Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines sat before the Senate Intelligence Committee last March and calmly explained why Communist China is no friend of the United States.
“The People’s Republic of China – which increasingly challenges the United States economically, technologically, politically and militarily around the world – remains our unrivaled priority,” she said.
“The CCP,” Haines said, “continues to take an increasingly aggressive approach to external affairs, pursuing its goal of building a world-class military, expanding its nuclear arsenal, pursuing anti-space weapons capable of targeting U.S. and allied satellites; coercing foreign companies and forcing foreign countries to allow the transfer of technology and intellectual property to enhance their domestic capabilities; further increasing the dependence of the global supply chain on China in order to use such technologies and dependence rather to threaten and cut off foreign countries in times of crisis; expand its cyber activities and increase the threat of aggressive cyber operations against the U.S. homeland and foreign partners, and expand influence operations, including through the export of digital repression technologies.”
The DNI’s annual threat assessment, released in February, said: “Beijing is accelerating the development of key capabilities it believes the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) needs to confront the United States in a sustained, large-scale conflict.”
In her testimony, summarized on the DNI website, “Haines highlighted the national security challenges posed by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.”
As this column has previously noted, in January 2021, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that “genocide continues” in China. In January 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that China was “committing ongoing genocide”.
In March 2023, the same month that Haines testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the State Department released its annual report on human rights in China. This report also concluded that China was committing genocide.
“Genocide and crimes against humanity have occurred this year against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang,” the State Department said. “These crimes were continuous in nature and included: arbitrary imprisonment or other solemn deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians; forced sterilization, forced abortions and more restrictive application of national birth control policies; rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, torture-based violence against gigantic numbers of arbitrarily detained persons, and persecution, including forced labor and draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and freedom of movement.
So should the taxes that Americans pay to the United States government be invested in the People’s Republic of China – or in Russia, North Korea or Iran?
Last month, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer voted to allow such investments to continue.
When the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 appeared in the Senate on July 27, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida proposed an amendment that was co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sens. Joni Ernst from Iowa and Dan Sullivan from Arkansas. It said, his summary explained, that money from the Thrift Savings Fund – which manages the pensions of U.S. military and federal employees – “may not be invested in securities listed on certain foreign exchanges.”
Specifically, these are exchanges conducted in “countries of concern,” which is a country “identified as a threat to the national security of the United States in the most recent report submitted by the Director of National Intelligence… (commonly referred to as the Annual Threat Assessment”).
In other words, under this amendment, the retirement funds of U.S. soldiers and civilian federal employees could not be invested in China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran.
When Rubio’s amendment came up for a vote on July 27, he gave a brief speech on the Senate floor.
“The Thrift Savings Federal Savings Plan is the largest defined contribution plan in the world,” Rubio said. “It has 22 funds dedicated exclusively to China. Each of them gives money to sanctioned companies that are on the entity list – companies responsible for human rights abuses against Uyghurs; companies that our own government has told are helping the Chinese build their military – companies sponsored by China.”
“Our government believes that federal employee retirement funds are invested in companies that our government believes undermine the national security of the United States,” Rubio said.
“Think about the irony,” he said. “You are a member of the military and your pension money is invested in companies that build missiles to blow up the ship you serve on.
“So if we are serious about this,” he said, “we have to end it.”
Who could disagree with Rubio’s excellent amendment?
60 votes were needed to be added to the NDAA. It got to 55.
In addition to co-sponsor Shaheen, eight senators voted in favor of this amendment and have been talking to Democrats to prevent federal pension funds from investing in China. They included independents Angus King of Maine and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and Democrats Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jon Tester of Montana and Mark Warner of Virginia.
Chuck Schumer went the other way and helped keep federal tax dollars flowing to the genocidal communist regime.
