New York’s political establishment needs to wake up to the Chinese Communist Party’s influence operations here.
The latest is Isabel Vincent’s latest Post exclusive revealing that CCP tendrils reached into the office of the Big Apple’s top cop: Now-ex NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban’s top aide, Assistant Commissioner Giu’An Lin, is linked to CCP-controlled groups known collectively as United Front.
For 12 years, Lin served as vice chairman of a nonprofit associated with the front, which operates to spread Chinese propaganda in the United States.
This follows the arrest of Gov. Hochul’s former ex-aide Linda Sun and her husband Christopher Hu for acting as a secret Chinese agent. Sun had previously worked for then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and then-Assemblywoman (now Rep.) Grace Meng.
Those cases, as well as the ongoing FBI probe of ex-Mayor Adams aide Winnie Greco, a case that also involves CCP influence, and one involving two men charged with running a secret police station in Manhattan, are but a small glimpse of China’s effort to compromise public officials and infiltrate Big Apple government and society.
CCP front groups are at work in multiple major US cities, Steven W. Mosher notes, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, working to elect Beijing-friendly politicians as well as to place agents in government.
Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens) says groups tied to the Chinese Community Party tried to topple him and take over his predominantly Asian district in the June Democratic primary — which Kim won by 443 votes.
The CCP’s sometimes gotten blatant in its operations: You see China’s flag at a lot more political events than you did a few years back.
At this point, no one has any clue how deep CCP penetration of New York politics might be, but plenty of local pols won’t think to look at any strings that might come with free trips, convenient donations or what looks like “support from the Asian-American community.”
That, though most ethnic Chinese in America want nothing to do with China’s government, and many rightly detest it: Indeed, Beijing’s show of influence is partly aimed at intimidating a community that might otherwise support dissent in China — whose government is known to monitor and even target its critics abroad.
To her credit, Hochul fired Sun upon discovering the staffer had secretly promoted the CCP agenda in official documents; perhaps the gov will now create a bipartisan state commission to investigate Beijing’s influence operations here.
New York’s leaders need to realize that, as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo puts it: The dragon is inside the gates.