EXCLUSIVE: Mitch McConnell’s Wife Elaine Chao Held Appointments From Chinese Communist Party Organizations While Serving In Cabinet

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Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials appointed Sen. Mitch McConnell’s wife to multiple government positions, many of which partially overlapped with her two U.S. Cabinet posts, according to Chinese government and state media reports unearthed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Elaine Chao, who married the Kentucky Republican in 1993, has held numerous U.S. government positions since the 1980s, including serving as Department of Labor (DOL) secretary throughout President George W. Bush’s tenure and as Department of Transportation (DOT) secretary during President Donald Trump’s first term. After resigning from the Trump administration in January 2021, Chao then served on the board of EV charging company ChargePoint between 2021 and 2026, and is now listed as a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

Chao — whose Chinese name is Zhao Xiaolan — has also received at least four Chinese government positions since 2008, including within arms of a CCP influence and intelligence agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports. Beijing uses the UFWD to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC).

Chao did not disclose any of the reported Chinese government positions during her January 2017 DOT secretary Senate confirmation hearing, which required her to list all positions held within the last ten years.

Chao’s late sister, Angela Chao, and father, James S.C. Chao, founder of shipping firm Foremost Group, both also received Chinese government and UFWD arm positions, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports.

The spokesman for Chao and Foremost Group, Patrick O’Connor, denied Chao, her sister or father had held such positions.

“She has never held a position with a foreign government or acted on behalf of one. We are not aware she has met with representatives from UFWD entities,” O’Connor said after being sent Chinese government and state media photos published between 2010 and 2026 showing Chao meeting with officials from the CCP and/or UFWD. “Such a suggestion disregards her nearly five decades of faithful service to the United States and is both unfounded and deeply insulting, hurtful and racist.”

The DCNF asked O’Connor why Chao believes it is “racist” to investigate her ties to the Chinese government.

“No one seems to care when most American business or political leaders hold meetings in China, so it’s suspicious when the Daily Caller makes insinuations about a former two-time cabinet secretary of Asian descent, especially based on photos, some of which are decades old,” O’Connor said. “The secretary is a proud American who has devoted most of her professional life to serving the American people. To question her patriotism is a double standard, at best — racist, at worst.”

Questions about Chao’s Chinese government ties first arose as early as 2001 following her DOL nomination and recently resurfaced after McConnell was hospitalized in June 2026 while Chao visited China. McConnell’s office declined to comment.

“No American, no matter how high and mighty, should have any ties with the Communist Party’s UFWD,” Gordon Chang, China expert and author, told the DCNF. “This organization is dedicated to destroying our country. This should not be hard to understand.”

‘Disqualifying’

Chao — who was born in Taiwan and obtained U.S. citizenship at age 19 — received three positions in UFWD arms and a Chinese government advisory role, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports.

Those reports describe Chao’s appointments in various ways, with some stating she had been “hired” or had “accepted an appointment letter,” while others simply note that she was then among those “holding” a given title.

Between at least October 2004 and August 2018, the homepage of the UFWD website for Shanghai’s Jiading District — birthplace of Chao’s father — featured a series of biographies on Chao. Those biographies were showcased alongside figures celebrated by the UFWD as role models for United Front work, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements.

Although it remains unclear when Chao first interacted with UFWD officials, as DOL secretary she corresponded with Jiading UFWD arms after receiving a Christmas card from two such entities in 2004, according to a DCNF translation of a UFWD report.

Chao reportedly sent a handwritten reply and autographed photo to those UFWD arms in February 2005, which they received the following month.

Both of the Jiading UFWD arms behind the 2004 Christmas card ultimately appointed Chao to positions that reportedly overlapped with her Cabinet secretary roles.

Chao’s United Front connections “should be disqualifying for dogcatcher, much less a Cabinet position,” said Jacqueline Deal, an advisory board member of State Armor, after reviewing the DCNF’s findings. State Armor is a nonprofit focused on countering “the threat of Communist China.”

“As Transportation Secretary, [Chao] did nothing to fix U.S. policy failures that have decimated our maritime industrial base while her family business profited from the CCP’s aggressive moves to exploit those failures,” Deal added.

One of Chao’s two pen pals was the Jiading branch of the UFWD’s All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), which appointed her as an advisor and committee member of its 5th council between September of 2012 and 2017, partially overlapping with Chao’s DOT secretary tenure, according to DCNF translations of Chinese state media reports.

ACFROC’s functions include promoting Beijing’s narratives, strengthening party support, attracting talent and sometimes also “conducting influence and intelligence operations,” Cheryl Yu, fellow in China Studies at The Jamestown Foundation, told the DCNF.

“[ACFROC] recruits prominent diaspora figures, including businesspeople, lawyers, academics, media figures and leaders of community associations, particularly those with access, status or the ability to mobilize others,” Yu said.

Chao also reportedly received several positions from the Jiading branch of the UFWD’s China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA), which co-authored the 2004 Christmas card, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports.

COFA’s Jiading branch initially appointed both Chao and her father — whose Chinese name is Zhao Xicheng — as honorary chairmen of its 3rd council in December 2008 while Chao served as DOL secretary, according to a DCNF translation of a state media report.

The branch also appointed several Chinese government officials as honorary chairmen at that time, including Jiading’s chief, party secretary, deputy party secretary and chairman of the local Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which is a CCP arm that carries out United Front work, according to a 2023 USCC report and DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements.

Those four district officials had met with Chao just months earlier in August 2008, after she led a U.S. delegation to attend the Beijing Olympics. At the invitation of the local government, Chao and her father visited Jiading on Aug. 27, where they met with the four officials and the district UFWD minister, according to DCNF translations of state media reports.

“Throughout my life, as I’ve moved forward, I have tried to preserve and remember my cultural roots. This is also the reason I am who I am,” Chao said during the visit, according to a DCNF translation of a Chinese state media report.

Several years after receiving the honorary appointments, Chao and her father were identified as advisors of the subsequent council of COFA’s Jiading branch. The 4th council of COFA’s Jiading branch ran between September 2012 and 2017, and likewise partially overlapped with Chao’s DOT tenure, according to DCNF translations of state media and Chinese government reports.

Chao’s sister Angela — whose Chinese name was Zhao Anji — was later identified as a director of COFA’s national organization in 2019, according to a DCNF translation of an announcement on COFA’s website.

“COFA advances CCP objectives through soft power by using relationship-building, cultural diplomacy and people-to-people exchanges rather than coercion,” Ina Mitchell, a Chinese intelligence expert, told the DCNF. “Many analysts characterize these activities as operating in the grey zone between legitimate public diplomacy and covert political influence.”

After her DOL tenure, a CCP official also tapped Chao to serve as a Wuhan municipal government international advisor in October 2009, owing to her “extensive experience and resources in international affairs” and perceived ability to create “more favorable conditions for Wuhan in matters of foreign affairs and attracting overseas talent,” according to DCNF translations of state media reports.

Those reports did not specify whether the position was paid or unpaid.

“On her first visit to Wuhan, [Chao] said she was deeply impressed by the city’s immense development potential and she expressed her willingness to promote mutual understanding between the peoples of the U.S. and China as well as cooperation and exchange across various domains, and, at the same time, [said] she’d do her best to fulfill her duties within her area of expertise as a Wuhan municipal government international advisor,” according to a DCNF translation of a related October 2009 Chinese government announcement concerning Chao’s appointment.

Chao’s father and late sister had both also received Wuhan government advisory positions by 2019, according to a Chinese government announcement and a DCNF translation of a profile of Chao’s father featured on the UFWD’s Jiading branch website.

“The secretary has received countless honorary degrees, titles, recognitions, keys to the city and other official awards over her career in public service,” Chao’s spokesperson told the DCNF. “During those presentations, it is customary for her to be photographed with local officials and others affiliated with the institutions involved. She remembers this event in Wuhan for its large, chaotic crowds, but was unaware of the title bestowed to her, in part, because she is not fluent in Chinese.”

The spokesman’s account, however, differs from contemporaneous Chinese state media reporting about the appointment.

During one May 2010 Chinese-language state media interview conducted in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, Chao appeared alongside her father, who said he and his daughter were both Wuhan government advisors, according to a DCNF translation of the report.

“In fact, Xiaolan and I are both advisors to the municipal government of Wuhan, Hubei — a city in central China,” Chao’s father said using her Chinese name, according to a DCNF translation.

Chao “even played the role of a television reporter” during that interview by holding the microphone for her father while he spoke, according to a DCNF translation of the report, which includes an accompanying photo showing Chao doing just that.

Cabinet secretaries should not hold positions with the Chinese government or UFWD arms, Scott McGregor, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police intelligence official, told the DCNF.

“This is not merely a matter of political optics or an abstract conflict-of-interest concern. It is a counterintelligence, governance and sovereignty issue,” McGregor said. “The absence of a proven quid pro quo would not make such an appointment acceptable; the appointment itself would create an avoidable and serious vulnerability in the executive branch.”

“From a counterintelligence perspective, the relevant question is not simply whether money changed hands or whether an official favor can be identified,” McGregor said. “The proper questions are whether the affiliation created access, whether it normalized contact with United Front personnel, whether it generated social or reputational obligations, whether the official’s status was used to legitimize the organization and whether the relationship could influence what the official was willing to say, examine or challenge.”

AUTHOR

Philip Lenczycki

Senior Investigative Reporter

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: CCP Intelligence Official Buys Building Steps From White House

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

State Department: Chinese Communist Party Is Committing Genocide

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The U.S. Department of State is unambiguously stating that the Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide.

On Aug. 27, this writer sent some questions to the State Department Office of Press Operations through its online portal for media inquiries. One of these questions was: “Has the State Department concluded that China is continuing to engage in genocide in 2026?”

On Sept. 1, a State Department spokesperson provided a written answer via email: “The United States determined the CCP is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious groups in Xinjiang.”

On Jan. 19, 2021, the last full day of President Donald Trump’s first term, then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, as this column has noted before, issued a written statement that was headlined “Determination of the Secretary of State on Atrocities in Xinjiang.”

“The United States of America has led the world in holding the perpetrators of the most heinous human rights abuses accountable,” Pompeo said in this statement.

“We do so because it is right,” he said.

“[A]fter careful examination of the available facts,” said Pompeo, “I have determined that the PRC [People’s Republic of China], under the direction and control of the CCP, has committed genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state.”

In this statement—issued more than five years ago—Pompeo called for this to stop.

