Expert Who Blamed China Hawks for Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Joins Team Biden

A think-tank expert with a history of controversial views on China and North Korea recently joined the Biden administration as a political appointee, National Review has learned.

Up until late last month, Jessica Lee was a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft — a George Soros– and Charles Koch–funded think tank, which has taken relatively soft stances toward China, Russia, and Iran. During her tenure there, she urged policy-makers to abandon hard-edged criticism of Beijing, while also blaming China hawks for a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes.

Congressional sources confirm to NR that she has since joined the State Department in its legislative-affairs bureau. Her paper trail on a variety of issues is likely to raise eyebrows in foreign-policy circles.

In an essay for Foreign Affairs in July 2021, for one, she and co-author Russell Jeung implied that the Biden administration exaggerates the threat posed by the Chinese regime, and they urged it to hire experts who disagree with its hawkish stances:

If Biden truly wants to reduce anti-Asian violence at home, he must adopt a more constructive China policy that does not depend on an exaggerated depiction of Beijing’s challenge to the United States. For one, such an effort should include bringing in personnel with a diverse set of opinions on U.S.-Chinese relations, including those who do not believe that the only course forward is extreme caution.

Jeung is the co-founder of an activist group, Stop AAPI Hate, that similarly blames anti-Asian hate crimes on China hawks’ rhetoric and preferred policies.

They continued: “Without a conscious effort to diversify internal deliberation on China policy, Washington’s behavior will continue to foster anti-Asian racism — just as it did during the Trump era.”

The piece accused China hawks of using “conspiratorial language” and of “demonizing an entire nation.”

Despite the Quincy Institute’s splashy launch in late 2019, and the largesse of its billionaire co-founders, it has been beset by a series of scandals that have undermined its effectiveness. Among other things, critics such as Senator Tom Cotton as well as former employees have accused it of peddling antisemitic views, denying the Chinese Communist Party’s mass atrocities against Uyghurs, and paying insufficient attention to Russian war crimes.

As of this week, Lee’s Twitter account was set to private, with a bio calling her an “expert on East Asia and legislative affairs.” A congressional staffer told NR that she is now a senior adviser to the State Department’s legislative-affairs bureau — the office that manages the department’s relationships with congressional offices.

Despite the Quincy Institute affiliation, Lee appears to have made significant inroads with the Biden administration over the past year and a half.

In 2021, Lee launched a monthslong campaign to urge the Biden administration to take a softer posture toward the Chinese Communist Party, citing anti-Asian hate crimes as reason to soft-pedal U.S. criticism of China. In addition to co-authoring the above-quoted piece for Foreign Affairs, she shared that message at several events across the federal government.

Last October, she was a panelist at a Department of Homeland Security event called “How Misinformation Fueled the Rise in Anti-AAPI Targeted Violence.” That event was co-hosted by the Asian American Foundation, a nonprofit group co-founded by the pro-CCP billionaire and Alibaba executive Joseph Tsai. Speaking about a purported link between a tough U.S. stance toward China and anti-Asian hate incidents, Lee claimed credit for lobbying the State Department to shift to a softer tone.

“My communication with Asian-American diplomats at the State Department shows that the work that we’re doing to shine light on these issues is having a positive impact in ensuring that we don’t use sweeping terms like ‘malign influence’ to describe China’s influence,” she said during the event.

The State Department later confirmed to NR that it did in fact move away from using the phrase “malign influence,” referring to CCP behavior, out of concern that it was too sweeping. It did not deny that Lee and the Quincy Institute played a role in that apparent change.

The institute and the State Department did not respond to a request for comment for this report.

News that the State Department had hired a different Quincy Institute alum, Rachel Esplin Odell, in its intelligence research bureau caused an uproar in Washington last month, after NR reported that she made a series of comments blaming the U.S. for undermining its One China policy, according to which Washington maintains only unofficial ties with Taipei. China policy experts, several senators, and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo variously condemned Odell’s comments and questioned the propriety of her decision to speak in such a public forum opposing the administration’s policies.

Lee’s hiring raises similar concerns, pertaining as well to her work urging reconciliation with the North Korean dictatorship. In a July 19 article for Quincy’s in-house blog, she argued that the U.S. response to North Korean belligerence should be to seek a closer diplomatic relationship with Pyongyang.

“Over the long-term, Washington should also be open to the possibility of not just normalization of relations but to a cooperative relationship with Pyongyang as part of closing the chapter of the Korean War and stemming the growing arms race between the two Koreas,” she wrote.