We are in the driver’s seat, not the CCP…
Frank Gaffney: Make the Chinese Communists Play by Our Rules
One of the dirtiest little secrets about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its success in amassing immense power to oppress its own people and increasingly to threaten ours has just been exposed by President Donald Trump: We have been underwriting and, thereby, enabling it.
In a decision last week, Mr. Trump – to his great credit – made plain this outrage and took a vital first step towards ending it. Now, we must finish the job.
The urgently needed impetus to do that was provided when Donald Trump intervened personally to prevent the federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) from investing an estimated $4.5 billion in CCP companies currently registered in, and transferring immense wealth from, our capital markets to pay for their activities on behalf of “the motherland.”
Some of those malevolent activities include providing the means by which the Party is able to monitor all aspects of the lives of 100 million Christians – and countless Uighur Muslims, Tibetans, Buddhists, and other Chinese – and to use such data brutally to repress them.
Other CCP corporations selling stocks and bonds on Wall Street build weapons designed to kill our men and women in uniform. Some of them are being bought to destroy the rest of us and our country.
Some of the Chinese companies raising money in our capital markets have actually been sanctioned by the U.S. government. Unbelievably, it may be illegal to do business with them, but it’s not illegal to invest Americans’ pension funds, college endowments, and personal savings so as to allow such proliferators and human rights violators to continue doing business.
Fortunately, in executing the President’s stand-down order to the board that oversees the Thrift Savings Plan, National Economic Council Chair Lawrence Kudlow and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien implicitly made clear in writing why it is unacceptable to have CCP companies like these getting money from any Americans, not just federal government employees, past and present, and their military counterparts:
This action would expose the retirement funds to significant and unnecessary economic risk. And it would channel federal employees’ money to companies that present significant national security and humanitarian concerns because they operate in violation of U.S. sanction laws and assist the Chinese Government’s efforts to build its military and oppress religious minorities.
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The financial impact of this risk is significant: scandals involving Chinese companies in recent years have cost investors billions of dollars.
