The Biden Family’s Alleged $31 Million of China-Linked Business

Demand stronger anti-corruption laws now

A screen shows Chinese leader Xi Jinping attending a virtual meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden via video link, at a restaurant in Beijing, China, on Nov. 15, 2021. Tingshu Wang/Reuters

News Analysis

In an era of superpower competition with Russia and even more so China, there is nothing more important than the integrity of politics in America’s capital city.

Why?

Because America is currently the only country in the world capable of defending democracy globally from the totalitarian threats emanating from Beijing and Moscow.

Yet the integrity of American politics is allegedly akin to rotting Swiss cheese.

The latest from Peter Schweizer, an expert on dirty money in American politics, are revelations of an alleged $31 million in deals between America’s presidential family and individuals linked to China’s intelligence services.

The mainstream media and academia, most of whom are Democrats, typically suppress or ignore this kind of news, because they want the Democrats to win in the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election.

Who they think among the anti-defense spending Democrats could be a reasonable president in 2024, given the rising threat of China and Russia, is a mystery. But they’re looking the other way on the Biden administration’s many problems, when for Donald Trump, they amplified the allegations of collusion with Russia, for example. The Mueller investigation didn’t find much.

The mainstream media rightly covered former President Trump’s links to Chinese business, such as the 34 trademarks that Beijing awarded to companies linked to Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, in 2018.

(Beijing: Surprise! Somebody not on the payroll just got elected. Better fix that pronto!)

But the mainstream suppressed news of the Biden family’s China deals, and America’s top social media, Twitter and Facebook, even suppressed posts about them, right before the election. This apparent election interference most likely gifted the presidency to Joe Biden in a manner that to Republicans, can seem undemocratic.

A survey by the Media Research Center shortly after the 2020 election found that 17 percent of Biden voters, enough to change the result, would not have voted for the Biden-Harris ticket had they known about even one of eight suppressed stories, including the family’s alleged business links worth potentially “tens of millions of dollars in profits” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Hunter Biden embraces his father, President-elect Joe Biden, in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 7, 2020. Andrew Harnik/Pool/AP Photo

There should be laws against such suppression of news during an election, especially by social media companies that are used by voters of both parties to express their personal views. Twitter’s former CEO, Jack Dorsey, made a half-hearted admission of a mistake in October 2020, but the damage continued. Biden was elected, in part through the gargantuan efforts of most mainstream print and social media to skew the facts.

After the election, Trump wrongly called on his supporters to “fight.” He said the word about 20 times in his speech on Jan. 6, 2021. His supporters felt the election had been rigged, and started invading the Capitol grounds even before the speech had ended.

Trump riled up the crowd too much, and didn’t do enough to stop them from illegally entering the Capitol building, which is the sacred center of American democracy. It should be inviolable.

But political polarization, in which news outlets of both conservatives and progressives selectively report the facts, is also to blame. They unfairly slant and suppress the news in a manner that arguably threw the election to a challenger, which is rare in American politics. Of 45 presidents in American history, only 10 have lost after the first term.

Trump supporters’ shock and dismay at this upset, especially given their knowledge of the alleged Biden-China deals, is understandable.

The Wall Street Journal was a welcome exception to biased coverage leading up to the elections. The Journal covered allegations of both Biden and Trump’s China ties.

Taking to the Streets to Stop Corruption

What can be done to fix the more general partisan media coverage, the swamp of corruption in Washington, and the swamp creatures of different parties flinging mud at each other, while promising to drain the mucky source of their fun?

First, we as voters need to realize that it is the rare swamp creature who wants to drain the swamp. The swamp is where the swamp creatures live and thrive, and they couldn’t survive without that green muck called money. We cannot expect most of our politicians to fix the problem of which they are a part.

And so, voters must take the issue to the streets. We will have to paint placards and drag ourselves outside to peacefully protest, nonviolently and legally, in order to get the point across: no more corruption, including legalized corruption, in Washington by the media, anywhere, anyhow.