“The United States,” he said, “calls upon the PRC immediately to release all arbitrarily detained persons and abolish its system of internment, detention camps, house arrest and forced labor; cease coercive population control measures, including forced sterilizations, forced abortion, forced birth control, and the removal of children from their families; end all torture and abuse in places of detention; end the persecution of Uyghurs and other members of religious and ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, and afford Uyghurs and other persecuted minorities the freedom to travel and emigrate.”

Since Pompeo made this statement, each of the State Department’s five annual reports on human rights practices in China (covering calendar years 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024) has stated that China is committing genocide.

“Genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year in China against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang,” said the first sentence of the 2024 report.

The State Department has not yet released its human rights report on China that will cover calendar year 2025. “The Department is actively working on the Human Rights Report covering global conditions in 2025 and expects to publish it later this year,” a State Department spokesperson informed this writer.

The department’s report covering 2024 described the CCP’s actions in Xinjiang.

“Government targeting of ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang with intensified coercive population control measures resulted in plummeting birth rates in Xinjiang after 2018 when authorities increased coercive population control measures, including forced abortions, forced sterilizations, involuntary intrauterine device insertions, and pregnancy checks occurring at detention centers in the region and targeting minority groups, primarily Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs,” said the report.

The report also said that “[s]ignificant human rights issues” in China included “credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings; disappearances; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; involuntary or coercive medical or psychological practices; arbitrary arrest and detention by the government including, since 2017, of more than one million Uyghurs and members of other predominantly Muslim minority groups in extrajudicial internment camps [and] prisons.”

Former President Joe Biden, as this column has noted before, met with CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping three times during his four-year term. But there is no evidence that Biden ever confronted Xi on the genocide that Xi’s regime has been perpetrating—and that Biden’s State Department cited in its annual human rights reports.

Trump, thus far, has had seven meetings with Xi. The latest was in May, when he traveled to Beijing accompanied by a number of major American business leaders, as this column has noted before. These included, among others, then-Apple CEO Tim Cook, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, Citi CEO Jane Fraser, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, Meta President Dina Powell McCormick, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

The genocide being perpetrated by Xi’s regime was not an issue at this summit. In a Truth Social posting made as the group departed for Beijing, Trump said, “I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to ‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People’s Republic to an even higher level! In fact, I promise, that when we are together, which will be in a matter of hours, I will make that my very first request.”

Xi is now scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House on Sept. 24. The first thing Trump should tell Xi at that meeting is that if China does not immediately cease engaging in genocide, the United States will cease engaging in trade with China.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Terence Jeffrey

Terence P. Jeffrey is investigative editor for the Daily Caller News Foundation. Follow on X TerryJeffrey.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: CCP Intelligence Official Buys Building Steps From White House

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A senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence official is the new owner of a historic building overlooking the White House Complex, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.

Located approximately 650 feet northeast of the White House grounds, the 100-year-old Securities Building on 15th Street was purchased on July 21, 2026 for $8.4 million by the Philip Qiu and Family Foundation, filings show. The building’s new owner, Philip Qiu, has held numerous positions within Chinese intelligence and state security arms, according to university records and DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements.

Qiu did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“The CCP is like a kind, but firm parent,” Qiu said in 2021, according to a DCNF translation of an announcement from a Chinese intel arm. “It has guided our people out of hardship, led China’s sons and daughters to build a new country and is steering us toward great national rejuvenation.”

[Image created by DCNF with Google Earth and Canva]

Qiu’s ownership of The Securities Building poses an urgent national security threat and must be investigated by federal authorities, multiple intelligence experts told the DCNF.

“This property allows access for big splashy intel ops as well as for more classic ops — like a listening post or Stingray-like systems to collect phone calls, text messages, and digital exhaust,” Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA operations officer, told the DCNF. “That’s all great for collecting targeting information to later ‘bump’ or recruit targets out in the world, who otherwise work inside a key U.S. government building.”

“But what’s especially alarming are emerging ops that properties like this allow — like hidden drone swarms or shipping container missiles,” said Wright, who hosts The Wright Report podcast. “This kind of property is where the next 9/11 will come from. It’s coming.” 

[Screenshot of UNH Instagram post]

‘Special Forces Training’

Qiu, whose Chinese name is Qiu Feili, has held at least four Chinese government positions, beginning with a “career as a detective in the Criminal Investigation Team in Shanghai,” a 2024 University of New Haven (UNH) Instagram post states.

Shanghai’s criminal investigation team is a unit within Shanghai’s Public Security Bureau (PSB), which functions as a local subordinate of “China’s FBI,” the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), according to DCNF translations of Chinese government reports.

While it is unclear how long Qiu worked in the Shanghai PSB, he had already received combat training by October 2011, when he enrolled in a Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU) master’s program, according to DCNF translations of SJTU announcements.

SJTU photos show students carrying rifles and wearing camouflage fatigues during a team-building wargame at the program’s outset.

“Classmate Qiu Feili, who has undergone special forces training, served as a commander in the Red-Blue Battle, and not only directed his troops to successfully capture enemy positions, but also killed one-third of the opposing forces with 42 shots, achieving the best individual sniper record,” according to a DCNF translation of SJTU’s announcement concerning the training exercise.

Qiu has continued to support and cooperate with China’s security apparatus in recent years including through his role as honorary chairman of the Hong Kong Immigration Department Staff Association, with which he organized events introducing Hong Kong students to the Shanghai SWAT team in 2023 and 2024, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements and accompanying photos.

[Image created by DCNF with @yaQya social media post showing Philip Qiu on left during October 2011 SJTU wargame]

The Shanghai native has also held at least three positions in arms of a CCP influence and intelligence agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), according to DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements. The UFWD’s operations are a “blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations” that Beijing uses to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the House Select Committee on the CCP.

Among other roles, Qiu has served on the executive committee of the Shanghai branch of the UFWD’s All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), according to a DCNF translation of a Chinese government announcement.

Qiu’s highest-ranking united front position is as chairman of ACFROC’s Shanghai Overseas Chinese Foundation (SOCF), which promotes overseas “cultural exchanges” and operates as the “only charity in the Shanghai UFWD system,” according to DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements. The former Shanghai detective joined SOCF as a director in May 2017 and has served as the foundation’s chairman since May 2021, according to DCNF translations of SOCF’s announcements.

“[SOCF] will continue to execute General Secretary Xi Jinping’s directive to ‘comprehensively implement the party’s overseas Chinese affairs policy, unite the hearts of overseas Chinese and serve overall interests,’” Qiu said during a 2021 foundation meeting, according to a DCNF translation of a SOCF announcement.

“With overseas Chinese hearts turned toward the party and pursuing a common dream, [SOCF] will actively embody responsibility and commitment to the overseas Chinese community in public welfare, charity and people-to-people exchanges,” Qiu continued. “[We] will strive to build SOCF into a charity with social influence to contribute the strength of the overseas Chinese community toward realizing the shared Chinese Dream.”

As chairman, Qiu has referred to the CCP as “our party” during SOCF party-building events he organized and has also represented the foundation’s party branch during Shanghai ACFROC party meetings, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements and accompanying photos. A “party branch” is the smallest “grass-roots” CCP organization and is required of Chinese institutions containing three or more party members, according to a DCNF translation of an announcement from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, which is China’s agency for legal supervision.

SOCF has also employed several other individuals belonging to Chinese intelligence arms including its secretary general, who has served as a director of the Shanghai International Culture Association (SICA), which, according to Alex Joske, former analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is a front for China’s premier civilian intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS).

“The MSS is roughly the CIA, with a dash of the FBI,” Wright told the DCNF. “The MPS, however, is a mash-up of DHS and FBI. The key difference is the MPS is generally the overt, visible, heavy hand of the state and party.”

As for the UFWD, it “provides cover” for MSS operations “sort of like what the State Department allegedly does for the CIA abroad when a spy pretends to be a diplomat,” Wright continued. “Bottom line: there is no real line between intel and non-intel agencies or officers in China. Anybody can be compelled for any role at any time — you don’t say no to President Xi.”

Qiu’s connections to MPS, UFWD and MSS arms should set off alarm bells in our nation’s capital, Gordon Chang, author and China expert, told the DCNF.

“No Chinese citizen should be permitted to own, lease, or occupy any real estate that gives him or her the ability to surveil any sensitive federal installation,” Chang said. “No ifs, ands, or buts.”

[Image created by DCNF with ACFROC + CAMDC pics and Canva]

‘Screamingly Obvious’

The Philip Qiu and Family Foundation is headquartered within another historic property half a mile north of the White House that is shared with six other entities controlled by Qiu — including the CCP-tied Chinese American Museum in Washington, D.C. (CAMDC), according to business filings and DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements.

CAMDC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit aiming to “advance the understanding, knowledge, and appreciation of the Chinese American experience,” according to a statement on CAMDC’s website.

Qiu co-founded CAMDC in 2017 with SOCF’s former chairman, Chen Xiaoping, whose English name is Neil Chen.

As with Qiu, Chen has also held multiple Chinese government positions, including with Shanghai branches of ACFROC and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports. CPPCC delegates “serve as proxies for CCP interests,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

CAMDC and Chen did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Although CAMDC claims that the “museum and its programs are not funded, controlled, or influenced by any foreign government,” the Chinese government has co-sponsored at least eight of the museum’s programs, according to CAMDC’s website and DCNF translations of Chinese government reports.

Four of those programs received support from UFWD-controlled religious entities.

Since 2023, CAMDC has co-sponsored three Buddhist events in Washington, D.C. — including one held at the Library of Congress — with Shanghai’s Longhua Temple, which is overseen by the UFWD’s Bureau Of Ethnic And Religious Affairs Committee, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government announcements.

All three events were headlined by Longhua’s abbot, Zhao Cheng, who is both a Shanghai CPPCC standing committee member and the deputy director of the UFWD’s municipal Ethnic And Religious Affairs Committee, according to a DCNF translation of a Chinese government announcement.

The security risks posed by Qiu’s ownership of properties near the White House are “screamingly obvious,” Michael Lucci, founder and CEO of State Armor, told the DCNF. State Armor is a national security-focused policy and advocacy organization operating as a nonprofit entity, with an affiliated 501(c)(4) social welfare organization known as State Armor Action.

“CCP intelligence agents have been caught buying property around military installations and critical infrastructure where they commit espionage in preparation of sabotage,” Lucci warned. “Now, even more of our most important national assets are being put at risk by the proximity of a man who has multiple CCP intelligence and security affiliations just 200 meters from executive facilities that should be completely off limits from adversary actors. We need government action to force the sale of the commercial property controlled by the CCP associate and a ban on this happening in the future.”

