Linda Sun, a New York public official and senior advisor for New York Governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul, has been charged with being a Chinese agent while in office. Miles Yu addresses what she is accused of, and takes a wider look at the history of Chinese espionage. Next, he analyzes why a seemingly local fender-bender turned into a microcosm demonstrating the Chinese Communist Party’s mistreatment of its veterans. And finally, Taiwanese President Lai Ching Te used a recent interview to turn the tables on Chinese land annexation policies by citing Chinese claims over Russian land. The double standard has led to suspicious silence from the CCP.
China Insider is a weekly podcast project from Hudson Institute’s China Center, hosted by Miles Yu, who provides weekly news that mainstream American outlets often miss, as well as in-depth commentary and analysis on the China challenge and the free world’s future.
Episode Transcript
This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.
Miles Yu:
Welcome to China Insider, a podcast from the Hudson Institute's China Center. I am Miles Yu, senior fellow and director of the China Center. Join me each week for our analysis of the major events concerning China, China threat, and their implications to the US and beyond.
Phil Hegseth:
It is Tuesday, September 10th, and we've got another three stories for Resident Hudson expert and host. Miles Yu. First is the indictment of Linda Sun, a New York public official who is a senior advisor for New York Governors, Cuomo and Hochul, who has been accused and charged with being a Chinese agent while in office, we break down what she's accused of and take a wider look at the history of Chinese espionage and its abilities today. Next, we cover of all things a road rage incident in China. A seemingly local fender-bender turned fight has caused a national outrage. But why? Well, I'll give you a hint. Someone involved is a Chinese veteran. And finally, Taiwanese President Lai used a recent interview to turn the tables on Chinese land annexation policies by simply asking what about the Chinese claims of a Russian lands? The double standard has led to suspicious silence from the CCP. Okay, Miles, it's Tuesday. How are you?
Miles Yu:
Very good. Phil, glad to be with you again.
Phil Hegseth:
You're traveling as always, but as always, we're happy to have you. So our first topic is one I saw break last week and I knew we'd be talking about today, which is the arrest of Linda Sun, who was a Chinese agent working in the New York government. She served under two New York Governors, both Cuomo and Hochul. So Miles, what makes her a Chinese agent and what is the history here, the context that we need to know?
Miles Yu:
She's an alleged agent, was arrested last week along with her husband. Well agents, anyone who concealed his or her real identity in another country working undercover for the interest of the Chinese Communist Party, but not for the country he or she is a citizen of. Most of them are not necessarily James Bond types. Many of them were ordinary American citizens who betrayed their country often for three reasons, ideological conviction, financial greed, or personal aggrandizement.
Phil Hegseth:
So going into each one of those and how do they play into this case?
Miles Yu:
Well, ideological conviction usually is the most important motive, including disillusion with the American democracy, with the problems inside the US. Some are downright members of the communist organizations. Every time the US political and economic system is in crisis such as the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, there are large numbers of Americans who would fall for the communist, the false prophecy, that the future of mankind does not belong to democratic capitalism, but communist utopia. Therefore, they would willingly work for the enemy of freedom such as the Soviet Union during the Great Depression and Cold War, and presently, communist China. We all know the infamous Alger Hiss spy case in 1950s. What the world knows less of the American spies working hard during World War II for the Chinese Communist Party. Those guys were sabotaging American's foreign policy of supporting the KMD nationalist government. The two most famous spies were Frank Cole and Solomon Adler of the US Treasury Department, who are in charge of managing wartime financial assistance to the nationalist government of China.
But in fact, they were working to sabotage FDR’s China policy. Now, the interesting about Frank Cole and Solomon Adler is that after World War II, both gentlemen fled to Communist China and worked for the CCP espionage and United Front work department until their death in Beijing in 1980s. They both falsely claim to be victims of McCarthyism, but in reality they were CCP spies working inside the US government. Anyone who is interested in this topic should really read Whitaker Chamber's incredible memoir called Witness, which documents his journey from a disillusioned American young man during the Great Depression to a Communist spy in the 1930s and 1940s, and again to an American patriot who outed Alger Hiss of the Soviet spy in 1950s. Much more German to the New York case in Linda Sun is a different kind of ideological motivated espionage. A primary cover for ideological spies is ethnic identity, which places many loyal Chinese Americans at risk of being recruited into working for the CCP. A false narrative is always carried out in the name of ethnic equity and racial diversity.
