The former top editor of the Chinese government propaganda newspaper Global Times, Hu Xijin, threatened sanctions on Thursday against President Joe Biden and the entirety of the U.S. Congress in response to a Breitbart News exclusive revealing a Congressional bill that would sanction thousands of Communist Party officials and their families.
Hu “retired” from his position running the Global Times, China’s most belligerent English-language propaganda outlet, in December, but remains on the newspaper’s staff as a video blogger and commentator. Upon resigning, Hu Xijin also vowed to continue irritating opponents of communism on Twitter, an American social media outlet that Chinese citizens do not have access to without special government permission.
Hu published a low-resolution screengrab of a Breitbart News post on Twitter to his personal account on Thursday describing an exclusive on a bill called the “Stop CCP Act” that, if passed, would result in sanctions and travel bans to the United States for thousands of members of the 90-million-strong Communist Party of China. Among those implicated would be not just dictator Xi Jinping and members of the Politburo, but their families –an especially important detail given that many senior Communist Party members, including Xi, choose to send their children to American universities.
“If the bill is passed,” I am sure China will sanction all the members of the U.S. Congress and all federal cabinet members,” Hu threatened, “including the U.S. president.”
Hu remains a well-connected member of the Chinese regime elite despite his departure, seemingly in disgrace, from the top of the Global Times masthead at the end of last year. Hu’s abrupt resignation led to speculation that regime leaders had punished him for the newspaper’s poor handling of the scandal surrounding the disappearance of tennis champion Peng Shuai. Peng, a Wimbledon doubles winner, published an extensive statement on the Chinese government-run social media network Weibo in November accusing the former head of the Chinese Olympics Committee, Zhang Gaoli, of raping her. The accusations were particularly explosive given the fact that China was less than three months away from hosting the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, despite global protests against granting China such an honor while its government engages in genocide.
The post rapidly disappeared, as did Peng. She resurfaced in social media posts by Hu and the Global Times that featured highly choreographed videos in restaurants and an alleged Chinese tennis event. The Global Times‘ efforts to persuade the world that Peng was safe and not being repressed into silence by the Party backfired, resulting in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) pulling all its events out of China.
The “Stop CCP Act” that Hu objected to on Thursday is a project being led by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), according to Breitbart News. Its targets would include Xi, the Communist Party Politburo, and the entirety of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), its top lawmaking body. The NPC is run by the Communist Party and does not debate laws; it rubber-stamps the will of the Politburo. The bill is also unique in that it would target the families of prominent communists, who benefit directly from the regime’s human rights atrocities.
The Biden administration has not used sanctions in a significant way to combat Chinese influence in the country. The White House announced sanctions in March against 24 officials, but the Global Times laughed at the move, noting Trump had already sanctioned most of the people on the list, so the move had no added effect even though it was also tried elsewhere in Europe.
President Biden and his family have a long history of business with Chinese individuals with close ties to the regime. As best-selling author and Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer revealed in his latest book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, the Biden family engaged in million-dollar deals with people like Ye Jianming, the head of a Chinese government energy company with ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Donations from wealthy, regime-connected Chinese citizens to the University of Pennsylvania also skyrocketed after the founding of its “Biden Center,” raising questions regarding the Biden family’s Beijing ties.
The revelations in Red-Handed have resulted in calls for investigations into dozens of American officials with ties to China and further sanction plans like the “Stop CCP Act.”
Hu’s threat follows multiple Chinese attempts to sanction American officials vocal about China’s egregious criminal behavior that have largely failed because the individuals in question have no assets in China and no interest in visiting – unlike their Chinese counterparts in America. In August 2020, the Chinese government issued sanctions against 11 people, mostly lawmakers and human rights advocates, in response to their defenses of civil rights in Hong Kong.
At the time, the pro-democracy protests in the city had become an international affair and prompted the NPC to illegally impose a “national security law” silencing dissent. Under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy, Beijing lawmaking bodies do not have the power to pass laws in Hong Kong, but Hong Kong police have enforced the “national security law,” anyway, essentially ending the protests.
The sanctions targeted lawmakers like Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Tom Cotton (R-AR), having no direct impact on their lives.
After Biden took office in January, China passed another set of sweeping sanctions against the now-former members of the cabinet of President Donald Trump, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and former top trade adviser Peter Navarro.
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