AUTHOR

Philip Lenczycki

Senior Investigative Reporter

RELATED ARTICLES:

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Top White House National Security Official Heads For The Exit

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

China Fueling Anti-AI Data Center Protests

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There is evidence that “strongly suggests” China and other foreign adversaries are fueling campaigns opposing data centers to undermine the US in the artificial intelligence race, the House Energy and Commerce Committee warned Thursday. Lawmakers on the panel urged in a new letter to the Trump administration to step up oversight of possible ties between China and anti-AI forces in the US, fretting that the international subterfuge could undermine American dominance.

“Our nation is locked in a race with China to innovate and lead the world in the development of Artificial Intelligence technologies,” House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) told The Post. “The fact that Chinese Communist Party-backed entities and other foreign adversaries may be attempting to influence decisions related to American data center infrastructure puts into perspective how serious of a fight we are in.”

President Trump shrugged off the threat. “We had a great meeting with China, and you know they do things to us and we do things to them. I say it all the time,” he told The Post when asked about the concern. He was in Beijing last month to meet with President Xi Jinping but the leaders didn’t come to any kind of agreement on AI as both the US and China race to become the dominant force in the industry.

The BPI study concluded that “international actors are working through state media organizations, nonprofit networks, and dark money groups to shape US policy and public opinion on artificial intelligence.” One example mentioned in that report was the network of nonprofits and outlets bankrolled by Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based US expatriate. Singham, who is married to Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, previously faced government scrutiny for “activities inimical to the US.” Republicans in Congress have also long been probing Singham’s influence network in the US. BPI cited an analysis that Singham pumped some $278 million across six American nonprofits between 2017 and 2023.

The Committee on Energy and Commerce sent a missive to President Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the FBI, seeking information about foreign influence campaigns to undermine US development of AI. “Americans deserve to know who is bankrolling the disinformation campaign that seeks to block critical infrastructure investments,” Guthrie contended to The Post. “Data centers are the foundational computing structure that makes modern life possible.” “Our adversaries in Beijing fundamentally understand this.”

Trump himself has been a staunch proponent of encouraging AI development and courted friendly ties with Big Tech executives. On Tuesday, he signed an executive order asking companies to let the government take a peek at next-gen AI models to prepare for cybersecurity concerns. But that was a scaled-down version of a more stringent executive order his administration had been contemplating. The president has framed AI as part of a critical international race that America must win.

“America is the country that started the AI race. And as President of the United States, I’m here today to declare that America is going to win it. We’re going to work hard, we’re going to win it. Because we will not allow any foreign nation to beat us,” the president has stressed. Several Trump administration officials, such as Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, have expressed concerns that China is helping to gin up anti-AI sentiment in the US. “Any place that’s trying to build data centers is getting bombarded with foreign-directed propaganda to try to block these from being built,” Burgum told Fox Business Network last month. “This is just another attack on the US and our ability to be competitive.”

Data centers provide the critical processing power for parsing through massive amounts of data needed to train and run AI models. Activists have criticized the explosion in data centers because they are energy guzzlers that can cause electric bills to spike. But AI experts say that without them, the US won’t be able to advance the nascent technology.
Critically, support for development of data centers is waning across a variety of polls. For example, in 2023, 69% of Virginians supported construction of new data centers, but that dropped to 35% this April, a Washington Post-Schar School poll found. The lawmakers say the issue is serious enough to warrant a federal investigation, and they are seeking a briefing from the Trump administration by June 18 on the steps being taken to combat foreign influence campaigns against AI development within the US.

“The U.S. is in a global race for technological superiority that has significantly raised the stakes for economic and national security if our nation falls behind,” the lawmakers stressed in the letter. “It is critical that this Administration takes any effort to undermine this objective — particularly from foreign adversaries — with a great deal of seriousness.”

©2026 All rights reserved.

Retired U.S. Flag Offficers (Generals/Admirals) Traveling to and Collaborating with Communist China

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Judge for yourself but in my opinion these retired Generals, Admirals and other high ranking former members of Federal Government should have their Security Clearances lifted NOW (if they still have them) and should be investigated for what information they shared with Communist Chinese military officials.

It has been alleged that most received free transportation, lodging,meals, etc. while engaged in these collaborations.

Several retired U.S. flag officers, including four-star generals and admirals, have been reported to collaborate with Chinese military officials in closed-door meetings over the past decade. These interactions have raised concerns about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on American military leadership.

Retired U.S. Flag Officers Collaborating with China

Numerous high-ranking retired military officials have engaged with Chinese counterparts.

  • Participants — Some of the most powerful retired officers, including former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have participated in these meetings.
  • Topics Discussed — Discussions have included critical issues such as Taiwan, the South China Sea, and cybersecurity.
  • Duration of Engagement — These interactions have reportedly spanned over a decade, indicating a long-term relationship.
  • Chinese Influence — The meetings were organized by a Chinese organization linked to military intelligence, raising concerns about potential influence.

Recent reports indicate that several retired U.S. flag officers, including high-ranking generals and admirals, have engaged in extensive dialogues with Chinese military influence groups over the past decade. This collaboration has raised concerns about the potential implications for U.S. national security and military integrity.

Overview of Collaborations

The involvement of retired U.S. military leaders with Chinese entities has significant implications.

  • Network Formation — The Chinese Communist Party has established a private network involving senior retired U.S. military officials, circumventing direct penetration of the Pentagon.
  • Long-term Engagement — Some retired officers participated in meetings with a Chinese organization linked to Beijing’s military intelligence for over ten years.
  • Public Endorsements — Over 120 retired generals and admirals publicly supported political figures, indicating their ongoing influence.
  • Concerns Raised — Investigations have highlighted the risks associated with these collaborations, suggesting they could undermine U.S. military strategies

Lloyd Austin’s (former US Secy of Defense) interactions with China have been primarily through communication rather than travel. Austin spoke with his Chinese counterpart in April 2024, marking a significant step in military dialogue.

EXCLUSIVE: America’s Top Retired Generals Participated In Secret Beijing Conference Backed By Chinese Spy Group

Some of America’s most senior former military and national-security officials quietly traveled to Beijing to participate in a closed-door “Strategic Security and Stability Dialogue” supported by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), an organization repeatedly identified by U.S. analysts and members of Congress as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front influence apparatus.

The meeting was billed as a Track II dialogue, meaning unofficial and off the record. But Track II forums are not politically neutral. They are where Beijing cultivates elite Western figures who no longer hold office but still command credibility and converts their presence into political capital.

CUSEF’s role is central.

The foundation was created by former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, who also served as a vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a core United Front body. For years, CUSEF has sponsored U.S.–China dialogues, trips, and exchanges that critics say consistently advance Beijing-friendly narratives under the language of “mutual understanding.”

This strategy is not subtle. CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping himself has described United Front work as “an important magic weapon for the success of the Party’s cause.” In other words, influence – not tanks or treaties – is how Beijing seeks to shape outcomes abroad.

That context matters when examining who showed up in Beijing.

Continue reading.

America’s Top Generals Walked Straight Into China’s Influence Machine

By Ben Smith

The Chinese Communist Party didn’t need to penetrate the Pentagon. It built a private network around it, and stocked it with some of America’s most senior retired generals and admirals.

That’s the core finding in Natalie Winters’ new report on the Sanya Initiative, a decade-plus military dialogue funded by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) and run in coordination with the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC). Congressional investigators have identified CAIFC as a front for the PLA’s former General Political Department, responsible for intelligence collection and “propaganda and perception management.” The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission specifically cited CAIFC’s role in Sanya.

Winters summarized the findings Tuesday on X:

The first delegation, named in CUSEF’s own 2008-2009 annual report, included retired Adm. William “Bill” Owens, former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer, former Pacific Command chief Adm. Joseph Prueher, former Southern Command chief Gen. Charles Wilhelm and former Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane. By 2009, the combined American-Chinese delegation had traveled to Hawaii, Washington and New York, where they sat down with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, members of Congress and senior State Department officials.

The glossy brochures called it a peaceful exchange. What they left out was CAIFC’s actual mandate. Congressional investigators described the group as performing the “dual roles of intelligence collection and propaganda and perception management” as part of the CCP’s broader United Front system, an influence apparatus designed to cultivate foreign elites and neutralize opposition to Beijing’s objectives.

The warnings were public as early as 2011. Mark Stokes, a former Pentagon official and co-author of a landmark study on PLA political warfare, testified before the commission that the Chinese side’s intentions were spelled out in the initiative’s own first report:

“The Chinese side says we wish you would advocate these positions,” Stokes testified, adding that American editorials later appeared with a “stark similarity” to what the Chinese participants had pushed. Hearing co-chair Jeffrey L. Fiedler responded: “Sounds like it was a successful narrative that was placed.”

A 2013 investigation by John Garnaut found a striking imbalance in the initiative’s early deliverables. The American side had agreed to try to delay a Pentagon report on China’s military power until after Taiwan’s election, viewed the U.S. election cycle as an opportunity to shape military relations, and discussed writing opinion pieces to counter critical coverage of China’s military. Garnaut found no comparable list of commitments from the Chinese side. Shortly after those early Sanya meetings, Owens published opinion pieces urging Washington to treat China as a friend and end arms sales to Taiwan.

Continue reading.

©2026 . All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Disloyal Careerists Are Still Haunting The Pentagon’s Halls

China to send rocket launchers to Iran

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Tehran is set to receive the Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defence missile launchers in a deal that could threaten the relationship between Donald Trump, the US president, and Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart. The $70m (£53m) contract covers man-portable air defence systems (Manpads). These are anti-aircraft missiles that a single person can carry and the agreement includes Chinese-made QW-12 and FN-16 missiles. The purchase is one of Tehran’s largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air defences since the outbreak of the war.

The agreement is the latest in a series of secret deals that has propped up Iran’s weapons supplies throughout its war with the US. The contract was signed by Zhongqing Baoshang International Investment, a Hong Kong-based company that sources told Reuters was acting as an intermediary between Iran and the Chinese supplier. China called the reports “completely groundless”, with its foreign ministry insisting it “has consistently played a role in promoting peace and ending the conflict”. The delivery of hundreds of Manpads would significantly expand Iran’s inventory of short-range air-defence weapons.

