By Andrew C. McCarthy
Understand what’s going on here: The media-Democrat complex is warning you, on the basis of no evidence, that if you don’t close your eyes to the explosive revelations from Hunter Biden’s computers, you will be abetting a Russian intelligence operation; yet it has become increasingly obvious that this is because, if you open your eyes, you may find out that the Bidens were selling themselves to an actual Chinese intelligence operation.
Among the more amazing revelations in the Biden corruption scandal that the media-Democrat complex is blocking voters from seeing is this: The corrupt Chinese businessmen with whom the Bidens were colluding not only had a record of buying political influence, not only were known to have high-level ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the regime, but also were clandestine agents of China — at least, that’s what the FBI and Justice Department seem to have told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The Bidens were seeking a $40 million liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal with CEFC, a Shanghai-based energy conglomerate that was flying high until early 2018. By then, however, it had become crystal clear to Xi Jinping’s government that the company’s machinations on behalf of the regime had been penetrated by U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement. CEFC formally went bankrupt earlier this year, but that was two years after the regime pulled the plug on its operations – which appear to have been a cover for Chinese intelligence operations.
The Bidens, with former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter as the point-man, dealt with CEFC in 2017. They were the beneficiaries of its corrupt practices and were smack in the middle of things when CEFC began to unravel due to American investigations — investigations that Hunter Biden agreed to look into on behalf of his CEFC partners.
CEFC Was ChinaCEFC posed as a private company. Make no mistake, though, CEFC was China. Its meteoric rise would not have been possible otherwise, and its rapid collapse happened because its usefulness as an instrument of the Communist regime’s influence was undermined by American surveillance operations.
CEFC’s precursor company was begun in 2002 by Ye Zianming, an obscure young man who became fabulously wealthy by opaque means. It is not hard to figure out what happened, though: The Communist regime smiled on him. He has acknowledged getting his big break in 2006, when the regime permitted him to acquire assets it had confiscated from a major smuggler. Over the next dozen years, he lived the life of a globe-trotting tycoon. Hunter Biden, in the overstatement that appears to be a family tic, has referred to Ye as not only “my partner” but as “the richest man in the world.” Ye did indeed live large, but it was the Chinese government that let that happen, lavishly backing his venture, while he, in turn, spread China’s influence, particularly by purchasing political connections in America, Europe, and Africa.
From the start, the New York Times has reported, CEFC retained former top officials of the regime and was strongly tied to the Chinese Communist Party, establishing an internal party committee and rearing young officials through the Communist Youth League. Ye himself had been deputy secretary of the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC). That is the public name for a division of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), known as the General Political Department’s International Liaison Department — as explained in a comprehensive report by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, mainly compiled by Senators Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa).