Former Acting Director of National Intelligence in the Trump Administration, Richard Grenell, and former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, two Trump allies, have launched an effort to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from influencing American entities.
The “Protecting America Initiative” aims to support legislation that targets the CCP’s presence in the United States. The CCP currently threatens America by purchasing farmland, buying influence through lobbyists, influencing U.S. universities, and more.
Grenell said in a statement that the threats posed by the CCP are on the rise, its “dangerous ideas” infiltrating the United States. “Our borders, critical infrastructure, higher education system, and agriculture industries are all under assault,” he said. “Communist China is seeking to influence our country and erase our liberties.”
Zeldin declared that “every facet of American life is dealing with unprecedented Chinese influence, America’s farmers and small business owners are on an uneven playing field, our students are seeing their campuses being taken over by CCP ideas, and our border patrol agents are facing a record number of Chinese nationals coming across our border.”
“Our biggest threat lies across the Pacific, Communist China. They’re on the march to influence and disrupt America from the inside out,” the group’s video says. “Our farmland, food supply, education system, energy production, manufacturing chains, our national security, Communist China wants to control it all. We must act now to stop them. And it starts with state leaders who will recognize and respond to China’s threats.”
“It will take us all to protect our freedoms, our values, our identity. And it starts with leaders in the states,” the video adds.
A recent report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) detailed the growing extent to which Chinese influence operations are infiltrating the United States.
According to the report, influence operations are necessary for “regime survival” and “advancing national interests.” The CCP’s power depends, in part, on the “behavior of foreign leaders and publics.”
“Certain factors make countries more or less resilient to China’s overseas influence activities,” the report notes. “These include the presence of liberal democratic institutions, such as a free press and an independent judiciary, the extent of economic dependence on China, the prevalence of domestic corruption, and a foreign society’s familiarity with China.”