In April, US intelligence indicated that China was preparing to sell the systems to Iran. Beijing rejected the claims but Mr Trump had threatened that China would face “big problems” if it went through with the sale. At the time, China’s foreign ministry said such allegations were “completely made up”. The reported deal could undermine the already complex relationship between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Beijing has also allegedly sent Tehran chemicals used in the production of rocket fuel for ballistic missiles. Meanwhile, maritime traffic data suggest China has continued to purchase oil from Iran since the war, putting money directly in Tehran’s coffers.

Muyu Xu, a senior crude oil analyst at Kpler, previously told The Telegraph that Iran was “absolutely bringing in more money” since the war. “Our data shows that China’s March imports of Iranian crude stood at about 1.6 million barrels per day, which is a similar level to February, which was 1.57 million barrels a day. These levels are much higher compared to the national average in 2025, which was 1.4 million barrels per day,” said Ms Xu.
Since the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iran in 2006, China has shied away from open arms sales, but has maintained shipments of dual-use technologies, including chemicals to produce ballistic missile fuel and materials to manufacture drones. After initial reports about secret arms deals with Iran in May, the US president claimed his Chinese counterpart promised not to send weapons to Iran. “He said he’s not going to give military equipment, that’s a big statement… He said that strongly,” Mr Trump said following a visit to China.

The conflict in the Middle East has widened this week, suggesting Tehran may need to rearm as fighting continues. Saudi Arabia joined a US attack on Iran overnight after previously carrying out secret strikes against the country.

Ukraine also targeted an Iranian cargo vessel in the Caspian on Saturday, marking the first direct link between the wars in Iran and Ukraine. Ukraine dismissed Iranian threats of retaliation, with Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, saying: “Iran’s threats are unjustified and groundless.”

©2026 . All rights reserved.

Here’s The Democrat Freak Show Line-Up Going Into Today’s Primaries

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Insane. And the only reason these kooks have a voter base is because the Democrat media/academia complex promote, stump and coverup for these destroyers.

Bad Hombre: Let’s take it from the top again.

Here’s the Democrat lineup going into the midterms:

  • A diagnosed-bipolar Asian chick with a history of self-harm who’s been institutionalized in a psychiatric ward and overdosed on lithium, and wants to get rid of Thanksgiving. Democrat frontrunner for Wisconsin governor Francesca Hong was previously hospitalized in a psychiatric ward and admitted to having a mental breakdown, suffering from mental illness, and cutting herself.
  • James Talerico, a guy who plays with a Dr. Fauci doll, proclaims his “love for trans kids,” and met his girlfriend at a gay bar.
  • Troy Jackson who dresses up as a mechanic for fun, married his cousin, and knocked her up twice.
  • A guy who frequents events where participants get pissed on in a kiddie pool while wearing assless chaps, whose claim to fame is lowering the age of consent for men to have sex with boys as young as 12, decriminalizing knowingly infecting others with AIDS, and supports allowing convicted pedophiles to run for school board.
  • A Haitian who thinks the United States is a “f*cking disgrace,” wants to abolish borders, law enforcement, and prisons.
  • A Muslim who believes the U.S. deserved 9/11, is funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, and whose wife and father-in-law have terrorist connections.

Michigan Primary: House Races With Socialists to Watch

New York Times: Brief summaries on some of the races to watch from the New York Times: Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, is term-limited, leaving an open governor’s race in a state that went for Mr. Trump by 16 percentage points in 2024. The contest to replace her is crowded in both primaries without a clear front-runner on either side:  Tennessee: Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, is term-limited and unable to run again. The Republican primary will include Senator Marsha Blackburn, who is running less than a year after winning re-election in the Senate.

Seattle Times: In Washington State: U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washougal, has candidates to her right and left vying for Southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District. National Republicans backing state Sen. John Braun have cast her as too blue for a competitive district that has thrice backed Trump; Democrat Brent Hennrich, meanwhile, argues she is not blue enough. In Central Washington, Republican front-runners Amanda McKinney and Jerrod Sessler are competing for an open seat representing the state’s conservative stronghold in Congress — a race that could reveal how deeply Trump-style politics has reshaped the Republican Party.

Additional Primaries Tomorrow: Kansas, Missouri and Washington

New York Times: Brief summaries on some of the races to watch from the New York Times: Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, is term-limited, leaving an open governor’s race in a state that went for Mr. Trump by 16 percentage points in 2024. The contest to replace her is crowded in both primaries without a clear front-runner on either side:  Tennessee: Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, is term-limited and unable to run again. The Republican primary will include Senator Marsha Blackburn, who is running less than a year after winning re-election in the Senate.

Seattle Times: In Washington State: U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washougal, has candidates to her right and left vying for Southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District. National Republicans backing state Sen. John Braun have cast her as too blue for a competitive district that has thrice backed Trump; Democrat Brent Hennrich, meanwhile, argues she is not blue enough. In Central Washington, Republican front-runners Amanda McKinney and Jerrod Sessler are competing for an open seat representing the state’s conservative stronghold in Congress — a race that could reveal how deeply Trump-style politics has reshaped the Republican Party.

“Francesca Hong is running for Wisconsin Governor and campaigning with Hasan Piker, who abuses his dog on live streams and states America deserved 9/11.”

This is the media:

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Why Do Muslims Pray On Public Roads?

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U.S. Bars Imports From 43 More Companies Over China’s Alleged Forced Labor Involving Uyghurs

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REUTERS—The United States on Friday banned imports from 43 more companies over alleged human rights abuses of Uyghur and other minority groups, including Hunan Aihua Group, one of China’s largest capacitor manufacturers, according to a government posting.

The companies were added to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, which restricts the import of goods tied to what the U.S. has determined are China’s human rights abuses and ongoing genocide in the Xinjiang region.

The latest additions also include companies in the pharmaceutical, metals, cotton, food and lithium production sectors.

The posting marks the first time companies have been added to the list under the Trump administration, and brings the number of entities on the list from 144 to 187. It is also the largest number of entities added in one action since the Act was signed into law in December 2021. Companies on the list are believed to mine, produce or manufacture their goods with forced labor.

Companies on the List

“Today’s action by the Trump administration strengthens America’s economy against products made with slave labor and sends a message to the Chinese Communist Party that we will not look the other way on its genocide and human rights abuses,” Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on China, said in a statement.

The U.S. has said Chinese authorities have established internment camps for Uyghurs and other religious and ethnic minority groups in China’s western Xinjiang region. Beijing has denied any abuses.

Hunan Aihua Group was added to the list because the U.S. believes the company sources chemical foil and other materials from Xinjiang, the Department of Homeland Security said in the posting in the U.S. Federal Register.

The company, which supplies consumer electronics, industrial, automotive and renewable energy markets,  did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chacha Food Co., whose products are exported to nearly 50 countries and regions, was also added to the list, according to the posting. Others on the list included Xinjiang Tianhongji Technology Co., Tefeng Pharmaceutical Co., Tianshan Aluminum Group, and Henan Guorong Electronic Technology Co.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The companies could not immediately be reached.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Holmes)

AUTHOR

Reuters

Contributor

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Strange Alliance Between Islam and Socialism

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Victor Davis Hanson: Why Radical Islam and Socialism Keep Joining Forces

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson.Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

One of the things that is perplexing and often a topic of conversation is this new American-Western European alliance or absorption of Islam and Marxism-socialism-communism. In other words, people who identify as radical Muslims, often in their alliance, include people who are traditional Western Marxists, and it doesn’t seem possible for a variety of ways.

There’s a lot of antitheses. Do we really believe that these upscale people in blue enclaves in the United States who declare themselves socialist and are voting for people like Zohran Mamdani, or Ilhan Omar, or Rashida Tlaib, who are proud, and active, and often fervent Muslims, tolerate gays? Do you really believe if you said, “I am gay, and I’m proud of it, and I want to announce that in Saudi Arabia,” you wouldn’t be in trouble?

Do you really believe that if you went to Iran and said, “I want to repeal all the sodomy laws,” you wouldn’t be in trouble?

Or if you went, let’s say, to Egypt and you said, “I wanna have a trans, sexual support group,” you wouldn’t be in trouble? Do you really believe that upscale, independent women in Western cities, maybe unmarried, professional, doesn’t that bother them a little bit when they ally themselves with radical Muslims who tell them that, as far as men go, their dream is going to an Islamic heaven and having the sexual use as if they’re almost tools of 72 virgins?

Does that go well with a book editor in Manhattan or the head of an NGO in Denver? I don’t think so.

Another thing that’s quite different is Islam believes in Allah, and that’s it. All other people who are non-believers are doomed to hell, and the duty is to spread worship, loyalty, fealty to the Muslim Allah.

But throughout the history of socialism and Marxism and communism, all of them agree on one thing, that religion is really the opiate of the masses. They feel that class struggle is harmed or negated by people who believe in a God. In the Christian sense, they feel that, blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor.

That Sermon on the Mount doesn’t do anything. It basically says there will be social justice in heaven, but not here. If you’re poor, you go to heaven by being morally better than the rich man. Remember, it’s harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man, Jesus says, to go to heaven.

So, the message for believers is that there is social justice in heaven. The message for a socialist, communist, Marxist is it’s right now. There is no heaven. There is no God. We have to get social justice now.

Another thing that’s very different is Marxists believe in the state control of the means of production, and socialists believe that this—there can be private property, but mostly the utilities, the railroads, the steel companies, most all of the muscles of a society are owned also by the state.

But they believe in a commission, a committee, a chairman. They don’t believe that one exercises power through royalty or succession, although most communist and Marxist states, which we see in North Korea and we see in Iran, they’re very similar in some ways. But, in the Arab world, monarchy is pretty much de rigueur, as we see in the Gulf states.

But Marxism says, “No, we don’t believe in kings. We overthrow them.” That was what the revolutions of 1848 were about. That’s what the French Revolution was about. That’s basically what the Bolsheviks were trying to get rid of an imperial dynastic tsar. So, that’s another antithesis.

Another thing is the Arab world is based on tribalism, that your first loyalty goes to people who look like you, speak a dialect of Arabic like you, and have a local or regional affinity, a proximity to you.

That’s always been the challenge of the modern Arab nation or state. How do you include people from seven, 10, 15, 20 different tribes who have fought each other for centuries and only come together when coerced to, for example, under the Ottoman Empire?

But Marxism is very different. Your first allegiance is not to people who look like you.

It’s to the global proletariat, the oppressed, the Comintern. Socialists believe that they have more in common with people in Europe who are fellow socialists than they do with rich people or, or people who are devoutly religious in their own country.

So tribalism is part of Islam’s foundation. Globalism is central to the socialist or the communist or the Marxist.

However, all of that said, someone’s going to say, “Well, Victor, they’re alike. They have a coalition. Zohran Mamdani is a hardcore Marxist, and he’s a hardcore Islamicist, and so is Ilhan Omar, and so are almost all the people in Dearborn, Michigan, it seems like, and so are these new socialist candidates that are popping up like flowers everywhere in blue cities and urban areas.”

So, what’s the similarities? One, they hate Western civilization. They can’t stand the values of Western civilization, free speech, religious opportunity, market capitalism, etc. They both hate that and Islam has been, has been at war with the West since the seventh century, and it’s fought Westerners not just in the Crusades, but all through the history of the Byzantine Empire, all through the history of Europe and North Africa.

And when [Osama] bin Laden said the great tragedy was that Islam lost its hold in Europe, what he was basically talking about was the Battle of Tours and the stopping of the Islamic movement northward into Europe. They, of course, have, in the Quran and its related apocrypha, there’s a lot of hatred of Jews.

They hate Israel with a passion. So do Marxists, socialists. I’m not sure why they do, given the creation of Israel was based on a kibbutz system, which is socialistic in nature, and many of the original generation who settled in Israel even before World War II came there as dissidents from Eastern Europe and Russia, and they believed in a socialist future.

But that’s all ancient history now. As of now, what draws Muslims to the new left-wing hardcore socialist and communist, and what draws them to include rather antithetical Muslims into their movement, they hate Israel with a passion, and they hate Jews.

There’s another, similarity. They hate capitalism.

They do not believe that a person should have freedom of opportunity to start his own business, to make a profit. In the Islamic world, interest is frowned upon officially. Not that the Gulf states are run … The Gulf states are run on hypercapitalism, but officially they find, euphemisms and mechanisms to get around prohibitions in the Quran for hypercapitalism or laissez-faire capitalism.

And of course, capitalism is the main enemy of Zohran Mamdani and others who feel it’s unfair, it doesn’t share the wealth. They believe in the message not of the Americans, “Give me liberty or give me death,” a revolution to ensure political freedom, but a holistic, totalitarian, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree revolution of fraternity egalitarianism.

In other words, we’re not just going to give people freedom to speak. We don’t want them to have freedom to speak. We want to make them equal on the back end by the use of government coercion.

Both of them hate democracy then. They don’t like the people voting because, in the Arab world or the Muslim world, there will be people who object to the role of women, especially in the modern age, or the role that intolerance for sexual minorities or the intolerance shown Christians.

And so, they will object, and they wouldn’t want to express that objection. That’s taboo. And we know from the history of socialism, they say they believe in free speech, but very quickly socialists try to outlaw it, and when they become communists, they kill for it.

That’s another difference. And both of them justify violence.

They believe the violent method is necessary for the, desired end. And so you see people who are committing … Who are the people that commit violence? Who was the person just this week in New York that stabbed somebody? Who was the person in Europe that tried to run over people at a gay party?

Who are the people protesting ICE? Who are the people on the campus protesting violently? They are either radical Islamicist or they’re radical socialist communist Antifa types, or often they’re mixed together in the same demonstration.

Finally, remember that Hitler himself said he was a national socialist.

Yes, he made deals with crony capitalism, but even though he said he despised Bolshevism, he said after he was looking back in his final days that he admired Joseph Stalin’s communism, and he said that if he had defeated the United States and Russia, he would have executed American leaders, but welcomed Stalin in kind of a genteel captivity.

And by the same token, Hitler said that he preferred Islam to Christianity. He had a great deal of admiration for the Grand Mufti. There was an alliance of radical Islam with national socialists. They both hated capitalism, and they hated the same thing as we’ve just reviewed, and they liked many of the same things.

Hitler was not a hypercapitalist. He was a socialist, a national socialist. And in some ways, even though he said he despised Bolsheviks, they had a lot in common.

So, remember, next time you see this bizarre, weird, surreal alliances or people shouting Allah Akbar or, power to the people, spread the word. They’re not as different as you think.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Victor Davis Hanson 

Victor Davis Hanson is a Daily Signal senior contributor, hosting a podcast, producing video commentaries, and writing a weekly column. He is the author of “The Counterrevolution The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement.” Follow on X VDHanson.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: Property Mogul Indicted In NYC Mayor’s Office Bribery Scheme Listed As Chinese Intel Official

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The property developer who allegedly bribed former New York Mayor Eric Adams’ chief-of-staff has served as a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence official and hobnobbed with party bosses for years, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.

Authorities arrested Andy Zhu, founder of New York-based real estate firm East Times Group (ETG), and three others including Adams’ former chief-of-staff, Frank Carone, on charges of fraud and money laundering in June, according to the indictment. Between October 2022 and September 2023, the property mogul allegedly bribed Carone and his brother with $120,000 to successfully pressure the New York City Department of Social Services to award Zhu’s Microtel Inn with a $6,825,000 “emergency shelter contract” in order to convert the Long Island City hotel into housing for “migrant asylum seekers.”

All the defendants have pleaded not guilty, and bail for Zhu, who is a Chinese national, was set at $8 million because of his “extensive foreign ties to a country that does not extradite to the United States,” prosecutors argued, the New York Post reported.

Chinese government and state media reports translated by the DCNF reveal that Zhu’s foreign ties include serving as an official within several arms of a CCP influence and intelligence agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), which Beijing uses to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC).

ETG and Zhu — who uses the Chinese names Yan Po Zhu and Zhu Sandong — could not be reached for comment and Zhu’s attorney, Stephen Scaring, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“United Front work is not a temporary political activity, but rather a major strategic undertaking that has long been directed by the CCP Central Committee,” Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a virologist who has accused the CCP of developing COVID-19 as a bioweapon, told the DCNF. “[T]he focus of United Front work includes not only influencing overseas Chinese communities, but also establishing long-term relationship networks with foreign governments, legislative bodies, universities, businesses, media organizations and other social institutions.” 

[Image created by the DCNF with photos from Zhu’s social media, ETG, 美国都市网, Chinese state media, Louis Zhao YouTube, and 中国侨声]

‘Party And State Missions’

Zhu has repeatedly met with high-level Chinese government officials and holds several positions within UFWD arms, including serving as an “overseas committee member” of the UFWD’s All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), according to DCNF translations of Chinese government documents and Zhu’s social media posts.

“ACFROC is responsible for building relationship networks, conducting influence operations, identifying and cultivating individuals who may be useful to the CCP — including useful idiots or agents — and, when necessary, providing personnel, communication channels, or social-resource support for national security, intelligence, or other party and state missions,” said Yan, who hosts The Voice of Dr. Yan podcast.

Zhu has attended multiple New York welcome banquets for ACFROC leaders, including a May 2019 event for ACFROC’s chairman, Wan Lijun, during which Zhu was filmed on stage alongside the intelligence official and other attendees in front of a banner welcoming the ACFROC delegation, footage shows.

“Every overseas Chinese compatriot is a mobile calling card for China’s people and civilization,” Wan Lijun said, according to a DCNF translation of a May 2019 state media report concerning his visit.

Wan Lijun, who now also serves as a member of the CCP’s 20th Central Committee, encouraged attendees at the May 2019 banquet to serve as China’s “ambassadors” and said that ACFROC assumes six core functions including “fostering economic growth, safeguarding the rights and interests of overseas Chinese in accordance with the law, expanding overseas friendship, actively participating in political affairs, promoting Chinese culture and taking part in social construction,” according to a DCNF translation of the state media report.

During Wan Lijun’s tenure as ACFROC’s chairman, members of his federation have worked with “China’s FBI,” the Ministry of Public Security, to establish overseas Chinese police stations around the world, according to a DCNF translation of a Chinese government announcement. One of those police stations was established in 2022 within a Manhattan Chinese civic association called the America Changle Association, to which Zhu made a $100,000 donation in 2018, the New York Post reported.

America Changle Association’s former chairman, Lu Jianwang, who is also known as Harry Lu, was convicted in May 2026 of operating a police station for the Chinese government in New York City and awaits sentencing.

[Image created by DCNF with ETG and Wall Street Herald photos]

Zhu began meeting with high-level ACFROC leadership as early as 2012.

On his own social media, Zhu posted a photo of himself in February 2012 at a small welcome banquet in New York City for ACFROC’s deputy chairman, Li Zhuobin, in front of a banner welcoming the intelligence official and “ACFROC’s Overseas Committee Members From The New York Region,” according to a DCNF translation of a photo accompanying a post Zhu made on social media.

During the banquet, ACFROC overseas committee members proposed to establish the “U.S. East Coast ACFROC Overseas Advisors, Committee Members And Youth Committee Members Association,” according to a DCNF translation of a related February 2012 Chinese media report.

Zhu has since welcomed at least four other high-level Chinese government delegations to the U.S.

In one instance, Zhu attended a banquet welcoming ACFROC’s deputy chairman Li Bo to New York City in November 2018, during which he also appeared on stage alongside the ACFROC official, according to a DCNF translation of a Chinese state media report and accompanying photos.

The 2018 banquet was hosted by a New York-based Chinese civic association called the United Chinese Associations of Eastern U.S., which counts Zhu as an advisor and identified itself as subordinate to the UFWD’s China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA) when filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in September 2023, according to Department of Justice records and DCNF translations of Chinese government, state media and university reports.

Such welcome banquets simultaneously serve political, propaganda and intelligence purposes, Yan told the DCNF, including by “establishing and maintaining relationship networks” and by publicly demonstrating “political identification with, and organizational obedience to, the CCP.”

“Overseas Chinese organizations typically invite carefully selected individuals from local political, business, academic, media and other socially influential circles, creating opportunities for direct contact between CCP officials and targeted individuals, thereby facilitating the subsequent development of relationships, influence operations and other United Front activities,” Yan said. “At the same time, such activities also serve to identify potential collaborators, assess their political attitudes, social influence and accessibility, and provide the foundation for subsequent information collection, relationship cultivation and other party and state missions.”

Zhu has also met with senior Chinese government and ACFROC officials in China on several occasions, including with Zhang Yao, deputy chairwoman of ACFROC’s Fujian branch, in July 2023, which was during the year-long period that Zhu was allegedly making bribery payments to secure the “emergency shelter contract” for his hotel, according to the indictment and a DCNF translation of a Chinese government announcement.