Linda Sun’s indictment is a case in point. The indictment document reveals that most of the alleged treasonous acts she performed on behalf of the CCP were done in the capacity of her as a senior director of Ethnic Diversity office of New York, presented her as the gatekeeper of the entire Chinese American community in New York state, which is the second largest Chinese diaspora community in the nation, second only to California. [Wow]. So her alleged business acts were always covered by righteous ideological camouflage of promoting ethnic diversity on behalf of the Chinese-American community. Many Chinese Americans, particularly elite Chinese Americans with incredible personal and professional accomplishments for what Linda Sun was promoting subtly but very effectively, and that is unfortunately has become mainstream thinking in the nation. What is this thing that Linda Sun was promoting? Well, any criticism or attack on the Chinese communist regime in Beijing is easily misconstrued as criticism or attacks on Chinese American community in the United States, which is only poisonous to our national security.
I'll give you one example. During the Trump administration, after China falsely accused the US army as the deliberate spreader of coronavirus to the world, President Donald Trump was so outraged that he used the first China virus to refute Chinese foreign ministry spokespersons’ outrageous accusations. This use of the first China virus by President Trump was clearly a criticism of Chinese spokespersons, but it drew national condemnation from the media, especially from the elite within the Chinese American diaspora, which those people are completely incapable of telling the differences. Well, what's worse? This mindless overreaction from some of the Chinese American community leaders, in my view, have created a gradually form dangerous national awareness that is extremely detrimental to the wellbeing and safety of the entire Chinese American diaspora in the United States. That is to say if any criticism of the CCP is criticism to the Chinese American community, then many people would think these Chinese Americans are essentially automatically aligned themselves, not with the us, but with the Chinese Communist Party.
Miles Yu:
This national awareness, though not fully formed yet is pernicious and harmful because it does not reflect reality. The reality is that overwhelming majority of Chinese Americans are patriotic anti-communist Americans. They will be victimized by this gradually formed national awareness that criticizing the CCP is the same as criticizing Chinese Americans. So in my view, the right way to approach this is to take side with the US government by condemning CCP’s [inaudible] against open and thorough investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, fighting against China's repression of the Chinese people, helping the US government at all levels against unlawful hate speech by real ignorant bigots and racists, while endorsing the American system as extraordinarily generous, fair, humane, welcoming places for Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans. This is the only way to tell American society and educate them about one fundamental reality that the interest of the CCP and that of the Chinese Americans are completely different. To do otherwise seems to me is nothing but the miracle of stupidity.
Phil Hegseth:
So you cited three main motivators here. The two we haven't covered are essentially ego and money. Can you detail those and how they apply to this case?
Miles Yu:
Well, first of all, financial greed is obvious. Linda Sun and her husband got paid back handsomely by the CCP directly or indirectly, mostly indirectly by millions of dollars. Congress, former senior government officials retired and corporate military leaders are doing tremendous monkey business with the CCP regime. They are very vulnerable. I mean, personal advertisement is also easy to understand. The CCP is an expert in working your egos
Professional enchantment at work with regard to promotion lightness of being arrogance and hubris. That's why so many brilliant, but underappreciated elites become spies. You look at the altered Ames, Robert Hanson, many of the guys who were feel like they were underappreciated and they worked for the [inaudible] freedom. So right now, after the death of Dr. Henry Kissinger, who is a tremendous American, there is a competition for who will be the next chief proxy of China in the US. You have some dumb Harvard professors in the race. Also in the race are some rather despicable Wall Street, double faced tycoons. The list goes on and on. So they're all vulnerable too.
Phil Hegseth:
She really ticked all of the boxes, all of the motivators, huh?
Miles Yu:
Anyway, so also, but for example, if you are just a college professor, you feel like you're somebody, but you feel you're so brilliant that you're smarter than your leaders, national leaders, elected officials, and then yet you are nobody except you teach students in the classroom. You go to China. China wants you to be their proxy. They would give you access to the senior leader of the Chinese Communist Party. You feel like you're somebody and you come back, act like a communist of the Chinese Communist Party in the United States. And then you obviously take side on the other side. Willingly or unwillingly, you become the agent of the Chinese Communist Party.
Phil Hegseth:
Yeah, and so I mean, they've clearly got people here. She felt prey to this, but is there a larger spy culture and a tradition here that China has not only in our country but around the world?
