A Story about How Deep the CCP’s Penetration Can Be
Recently Newsweek magazine published an exclusive investigation, saying that it has identified “600 U.S. Groups Linked to Chinese Communist Party Influence Effort with Ambition Beyond Election”. Actually, for many Chinese Americans, it is not news at all. We knew it many, many years ago, and lived through the experiences of being targeted if you are not in the CCP’s ranks. Today I will share with you an astonishing fact that a piece of legislation at the state level in Oregon that affects all the public schools was virtually pushed through by the CCP 10 years ago, but local residents had no knowledge of such a law at all, but are still bearing the consequences today. This fact was discovered and broke by me two years ago.
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An Unexpected Email
Now, let’s go to our story today.
It all started with an unexpected email.
In Sep 2018, an American Chinese lady in Oregon, suddenly received an invitation from an unknown source to an event in downtown Portland to “welcome China’s new consul general Wang Donghua to Oregon.”
This lady was very much surprised for two reasons.
First, although she is of Chinese ethnicity, she has not been involved in any China-related events, or dealt with any people in the Chinese community, for decades. She was very surprised that such an invitation could actually reach her.
Secondly, the wording and implication of the invitation made her very uneasy. One of the sentences said, “With U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to implement $200 billion in additional tariffs on Chinese goods, the people of our two countries face a major escalation in trade tensions.”
She is very much aware that Oregon is an agricultural state, and China is Oregon’s largest export market. If the new Chinese Consul General wanted to work people up to go against President Trump’s trade policy, he could have a bigger audience in Oregon.
As the midterm elections were close, after reading the invitation carefully, she came to the conclusion that the new Consul General of the People’s Republic of China in San Francisco would not only be inciting the local business community to oppose President Trump’s trade policy, but also try to influence the election.
So that’s why she felt alarmed.
Lan Jin: a CCP’s Darling
So she did some research about the host organization of the event, which was the Oregon China Sister State Relations Council (let’s call it “Oregon China Council” for short from now on). And the following was what she found:
The president of the Oregon China Council is a very high profile Chinese man called Lan Jin. He is also the principal of a business consultant company called Octaxias. Many big names can be found on his company’s “Latest News” page, such as “Oregon Speaker of the House Tina Kotek,” “Vice Premier Liu Yandong [of China], and so on.
Further search with Lan Jin’s Chinese name led to numerous reports in Chinese. One report was an exclusive interview from the CCP’s most important propaganda outlet, People’s Daily. This means that Lan Jin is a darling of the CCP.
According to People’s Daily, Lan Jin is also an ‘Overseas Observer-Representative of the First Session of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
If you are familiar with Chinese politics, you’ll know that the CCP’s “Political Consultative Conference” is a very important organization, and its main function is to carry out the so-called “United Front” work for the CCP.
A Core Member of the CCP’s “United Front” Work
What is the “United Front” work?
A U. S. government report defines it as “the agency responsible for coordinating.. (the CCP’s) influence operations—mostly focuses on the management of potential opposition groups inside China, but it also has an important foreign influence mission.”
The U.S. government report gives reference to Liu Yandong multiple times as “Council of Confucius Institute Headquarters Chair; former State Council Vice-Premiere; former Politburo Standing Committee Member; former United Front Work Department Minister.”
On the homepage of the “Oregon China Council” we mentioned earlier, a photo of Lan Jin and a smiling Liu Yandong is featured as a lead photo. By the way, the website of the “Oregon China Council” has now been taken down. I don’t know when it was taken down. So all the images you are seeing are archived files I saved 2 years ago when I did the investigation.
Why did I save those pages? I knew they could be deleted at any time. Although two years ago, Lan Jin still had his website on as an asset to show how capable he was, I knew he would change his mind later. I knew how things would develop much earlier than him. Don’t ask me why, that’s my secret.
Anyway, on his company website, Lan Jin lists the following as one of his main achievements:
“In 2011, Jin Lan facilitated the Honorable Mme Liu Yandong, the State Councilor of China, to visit Oregon. She is the highest Chinese official ever to visit the State of Oregon in history.”
So, from these, we can establish that if Lan Jin could facilitate as high profile a figure as Liu Yandong to visit Oregon, he must either have a very close personal relationship with Liu or be a core member of the CCP’s United Front Work Department.
Oregon State Legislation Promotes Confucius Classrooms
So, how did Lan Jin do his “United Front Work” in the US?
Another People’s Daily report on Nov. 19, 2015, entitled “U.S. Oregon Politicians Discuss How to Enhance Relations with China” has the paragraph:
“According to Lan Jin’s introduction, the Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon passed legislation in 2010 to have public schools in Oregon set up Chinese-language courses and Confucius Classrooms to promote Chinese language study. This was the first in the United States, or even in all the English-speaking countries globally. This initiative was first introduced to the Legislative Assembly by the Joint Committee on Fujian Sister State. ”
Lan Li’s own website also listed the following as his “milestones”:
“The first Confucius classroom in North or South America established in Medford, Oregon at St. Mary High School in 2008.
“Oregon was the first state in the U. S. to pass legislation to expand Mandarin education in all public schools (2010).”
With these “first” statuses, dozens of Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms sprang up in Oregon. Portland State University alone had 36 affiliated Confucius Classrooms in 2018, and still has 33 now.