On another occasion, Zhu met with UFWD and ACFROC officials in Beijing for a multi-day celebration of the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in September and October 2019, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and media reports. During those 2019 festivities, the Fujian-native attended a dinner reception in the Great Hall Of The People, a picnic at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse and a military parade in Tiananmen Square alongside high-level CCP and UFWD personnel including ACFROC’s current chairman Wan Lijun, photos accompanying the Chinese news reports show.

“United front organizations, such as [ACFROC], are not merely cultural or overseas Chinese affairs organizations,” Yan warned. “Rather, they constitute an important component of the CCP’s national strategic system, whose core objective is to employ all lawful and non-military means to serve the party’s political, security and national interests.”

AUTHOR

Philip Lenczycki

Senior Investigative Reporter

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: CCP Intel-Associated Official Converted Taxpayer-Funded Facility By US Military Bases Into Massive Illegal Weed Grow

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: CCP Intel-Associated Official Converted Taxpayer-Funded Facility By U.S. Military Bases Into Massive Illegal Weed Grow

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A Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence official is the head of a U.S. taxpayer-funded facility in the Mojave Desert where authorities dismantled a massive illegal marijuana operation, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.

Police seized over 15,000 marijuana plants and arrested 14 people — including eight Chinese nationals — while conducting a July 2022 raid on a 75-acre Barstow, California facility owned by China-based quartz slab manufacturer American Quartz Inc. (AQ), which secured a multimillion-dollar Sunshine State grant earlier that year with support from Treasurer Fiona Ma and remains operational, according to the criminal complaint and state records.

Barstow’s former mayor Paul Anthony Courtney and a dozen other individuals were charged with felony counts of illegal marijuana cultivation and tax evasion in July 2025 related to the illicit operation, which allegedly may also have involved “violence,” “cruelty,” and witness intimidation, according to the criminal complaint. The charges against Courtney, who served as Barstow mayor until 2024, were ultimately dismissed in March 2026, when he agreed to plead no contest to a newly added “Fighting, Noise, Offensive Words” infraction, court records show.

Bench warrants have been issued for the arrests of the eight Chinese defendants, who have not appeared in court, and the other defendants pleaded not guilty in their ongoing cases.

While it is unclear if any of the defendants ever worked for AQ, Chinese government documents translated by the DCNF reveal that the company’s CEO, “Tommy” Hu Qiaomin — who was not charged — has extensive CCP state security ties and has held numerous positions within arms of one of the communist nation’s influence and intelligence agencies, including current membership in several such entities.

AQ, Hu, Ma and Courtney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Hu’s ties to the CCP raise serious national security concerns in light of AQ reportedly continuing to operate as a “landlord” for cannabis cultivators post-raid, the Chinese company’s efforts to influence U.S. lawmakers and AQ’s proximity to sensitive U.S. government sites, including Edwards Air Force Base to the west, Fort Irwin to the north and Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow approximately 6 miles east.

“AQ operated as more than a commercial landlord; it gave a CCP-linked actor facility control inside a sensitive logistics corridor,” Ammon Blair, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told the DCNF. “The facility matters as much, if not more, than the marijuana.”

“AQ sits near the Barstow International Gateway (BIG), which links the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Alameda Corridor, BNSF Railway, warehousing, transloading, and national freight movement,” said Blair, who is a former Border Patrol agent and Army veteran. “It also sits near Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow, which supports military logistics and operational readiness. That geography gives a hostile or criminal network practical value through staging, warehousing, workforce placement, cash movement, surveillance, local influence and commercial cover.”

[Image created by DCNF with Google Earth screenshot + Canva, Barstow Police Department and Southern California News Group / Joe Nelson pics]

‘For The Motherland’

Hu has held Chinese military, government and intel arm positions in both the U.S. and China, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government reports.

Born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang in 1955, Hu served in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) until 1980, when he began working for the state-run Wenzhou Foreign Trade Company, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports. After building a shoe manufacturing company in Africa in the 1990s, Hu expanded his business to the U.S. in 2003.

While living in the U.S., Hu has maintained close ties with the Chinese government, including by serving as a representative to Wenzhou’s Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at least four times between 2012 and 2019, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports. CPPCC delegates “serve as proxies for CCP interests,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC).

Hu’s Chinese patriotism made headlines in China during Wenzhou’s 2019 CPPCC conference, when he gifted custom-made vests featuring Chinese flags to other delegates.

“I frequently see overseas Chinese leaders wearing these patriotic vests at events and activities. It shows everyone’s sense of responsibility and pride for the motherland,” Hu said, according to a DCNF translation of a 2019 Chinese government announcement.

Hu has also held at least five positions within arms of a CCP influence and intelligence agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), which Beijing uses to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to USCC.

Among other such roles, Hu previously served as a representative in the Wenzhou branch of the UFWD’s China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA), and has served as an executive vice president in the UFWD’s Wenzhou Overseas Chinese General Chamber of Commerce since 2019, according to DCNF translations of UFWD announcements.

The entrepreneur has also led several California-based united front-affiliates, including the U.S. Wenzhou Association (USWZA), which is a nonprofit that is listed as an overseas chapter of a UFWD arm called the All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports.

USWZA operates “under the leadership” of the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate, according to a DCNF translation of a speech Hu made during a February 2013 USWZA conference, which included attendees from the consulate as well as members of a UFWD arm that opposes Taiwan’s independence called the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (CCPPNR). While serving as USWZA’s chairman, Hu said the association had welcomed visiting Chinese officials, including General Secretary Xi Jinping and personnel from ”China’s FBI,” the Ministry of Public Security (MPS).

“Over the past two years, our association has handled the highest volume of reception duties. We have hosted delegations from MPS, the State Tax Administration, the Communist Youth League Central Committee, the inaugural Central Art Leadership training program to the U.S., deputy provincial-level leadership training programs, the Zhejiang Song and Dance Troupe, provincial-level leading cadres training programs as well as municipal party committee, government, People’s Congress, and CPPCC committee delegations,” Hu said, according to a DCNF translation of the 2013 speech.

USWZA’s website continues to list Hu as a member and the entrepreneur appeared on stage alongside the association’s officials during USWZA’s March 2026 Chinese New Year event, photos and footage show.

Since 2017, Hu has also met with MPS officials in China at least five times to discuss matters including Wenzhou’s “overseas Chinese police” program — which established a yet unidentified Los Angeles police liaison station in 2018 — as well as an MPS platform that supports the CCP’s overseas courts, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government posts. Hu has served as chairman of another UFWD-affiliate called the Wenzhou Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce (WZLACC), which is a nonprofit that hosts one such overseas Chinese court, the DCNF reported in January 2025.

USWZA and WZLACC could not be reached for comment and the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“Hu’s Chinese government ties change the meaning of the case,” Blair said. “A former PLA soldier with CPPCC, UFWD, COFA, MPS, consular and overseas-policing ties brings the CCP party-state influence system into the ownership of a U.S. industrial site.”

[Image created by DCNF with Paul Anthony Courtney Facebook post + California and Chinese government pics]

‘Help From Friends’

While holding positions with CCP entities, Hu built a relationship with California State Treasurer Fiona Ma that helped deliver Chinese military-tied engineers and millions in taxpayer dollars to AQ, filings show.

In November 2019, Ma, her representative Daniel Sieu and his wife, who is also Ma’s ”outreach specialist,” attended AQ’s groundbreaking ceremony, according to AQ’s website and photos accompanying Chinese government announcements.

During the event, AQ reportedly received the city key from Barstow officials as well as a commendation from Ma, who has presented such awards to CCP-tied individuals at least 10 other times, the DCNF reported in May 2026.

Ma and the Sieus, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, continued to support AQ in several ways after its launch, including by meeting with Barstow officials and by helping at least seven engineers from China’s Veegoo Technology obtain U.S. visas, purportedly in order to help AQ build its assembly lines, the Victorville Daily Press reported.

Veegoo has been recognized by the Chinese government as a “Little Giant,” which is an affiliation that the U.S. Department of War has used to designate entities as “Chinese Military Companies,” according to federal sources and a DCNF translation of an announcement on Veegoo’s website.

While Daniel Sieu was the “central driver” of AQ’s push to secure introduction letters for Veegoo’s engineers, the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) — where Ma serves as a key voting member — also assisted, the Daily Press reported.

Money likewise moved between Hu and Ma’s entities after the 2019 groundbreaking ceremony, with filings showing that AQ and another company owned by Hu had collectively donated $11,000 to Ma’s political war chest by June 2024.

During an October 2021 event held by the William & Stephanie Foundation (WSF), Hu also made a “generous donation” of an unspecified amount to the nonprofit, which was established by the Sieus and lists Ma as its sole board advisor, according to business filings and a DCNF translation of a Chinese state media report.

“The arduous struggle of Chinese people in America has been filled with blood and tears,” Hu said while thanking Ma and Daniel Sieu for supporting AQ at the WSF event, according to a DCNF translation of the state media report. “Establishing a factory here is more difficult than in China, but if you have help from friends one can achieve twice as much with half the effort.”

The following year, GO-Biz awarded AQ with a $5 million California Competes grant in April 2022 contingent upon several conditions including the quartz slab manufacturer renovating the facility and creating 500 new full-time jobs in California, according to the contract, which was signed a month after AQ began leasing warehouse space to cannabis cultivators, the Daily Press reported.

States should not allow Chinese entities to own property or partner with cannabis companies, Steve Robinson, editor-in-chief of The Maine Wire and filmmaker behind the award-winning documentary High Crimes: The Chinese Mafia’s Takeover of Rural America, told the DCNF.

“Why is the CCP sponsoring black market cannabis cultivation and trafficking? The best answer I’ve seen is that cannabis trafficking provides a low-risk mechanism for stockpiling cash,” Robinson said. “So, the more important question from a national security perspective is what is the CCP doing with the billions of dollars in drug money these networks produce?”

AUTHOR

Philip Lenczycki

Senior Investigative Reporter

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Dem Darling Raked In Cash From Donors With Chinese Gov’t, CCP Intel Ties

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Here’s a List of Battles fought against Communists

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NOTE: The author of this column was a “Cold War Warrior” who has fought Communism throughout his 23 year military career and he still does to this very day. He fought in the “Tet Offensive” of 1968 as a Field Artillary Second Lieutenant with the 2nd Battalion 501st Airborne Infantry, 101st Airbrone Division in Vietnam.