How Corruption Grows From the Local Level

Achieving the demand is not so simple. Corruption starts at the local level, when first-time city councilors and county representatives learn that to get ahead with campaign donations, they must serve what amounts to big business in their towns—often developers, local consultants, and main street shops.

That sounds innocent enough, but as those local politicians ascend to become state representatives and finally elected to positions in Washington, they start scratching the backs of bigger and bigger corporations, finally ending with those multinationals that do business in China. In exchange, they get the money they need, at every level of their climb, to win elections.

Those top American businesses in China want the over $600 billion of annual trade and $2.3 trillion in investments to continue. So they don’t want to confront Beijing’s growing power and human rights abuse, and they encourage “their” politicians in Washington to make sure the China money train keeps chugging.

Tesla China-made Model 3 vehicles are seen during a delivery event at its factory in Shanghai, China on Jan. 7, 2020. Aly Song/Reuters

It sounds complicated but it’s really simple. Money talks in Washington, and the biggest money today comes from China.

Fixing the problem will require a firewall between politicians and business. Politicians should serve business to the extent that it serves the citizens, and no more. That means that politicians should not get any revenue from business, especially China-linked business, when they are politicians or afterwards.

As it stands today, when politicians leave office, they often get quid pro quo forms of legalized corruption that keeps them onside of the businesses they serve. They should be serving the people, but instead they are serving their paymasters, who provide them with revenue, including through revolving-door business with the companies they were supposed to regulate in the interests of the citizens, and only the citizens.

Alleged Corruption in Britain

The swamp extends well past Washington. On Jan. 30 in the Times of London, Matthew Syed detailed how the revolving door works in Britain.

“Consider the scale of the problem: half of all ministers under Theresa May and Boris Johnson took up posts with related companies on leaving office, including Patrick McLoughlin, a transport minister turned airline lobbyist, and Chris Grayling, who earns £100,000 a year advising a ports company,” he writes.

“Twenty-five ministers from the coalition government took up jobs in sectors they had regulated, including Ed Davey and Chris Huhne at energy companies, and Nick Clegg at Facebook.”

Those are the British Conservatives. But Syed, who wrote the book “Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking,” notes rebelliously that Labor ministers in Britain are also on the corporate dole.

“Alan Milburn and Norman Warner took jobs with health firms, and Patricia Hewitt landed consultancy roles with Alliance Boots and Cinven, which bought 25 private hospitals from Bupa,” a private healthcare company. “Geoff Hoon secured AgustaWestland among his clients—a firm for which he had approved a £1 billion contract as defence secretary.”

Syed also notes CCP influence of Western politicians, who “aided and abetted” the regime as they got rich, and China’s corporations looted hundreds of billions of dollars worth of intellectual property.

“After masterminding rapprochement, Henry Kissinger made a fortune through business links with Chinese proxies, a story that can also be told of Madeleine Albright and dozens of others,” writes Syed.

Former British Prime Minister “David Cameron’s most ambitious commercial move was not Greensill Capital (from which he made millions) but an abortive $1 billion China investment fund.”

Stronger Laws Against Corruption

Syed proposes a fix: quadruple ministerial salaries while banning them for seven years from work for related companies. It’s a step in the right direction, but not tough enough.

Citizens should demand more of their politicians, namely service to the country, not to themselves or their billionaire paymasters.

Yes, ban politicians from related business for seven, or better yet, ten years. But demand that this go into immediate effect or there will be voter revolt. We don’t have time to gradually introduce anti-corruption measures over the next decade. By then, the CCP might have even more thoroughly infiltrated our government, making any resistance or defensive reforms impossible.

And the best politicians should be happy to survive on their existing salaries, plus generous pensions to allow them to do charitable work once out of office. Politicians, who are supposed to be civil servants, should not expect the compensation of the multi-million-dollar CEOs that they may prefer to be. If they yearn for the luxury business route, they should go that way 100 percent and stay out of politics. In that case, there are other just-as-good people to represent us in Washington.

Ultimately, there needs to be a firewall between business and politics. The two should be like oil and water. Why? Because the values required to be one are the opposite of those required for the other. In business, to be greedy is a virtue. In politics, it is a sin.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.