Republicans introduce bill to sanction Chinese state-backed 'disinformation network'

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Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., on Wednesday introduced new legislation to sanction a Chinese government-backed "disinformation network."

The Countering Chinese Propaganda Act, which takes recommendations from the Republican Study Committee's National Security Strategy, would implement sanctions on the United Front Work Department (UFWD) -- an arm of the Chinese Communist Pary that helps coordinate information campaigns.

"The United Front participated directly in the Uyghur genocide and the oppression of Christians in China—but its ultimate goal is to spread those persecutory tactics around the globe," Banks said in a statement. "The leadership in Washington may have changed, but China’s political warfare hasn't."

Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen a large screens at the opening session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, March 3, 2018. (Associated Press)

He added that the job of combating Chinese Communist Party disinformation has "fallen" into the hands of Congress.

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A 2018 staff research report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission notes that UFDW-related organizations, while they do not have a direct connection to the CCP, play "an increasingly important role in China’s broader foreign policy" under Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

Xi had established two new UFWD bureaus at the time the research was published, one of which targeted "representatives of the 'New Social Classes,'" which aims to gather "support from China's new middle class," and the second of which "cultivates loyalty and suppresses separatism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China, home to the Uyghur ethnic group and other Muslim minorities."

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Banks and Cotton's new legislation would create new sanctions for state-backed propaganda networks and require the secretary of state to determine whether the UFWD would qualify as an entity to be sanctioned. 

"The Chinese Communist Party expands its disinformation campaign each day–concealing information regarding the origin of COVID-19, lying about its oppression of [Uyghurs] and other religious minorities, and infiltrating American universities and businesses," Cotton said in a statement.

He added that the UFWD "is just another venue for the CCP to spread its propaganda and to coopt foreign groups to toe the CCP line."

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President Biden has yet to follow the previous administration's and the Canadian parliament's respective decisions to label China's reported atrocities against Uyghurs in the country's western Xinjiang Province as genocide. 

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Up to 3 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been subject to mistreatment, including relocation to what China has dubbed reeducation camps but what fomer detainees and foreign policy experts have recognized as prison camps aimed at secularizing that religious sector of China's population, since at least 2017.

Former Defense Secretary Mike Pompeo in December issued visa restrictions against UFWD officials who engaged "in malign activities to co-opt and coerce those who oppose Beijing’s policies," he said in a tweet at the time, adding that the Trump administration was calling on China "to end its use of coercion to suppress freedom of expression."