WATCH: The Cold War Explained In 15 Minutes | Best Cold War Documentary

Here is a chronological list of major military conflicts, campaigns, and battles fought globally to resist, contain, or overthrow communist forces and regimes throughout the 20th century.

The Early Era & Interwar Period (1917–1939)

  • The Russian Civil War (1917–1922): Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the White Army (a loose coalition of anti-communist forces) fought the Red Army. They were supported by the Allied Intervention, which included troops from the United States, Great Britain, France, and Japan.

  • The Battle of Warsaw (1920): A decisive battle in the Polish-Soviet War, often referred to as the “Miracle on the Vistula.” Polish forces under Marshal Józef Piłsudski decisively defeated the advancing Soviet Red Army, halting the spread of communism into Western Europe.

  • The Chinese Civil War – First Phase (1927–1937): The Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) forces led by Chiang Kai-shek launched campaigns to eliminate the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), culminating in the Fifth Encirclement Campaign which forced the communists into the “Long March.”

The Cold War Era (1945–1991)

The Korean War (1950–1953)

United Nations forces, primarily led by the United States and South Korea, fought against invading North Korean and Chinese communist forces.

  • Battle of Inchon (1950): An amphibious invasion led by General Douglas MacArthur that successfully broke North Korean supply lines and recaptured Seoul.

  • Battle of Chosin Reservoir (1950): A brutal winter battle where UN forces fought their way out of a massive encirclement by the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army.

The Vietnam War & Indochina Conflicts (1946–1975)

  • Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954): The decisive engagement of the First Indochina War, where French Union forces were defeated by the communist Viet Minh.

  • Battle of Ia Drang (1965): The first major conventional battle between the United States Army and the People’s Army of Vietnam (North Vietnamese Army).

  • The Tet Offensive (1968): A massive surprise campaign launched by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces against South Vietnamese and US positions. While a tactical defeat for the communists, it was a strategic turning point.

Anti-Communist Insurgencies & Counter-Insurgencies

  • The Malayan Emergency (1948–1960): A successful counter-insurgency campaign led by British and Commonwealth forces against the communist Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA).

  • The Greek Civil War (1946–1949): The Greek government army, heavily backed by the UK and later the US under the Truman Doctrine, defeated the communist-led Democratic Army of Greece (DSE).

  • The Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989): Anti-communist Islamic guerrillas, known as the Mujahideen (supported by the US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and others), fought a protracted war against the Soviet Union and the Marxist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

Post-Cold War & Border Conflicts

  • The Angolan Civil War (1975–2002): A proxy conflict featuring battles like the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, where anti-communist UNITA forces (backed by South Africa) fought the ruling Marxist MPLA government (backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union).

  • Sino-Vietnamese War (1979): A brief border war fought between two rival communist powers, where China launched a punitive expedition against Vietnam in response to Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia.

History of Communism in a column titled “Repression and executions under communist dictatorships” writes:

Communist dictatorships in the 20th century were characterized by brutal repression, mass killings, forced labor camps, and executions of political opponents and civilians seen as threats to the regime. The total death toll is estimated at over 100 million people across communist states like the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, North Korea, and Eastern Europe. These regimes maintained power through secret police, propaganda, violently silencing dissent, and a massive apparatus of repression and terror.

Soviet Union Under Stalin

The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin from the 1920s-1953 saw some of the worst repression and mass killings in history. Key elements included:

  • The Great Purge (1936-1938): Stalin unleashed a wave of terror, involving show trials, mass arrests, torture, and executions of Communist Party members, government officials, and military officers. Estimates of the death toll range from 700,000 to 1.2 million executed.1
  • Gulag forced labor camps: Millions of Soviet citizens were sentenced to forced labor in the brutal Gulag camp system. Inmates faced starvation, exposure, exhaustion, and summary executions. Estimates of total deaths in the Gulags range from 1.5 to 1.7 million people.2
  • Collectivization and terror-famine (1932-1933): The Soviet state’s forced collectivization of agriculture and seizure of crops and food led to a man-made famine killing an estimated 7 to 10 million people, mainly in Ukraine (the Holodomor). Stalin used the famine to crush peasant resistance and nationalism.3

Historian Robert Conquest called Stalin’s Soviet Union “a regime of unrivaled cruelty and total negation of human rights” that “far exceeded even Nazi Germany in the scale and range of its physical terror and torture, executions and mass murders.”4

China Under Mao

Under Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party carried out massive repression and caused the deaths of tens of millions through executions, labor camps, and man-made famines:

  • Land Reform and Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1949-1953): Mao launched violent campaigns to seize land and eliminate landlords and perceived enemies of the revolution. An estimated 1 to 4.5 million landlords were executed.5
  • The Great Leap Forward (1958-1962): Mao’s crash industrialization and collectivization campaign caused economic collapse and the Great Chinese Famine, killing an estimated 15 to 55 million from starvation and overwork.6
  • The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976): Mao unleashed the Red Guards to violently purge perceived capitalist and traditional elements, killing up to 20 million and subjecting countless others to public torture, humiliation, and labor camps.7

Mao proclaimed “We have a very good solution called execution. With the death of one, many may live.”8 His rule turned China into a land of paranoia, repression and death on a colossal scale.

Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge

From 1975-1979, the communist Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot carried out one of the worst episodes of mass killing in the 20th century, causing the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia’s population.9

  • Executions and torture: The Khmer Rouge executed hundreds of thousands of perceived enemies, including intellectuals, Buddhists, and ethnic minorities. Prisoners were tortured into giving false confessions at sites like Tuol Sleng prison before being brutally executed.
  • Forced labor and starvation: Millions were forced into agricultural labor camps and subjected to starvation, overwork and disease. Countless died from the nightmarish conditions.
  • The Killing Fields: The remains of over 1.3 million victims, many executed, have been uncovered in over 23,000 mass graves known as the Killing Fields across Cambodia.10

Historian Ben Kiernan stated the Khmer Rouge’s rule “ended up killing over one quarter of the country’s population, through execution, starvation, and overwork. It was one of the worst holocausts in modern history.”11

Other Communist Dictatorships

Repression and executions occurred across other communist regimes as well:

  • North Korea: Has operated a brutal system of repression since the 1940s, with 400,000 believed to have died in labor camps and 25 million estimated to have starved.12
  • Eastern Europe: Stalinist terror gripped Eastern Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s, with hundreds of thousands killed, imprisoned or sent to labor camps. The Soviet invasions crushed uprisings in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).
  • Cuba: Thousands were killed by Fidel Castro’s regime, especially in the early 1960s, and many thousands imprisoned for political dissent.13

Conclusion

The historical record shows that communist dictatorships were responsible for repression, executions and deaths on a massive scale, causing immense human suffering. These regimes ruled through fear, violence and the crushing of individual freedom – the antithesis of their hypocritical promises of liberation and equality. The staggering death toll is a tragic testament to the lethality of totalitarian communism. As Stéphane Courtois stated in The Black Book of Communism, “Communist regimes did not just commit criminal acts…they were criminal enterprises in their very essence, on principle, so to speak, in the name of an ideological project.”14 Communism’s legacy of repression and mass killing must never be forgotten.

References

  1. Timothy Snyder, “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin”
  2. Anne Applebaum, “Gulag: A History”
  3. Norman Naimark, “Stalin’s Genocides”
  4. Robert Conquest, “Reflections on a Ravaged Century”
  5. Frank Dikötter, “Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962”
  6. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, “Mao: The Unknown Story”
  7. Li Zhisui, “The Private Life of Chairman Mao”
  8. Ben Kiernan, “The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979”
  9. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform”
  10. Rudolph J. Rummel, “Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900”
  11. Stéphane Courtois et al., “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression”

©2026 . All rights reserved.

Mamdani’s Sour Independence Day Address Shows How Little He Understands America

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This Independence Day, countless Americans celebrated our country’s 250th anniversary in countless jubilatory ways, from grilling in the backyard to going to fireworks shows and even traveling to Mt. Vernon to pay respects to the Father of Our Country.

But a certain socialist mayor of New York City took the occasion to deliver a speech in a tone that made it seem like he was turning in a homework assignment on a topic he hated.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s speech before the July Fourth festivities was an epic downer, a perfect example of aspirational leftist rhetoric masking a notable dearth of genuine patriotism.

It’s not nearly as important as the content, but the optics were bad too.

As a man once said, you’d find more cheer in a graveyard. You’d think Mamdani would get some extras who at least looked like they wanted to be there.

Mamdani’s wife didn’t even show up, though it’s doubtful she would have brought up the energy level. She reportedly went on an “Islamic spiritual wellness” retreat in Spain rather than stay for the Independence Day events. It was a coincidence, I’m sure.

So, this was a solemn, dour occasion in which even when Mamdani tried to squeeze out some praise for America, it was laced with straw men and passive-aggressive contempt.

I’m not exaggerating, it really was terrible.

“We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else,” he said at one point. “ … The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place.”

Mamdani obviously doesn’t spend too much time with people who believe America is exceptional.

Being rich and powerful is merely a byproduct of America’s greatness.

However, if you’ve gone through life believing that Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” is true, then this is the kind of phony image of our self-conception you might come up with.

Mamdani’s intent was clearly to draw a line between his false version of America’s past as greedy and rapacious compared to its assumedly more generous, borderless socialist future that he and his friends intend to usher in.

We are supposed to believe that by handing the keys to our future over to the perpetually aggrieved, we’ll finally not be a bad country. And that hope is the only thing that keeps them invested in the place they apparently call “home.”

Mamdani continued to list in his speech a series of people who had escaped one oppression or another and ended up here in another land of oppressions that was maybe OK sometimes.

How inspiring.

The speech drew praise from some Democrat politicians and left-wing commentators, but it seems even Mamdani’s comms team knew that the vibe was off.

He followed up with a slightly more upbeat X post that nevertheless defined patriotism as “every act of righteous dissent — because loving our country means fighting for the best version of it.”

The boys of Pointe du Hoc and the young men who suffered at Valley Forge are, I guess, a cut below on Mamdani’s patriotism scale because they simply fought for the America that was.

I’ll counter that America was great when we were nothing but a collection of bankrupt states clinging to existence at the edge of the world in the shadow of the British empire.

America may be a land of perpetual motion, but what makes it special is in part what’s fixed in place.

“If all men are created equal, that is final,” Calvin Coolidge said at America’s 150th anniversary. “If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.”

From that hinge point of our country’s creation, millions upon millions of Americans helped build the most extraordinary country that has yet existed.

Did everyone succeed, was every law just, did everything work perfectly? Obviously not. We live in America, not the Kingdom of Heaven.

