Biden’s Pick for CIA Chief Has a Long History of Working with Chinese Communist Front Groups
Zerbor/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Bill Burns, the man Joe Biden has chosen to prospectively head the Central Intelligence Agency, is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Help, an organization that has over a decade-long relationship with the China-United States Exchange Foundation and other groups linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Burns has been at the head of the Carnegie think tank since 2014, overseeing its association with the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) — an association that goes back to at least 2009.

CUSEF is an important part of the CCP’s United Front effort to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition” and encourage foreign actors to “adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.” To that end, CUSEF has sponsored trips for Chinese Communist Party officials to speak at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In 2009, for instance, the Carnegie outfit hosted the former Shanghai mayor and vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Consultative Conference for a “keynote speech” on a trip paid for by CUSEF.

Two years later, CUSEF founder Tung Chee-hwa, chairman of the “highest-ranking entity overseeing” China’s United Front, gave a speech at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event, according to CUSEF promotional brochures.

{modulepos inner_text_ad}

Additionally, the South China Morning Post claims that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a recipient of “money from” CUSEF and has worked alongside the Chinese entity on projects aimed at increasing U.S.-China collaboration.

In 2012, CUSEF worked with the Carnegie Endowment for International Help on the “US-China Security Perceptions Project,” which analyzed the “views of the public and elites in five distinct categories — government, business, academia, the military, and the media — regarding a wide range of national security issues, from the nature of American and Chinese power, both globally and in Asia, to the images held of one another’s national character.”

Another partner in the project was the China Strategic Culture Promotion Association (CSCPA), whose leader, former Chinese Navy Admiral Luo Yuan, argues for a “strong” Chinese military.

The report that resulted from that collaboration included various “recommendations for U.S. and Chinese policymakers,” including to “emphasize cooperation over competition” and to “prevent the Taiwan issue from derailing broader cooperation.”

Furthermore, numerous Carnegie Endowment leaders — including Vice President Douglas Paal — have also contributed to CUSEF’s quarterly journal, China-US Focus.

Since 2014, in fact, individuals under Burns’ leadership, such as Senior Associate Yukon Huang, Resident Scholar Matt Ferchen, and Resident Scholar Wang Tao, have contributed at least six articles to the publication, alongside Chinese Communist Party officials and People’s Liberation Army leaders.

Another Carnegie Endowment link to the Chinese Communist Party: its Beijing-based Carnegie-Tsinghua Center.

As the National Pulse reports:

Hosted at Tsinghua University, the institute features seven individuals who work at the Chinese government-funded university as its guiding scholars: Shi Zhiqin, Sun Xuefeng, Zhao Kejin, Tang Xiaoyang, Chen Qi, Zhang Lihua, and Zhang Chuanjie.

Two senior fellows have even more explicit ties to the Chinese Communist Party such as Tong Zhao who “has worked for the Office of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality” and Yan Xuetong, a “member of the Consultation Committee of China’s Ministry of Commerce.”

Tsinghua University, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s alma mater, also has a “clear connection” to the Chinese “state administration for technology and industry in discussions on what [they] can do to help the national security,” according to former Senior Intelligence Officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency and State Department Official Nicholas Eftimiades.

The school is even known to have launched cyberattacks against the U.S. government, and works with Western institutions such as CNN and the New York Times as part of its “Marxist journalism” program.

The center, whose goal is to increase U.S.-China collaboration, has hosted conferences attended by Chinese Communist Party officials and American lawmakers such as former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Elaine Chao (the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), and former Secretary of State John Kerry.

The New American has previously reported on the Chinese government’s extensive courting of American lawmakers and tech insiders

That Biden wants Bill Burns, a man tied to China’s communist regime, to direct national intelligence for the country should be alarming to every American. Concerned citizens should tell their lawmakers to cast their votes against this seditious pick.