REVEALED: China’s State Propaganda Group Boasts Control Over Western Think Tanks, ‘Election Integrity’ Groups, And Even Joe Biden’s National Security Team.

by RAHEEM KASSAM and NATALIE WINTERS

The Chinese Communist Party’s Cyberspace Administration of China has boasted of one of the most critical connections between the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the groups and individuals campaigning to stop President Trump and his “America First” agenda, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.

New, bombshell admissions over China’s influence in both the United States and Europe link organizations such as the Berggruen Institute with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Berggruen Institute first rose to national attention after co-founding the “Transition Integrity Project” which advised on how Joe Biden could seize power on the back of an ostensible Trump victory.

The news lends further credibility to election-tampering theories especially concerning Chinese Communist Party influence.

A 2017 report effectively claims – on the CCP’s behalf – that CNN host Fareed Zakaria, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook Oversight Board member Helle Thorning-Schmidt, NeverTrump philanthropist Pierre Omidyar and many others “co-operate” with the CCP and its goals.

‘Party Media’.

An unearthed media communique entitled “Holding High the Banner of Party Media and Fulfilling Its Duties and Missions” appears on the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) website.

The government entity reportedly engages in “online propaganda and public opinion work” and upholds a “Socialist core value view,” while spearheading censorship of media and the internet in China. In other words, they pump out pro-CCP lines abroad, while cracking down on dissent within.

The release brags of the work of the Chinese Communist Party’s Western-focused propaganda efforts via the state-owned China Daily newspaper and website. China Daily has purchased placement inside the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post – the latter of which also carries a Fareed Zakaria opinion column, weekly.

At the time of publication, Zakaria’s latest column is entitled: “The Pentagon is using China as an excuse for huge new budgets,” wherein the CNN host lauds China’s “ambitious” Belt and Road Initiative and insists the U.S. need not worry about China’s rise as a military power.  

 
“As a party media website,” the CAC document confirms, “China Daily uses international communication to implement the spirit of the important April 19th speech [by Xi Jinping], conscientiously fulfilling its duties and missions, and effectively internalizing the spirit of the speech into the entire network’s strategy and guidelines for all journalists.”

The April 19th speech of 2016 discussed the “spiritual garden” of cyberspace, with Xi insisting that China “strengthen governance in cyberspace according to the[ir] law, strengthen the construction of online content, strengthen positive online propaganda, foster a positive, healthy, upward and benevolent online culture, [and] use the Socialist core value view.”

“Thinkers” For Hire.

With this in mind, the CAC proclaims boasts of promoting over 10,000 propaganda pieces to foreign audiences and, critically, brags of their work with Western think-tanks in achieving this goal:

“Through cooperation with think-tanks such as the Berggruen Institute in the United States, the Canadian Center for International Governance Innovation, and the Australian Lowy Institute for International Policy, we have attracted nearly 200 overseas think-tankers as special commentators on China Daily. In one year, it published more than 300 of their signed articles, enabling these “influential people” to influence more overseas audiences and tell China’s stories well.”

The names associated with some of these think tanks – especially the Berggruen Institute – should cause alarm to national security-minded individuals and indeed Western governments.

The Berggruen Institute lists, amongst its key “21st Century Council” members, influential global think-tankers and public figures including:

• Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown;
• Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey;
• Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington;
• Anti-Trump funder Pierre Omidyar;
• Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd;
• Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy;
• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt;
• Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers;
• Former Danish Prime Minister and Facebook Oversight Board Member Helle Thorning-Schmidt and;
• CNN Host and Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria.

 
The CCP’s claims appear to be more than just bragging, as evidence unearthed by The National Pulse shows members of the aforementioned entities indeed contributing Chinese government-sanctioned propaganda articles to China Daily.

In 2008, a fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation lambasted Western “hubris” for the CCP’s propaganda outfit.

In 2016, the Lowy Institute’s program director Tristram Sainsbury – also a fellow at Renmin University – told the state-media Xinhua agency: “I expect China will be driving an agenda that is closer to the longer term economic challenges that the G20 has been facing for a long time.”

Tom Bernes, distinguished fellow and former executive director of the Center for International Governance Innovation told China Daily in 2016: “China, over the last couple of years, has begun to take an important role in global economic governance.”

In late 2016, the Berggruen Institute’s Nathan Gardels urged closer co-operation with China.

In 2019, China Daily lauded Gilman’s comments during the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, which Communist leader Xi Jinping also took part in.

In 2020, Thomas Bernes, of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, slammed President Trump’s insistence on holding China to account for the COVID-19 pandemic, much to the approval of China Daily.

Transition to China.

Regular readers of The National Pulse may be familiar with the Berggruen Institute for other reasons.

In mid-2020, The National Pulse exclusively reported on the involvement of the Berggruen Institute in an explicitly anti-Trump exercise known as the Transition Integrity Project (TIP).

A collaborative effort between former Soros counsel Rosa Brooks and Berggruen executive Nils Gilman, TIP littered the U.S. media with commentary about how Joe Biden should refuse to concede in the event of an apparent election night victory for President Donald Trump – which is precisely what happened.

Brooks – who repeatedly refused to be interviewed by The National Pulse before pulling the TIP website down and ceasing operations before election day – had previously offered election assistance to Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, and specifically name-dropped now-Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in her e-mail.

Sullivan is listed as a fellow of Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy – named by the CCP as a “co-operator.”

Amidst scrutiny of TIP’s work in attempting to prematurely cover for Biden’s mail-in ballot-boosted “victory,” Gilman lashed out at critics including writer and analyst Michael Anton.

“Michael Anton is the Robert Brasillach of our times and deserves the same fate,” Gilman opined in a tweet dated September 21st, 2020.

Brasillach was a French author and journalist who was executed in 1944 by firing squad for using his various platforms to advance Nazi collaborationism and anti-Semitism during World War II. The execution, rather than lifetime imprisonment, was highly controversial as he was charged with intellectual crimes as opposed to military or political actions.

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