(PresidentialHill.com)- Chinese operatives interfered in the midterm elections in California, calling a Republican congresswoman’s ad against her Democratic opponent “racist,” according to Washington Free Beacon.
California Republican Michelle Steel attacked Democrat challenger Jay Chen’s support for the “Confucius Classroom program,” a CCP-run initiative that reportedly “provides American K-12 schools with Beijing-backed teachers and curriculum materials.”
Just two weeks away from the November 8 election, a Chinese nonprofit, “Committee of 100,” with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and Beijing-backed groups called the ads “racist” in a statement. The involvement was reportedly surprising because the nonprofit usually refrained from electoral politics, preferring instead to comment on academics, legislation, and federal appointments.
The group’s mission is to allegedly “advance U.S.-China relations.”
After the group’s statement, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee used it to report that the Asian community had turned on Steele. The New York Times and NPR also wrote that the nonprofit represented Chinese Americans, despite that many of its members are tied to the CCP and the regime’s state-backed companies.
Some China experts claim that the committee is a target for foreign influence efforts by the CCP.
One committee member, Ronnie Chan, has a position on the governing board of the China-United States Exchange Foundation which is a foreign agent of the CCP. The exchange itself is founded by billionaire Chinese national Tung Chee-hwa who sits on the CCP advisory body as its vice president.
Its extensive affiliations led Chinese President Xi Jinping to call the committee a “friendly group” in 2015. The CCP’s “United Front” system also used the committee to pressure its members to “toe the party line,” according to a Hoover Institution report.
Despite the committee’s denial that it is affiliated with the CCP, then-committee chair Wang told China Daily in 2018 that the group should “get actively involved” in China’s Belt and Road initiative, which is what many have called the regime’s new “silk road” project designed to subject foreign infrastructure to its control.
“The Committee of 100 is a pro-Beijing group, concerned almost exclusively with the interests aligned with those of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mark Simon, a former senior executive at the pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily wrote.