Miles Yu:
Oh yeah. China has a very rich spy culture. We go back, everybody's quoting The Art of War by Sun Tzu, right? And Sun Tzu, one of the very important chapter talks about employment of spies. Sun Tzu said there are five type of spies, and I'll let you figure out which type of spy Linda Sun would fit in. Right?
Phil Hegseth:
Okay. Okay, we'll play again.
Miles Yu:
The first type of is called the local spy, also known as the village spy, village spy. Those are basically people in other countries, but they're giving information to you and not basically in a local spy. They know the local population. They have local cover. Another type of spy is called the inner spy. Those are spies who were officials of the enemy country, but they were employed by you. Third type of spy is converted spies. Those are the spies of the enemy spies, basically the double agents, right? And then the fourth one is called the death spies. Those were the were people who sent to inform the enemy and to spread false reports through your spies already in the enemy lines. The last type of spies called the living spies. Those were basically traditional, classically defined in the modern times of the James Bond type. You penetrate into enemies inner circle, and then you spy, you steal, and then you report back. So the Chinese strategic culture historically plays a very important value on deceit and disinformation. So it's not necessarily kind of a straightforward, the western type of spy that sent over there to steal and to film and send back to report.
Phil Hegseth:
Right?
Miles Yu:
No, it's very comprehensive as you say. This is the tradition.
Phil Hegseth:
We've got different spies serving different purposes, right?
Miles Yu:
Yeah. The most importantly strength, Sun Tzu said you must employ the five type of spies all at the same time simultaneously. Otherwise it won't work.
Phil Hegseth:
So would you put her in the inside spy basket?
Miles Yu:
I'll let you figure out. I'll let the court figure out.
Phil Hegseth:
I like it. So what is the CCP’s modern adaptation of these to create their current spy culture?
Miles Yu:
Well, the CCP’s modern adaptation of the rich Chinese spy culture is obvious. It had different name. It's called the United Front Work.
Phil Hegseth:
Okay, and what is that?
Miles Yu:
Okay, so Mao Zedong famously said in late 1940s that the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, has three magic weapons. First and foremost is the United Front. Secondly, it's arms struggle. Thirdly is a party construction, basically party sales everywhere.
Now United Front Work is a very comprehensive CCP mission. It basically consists of three parts. One is elite capture as well as proxy cultivation. Second type is called subnational infiltration, and thirdly is disinformation and propaganda. Lemme just go through this very briefly, one by one. About elite capture and the proxy cultivation, the United Front Work primarily focuses on this mission. That is you capture enemies, elites, and you make them your proxy. The CCP’s best minds in China, those people who know the United States inside out and who are experts, very well trained. They're not in the West to promote CCP policy directly. They never do. But they would be sent to different think tanks, universities and research institutions, local, state, and federal governments to cultivate proxies, to fund their practice, which result in a phenomenon we generally called Panda Hugging. Panda Hugging is a very big business in the United States. In particular, almost all of CCPs key propaganda points main policies are conveyed to the west, not through the CCP leaders themselves, but through this capture elites, those panda huggers, right?
I call them the China brokers. Many of them are granted exclusive assets to the senior CCP leadership, which in turn greatly enhances these people's prestige and mystique of power in the West. Well corporation pay those people millions of dollars and ask for favor asking to convey to the Chinese leaders they wish to be treated nicely for their China operations by the CCP autocrats. Senior government officials who are denying normal access to CCP Mandarins rely heavily on these CCP proxies for insights and clues. There was a movie called the China Syndrome. I don't know if you have seen this or not. That was a Hollywood fiction, but this is the real China syndrome in Washington, and the first of the 12 step healing programs for this did not take place until Donald Trump came to Washington, especially under Mike Pompeo’s State Department leadership for which I serve as a China advisor.
Secretary Pompeo was clearly aware of the CCPs infiltration in the United States, and he made very important speeches, the most important [three]. So they made three speeches. Number one, I think the most comprehensive one he delivered to the National Governor's Association of February 8th, 2020. In that speech, he comprehensively laid out the various aspects of China's United Front Work on subnational governments, mostly local and state governments. And the second speech he made was in September, 2020. He delivered this at the Wisconsin Senate in Madison, Wisconsin. What you also talk about how the CCP government works on the state politicians to convey and deliver their demands. The third speech, which happened to be Secretary Pompeo's last official travel took place on December 9th, 2020. He gave the speech at Georgia Tech on Chinese government infiltration on American campuses, how their work, their United Front work has damaged Americans academic freedom and scholarly integrity. I was with him on all three occasions and was intimately familiar with the contents of those farsighted speeches. And for listeners who want to read all of them or watch the video, you can easily find them either YouTube or the State Department website.