Down here, among the fallen, we’ve done quite a bit better than the rest in our 250 years.

You wouldn’t think that listening to the mayor of New York.

You’d think the American experience was no more than a series of miseries until a wealthy Indian child of a Bollywood producer and anti-colonialist professor settled here after a brief stop in Uganda, set up shop a hot second ago, and began to set things right.

Like so many others on the left, his only fondness for America appears to be in what he hopes it will be, not what it is or has been.

When in power they are “patriots,” when they aren’t it’s nothing but sour faces and complaints.

AUTHOR

Jarrett Stepman 

Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also the author of “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.” Send an email to Jarrett. Follow on X JarrettStepman.

RELATED VIDEOS:

Victor Davis Hanson: Mamdani is the Real Racist Polluting This Country

How to Spot a Communist, 2026

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Spy World Says It’s Pivoting To China After Years Of Whistleblower Warnings

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Whistleblowers and declassified documents have revealed a pattern of the CIA and FBI soft-pedaling findings that could rattle China, raising questions about whether President Donald Trump has the best information about America’s chief geopolitical rival at a high-stakes moment for U.S.-China relations.

A soft-on-China bias during the Biden administration shaped analyses of COVID-19 and election interference at CIA, FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the evidence suggests. Many officials in the sprawling $115.5 billion intelligence apparatus ascribe to a neoliberal worldview that prefers free trade and unfettered scientific cooperation with China, whistleblowers say.

The country’s most formidable adversary may have shaped an election and ignited a pandemic that killed 1.2 million Americans without serious alarm bells ringing at the top of the U.S. intelligence community, even as Beijing grew ever more brazen in its encroachments onto American shores.

However some evidence suggests that spy world is strengthening its position vis à vis China after a series of stumbles, even as the Trump administration marshals the military for the war in Iran.

Even as the Iran War has diverted munitions from Asia, CIA Director John Ratcliffe has stepped up efforts to recruit spies in China, including in a February video capitalizing on apparent chaos in the Chinese military. Ratcliffe reported to Congress in March that CIA had increased foreign intelligence gathering in China by 100%.

The message about rooting out political bias has “been received within our analytic community and within the CIA,” he said.

The bias under prior administrations was “pervasive,” according to James Erdman III, a CIA whistleblower who has risked retaliation by speaking out publicly.

Erdman revealed in Senate testimony on May 13 that when he dug into the suppression of intelligence pointing to a lab accident in Wuhan of the COVID-19 virus, many intel officials reported reluctance to elevate information that reflected poorly on Beijing. Erdman served as a member of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s task force unearthing intelligence community missteps and abuses, and remains at the CIA. The ODNI is working to declassify intelligence related to the origins of COVID before Gabbard leaves the post on June 30.

“That was pervasive among the individuals we talked to,” he said. “There’s certainly reluctance to provide information that would be geopolitically destabilizing or provide ammunition for actions that maybe they thought would be unwise.”

Virologists with the National Academy of Sciences advising the intelligence community would simultaneously work with Chinese scientists and were not subject to routine counterintelligence checks, according to Erdman’s written testimony. The most striking example: University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric advised the intelligence community through the BSEG and simultaneously worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab with ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Baric retired from UNC, Science reported on May 12.

EXCLUSIVE: California Dem Darling Raked In Cash From Donors With Chinese Gov’t, CCP Intel Ties

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Donors with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its intelligence arms have contributed more than $100,000 to the political war chest of California Treasurer Fiona Ma, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.

Among the many donations, filings show the Democratic frontrunner in California’s 2026 lieutenant governor race accepted $2,500 in September 2022 from then-Arcadia mayoral candidate Eileen Wang, who is expected to plead guilty to charges of acting as an illegal agent of China in the coming weeks, according to the Department of Justice. Ma has been photographed alongside Wang at multiple California events and endorsed her mayoral candidacy in August 2022 — one month before receiving the campaign contribution, according to DCNF translations of Chinese media reports.

Ma and Wang did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

California’s two-term treasurer has met with officials from the Chinese government and an influence and intelligence agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD) at least 30 times since 1999, the DCNF reported in May. The UFWD’s operations are a “blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations” that Beijing uses to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the House Select Committee on the CCP.

“This is how China seeks to co-opt U.S. lawmakers. It ‘floods the zone’ with United Front community groups to entangle American politicians in meetings, under the guise of legitimate community outreach and multiculturalism,” Sam Cooper, an investigative reporter and the author of “Wilful Blindness: How A Network Of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated The West,” told the DCNF. “If the politician you are investigating is meeting frequently with groups confirmed to fall within that classification and receiving donations from them, that constitutes a grave concern for American democracy.”

The China-ties of California’s chief financial officer recently came under scrutiny following an April 2026 Politico report revealing that in September 2023 she offered to help secure U.S. internships and employment opportunities for students attending the Pegasus California School, which was founded in the coastal city of Qingdao by Ma’s campaign finance committee chair. Pegasus’ students, who are Chinese nationals, have allegedly received unlawful California high school diplomas through a partnership with the Val Verde Unified School District, according to a 2026 Riverside County Office of Education audit of the district, which did not accuse Ma of any wrongdoing.

‘Promise Of Money’

Individuals with ties to China’s government, military and intelligence agencies have repeatedly donated to Ma’s political coffers, which received just over $2 million in total contributions from all sources in 2025, according to California Secretary of State campaign filings.

“It is disgraceful to see the willful entanglements with CCP-tied entities by government and business elites that are blinded by the allure of the promise of money and jobs, particularly since they are ignoring the directives and warnings by our national security and intelligence agencies,” former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Cella told the DCNF.

Ma’s campaigns have accepted tens of thousands of dollars from UFWD-affiliated donors, such as Royal Business Bank’s co-founder Simon Pang, who has contributed $12,500 to Ma since 2018 and serves as the “Southern California coordinator” for a UFWD affiliate called the Chinese People’s Association For Friendship With Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), the DCNF reported in July 2025. CPAFFC has “sought to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote [China’s] global agenda,” the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center has warned.

California’s treasurer has been photographed interacting with Pang at multiple events including the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate’s January 2023 Chinese New Year celebration, Chinese government photos show.

Ma’s campaigns have also accepted tens of thousands of dollars from several individuals who are affiliated with CPAFFC and traveled to the organization’s Beijing headquarters with Pang in February 2016, according to campaign filings and DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports.

Pang could not be reached for comment.

Filings also show Ma’s 2022 State Treasurer re-election campaign received $1,000 from businessman Xuan Guojun, who has held positions in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region People’s Congress and multiple UFWD arms, the DCNF reported in July 2025. Authorities in California arrested Xuan in May 2025 for allegedly abusing his 21 children in the U.S. related to an apparent surrogacy scheme, however no charges have been filed.

Xuan also serves as the executive chairman of a California-based nonprofit called the U.S.-Zhejiang General Chamber of Commerce (USZJGCC), which donated $2,750 to Ma’s 2022 re-election. Tax documents identify USZJGCC as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, which are restricted from making political contributions, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

The nonprofit is co-chaired by a supervisor for “China’s FBI,” the Ministry of Public Security, the DCNF reported in January 2025. Ma has participated in several USZJGCC events including an April 2023 webinar, according to DCNF translations of USZJGCC announcements.

Xuan and USZJGCC could not be reached for comment.

California Secretary of State filings also reveal that Ma’s lieutenant governor race has received $13,600 from Eric Zhang & Associates LLP, whose founder held a fundraiser for the career politician in January 2024, according to a DCNF translation of Chinese media.

The manager of that company’s Las Vegas office, Barry Zhang, was the registered agent for the now defunct Prestige Biotech Inc. (PBI) and another company connected to the alleged illegal biolabs that authorities discovered in Reedley, California in December 2022 and Las Vegas, Nevada in January 2026, business filings show.

While it is unclear if authorities recovered pathogens at the Nevada site, the California location contained “at least 20 potentially infectious agents,” according to a 2023 House Select Committee on the CCP investigation, which also said that PBI’s accountant worked for organizations headed by individuals “linked to CCP leadership and to the [UFWD].” Barry Zhang was the accountant referenced in that investigation, a committee spokesperson told the DCNF.

Eric Zhang & Associates and Barry Zhang did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Donors serving as members of other UFWD arms including the All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC) and the China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA) have also contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Ma’s campaigns.

The American public should be aware that ACFROC and COFA may conduct “actual intelligence, espionage and criminal activity on American soil,” journalist Sam Cooper warned.

ACFROC overseas advisor and media mogul Florence Fang has donated $5,750 to Ma’s campaigns since 2004, filings show. Fang’s family owned the now defunct AsianWeek magazine, where Ma previously worked as a columnist, according to 2002 reporting by The San Francisco Examiner, which was also previously published by the Fangs.

Filings show Ma’s campaigns have likewise received $8,805 from Tina Yao, who serves as the executive director of COFA’s Jiangsu provincial branch, according to a DCNF translation of a UFWD announcement. Ma has presented at least two commendations to Yao since 2024 related to her work as the president of the American Yunnan General Chamber of Commerce (AYGCC), which is a California-based nonprofit where Ma’s late father served as honorary president, according to AYGCC’s website.

Fang and Yao did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Ma has also accepted campaign contributions from several venture capital firms that have invested in companies developing technology for China’s security state and military, including Oriza Ventures, which donated $12,000 to Ma’s lieutenant governor race, filings show. Oriza Ventures’ parent company is a Suzhou municipal government investment arm, which supports the CCP’s strategy to repurpose civilian technology for China’s military, according to a 2018 Office of the U.S. Trade Representative report.

Oriza Ventures could not be reached for comment.

China’s dictator Xi Jinping has “massively expanded the UFWD’s cadre system with the explicit purpose of weaponizing diaspora community groups in the U.S.,” Cooper said.

“The assigned task of those community group members is to surround and cultivate elected officials. In the more aggressive operations, my assessment is that the objective extends to ensnaring those officials in financial corruption,” Cooper added.

“When a politician accepts an award, a donation, or a speaking platform connected to organizations operating under the umbrella of these friendship and trade groups, a Chinese intelligence officer is, in my assessment, very likely involved in an influence operation designed to subvert American democracy. American voters deserve to know who funds and organizes the access events their elected representatives attend.”

AUTHOR

Philip Lenczycki

Senior Investigative Reporter

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: California Treasurer Has Long History Hobnobbing With Chinese Gov’t And CCP Intel Officials

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