CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – The Chinese spy balloon is one part of a bigger story.
Here’s a story from Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, who is in a position to know. He’s chairman of an intelligence subcommittee on China. He wrote last weekend in a New York Post op-ed that China operates a secret police system within the United States. He notes that we’ve already shut down one of their police stations, set up as a Chinese-American friendship group in an apartment building in lower Manhattan.
Say a Chinese exchange student going to school in the U.S. is involved in anti-communist protests. China’s secret police might reach out to them, and threaten to send them back home. Speaking out against China could lead to an arrest, on U.S. soil, and being secretly taken out of the country. We know of one woman with dual citizenship whos father was denied medical care in China unless she returned there. She was arrested when she arrived. It’s believed that some people were detained in the secret Manhattan location before being smuggled out of the U.S.
This may seem like a curious and fantastic story. Except China has done this before. In Hong Kong there was a salacious part-fictional book written about the corruption and sexual exploits of top communist officials in China. The author and bookstore owners who sold it disappeared, and reappeared to stand trial in Bejing. They are still jailed today.
And in the United States former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the Chinese consulate in Houston was being used as a spy and surveillance headquarters. It was shut down under the Trump administration.
Free societies like ours are always more vulnerable to spying than closed authoritarian countries. It’s inconceivable that we could have similar operations in China. What is needed is a restoration of balance in the US-China relationship. We are still the largest customers for their economy. We are irreplaceable to them. And we should be bolder about using that leverage as to what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior.
Chris Conley
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