Phil Hegseth:
Okay, well people can check that out for a little bit more on that topic if they'd like to. But moving on, Miles, you're going to have to explain this one for me. This sounds like a run of the mill traffic accident turned road rage incident, but it is stirring up a political crisis of sorts in China. So what happened here, and then we can get into what it all means at a societal level.
Miles Yu:
The major political earthquakes normally take place after a small minor incident, which reflects a real larger societal problem, right? In this case, so August 28th, there was a 38 year woman Qingdao, a major city on the east coast of China. She was driving a car, but she drove on the wrong side of the highway. And then when she realized she was trying to get back on the right side of the highway, but the SUV driver would not yield causing the lady to rear-end a tourist bus in front of her, [inaudible].
Phil Hegseth:
Okay,
Miles Yu:
So the lady got out the car and slapped and struck the 26-year-old SUV driver, dozens of times causing nose bleeding and facial swelling. So throughout the whole process, the young man remained calm and didn't strike back at all. This whole incident, the whole process was filmed by bystanders stuck in the traffic.
Phil Hegseth:
So…
Miles Yu:
The post, this video clicked online, but that was not a problem because there's dozens of stuff like this online every day in China. People are used to it. The problem is threefold. Number one, the police report posted online was incendiary because this lady was given an extraordinary light punishment. She was ordered to stay in detention for 10 days. She was fined 1000 Yuan which is equivalent to about $135. This is not really that appropriate in eyes of most of people who are watching these videos because it was very violent. This lady, she was known in China right now throughout the nation as rogue tiger lady. Okay? It also further revealed that this rogue tiger lady is a rumor to be the mistress of the local police chief. Now, I'm not sure whether this is true or not, because there's no clear evidence to prove that is the case. But even if it's not true, but the power of rumor is sizable and very devastating because it is so commonplace that police chiefs have mistresses all across the nation.
Phil Hegseth:
Oh geez.
Miles Yu:
And those mistresses were becoming very, very arrogant and abusive. So it was known nationwide as bad elements. But the most importantly, the third thing that really made this whole thing a minor political crisis, I will say, is that it was from the review that the victim is a 26-year-old army veteran and Chinese veterans are not treated very well, and they have become a major source of political instability for the CCP regime. Remember, several months ago, you got thousands of veterans converging on Beijing to send a petition to the central government and demanding better treatment because many of them were basically the unemployed, they couldn't find a job.
Phil Hegseth:
Oh, interesting.
Miles Yu:
Okay. So after the fact that this SUV driver, the victim of this road, tiger lady, was a 27-year-old army veteran who behaved very well during the entire process and you got a national outrage going on. Busloads of veterans from all over the country converged on Qingdao city to show support for their fellow veteran victim and demand a fair reinvestigation. Now this is really, really something that's very exciting to a lot of people inside China watching this because veterans, they know how to use violent means to accomplish missions, and they're very well organized. They're very, very pissed off right now at the regime. So that's why this become such a very important event going on. So China is a basically [inaudible] ready to explode any moment.
Phil Hegseth:
What is this incident, which seems to be a larger issue about treatment of veterans, say about Chinese society today?
Miles Yu:
I will say basically it means that there is a prevalent disenchantment against the Chinese government.
Particularly this disenchantment has sort of a manifested itself in a very specific way. Now, Chinese police were very hidden people in China. I mentioned in one of the episodes earlier that one of the national heroes among Chinese people is a young man by the name of a Yang Jia 杨佳. Yang Jia 杨佳 was a guy who was a long bicyclist in Shanghai. He was mistreated and abused by the Shanghai police. So he was asking for apology. The police in Shanghai refused to follow his demand. So this guy, a young man and just went into the police station and using a machete and killing six cops. Geez. So he was a promptly executed, of course. But this man, Yang Jia 杨佳, has become a national hero. Many people view him as sort of somebody who did justice for themselves. So this is actually a very, very twisted nation right now. A murderer become a hero.
Phil Hegseth:
Why are the police so hated? Is it just brutal tactics or is they're seen as just an arm of the party that they can actually physically, they have physical representation of the party in their neighborhoods or what is, where's it coming from?
