Trump Administration Could Produce a Potent Tool Against the CCP That Biden’s Team Delayed

New Trump administration officials have the opportunity to spearhead the release of a powerful tool to confront the Chinese Communist Party: a report that would expose the corrupt practices of its senior members. Despite orders from Congress, the Biden administration failed to release the report.

In 2022, Congress tasked the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department to produce a report on the wealth and corrupt practices of senior Chinese Communist Party officials in the National Defense Authorization Act, but the Biden administration officials failed to publicly release that report by the deadline established by lawmakers. 

“If the Chinese People Knew”

The act, which was passed by lawmakers in 2022 for the 2023 fiscal year, directed then-DNI Avril Haines, in consultation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to compile the report on the senior officials, including General Secretary Xi Jinping and members of the elite Politburo Committee, and release the information publicly.

“This is an existential threat to the Chinese regime, because you have leaders with tens of millions—billions, in some cases—of funds outside of China. And if the Chinese people knew the extent of this, there probably would be a revolution,” Gordon Chang, a lawyer and China commentator who lived and worked in Shanghai and Hong Kong for decades, told the “Just the News, No Noise“ TV show. 

“Now I think that that actually did make it into US law, but they haven’t enforced it, right? It hasn’t started yet, right?” Chang said. “And so really, this is something where China is, I’m sure, lobbying the Trump administration, just as they lobbied the Biden administration over this.”

Neither the Office of the DNI nor the State Department responded to requests for comment from Just the News about whether the new leadership planned to move forward with the report. 

Last year, Rep. Andrew Ogles, R-Tenn., filed the Confronting CCP Malign Influence Act, which aimed to once again demand a wealth and corruption report on communist party officials, this time setting a 90-day deadline, after the Biden administration failed to adhere to the law. The bill would have also required the DNI to testify publicly to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence within 180 days. However, the bill never passed and was not signed into law. 

Rep. Ogles did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News. 

To Many — in the West — it’s Old News

In the past, efforts to expose the finances of senior CCP officials have been met with quick censorship and stern denials by the Chinese regime. The reactions suggest that such a report could provide significant leverage to the United States in negotiations with the Chinese. 

Most recently was when the vast offshore wealth of communist leaders was exposed in the leak of the Panama Papers in 2016. Those documents showed that family members of many former and then-senior officials, including President Xi Jinping and other Politburo Standing Committee members, were invested in or controlled offshore companies, which many connected individuals in China use to transfer wealth overseas. 

Years earlier, a Bloomberg News report on fortunes of Xi Jinping’s close family members and the families of those close to Mao Tse Tung — called “Princelings” — was blocked in China in 2012 on the eve of the communist official’s ascension to the presidency. The report exposed billions of dollars in assets held by his close family members, including his older sister, Qi Qiaoqiao, her husband, Deng Jiagui, and their daughter. Xi’s relatives began to divest from their overseas holdings after he became president in 2012, likely to give him cover as he pursued anti-corruption policies. 

Later the same year, the Chinese government censored the New York Times after a similar report on the billions in assets of the family of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, despite his family’s humble origins. The Times reported that the family’s considerable wealth ballooned in the years after Wen Jiabao was elevated to the country’s ruling caste when he first became the vice premier in 1998. Some of the family members’ ventures even received financial support from China’s state-owned enterprises that operated in industries Wen oversaw as premier. Although late to the story, The New York Times was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for International Reporting. Politico reported that China temporarily blocked both The New York Times and Bloomberg News‘ websites and denied visas to journalists.

Thousands of Senior Officials

A new exposé on corrupt practices backed by the combined information gathering and analytical capabilities of the U.S. intelligence community and the State Department may serve as both an embarrassment to the Chinese Communist Party, especially as President Xi continues the anti-corruption push that he started shortly after his rise to power in 2012. 

The campaign has ensnared thousands of senior officials who have been punished for alleged corrupt activities, including for aiding family members with business interests and bribery. According to the CCP, at least one million officials were disciplined for corruption between 2013 and 2016.

President Xi’s initiatives have continued unabated since. He recently reiterated his promise to root out corruption and labeled it the “biggest threat” facing the Chinese Communist Party. “Corruption is the biggest threat facing the [Communist] Party, and countering corruption is the most thorough form of self-revolution,” Xi Jinping told a gathering of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which manages the corruption probes. “The current situation in the fight against corruption remains grave and complex. The existing amount of corruption has not been eliminated and new cases have continued to occur.” 

The past efforts to censor this information also suggest that the party leaders believe public reporting on their wealth and potentially corrupt activities are also a threat to their power that President Trump could exploit to put pressure on Beijing, one expert says. 

“These are the people that matter in the CCP hierarchy. More than any other action the American Government can take, this affects the CCP’s top leadership directly. Apply sanctions and tariffs, and Mr. Xi and the CCP elite will gladly have regular Chinese absorb the hardship and punishment, limitlessly,” Grant Newsham, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy, wrote in an op-ed for the New York Sun. 

“But explaining away the CCP leadership’s immense wealth — to include overseas bank accounts, businesses, real estate, and relatives with ‘green cards’ is tricky —and dangerous — especially while Mr. Xi is telling all other Chinese to ‘eat bitterness,’” he wrote.

Steven Richards joined Just the News in August 2023 after previously working as a Research Analyst for the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) in Tallahassee, Florida. He is a two-time graduate of Florida State University with a Masters in Political Science and a B.S. in International Affairs. 

Reprinted with Permission from Just The News – By Steven Richards

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.