‘AMERICA’S CORE INNER CIRCLE’: Chinese professor’s shock boast

A Chinese Communist Party expert has been filmed boasting about Beijing’s influence “at the top of America’s core inner circle” and welcoming Joe Biden’s election win as a return to power for the “traditional political elite”.

Professor Di Dongsheng, Vice Dean of the School of International Relations at Renmin University, made the comments in a November 28 lecture, where he suggested that the CCP had been unable to control Donald Trump through its influence on Wall Street, which unsuccessfully “tried to help” Beijing during the President’s trade war.

Speaking to a large crowd at the event in Shanghai, the political expert from the Beijing university – a key training ground for new CCP cadres – described how the 2016 election disrupted the relationship between the two countries.

“We know that the Trump administration is in a trade war with us, so why can’t we fix the Trump administration?” he said.

“Why did China and the US used to be able to settle all kinds of issues between 1992 and 2016? We fixed everything in two months. What is the reason? I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here. It’s just because we have people at the top.

“We have our old friends who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence.”

Professor Di noted that since the 1970s, Wall Street “had a very strong influence on the domestic and foreign affairs” of America, and that “to put it bluntly, for the past 30 years, 40 years, we have been utilising the core power of the United States”.

“So we had a channel to rely on,” he said.

“But the problem is that after 2008, the status of Wall Street has declined, and more importantly, after 2016, Wall Street can’t fix Trump. It’s very awkward. Why? Trump had a previous soft default issue with Wall Street, so there was a conflict between them, but I won’t go into details, I may not have enough time.”

Professor Di said during the US-China trade war, Wall Street “tried to help, and I know that my friends on the US side told me that they tried to help, but they couldn’t do much”.

“But now we’re seeing Biden was elected,” he said, prompting laughter from the audience.

“The traditional elite, the political elite, the establishment, they’re very close to Wall Street, so you see that, right?”

The professor shared a lengthy personal anecdote about meeting an apparent Chinese agent who helped in a propaganda operation prior to Xi Jinping’s 2015 visit to Washington.

He described the woman as the “president of the Asia region of a top-level financial institution”, who had lived in China for 30 years, spoke fluent Mandarin and had Chinese citizenship – expressing surprise that the US government allows dual citizenship when China does not.

“This old lady wouldn’t give up her dual US-Israeli citizenship for Chinese citizenship, right?” he said. “So I immediately understood that she was an old friend of us Chinese people.”

He recounted how the woman had used her influence to pressure the owner of Washington D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose – who he said had been a journalist in Asia and was not a fan of the CCP – into holding an event for President Xi’s book Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.

“Then I saw the owner of the bookstore, who was very proud of himself before, with an unhappy face, asking his employees to arrange tables and chairs – he was very reluctant, as he was forced to do this,” Professor Di said.

“I said (to the woman), ‘How did you fix him? We tried to communicate with him, but failed. He was very spoiled.’ The old lady smiled wryly and said, ‘I reasoned with him.’

“Do you know where that sentence comes from? It’s a classic line in the famous American mafia movie The Godfather. That guy cut off the head of a horse and stuffed it into someone’s blanket.”

Reached for comment by news.com.au, Politics and Prose owner Bradley Graham denied the story.

“No one pressured us to hold the event,” the former Washington Post journalist, whose wife and co-owner Lissa Muscatine is Hillary Clinton’s former speechwriter, said in an email on Tuesday evening.

“That’s just one of a number of untrue assertions by Di in his bizarre, distorted account of the event.”

Asked if he knew who Professor Di was referring to, or whether he recalled a woman matching the description given by Professor Di attending the event, Mr Graham said, “I really don’t know what woman he’s talking about.”

The talk was live-streamed on video-sharing platform Guan Video but has since been deleted, The Epoch Times reported.

It went viral after being translated and posted online by Falun Gong activist Jennifer Zeng.

“We are doing a live broadcast on the whole internet today, and it is said that a million people are watching it, so I have to control how much I can tell – I can’t betray others,” Professor Di said at one point.

Professor Di also referenced how China “helped” the President-elect’s son Hunter Biden in his foreign business dealings.

“Trump has been saying that Biden’s son has some sort of global foundation,” he said.

“Have you noticed that? Who helped him (Biden’s son) build the foundations? Got it? There are a lot of deals inside all these. Then, so, at such a time, we use an appropriate way to express some goodwill.”

Professor Di said China was now accelerating the reopening of its financial sector to the US in anticipation of a thriving relationship under President Biden.

He cautioned against those who viewed it as making “concessions”, indicating the purpose was actually to “hold tight on the big thigh of America” to make decoupling the economies more difficult.

“You hold on to the United States, crying out loud – don’t run away, don’t dump me,” he said.

Mr Trump tweeted a segment from Tucker Carlson’s Monday night show where the Fox News host discussed the explosive clip, calling it “as close to a smoking gun as we have ever seen” and saying “it looks like the Bidens are far from the only ones who have been compromised”.
 

pic.twitter.com/reenwuelHY

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2020

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe reacted to the video, telling Carlson there were “a lot of people who, for economic reasons, don’t want China to be our greatest threat”.

“There are a lot of people who, for political reasons, don’t want China to be our greatest threat in America, but the intelligence doesn’t lie,” he said.

“China is our greatest threat and it’s not even close. No other country has the capability of essentially taking away the American dream, and a specific plan to do so, and the intelligence is clear.”

China expert Gordon Chang told the program that Mr Biden would be little match for the “incredible arrogance” of the Chinese government. “They’re going to push a President Biden around,” he said.

“They’re going to do things which are dangerous, because we’re going to have to push back. Under President Trump, the Chinese didn’t try this because they were afraid of him. So what I’m concerned about is the state of mind of China. This is dangerous.”

Mr Chang added it was “absolutely true that China does have that relationship into what (Professor Di) calls the core circle of America’s real power”.

It came as Axios published a bombshell, year-long investigation revealing how a young female Chinese intelligence operative developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including California Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell.

Christine Fang, who was enrolled at a San Francisco Bay Area university, targeted up-and-coming politicians who had the potential to make it on the national stage, and had “sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors”, Axios reported.

frank.chung@news.com.au