Founder Of Chinese Front Group Spoke At CIA Nominee’s Think Tank Amid Beijing Propaganda Push
William Burns, the nominee for CIA director, testified before the Senate
about links between a think tank he leads and a Chinese foundation that serves as a front group for the communist party.
Burns said that he cut ties with the group, the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), “not long after” he took over as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But the founder of the foundation gave a pro-Beijing speech at a Carnegie event more than 14 months after Burns took over the think tank.
CUSEF donated between $200,000 and $500,000 to Carnegie between 2015 and 2017.
The founder of a front group for the Chinese Communist Party appeared at an event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in May 2016, where he pushed a pro-Beijing argument regarding a decades-long stalemate over control of the South China Sea.
The speech, by Tung Chee-hwa, the founding chairman of the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), was held more than 14 months after William Burns, President Joe Biden’s nominee for CIA director, took over as president of the Carnegie Endowment.
The timing of Tung’s visit to Carnegie would appear to conflict with Burns’ testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that he cut ties between Carnegie and CUSEF “not long after” he took over as president of Carnegie in March 2015.
Tung, a billionaire who was formerly chief executive of Hong Kong, gave a speech at Carnegie’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. on May 11, 2016. The Daily Caller News Foundation has reported that CUSEF donated between $200,000 and $500,000 to Carnegie between 2015 and 2017.
During his Wednesday testimony, Burns downplayed Carnegie’s relationship with CUSEF,
while acknowledging that the Hong Kong-based group was used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “to sway public opinion and build influence.”
He also acknowledged in response to written questions released before the confirmation hearing that the CCP uses CUSEF as part of a “whole-of-government approach…to try and influence political, economic, and cultural developments to benefit CCP interests.”
Burns told Sen. Marco Rubio, who cited details reported this month by the DCNF, that he severed ties with CUSEF because he was “increasingly worried about the expansion of Chinese influence operations.”
He said that Carnegie subsequently launched an initiative to counter foreign influence operations, which focused on China and Russia.
Whether Tung’s speech was coordinated with China is unknown, but he pushed an overtly pro-Beijing viewpoint during his speech at Carnegie, one of the most influential foreign policy think tanks in the world.
Tung spoke at length about the South China Sea, a geopolitical hotspot that has long been the center of a territorial dispute involving China, Taiwan, Vietnam and other Asian countries.
At the time, an international arbitration court in The Hague was deliberating rightful ownership of islands in the South China Sea.
The Chinese government waged a massive propaganda campaign in the West ahead of the arbitration court’s decision, with Reuters and CNBC reporting in July 2016 that Beijing was in “propaganda overdrive.”
http://dailycaller.com/2021/02/26/william-burns-carnegie-tung-chee-hwa/
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