4 ways American states and cities can meet the CCP threat to our way of life

Now that the 2024 election is over and power in Washington, D.C. has been determined, it is time to turn our collective focus to the greatest external threat to the American way of life. communist china.

The sheer size of China's military and economy, and the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) determination to usurp America's global leadership, pose major challenges to the United States. While much attention is being paid to flashpoints in the Indo-Pacific like Taiwan and the South China Sea, it would be a mistake to underestimate the ongoing conflict on our homeland, where China is being attacked not only from the outside but from below. They are trying to weaken our country from above. .

While the federal government is the tip of the spear of national defense, state and local governments are responsible for ensuring the safety of the homeland, increasing resilience to Chinese Communist Party attacks, and preparing for future conflicts that we hope never come. plays an important role. Indeed, after President Trump's election in 2016, the Chinese Communist Party adopted a “local” engagement strategy to resist Trump's federal policies through the states, and this strategy continued during President Biden's term.

As National Security Advisor, Ambassador O'Brien was briefed daily on the Chinese Communist Party's malign domestic activities. Shockingly, Governor Ducey, who served two terms as Arizona's governor, was never briefed on the widespread, systematic, and dangerous state-level Chinese Communist Party operation to disrupt domestic security. This disconnect must end.

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To thwart the Chinese Communist Party's subnational pursuits, state armored organizations and free enterprise civil society organizations, with the help of more than a dozen of the nation's leading security experts, developed a national threat assessment and conducted state and local elections. provided elected officials with a roadmap to protect our nation's interests.
There are four main directions in which the Chinese Communist Party is infiltrating America at the state and local level. China is actively targeting our people and institutions, economic assets, financial assets, physical infrastructure, and critical supply chains. Each of these problems requires state-level solutions that complement federal policy.

First, countries must respond to China's efforts to influence state and local leaders and institutions. The Chinese Communist Party follows a strategy of “elite capture” in its influence operations, seeking to establish flows of talent and information that China can use to its advantage.

First, all official visits to China by members of Congress must be suspended immediately and indefinitely. States must protect our public campuses from Chinese Communist Party influence operations, as Florida accomplished with comprehensive legislation in 2022 and 2023. “Sister city” agreements with China must also end, as Indiana did in 2024, to thwart China’s local influence operations.

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Second, the state must stop underwriting China's economy. Americans would be shocked to learn that many retirement accounts, including public pension funds, have large investments in Chinese state-owned enterprises and defense industry companies. Under China's infamous national security law, all Chinese companies are effectively co-opted by the party-state. It would be overconfident to think that fund managers can hold Chinese assets and continue to comply with their fiduciary duties. States such as Tennessee, Indiana and Kansas have banned such investments, and Gov. Greg Abbott recently announced a complete divestment from China.

State leaders should follow the example of Utah, Idaho, and Nebraska and ban Chinese technology from state procurement programs for critical technologies such as drones, cars, DNA sequencing equipment, computers, and communications equipment. be. Economic incentives for companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party should be off the table. We should never undertake for China to establish a commercial base within our borders.

Third, nations must protect their real estate and critical infrastructure from use by China for espionage or future sabotage. China has seen an unprecedented increase in its purchases of farmland and other land near U.S. military bases and critical infrastructure such as communications, water and power plants.

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The federal government cannot identify every transaction that poses a risk, and if states do not take on this responsibility, they remain vulnerable. States such as Arkansas, Florida, and Texas have taken effective steps in recent years to keep land and critical infrastructure out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.

Finally, national leaders must heed the many lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen critical infrastructure and supply chains ahead of a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific theater.

China's unusually aggressive actions against Taiwan and the Philippines (treaty allies of the United States) could escalate into a conflict that would cause even more disruption than the pandemic. There is also the possibility that a large-scale and systematic cyberattack will be carried out against the mainland. Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas are currently conducting a Pacific Conflict Stress Test to diversify their states' supply chains and protect critical infrastructure in advance of such conflicts.

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The Chinese Communist Party's coordinated strategy to infiltrate and weaken American society is not hypothetical, nor is the Chinese Communist Party's military threat to the free world. State and local officials must weather this crowd storm by leveraging their unique powers in the federal system to protect them.

It is past time for the Chinese Communist Party's influence operations to be shut down, national finances and supply chains to be protected, and land and critical infrastructure to be protected from Communist Party control. If nations fail to act, we will all be vulnerable to the grave harm that the Chinese Communist Party seeks to inflict on America's national interests and our democratic partners around the world.

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