President Joe Biden has been busy with executive orders focused on reversing President Trump’s legacy.
One order dropped a Trump program to deport convicted sex offenders who are in the United States illegally.
Now China expert Gordon Chang, the author of “The Coming Collapse of China” and a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, points out Biden has reversed a Trump action that prevented Americans from financing China’s military.
On Jan. 26, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a license permitting Americans to continue acquiring shares in certain companies associated with “Communist Chinese Military Companies,” known as CCMCs, until May 27.
The previous deadline, set by the Trump administration, was Jan. 28.
Trump’s order “stopped investors, subject to wind-down provisions, from purchasing or possessing shares in any company designated a CCMC.”
In short, Chang wrote, “Trump ordered Americans to stop financing China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army.”
There now are 44 companies on the list, including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China’s leading chipmaker, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation, he said.
Biden’s order, he said, essentially “guts” Trump’s order banning investment into dozens of companies that should be off-limits.
“The Biden administration, therefore, caved. Wall Street had fiercely opposed Trump’s executive order and now has additional time to work for its repeal,” Chang said.
Chang was told by Roger Robinson, chairman of the Prague Securities Studies Institute, that changing Trump’s order “would only serve to enrich Wall Street and Beijing at the expense of American security, fundamental values, and investor protection.”
He’s right, Chang said.
“Beijing views the U.S. financial community as its channel to influence the highest levels of the American political system,” he said.
The right thing would be to stop Americans from investing “in any Chinese business, whether or not now formally designated as a Community Chinese Military Company.”
The ban should cover all of China’s government-owned operations as well as privately owned companies, Chang insisted.
“As President Trump wrote in the preamble to EO13959, ‘the national strategy of Military-Civil Fusion’ means that the party-state compels private companies to support the ‘military, intelligence, and security apparatuses and aid in their development and modernization,'” he said.
“Every dollar that goes into a Chinese enterprise, whether state or private, enriches a regime that has declared a ‘people’s war’ on the United States. Therefore, every company should be off-limits to investment from Americans,” he said.
Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
