While the Chinese Spy Balloon story was captivating and distracting, fears of growing Chinese Communist government surveillance of Americans are no longer the stuff of spy movies and conspiracy theories - the threat is real. And whether itundefineds unusual purchases of agricultural land near military installations, clandestine police stations, suspicious algorithms, TikTok or errant balloons, they all in one form or another pose a potential risk to Americaundefineds national security. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with Nan Su, Senior Correspondent of The Epoch Times, about RED ZEPPELIN - OH THE INHUMANITY OF THE CHINESE CREEP.
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In 1957, the sense of security the United States had come to accept after America’s victory in World War II drastically changed.
The NBC radio broadcast on the night of Oct. 4 told its audience, undefinedListen now… for the sound that forevermore separates the old from the new,undefined as the sound of the Sputnik satellite came through the airwaves.
This moment didn’t just signify a groundbreaking technological achievement with the launch of the first satellite into orbit. It also conveyed to the rest of the world the Soviet Union was outpacing the United States technologically a decade into the Cold War.
The Biden administration allowing the Chinese spy balloon to violate our airspace is that the American public has received a similar wake-up call to the brazenness of Chinese spying.
With this spy balloon, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping wanted to dare the Biden administration to something about it. Instead, our government dithered. Xi tested the political will to respond and we failed. The Washington Post reported that China has deployed similar balloons in the past over Hawaii and Gaum. Clearly Beijing deployed one over our ICBM fields in the US mainland because they believed they could get away with it.
Concerningly, Bloomberg reported, undefinedU.S. authorities were well aware of the unidentified object that had entered American airspace on Jan. 28, that had then left and re-entered over North Idaho on Tuesday.undefined
However, Bloomberg changed their story as the first reports from Bloomberg stated that the balloon in question was one of our Military balloons.
According to the writer Olivia Poh-Bloomberg headlined the story as undefinedThousands Mistake US Research Balloon for Chinese Spy Craft.undefined
Bloomberg reported at first that what we were all seeing and tracking was an “N257TH,” a standard high-altitude research balloon often released over the US, according to FlightRadar24.
Poh stated undefinedthousands of internet users mistook it for the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon floating over the western state of Montana.undefined
China has bestowed Bloomberg with the ‘Most Valuable Vendor’ award and the ‘Best Information Vendor’ award.
Flight Radar said in a tweet on Saturday that it updated its label for the US balloon, adding that the object was “not a Chinese balloon.”
Then it was reported that the balloon is part of a broader Chinese spying program that’s seen many such devices sent over to the US, including some during the Trump administration, according to officials in Washington.
South China news reported that same story.
They reported More than 4,000 users were following every move of the high-altitude research balloon on Flightradar24
The aircraft-tracking website later updated its label for the US airship, adding that the object was ‘not a Chinese balloon,
Reuters reported the balloon named HBAL617 with registration number N257TH belongs to Aerostar, an aerospace company based in South Dakota.
“HBAL617 is an Aerostar Thunderhead Balloon that was launched from New Mexico [on] January 31 and is currently over the southeastern US,” Anastasia Quanbeck, Aerostar’s Culture and Communications Manager, said in an email.
“Aerostar has not had any balloons over the northwest part of the US in the last month.”
Again this story evolved into a Chinese Balloon story. A story that lingered for a long time.
Then came the story of a woman in Billings catching on Video the shooting down of an aircraft that she said was a similar balloon.
The Government of Montana and the fire department said that there was no such incident.
But no the Balloon was still up there moving toward St. Louis.
Of course, there’s another part of history that can be used as a reminder of Spying missions and the spin governments put on them.
On the eve of the Paris Summit and during the May Day holiday, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers took off from a base in Pakistan bound for another base in Norway, with his planned flight path transgressing 2,900 miles of Soviet airspace. Near the city of Sverdlovsk Oblast in the Ural Mountains, Powers’ plane was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. Powers ejected and parachuted safely to the ground, where he was captured by the KGB, and held for interrogation. The plane crashed, but parts of it were recovered and placed on public display in Moscow as evidence of American deceit.
Although the capture of Powers provided the Soviets the concrete proof that the United States had been conducting the flights, it was not immediately clear what the impact would be for the Paris Summit. At first, and before they had confirmation that Powers had survived, U.S. OFFICIALS CLAIMED THAT THE U-2 HAD BEEN CONDUCTING A ROUTINE WEATHER FLIGHT but experienced a malfunction of its oxygen delivery system that had caused the pilot to black out and drift over Soviet air space. On May 7, however, Khrushchev revealed that Powers was alive and uninjured, and clearly had not blacked out from oxygen deprivation. Moreover, the Soviets recovered the plane mostly intact, including the aerial camera system. It became instantly apparent that the weather survey story was a cover-up for a spy program.
