Their travels are being funded by a man who has participated in pro-Beijing demonstrations in the U.S.
Their travels are being funded by a man who has participated in pro-Beijing demonstrations in the U.S.
N ew York State Republican legislators have traveled to China for a ten-day visit as part of a “friendship delegation,” reportedly accompanied by a Chinese Communist Party organ tasked with co-opting state-government officials.
In a publicly issued warning last year, the intelligence community pointed to the key role that that organization, called the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, plays in Beijing’s influence operations. In 2020, then–secretary of state Mike Pompeo labeled it “a Beijing based organization tasked with co-opting subnational governments” that “has sought to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda.”
The lawmakers on the trip, all Republicans, are New York assembly minority leader William Barclay and state lawmakers Lester Chang, Sam Pirozzolo, and Michael Novakhov. The American Chinese Commerce Association (Hong Kong), a local pro-Beijing community group, its leader John Chan, and several of its allies, are also on the trip.
The lawmakers’ offices did not respond to requests for comment, though Mike Fraser, a spokesman for Barclay and Republicans in the state assembly, told the New York Post that Chan’s association funded the trip.
Chan regularly engages in pro-CCP activism, taking part in demonstrations this year that opposed visits by Taiwan’s president and vice president to New York. In November, Chan traveled to San Francisco, where he joined crowds of hundreds of overseas Chinese who celebrated Xi’s trip to the city. (Those protests turned violent as the crowds beat anti-CCP activists, though there’s no indication that Chan was directly involved in the assaults.)
In addition to the GOP state legislators, business figures from the overseas Chinese community in New York are part of the delegation, which has traveled to Beijing and Fuzhou, in China’s Fujian province, according to Chinese media reports.
They arrived in Beijing on December 13, according to the China Press, a U.S.-based news website. During the first leg of the trip, they met Chinese officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the Standing Committee of the Beijing municipal People’s Congress, and the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), according to MGM Media, a Queens-based Chinese community website that has a representative traveling with the lawmakers.
It also reported that CPAFFC official Sun Tao is accompanying the New Yorkers for the entire trip.
The CPAFFC is a subsidiary of the party’s United Front Work Department — a powerful bureau that seeks to cultivate influence among non-party members in China and abroad to advance Beijing’s aims. The New York Republicans also met the Chinese Overseas Friendship Association, another known subsidiary of the United Front Work Department.
On December 18 and 19, the New York delegation traveled to Fuzhou, taking part in cultural and sightseeing activities, leaving the lawmakers impressed, according to the state-owned Fujian Daily.
“This trip is just the beginning,” Barclay said, according to the communist newspaper. “In the future, I hope to strengthen cooperation between New York State and Fujian Province in education, economy, trade, cultural tourism, and other fields.”
Officials in Fujian have long been important participants in the party’s efforts to cultivate influence in New York state; at other times, Fujian provincial agencies have been implicated in espionage and harassment schemes in the U.S. In April, federal prosecutors announced the arrests of two men who had set up an illegal Chinese-government-run police station in Manhattan. According to court documents, they had done so at the behest of Fuzhou’s security services.
The New York delegation is among the first groups of U.S. state officials to visit China following the meeting between President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco last month. The two heads of state dialed back tensions and pledged to foster more exchanges between their two countries.
Just ahead of the Biden–Xi meeting, California governor Gavin Newsom traveled to China for a series of friendly meetings with Chinese-government officials focused on climate change. Like the New York Republicans, Newsom, a national standard-bearer for the Democratic Party and likely future presidential candidate, held meetings with the CPAFFC.