And if you check the name list of the Joint Committee on Fujian Sister State, which “first introduced to the Legislative Assembly” the legislation to promote Confucious Classroom”, you will find that Lan Jin is the “Executive Director” of the committee. Judging from the surnames, you can see that apart from Lan Jin, there are 6 other Chinese members, out of 18 members. So the Joint Committee has nearly 40% Chinese members.
I don't think we need to do any introduction for the Confucius Classrooms here. The US government already defined the Confucius Institutes in the United States as “an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence” and required it to register as a foreign mission.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said that he was hopeful that the Chinese Confucius Institute cultural centers on U.S. university campuses would all be shut down by the end of the year.
Back in 2018, when I investigated the case in Oregon, I interviewed the late Dennis Richardson, Secretary of State of Oregon, and asked him what Lan Jin’s role and responsibilities were in the Joint Committee on Fujian Sister State, but Richardson declined to comment, and asked me to “talk directly with Mr. Lan regarding any questions about his participation and activities.”
I did manage to reach Lan Jin via his phone. However, as soon as he heard who I was, he immediately hung up without giving me any chance to ask any questions.
Senator Betsy Johnson, one of the two lawmakers of the Joint Committee on Fujian Sister State who was still in office 2 years ago, confirmed to me that Dennis Richardson was the main one who had worked hard, and traveled to Fujian province in China many times, to push things forward.
So, to sum the story up, a CCP’s darling, Mr. Lan Jin was the “Executive Director” of the committee of the Oregon Legislative Assembly that introduced and pushed through the legislation to promote Conficious Classrooms in all state public schools.
Loopholes in the US Legislative System
When I talked to the lady who received that un-expected email and then contacted me so that I could do some investigation, she said she was quite alarmed to find out that such a law so obviously backed and pushed by the CCP could be “quietly” passed in the state legislature. In other words, how deeply has the CCP been influencing American laws and politics in a broader spectrum?
If people like Lan Jin are allowed to have a say in the process of forming new legislation, isn’t that a loophole in the US legislative system?
Another fact that saddens her is, although she has been a local resident for many years, she knew nothing at all about this law, nor any English reports about the passage of the legislation could be found anywhere in the US when she searched for them.
Instead, she only found this news on the websites of the Chinese Embassy and Hanban. They proudly posted the news there as their achievements.
By the way, Hanban is a Chinese term meaning “Office of the Chinese Language ''. It is also known as the Confucius Institute Headquarters. According to its official website, Hanban is "a public institution affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education" and is committed to "providing Chinese language and cultural teaching resources and services worldwide".
When you hear this story, do you feel alarmed as well? The public schools of an entire state were “invaded” by the CCP’s Confucius classrooms, yet local residents knew nothing of it, and are still sending their children to those schools.
Oregon Secretary of State’s Trip to China: Partly Paid by CCP
Digging further, we found more alarming information awaiting us.
When the Oregon lady who tipped me off read the “Oregon China Council”’s website, she felt that it was a completely “Chinese” site, although the language is in English. Most news reports on the website were Chinese-language reports from People’s Daily and Xinhua.
And much to her astonishment, she found that the “registered agent” of the “Oregon China Council” was not Lan Jin, but Dennis Richardson.
Under the “Photo Stories” of the “Oregon China Council” ’s website, a lot of happy photos of a smiling Richardson could be seen, featuring him leading a trade delegation to China in 2017.
She also found that this trip was partly paid for by the CCP, as reported by The Oregonian, a daily newspaper in Portland.
And, according to Richardson himself, “Because our Chinese hosts value family participation, two of my grandsons will accompany me at their own expense.”
“Treating Them Like Kings”
Actually, “entertaining” visiting politicians is the CCP’s standard practice.
In my last program, I talked about how I learned a lot of inside stories from Chen Yonglin, former First Secretary of the Chinese Consulate in Sydney, who defected to Australia in 2005.
Chen Yonglin said, the CCP invites politicians to China, treating them like kings, sometimes “entertaining” them with prostitutes, and giving benefits to their family members.
Chen Yonglin revealed that in 2005, the Chinese consulate in Sydney alone had given a dozen so-called “scholarships” to Australian officials’ relatives who wanted to study Chinese in China.
For example, once a child of Henry Tsang, former member of the New South Wales Legislative Council of Australia, wanted to go to China to study, the Chinese consulate in Sydney immediately gave him a scholarship, with both tuition fees and living expenses covered for free.
“Get to Know an American Friend”
During the exclusive interview with the People’s Daily, when asked about how to improve relationships with the American people, Lan Jin “winks his eyes and suggests, ‘The simplest way, is get to know an American friend, the kind that can be put onto your Emergency Contact List.’ ”
It was quite obvious that Richardson was exactly such a friend for Lan Lin, who had spent at least 15 or 20 years developing their relationship.
Although Richardson passed away in 2019, I wonder how many other politicians are also on Lan Jin’s “Emergency Contact List".
I also learned from Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese civil rights activist who lives in Washington DC now that the CCP has been spending $200 million each year in Washington DC to bribe politicians.
So, from this single one story, we can see that the CCP’s penetration has been way deeper and broader than many people’s wildest imagination.
Well, I broke the story of Oregon 2 years ago. But it seems that not that many people were paying attention then. So I am speaking about it again today. I hope this time more people will listen.
That’s all for today. Thank you for watching. Truth does save lives. Please subscribe to my channel, spread it, leave your comment and check out my other videos.
Thank you! See you next time!
11/1/2020
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