US urged to consider bans on Chinese journalists and subsidise US businesses to counter Beijing’s influence campaign
- Report focuses on what it calls a growing Chinese influence operation aimed at American democracy
- Urges punitive actions such as denying US visas to Chinese journalists
“Tit-for-tat retaliation” such as denying visas for Chinese journalists may be the only option for the United States to halt an ever-broadening Chinese influence campaign that targets American freedoms and democracy, according to a report written by some of America’s most prominent China experts and issued on Thursday.
Actions to counter China’s influence campaign on US soil that were recommended by The Working Group on Chinese Influence Activities in the United States also include paying governmental subsidies to American companies that suffer punitive action from the Chinese government, and calling on US think tanks not to host Chinese academics when Chinese institutions refuse to receive American scholars.
The report, titled Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance, also calls for any US scientist or expert invited to carry out research in China under the country’s “Thousand Talents Programme” to be registered as a foreign agent.
According to the 200-page report, published by the Hoover Institution, a conservative, pro-democracy think tank based at Stanford University, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is commandeering an ever-broadening influence campaign targeted at US think tanks, governmental bodies at multiple levels, the media and educational institutions.
Whereas scholarly analysis of China’s influence campaigns has traditionally advocated strengthening mechanisms that expose and provide education on such operations, the Hoover Institution’s report goes one step further, calling for reciprocal measures that, by its own admission, could risk “lowering our own standards of openness and fairness”.