Amid the revelations of espionage by the communist regime, a China expert is urging the federal government to shut down Beijing’s consulates in the United States.
“China’s influence, intelligence and infiltration attempts are overwhelming America. Given the emergency, Washington should immediately close down all of China’s bases of operation in the U.S., including its four remaining consulates,” wrote Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China” and a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
Chang said it is also in America’s interest to get its companies out of China, “for moral as well as other reasons.”
He cited the scandal involving the relationship between U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang.
“China has hundreds — perhaps thousands — of agents in the U.S. identifying, grooming, supporting, influencing, compromising, and corrupting Americans in politics and other fields of importance to it,” Chang said.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told Fox News on Dec. 11 that there are “hundreds of thousands of people that act like spies that are coordinated by China.”
Chang said Fang may have “honey-trapped” Swalwell, an allegation on which the Democrat has declined to comment.
He said each of China’s estimated 370,000 students in American colleges and universities is a “potential agent because all are under a legal compulsion to commit espionage against the United States.”
Chang said China is using its nationals to gather intel and its diplomatic facilities to process the information.
Last July, the State Department ordered China’s consulate in Houston closed, because it was known to be a “hub of spying.”
And James Olson, a former CIA counterintelligence chief, estimates that China, “conservatively,” had more than 100 intel officers operating in New York.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said in July that China’s agents are overwhelming U.S. law enforcement.
Dan Hoffman, a former CIA station chief, told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner last Thursday that “China is flooding the zone,” Chang noted.
The solution, he believes, is to cut off China’s ability to embed spies.
“This means closing Beijing’s four remaining consulates — Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco — and substantially reducing the staff of the embassy. The embassy, in reality, needs only the ambassador, immediate family, and personal staff, not the hundreds currently assigned there,” he said.
It’s possible that China then would move its spies to banks or other businesses, but “that will take time and, in any event, Washington can order the closure of non-diplomatic outposts as well,” Chang said.
If there’s retaliation and China closes U.S. consulates?
“The U.S. should nonetheless act to show Beijing that it is absolutely determined to defend itself. Nothing says ‘political will’ more than being willing to take a big hit,” he said.
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