Biden Establishes Task Force to Monitor China’s Censorship and Harassment in US

Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) looks on as President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Nov. 21, 2023. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—President Joe Biden on Dec. 12 announced the establishment of a task force to “monitor and address the effects” of any attempts by the Chinese regime to censor or intimidate individuals or businesses in the United States.

The action is in response to Beijing’s increasing efforts to silence critics living in the United States.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules the People’s Republic of China (PRC), conducts one of the most sophisticated and extensive campaigns of transnational repression in the world, according to human rights groups.

Biden issued a memorandum to address this issue by establishing the “China Censorship Monitor and Action Group” within the executive office. He directed the assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and the director of the National Economic Council to lead the task force.

The group will develop a “strategy to monitor and address the effects of any efforts by the PRC to censor or intimidate, in the United States or in any of its possessions or territories, any United States person, including a United States company that conducts business in the PRC, exercising its freedom of speech,” according to the memorandum.

The task force will include representatives from various departments and agencies and gather input from stakeholders in the private sector and the media. The group will issue an annual report to the president and the appropriate congressional committees.

“This is a good start,” Michael Sobolik, senior fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, wrote on X.

“The Trump administration should continue this task force—with one additional (and very important) change. Trump should expand the group’s parameters to examine CCP censorship not only within America but also within China. That’s where the party’s fears about free speech are greatest. It’s where the CCP is weakest.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long censored critics at home and, in recent years, has intensified efforts to extend that censorship globally, aiming to block any criticism of its ongoing human rights abuses.

In an October report, the House Committee on Homeland Security (CHS) detailed recent cases of CCP’s espionage and transnational repression in the United States.

“Beijing has continually encroached upon American sovereignty to spy, intimidate, and harass not only defectors, but even American citizens,” CHS Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) said in a statement. “To be clear, our adversary is not the Chinese people, but the threat that comes from the tyrannical regime that oppresses its own people, commits genocide, censors speech, and seeks to undermine representative government.”

A recent case involves a Chinese agent attempting to bribe the IRS to advance Beijing’s transnational repression of New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts. Shen Yun has long been on the CCP’s target list for exposing its human rights abuses.

John Chen, 72, a naturalized U.S. citizen, received a 20-month prison sentence for his role in a $50,000 bribery scheme under the direction of a Chinese intelligence official to revoke the nonprofit status of Shen Yun.

On Dec. 12, Biden also announced the establishment of the “Countering Economic Coercion Task Force.”

The task force will “oversee the development and implementation of an integrated United States Government strategy to respond to and deter coercive economic practices by countries of concern, including the PRC.”

These steps were taken to comply with the requirements of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2023, which Biden signed into law in December 2022.