By ALAN SUDERMAN and SAM METZ
March 28, 2023
A letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping to Cascade
Elementary School fourth grade students in early 2020, is photographed Feb. 13,
2023. China’s global influence campaign has blossom in Utah, where state
officials were thrilled with Xi’s letter. It was heavily covered in Chinese
state media, which quoted Utah students calling Xi a kind “grandpa” — a
familiar trope in Chinese propaganda. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — China’s global influence campaign has
been surprisingly robust and successful in Utah, an
investigation by The Associated Press has found.
The world’s most powerful communist country and its
U.S.-based advocates have spent years building relationships with Utah
officials.
Legislators in the deeply conservative and religious state
have responded by delaying legislation Beijing didn’t like, nixing resolutions
that conveyed displeasure with China’s actions and expressing support in ways
that enhanced the Chinese government’s image.
The AP’s investigation relied on dozens of interviews with
key players and the review of hundreds of pages of records, text messages and
emails obtained through public records’ requests.
RELATED COVERAGE
– Amid
strained US ties, China finds unlikely friend in Utah
Beijing’s success in Utah shows “how pervasive and
persistent China has been in trying to influence America,” said Frank Montoya
Jr., a retired FBI counterintelligence agent who lives in Utah.
“Utah is an important foothold,” he said. “If the Chinese
can succeed in Salt Lake City, they can also make it in New York and
elsewhere.”
Here are some key takeaways:
LEGISLATIVE AND PR VICTORIES
The AP review found that China and its advocates won
frequent legislative and public relations victories in Utah.
Utah lawmakers recorded videos of themselves expressing
words of encouragement for the citizens of Shanghai in early 2020, which
experts said likely helped the Chinese Communist Party with its messaging.
The request came from a Chinese official as the government
was scrambling to tamp down public fury at communist authorities for
reprimanding a young doctor, who later died, over his warnings about the
dangers posed by COVID-19.
Around the same time, Utah officials were thrilled when
China’s authoritarian leader Xi Jinping sent a letter to fourth grade students
in Utah. A Republican legislator said on the state Senate floor that he
“couldn’t help but think how amazing it was” that Xi would take the time to
write such a “remarkable” letter. Another GOP senator gushed on his
conservative radio show that Xi’s letter “was so kind and so personal.”
The letter was heavily covered in Chinese state media, which
quoted Utah students calling Xi a kind “grandpa” — a familiar trope in Chinese
propaganda.
State lawmakers have frequently visited China, where they
are often quoted in state-owned media in ways that support Beijing’s agenda.
“Utah is not like Washington D.C.,” then-Utah House Speaker
Greg Hughes, a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, told the Chinese
state media outlet in 2018 as the former president ratcheted up pressure on
China over trade. “Utah is a friend of China, an old friend with a long
history.”
FBI SCRUTINY
Utah Republican Sen. Jake Anderegg told the AP he was
interviewed by the FBI after introducing a 2020 resolution expressing
solidarity with China in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. It won
nearly unanimous approval. A similar resolution, proposed by a Chinese
diplomat, was publicly rejected by Wisconsin’s Senate.
Anderegg said the language was provided to him by Dan
Stephenson, the son of a former state senator and employee of a China-based
consulting firm.
Stephenson and another Utah resident, Taowen Le, are among
China’s most vocal advocates in Utah.
Both men have supported and sought to block resolutions, set
up meetings between Utah lawmakers and Chinese officials, accompanied
legislators on trips to China and provided advice on the best way to cultivate
favor with Beijing, according to emails and interviews. Both have ties to what
experts say are front groups for Beijing.
After embassy officials tried unsuccessfully last year to
get staff for Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to schedule a get-together with China’s
ambassador to the U.S., Le sent the governor a personal plea to take such a
meeting.
“I still remember and cherish what you told me at the New
Year Party held at your home,” Le wrote in a letter adorned with pictures of
him and Cox posing together. “You told me that you trusted me to be a good
messenger and friendship builder between Utah and China.”
Both men said their advocacy on China-related issues were
self directed and not at the Chinese government’s behest. Le told AP he has
been interviewed twice over the years by the FBI.
The FBI declined to comment.
TAILORED APPROACH
Security experts say that China’s campaign is widespread and
tailored to local communities. In Utah, the AP found, Beijing and pro-China
advocates appealed to lawmakers’ affiliations with The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormon church, which is the state’s
dominant religion and one that has long dreamed of expanding in China.
Le, who converted to the church decades ago, has quoted
scripture from the Bible and the Book of Mormon in his emails and letters to
lawmakers, and sprinkled in positive comments that Russell Nelson, the church’s
president-prophet, has made about China.
PART OF BROADER TREND
Beijing’s success in Utah is part of a broader trend of
targeting “sub-national” governments, like states and cities, experts say.
It is not unusual for countries, including the U.S., to
engage in local diplomacy. U.S. officials and security experts have stressed
that many Chinese language and cultural exchanges have no hidden agendas.
However, they said, few nations have so aggressively courted local leaders
across the globe in ways that raise national security concerns.
In its annual threat assessment released earlier this month,
the U.S. intelligence community reported that China is “redoubling” its local
influence campaign in the face of stiffening resistance at the national level.
Beijing believes, the report said, that “local officials are more pliable than
their federal counterparts.”
Authorities in other countries, including Australia, Canada
and the United Kingdom, have sounded similar alarms.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington told the
AP that China “values its relationship with Utah” and any “words and deeds that
stigmatize and smear these sub-national exchanges are driven by ulterior
political purposes.”
___
Suderman reported from Washington. AP writer Fu Ting in
Washington contributed to this story.
https://apnews.com/article/china-foreign-influence-utah-mormon-50015492bcd1e8eb9ebbaee19f5942a9
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