic Culture Promotion Association (CSCPA) – whose leader former Chinese Navy Luo Yuan officer argues for a “strong” Chinese military – the 62-page report issues a host of “recommendations for U.S. and Chinese policymakers including to “emphasize cooperation over competition” and to “prevent the Taiwan issue from derailing broader cooperation.”
A host of Carnegie Endowment leaders – including Vice President Douglas Paal – have also contributed to CUSEF’s quarterly journal, China-US Focus.
Since 2014, individuals under Burn’s leadership, including Senior Associate Yukon Huang, Resident Scholar Matt Ferchen, and Resident Scholar Wang Tao, have contributed at least six articles to the magazine alongside Chinese Communist Party officials and People’s Liberation Army leaders.
The Carnegie Endowment retains yet another link to the Chinese Communist Party: its Beijing-based Carnegie-Tsinghua Center.
Hosted at Tsinghua University, the institute features seven individuals who work at the Chinese government-funded university as its guiding scholars: Shi Zhiqin, Sun Xuefeng, Zhao Kejin, Tang Xiaoyang, Chen Qi, Zhang Lihua, and Zhang Chuanjie.
Two senior fellows have even more explicit ties to the Chinese Communist Party such as Tong Zhao who “has worked for the Office of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality” and Yan Xuetong, a “member of the Consultation Committee of China’s Ministry of Commerce.”
Tsinghua University, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s alma mater, also has a “clear connection” to the Chinese”state administration for technology and industry in discussions on what [they] can do to help the national security,” according to former Senior Intelligence Officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency and State Department Official Nicholas Eftimiades.
The school has even launched cyberattacks against the U.S. government, and partners with Western institutions like CNN and the New York Times for its “Marxist journalism” program.
The center, which seeks to boost U.S.-China collaboration, has hosted conferences attended by Chinese Communist Party officials and American lawmakers such as Paul Ryan, Elaine Chao, and John Kerry.
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