Miles Yu:
You said very well. You said it very well. They're the willing executioners of the brutal regime.
So they're the ones that maintain daily contact with the enemy of their government. That is the people. So that's why they were really, really headed. And of course the veterans, obviously they were supposed to be the willing execution of the regime, but after they were discharged and they go home and they face reality, reality is pretty brutal for them. They're not a guaranteed job and their pension is kind of very, very inadequate. So you have a lot of disenchantment there. But all this points to one thing you asked me about what does it mean? It means one thing that China is a politically unstable country. People want to change and also testify to the power of the internet. And any tiny incident can make a lot of big booms, a lot of big bangs in China. So this is something that we should be very careful about.
Phil Hegseth:
Yeah. Well, we'll keep our out for other small microcosms of larger issues. Our final topic today is about Taiwanese President Lai Ching Te, who gave a recent interview on Taiwanese TV and said that China's bid to Annex is driven not by territorial integrity, but by ambitions to alter the rules-based order. And then he shifted and talked about a different territory that isn't Taiwan. Miles, could you explain what he went on to talk about and why it matters?
Miles Yu:
So on the hundredth day anniversary of his new government president Lai Ching Te, also known as William Lai woman on the Taiwanese TV show hosted by [Catherine Chung]. And during which President Lai said China's intent to invent Taiwan is really not about sort of a maintaining territorial integrity. If that were the China's intent, they would've asked Russia to return all the territories taken by Russia and willingly give away by the Chinese communist government.
Phil Hegseth:
I love it. I love it.
Miles Yu:
He turned the table on China, and this is really interesting because since the 19th century, Russia grabbed a lot of what was then Manchu Dynasty territory. And China right now is in no position to ask for return because they're trading partners. Even during the Cold War, even after China and the Soviet Union split over, who should the leader of the Chinese have, the global international communist movement and China [inaudible] to this kind of deal was made in the 1950s. So China gave away territory to Russia, dozens times bigger than the territory size of Taiwan.
So that's what President Lai was talking about. The interesting thing is Russia responded. Russia said, is longer a business? And because China and Russia's territory issue have been settled in 2004 by then Secretary General Zhang Zemin and Vladimir Putin, and therefore we have no border dispute. Taiwan hu, they call you. Taiwan is part of China. So that's basically all those things. The funny thing is the CCP has not responded directly to this. They are in a very awkward situation because what President Lai said is absolutely true. But if they say something about the truth and alienate the Russian friend and ally, by the way, China is totally on the side of Russia for invasion of Ukraine. So this is why it's important. So I think person lie, I don't know whether he intended to do this or not, but actually did something remarkably wise and very sophisticated in my view.
Phil Hegseth:
It was a really nice clever diplomatic move to shift attention and point out an oxymoron in the Chinese policies and ambitions.
Miles Yu:
You are absolutely true. I published a short article several months ago for the Hoover Institution in which I analyzed the theoretical foundation and the historical tendency of China's border strategy and why China's border strategy is ideologically motivated. In other words, China is totally willing to give away what is supposed to be China's sovereign domain, the size of 30, 40 times of Taiwan's to its friendly, ideologically aligned countries like the Soviet Union and now Russia and Mongolia, People's Republic Mongolia at the time, and all those countries who were friendly to China like Burma, China, gave away a lot of territories to Burma. No problem with that. So that has nothing to do with territory integrity. So China's intent in invade Taiwan is purely based upon what Mao said, the unfinished revolution. You got to continue this whole thing. Chinese government spokesperson said this was a continuation of 1949 Communist Revolution. So it's sort of animated by that kind of ideological zeal. I also say that because Taiwan is a very successful democracy, Taiwan's impact on the mainland Chinese people is enormous. That's why they're so afraid of freedom and democracy, which is manifested by Taiwan and Taiwan's success.
Phil Hegseth:
Yeah, friend. Now, territorial dispute later, which is maybe why China's staying so tightlipped, they're giving themselves options in the future if they ever needed to. Well, that's a great place to leave it. Travel safe mile. We thank you for joining as always, and we'll see you next week. See you next week.
Miles Yu:
Thank you for listening to this episode of China Insider. I'd also like to thank our executive producer, Philip Seth, who works tirelessly and professionally behind the scenes for every episode. To make sure we deliver the best quality podcast to you, the listeners, if you enjoy the show, please spread the word. For Chinese listeners, please check our monthly review and analysis episode in Chinese. We'll see you next time.