Is Grace Meng a spy, a fellow traveler, or just someone who pals around with and gives awards to and arranges for letters to be ferried to CCP officials who just happen to be conducting influence operations in the Big Apple unbeknownst to herself?
An investigation by Philip Lenczycki under the aegis of the Daily Caller News Foundation found that Meng (above, far left), who has been representing New York’s 6th congressional district since 2013, has “repeatedly met with visiting Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials and intel personnel alongside a civic association she was listed as belonging to for years” (“Dem Congresswoman Was a Fixture at Events Honoring Chinese Communist Party Officials,” Daily Caller, October 29, 2024).
False and xenophobic
That civic association is the Henan Association of Eastern America (HAEA). Meng has spoken variously about the nature of her relationship to the association, which, for its part, recently deleted its website in a hurried cover-up. In a video from 2008, she called herself a vice chairman of the HAEA; today, she says she never had any but an honorary role in the outfit.
“Any assertion that my attending community organization events is somehow nefarious is absurd, false and xenophobic,” Meng deflectingly declares, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal. “Like every American patriot, I am deeply, deeply concerned about the national security threat that the Chinese Communist Party’s government poses to the United States, and I believe we need to protect our nation from it.”
Even if she’s been a mere dupe for all these years, shouldn’t she be a little more apologetic about it?
But the assertions of investigators like Lenczycki are more specific than she suggests. According to his Daily Caller article:
The six-term congresswoman has publicly toasted CCP intel chiefs, awarded congressional commendations to Communist Party bosses and received numerous gifts during more than a dozen events welcoming Chinese government delegations to New York City since 2008, according to a DCNF review of hundreds of Chinese government, media and civic association reports….
“It’s extremely troubling that a sitting Democrat in Congress has literally welcomed Chinese Communist Party influence into our country,” Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks told the DCNF. “This deserves further investigation, and at the least shows the dangers of United Front groups; why members of foreign influence operations must follow the law and register under FARA; and why the worst groups like the Henan Association should be designated as foreign missions of Communist China.”
The vast majority of Meng’s meetings with Chinese communist dignitaries emerged from her relationship with HAEA, an ethnic association based in New York City that federal prosecutors have linked to CCP influence operations, according to The Wall Street Journal.
For over a decade, Meng’s photo was prominently featured at the top of HAEA’s home page until the entire website was deleted on Sept. 26, following DCNF reports on her years-long involvement in the organization.
The Journal identified the president of HAEA, Zhang Fuyin, as an unnamed and unindicted co-conspirator in the Justice Department’s recent indictment of Linda Sun, who worked in the administrations of two New York governors.
Zhang is listed as an “overseas advisor” in the records of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, which is part of China’s United Front Work Department.
Having an influence
United Front is an influence operation. The people to be influenced are American and other foreign potentates and adjutants, and they are to be influenced in a direction favorable to the Chinese Communist Party.
Joseph Cella, a former U.S. ambassador, says that the UFWD’s mission is “to gather intelligence on elite leaders, manage their relations with them and gain influence over them—that essentially involves weaponizing corruption—so they can advance their political, ideological, economic, and security objectives.” The Wall Street Journal adds that the United Front also helps to “surveil and harass Chinese activists in the U.S.”
The deputy chairman of HAEA, Sydney Li, is a congressional aide for Meng. Lenczycki notes that in 2019, Zhang and Li “presented a letter from Meng to the Henan provincial chairwoman of ACFROC, the WSJ recently reported. The 2019 trip is referenced in the DOJ’s indictment of Sun, though Zhang and Li are not named.”
Li has also “hand-delivered letters from Meng to CCP intel and Propaganda Department officials on at least five occasions….”
Linda Sun, accused of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government, was a member of Meng’s staff when Meng was a member of the New York Assembly. The Sun-Meng connection is not damning all by itself, but it’s a connection worth looking into in light of all this other stuff.
We have been learning that it’s way too easy for CCP influence operators to do their work in the United States.