While the Chinese Spy Balloon was captivating and distracting, people may not realize that there is a silver lining to all of this and that is we must now be more aware of the Chinese Creep into American affairs.
Everyone is talking about the “Chinese spy balloon, It’s apparently a big deal, it even has its own Wikipedia page already.
Some say it is a distraction -but seriously we can see that it again tells us that China had so many things at its disposal to spy on us.
Now, after the eyes of millions of Americans turned to the skies – tracking a suspected Chinese spy balloon drifting over the country for days – hard experience has taught America to assume the worst when it comes to Beijing.
Fears of growing Chinese Communist government surveillance of Americans are no longer the stuff of spy movies and conspiracy theories.
The threat is real. And whether itundefineds unusual purchases of agricultural land near military installations, clandestine police stations, suspicious algorithms, Tik Tok or balloons, they all in one form or another pose a potential risk to Americaundefineds national security.
US suspicions over Chinese government undefinedinfiltrationundefined - shared by both Republicans and Democrats - are hardly surprising given that Chinaundefineds premier Xi Jinping has increasingly demanded the countryundefineds businesses conform to the aims of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chinese corporations are left in little doubt by the Beijing regime that they exist principally to further government goals rather than make profits.
Last month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that he intended to ban big and undefinedaggressiveundefined Chinese land purchases in his state.
undefinedYou donundefinedt want them buying farmland, controlling our food supply. You donundefinedt want them near military bases,undefined he said. undefinedBut do you want them building a resort in Florida either? I donundefinedt.undefined
Now, Gov. DeSantis has regularly warned about China. Last year, he sounded the alarm shortly after a report showed Chinese real estate investors spent more than $6 billion in the US in a year - more than investors from any other foreign country. And sunny Florida appears to be their favorite - accounting for nearly a quarter of all similar purchases in the US.
DeSantis is hardly a lone voice. In December, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer cheered the Biden administrationundefineds move to block CCP-backed technology company, YMTC, from purchasing critical technology from U.S. businesses.
undefinedThe entanglements of these companies with the CCP and the Chinese military are too treacherous,undefined he declared. The question for American policymakers today is: How undefinedentangledundefined are we?
Major land purchases by Chinese entities now rarely pass off without controversy - particularly when there appears to be a military dimension.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, Chinese ownership of American farmland has soared 20-fold in a decade from $81 million in 2010 to $1.8 billion in 2020. And several Chinese firms have in recent years bought or tried to buy large plots of land near US armed forces bases.
In November 2021, the city of Grand Forks in North Dakota announced that Fufeng Group, headquartered in Shandong, China, wanted to build a corn mill there on a vast muddy stretch of land.
The company had identified a 370-acre plot that just happened to be only 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, which in turn just happens to be home to some of Americaundefineds key intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.
The base hosts the 319th Reconnaissance Wing which operates the RQ-4 Global Hawk, a high-altitude, remotely piloted surveillance plane, and will also house a crucial new space communications center.
The information that flows through this facility form undefinedthe backbone of all U.S. military communications across the globe.
This cannot be a coincidence.
The Biden administration has been warned of this attempt at a Chinese creep. Fifty Republicans warned of Fufeng Groupundefineds undefinedclose links to the Chinese Communist Party.undefined In fact, the president of Fufeng, Li Xuechun, is allegedly an active member of the CCP.
Marco Rubio Vice Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence weighed in on the controversy of the Chinese creep.
He stated undefinedBy law, Chinese businesses are required to bow to the demands of the Chinese Communist Party – a regime that hates us and wants to overtake the United States at every opportunity.
After more than a year of debate, the U.S. Air Force warned that the undefinedproject presents a significant threat to national security.undefined
In a sharp about-face, the mayor of Grand Forks said heundefinedll do what he can to block construction. Just a few years ago, Mayor Brandon Bochenski was celebrating the investment. But times have changed.
There have been other such moves and the fact that Chinese-owned companies get major financial backing from Beijing (which, say, observers, rarely approve anything without an ulterior motive) has convinced analysts theyundefinedre part of a strategy.
