Graft and corruption are not victimless crimes

Agnes Chow, Joshua Wong and Ivan Lam convicted November 22, 2020

Agnes Chow was only 14 years old when the Chinese Communist Party tried to impose a law in Hong Kong that Christian schools must teach communist “moral and national education.” Communist morals are designed to undermine families, religion, property rights and community cohesion.

A Roman Catholic, attending Holy Family Canossian College, she joined a sit-in to protest the law. As a citizen of Britain and a resident of Hong Kong she was exercising the right to speak that was guaranteed by the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984.

When Beijing backed down, that should have freed her to be a child again. But it didn’t. As the CCP kept violating its commitments to Hong Kong’s seven million British citizens, Chow kept joining greater and greater numbers of fellow citizens to protest Beijing’s injustices.

In June of 2019 two million people flooded the streets of Hong Kong to speak against an extradition arrangement. That law would have permitted the CCP to arrest political enemies in Hong Kong and bury them in the secret prisons and labor camps on mainland China.

The extradition proposal was withdrawn but came back with a vengeance. On July 1, 2020, Beijing unilaterally imposed a new “security law.” This law enables the CCP’s secret police to operate in Hong Kong. It is written vaguely enough that virtually any speech or assembly protesting communist policies can be deemed a crime. And it criminalized actions that took place before the law went into effect.

Soon afterwards, the arrests began. Chow and several others who were prominent in the June 2019 protests were charged with organizing an “unlawful assembly.” On Monday, December 2, the day before her 24th birthday, she was sentenced to spend ten months behind bars. In ten short years Hong Kong went from China’s guaranteed haven of free speech to a police-state.

Chow is among the first to be imprisoned. But more, many more, will follow. Moreover, the threat of aggression from the CCP will not end when Hong Kong’s freedoms are devoured. Across a narrow strait of sea sits the independent island of Taiwan. The CCP does not recognize the independence of Taiwan. If it is successful in imposing communism on Hong Kong, Taiwan will be next in its crosshairs.

President Richard Nixon visits China in 1972

Five decades of trade with the Chinese communists have lulled most Americans into thinking that they are a benign business partners with the same goals as Wall Street—to make money. But as should be obvious by their treatment of Hong Kong, Beijing is quite willing to sacrifice the prosperity created by freedom in pursuit of power.

John Ratcliffe, the U.S. director of national intelligence (DNI), published a column in the Wall Street Journal the day after Chow was sentenced. He wrote, “If I could communicate one thing to the American people from this unique vantage point [as DNI], it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.” These are strong words.

“The intelligence is clear,” Ratcliffe wrote, “Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

As if any more corroboration was needed, a November 28 video of Di Dongsheng, a Chinese communist official surfaced soon afterwards. It showed him bragged to an audience of CCP elites that “we have people at the top” of American institutions.

Di Dongsheng, November 28, 2020

Days later, a 2015 database file was leaked showing 1.95 million members of the Chinese Communist Party that have infiltrated corporations and governments around the world. They sit in positions of power at places like Boeing, Pfizer and other international corporations. Others are employed in government. All present serious threats to America’s national security.  

All of this should put into perspective the recent revelations about Eric Swalwell and the Chinese spy who helped fund his meteoric rise to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. It should be born in mind as the mainstream media finally begins to report on the Department of Justice investigations into James and Hunter Biden.

Everybody knows that graft and corruption for financial gain are crimes. But fewer people spend time thinking about why they are crimes. After all, if some politician or corporate huckster can leverage his position to earn a few million bucks, isn’t that the American dream? How does that hurt me?

For starters, we should remember that bribes are not free money. They have strings attached. Those who give lucrative deals to American corporations and politicians want something in return—and they have ways of making sure that they get it. What they want are domestic and foreign policies that favor them and disadvantage their enemies.

Agnus Chow is considered an enemy by the CCP—as is anyone who speaks, assembles and worships freely. Every deal of graft and corruption with the CCP that lines the pocket of someone lucky enough to have connections is paid for by innocent people like Agnes.

Selling out the human rights of Chinese nationals does not only affect China. It spills over to Taiwan and into America itself. The selling of public influence for private gain is as evil as it gets. It betrays the American public and every good thing that America should be doing in the world.

America fought a bloody war to end slavery, had momentous struggles to secure civil rights for all people, and continues to stand against oppression wherever it may be found. Yet, the Apple corporation recently lobbied congress against the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” which is designed to stop the Chinese Communists from using the slave labor of three million citizens to make products for American corporations. Similarly, the National Basketball Association stifles public criticism of the CCP’s mass arrests and genocide of the Uyghur people.

All of this, and much more, makes millions for American and Chinese financial elites at the expense of both countries’ citizens. It is outrageous that American business is so deeply entangled with the CCP that they regularly turn a blind eye to injustice and actively fight against policies that would protect the basic human rights of people under the thumb of the Chinese communists.

All American people—across the political spectrum—must demand a vigorous investigation and prosecution of graft and corruption on Wall Street and Washington, in Silicon Valley and wherever it may be found. We must not allow political considerations to shield one party or another. We must not give in to corporate greed that would protect our favorite name-brands from investigation and prosecution.

If America is to remain a beacon of freedom to the world, it must stand up to China now. The hour is late. The freedom of America itself is now in jeopardy.