Prominent conservatives in the House of Representatives accused President Joe Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations of downplaying China using its growing political and economic clout in Africa to promote its communist ideology and undermine America’s global push to expand democracy.
In a report, the Republican Study Committee (RSC), chaired by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), also linked Amb. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a U.S. State Department employee, to a group that held top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials as clients.
“Thomas-Greenfield is former Senior Vice President for the Albright-Stonebridge Group, which has held a number of senior CCP officials as clients including Jin Ligang, a former senior Chinese government official,” it said, adding:
Ambassador Greenfield has a history of troubling comments praising and welcoming China’s role in Africa. As Senator Ted Cruz [R-TX] has pointed out, in 2006, Greenfield said she was not concerned about China’s growing influence in Africa, and in 2013 she stated that she does not see the U.S. competing with China in Africa.
In January, Greenfield indicated she believes the U.S. and human rights violator China should join hands in Africa to promote values such as “good governance, gender equity, and the rule of law,” RSC noted.
“I see no reason why China cannot share in those values. In fact, China is in a unique position to spread these ideals given its strong footprint on the continent,” she proclaimed in an editorial published by the Washington Post.
The conservative lawmakers lambasted the ambassador’s suggestion considering China, which is committing genocide against its Uyghur Muslim minority and promoting communism as an alternative to democratic values, is a strategic U.S. rival seeking to replace America as the world’s leading superpower, the RSC reported.
Referring to Greenfield’s proposition that China and American work together, the GOP panel explained:
This is a naïve and outlandish belief considering China is a Communist regime with the most sophisticated surveillance state in the world, and is committing genocide against its own Uyghur Muslim population including allegations by concentration camp survivors of a campaign of systematic rape of Uyghur women.
China has deliberately and aggressively weaponized their political and financial investments in Africa to displace the United States as an influential force on the continent.
In 2014, the new ambassador to the U.N., where China has been expanding its leverage as one of the influential permanent members of the international body’s powerful security council, reiterated that China’s increased clout in Africa was not a matter of concern for her after making similar comments the previous year.
She urged African leaders in 2014, potentially some who were victims of China’s “predatory lending” efforts, to work with Beijing to get the “best possible deal,” the GOP study committee noted…
In March 2019, Greenfield said that the U.S. role in Africa was “to ensure that they [African leaders] have the capacity to strike and negotiate better deals with the Chinese.”
However, former President Trump signed the Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act (BUILD Act) in 2018 to counter China’s global investments, namely its multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an infrastructure-building global effort.
The BUILD Act aims to advance U.S. influence in developing countries “by incentivizing private investment as an alternative to a state-directed investment model,” the Congressional Research Service (CRS) explained in January 2019.
Trump Administration officials and independent experts have warned that China uses its influence in Africa to promote a “new international order,” encouraging countries to adopt its communist ideology to solve their societal and economic ills.
The Trump administration repeatedly accused China of using BRI in Africa as a vehicle for “predatory lending” practices or “debt traps” that threaten to rob the borrowing countries of their sovereignty.
China’s engagement in Africa resembles a new form of colonialism consisting of “debt-trap diplomacy” that seeks to saddle borrowing countries with difficult-to-pay enormous debts collateralized with natural resources or other strategic assets to increase Beijing’s leverage on the continent.
In unveiling Trump’s African strategy in December 2008, the Trump administration warned that China’s “predatory practices’ in Africa:
[S]tunt economic growth in Africa; threaten the financial independence of African nations; inhibit opportunities for U.S. investment; interfere with U.S. military operations; and pose a significant threat to U.S. national security interests.
In 2009, China surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner, further strengthening Beijing’s influence and sway over the continent.
A top U.S. commander warned that year that China was likely to expand its military footprint beyond its first overseas base erected in Djibouti, just miles from America’s only permanent base in Africa.
Ahead of the push, Breitbart News’ Matt Boyle exclusively learned from RSC Chairman Rep. Banks that the panel is launching a legislative blitz starting Tuesday against Biden to expose his weaknesses in combating the threat posed by China.
“Despite tough talk on China, such as Secretary Blinken saying that Trump was right to take a tougher approach to China, the Biden administration’s actions have shown they will do the opposite,” the RSC concluded.
The Biden administration is willing to cooperate with China in areas of mutual interest, such as climate change and global health. China, the coronavirus’s birthplace, denied a World Health Organization (W.H.O.)-led team probing the origins of the pandemic and the U.S. access to raw data on early cases, potentially jeopardizing efforts to understand how the outbreak began.
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