In 2016, a Houston-based subsidiary of Chinaundefineds Xinjiang Guanghui Industry Investment Group paid an estimated $110 million for some 140,000 acres in Val Verde County, Texas.
The companyundefineds owner, Chinese billionaire Sun Guangxin - another member of the Chinese Communist Party and former Peopleundefineds Liberation Army officer - said he wanted to build the Blue Hills Wind Farm on part of the land so he could have access to the stateundefineds electricity grid.
Skeptics were struck that not only was there little wind in this part of the state but - as in Grand Forks, N.D. - about the only other thing of note in Val Verde was an important military base. Laughlin Air Force Base is the largest pilot training center in the US Air Force.
The Chinese also have ownership of major US pork producer Smithfield.
The company, whose products can usually be found in any American supermarket, was bought in 2013 by the conglomerate WH Group, based in Hong Kong. It was the biggest-ever takeover of a US company by a Chinese one and triggered a congressional hearing.
Despite expertsundefined warnings that the US might ultimately regret the $4.7 billion deal and it gave the Chinese too much control over Americaundefineds pork industry, it was allowed to go through. When food supplies became a major headache during the pandemic, Smithfield - based in Virginia - was accused of ramping up its exports of meat to China to record levels at the expense of feeding Americans.
In some parts of the US, the arrival of a Chinese company is enough to provoke horror even if its intentions appear entirely benign.
Semcorp, a Shanghai-based tech company which the biggest producer of a key component of lithium-ion batteries, promised to invest $1 billion in a new factory that would create 1,200 jobs in Sidney, Ohio.
The state has been hit particularly hard by job losses but local people who complained at it being a Chinese company won loud applause at a public meeting last spring to consider tax breaks for the company. undefinedThey are not our friends,undefined said a resident. undefinedThink of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren when you have to explain you approved this to a company from China.undefined
Despite the objections, the project is going ahead.
In a testament to the brazenness of the autocratic Beijing regime, even their police are now operating secretly in the US.
Weeks ago, it emerged that the FBI is actively cracking down on a US-wide network of covert Chinese police stations. These very unofficial outposts - including one in Manhattanundefineds Chinatown that was raided by the FBI last fall - are reportedly collecting intelligence, investigating crimes and generally keeping watch on Chinese abroad.
The Chinese government promotes these locations as resources for Chinese nationals and say the program has undefinedpersuadedundefined 230,000 Chinese citizens to return home since April 2021. But human rights organizations claim these stations are guided by a much more sinister purpose - an intimidation campaign.
These secret cop shops – which reportedly also operate in 100 locations throughout Europe and in Japan - make no attempt to work with local law enforcement and have no diplomatic status. It is unclear who works at these facilities.
But even Chinese state news media reporting has alluded to the true purposes of these offices, according to the New York Times. Articles have described the outposts as intelligence collection apparatus.
Many of those reports have reportedly since been deleted.
Lastly, we all know of the accusations that China is threatening US national security in the digital world. Bipartisan concern has focused on TikTok, the wildly popular social media platform that is used relentlessly by more than two-thirds of US teenagers.
Despite initials denials, TikTok has been found to have used the app to spy on US reporters writing about the platform and allowed the Beijing regimeundefineds propaganda arm to covertly criticize US politicians ahead of last yearundefineds midterm elections.
Chinese penetration of the US – both physical and cyber – is diverse and growing. While some of the holdings of Chinese companies in America are undoubtedly innocent, the fact that Beijing puppet-masters may be pulling the strings is a glaring cause for concern.
Now we can only winder why a Chinese spy Balloon was allowed to spy on our Nuclear and information infrastructure.
There is no longer an American loyalty when hierarchy Corporate fascism is in charge; there is now a world concern and a world campaign, forged by American policy makers, which is now beginning to trouble those who have been the star players in the patriot games.
The rules have changed and the game theory no longer favors the residents of the homeland. The list of enemies is now a “kill” or “hit” list on which American citizens are in the crosshairs.
We allow the Chinese to get away with their treachery and we stand idly by when our adversary pretends to be diplomatic shareholders in the new reset communist creep.
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SHOW GUEST: NAN SU
Born and raised in China, Mr. Nan Su came to the U.S. in 1989. Mr. Su has been serving as a news commentator for SOH International Chinese Radio Network and NTD International TV network since 2003, and has made many speeches at public events in the past decade on China-related topics.
Nan Su is currently a Senior Reporter for The Epoch Times, a newspaper that is published in 35 countries and 21 languages.
