Democrat Haley Stevens: Chinese Communists Represent ‘Opportunity,’ Not ‘Bogeyman’

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) disputed any claims that Communist China is the “bogeyman,” despite constant acts of corporate espionage against American companies and the genocide of Uyghur Muslims.

Stevens, last week, was asked by Caroline Hyde during an appearance on Bloomberg Markets: The Close if the congresswoman wants the American private sector to work with China. Stevens said that she “thinks” there is export potential to work with China. The congresswoman said she talked to automakers and thinks America can have a presence there but does not want to “dictate the terms of business.” But, Stevens ultimately said she doesn’t understand why “everyone is painting” China as the “bogeyman,” because she thinks China has “opportunity” by using the American free market.

Breitbart News had previously reported, in 2019 there were an estimated seven million American workers had earned their living from the automotive industry either by manufacturing, selling, or servicing cars and trucks. Additionally, nearly all auto manufacturers across the world have been heavily investing in electric vehicles. Also, in 2019, General Motors (GM) had laid off thousands of American workers. At the time, the management inside GM explained their mass layoffs were a part of a “restructuring” to focus on electric and autonomous vehicles to be manufactured in China.

More notably, Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour authored a detailed analysis on how the Obama-Biden administration originally let China buy up massive parts of the Electric Vehicle industry in the United States market from 2009 to 2016:

The biggest winner in this push for an all-electric future is China, which is eager for the transition to EV because the communist regime does not have the same access to plentiful oil and gas as American consumers. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party has made dominance of the EV industry a key goal in its ambitious China 2025 initiative, hoping to overtake Detroit as the world’s automotive capital.

Indeed, China is positioning itself to do just that. Companies like Ford and General Motors have partnered with Chinese state-owned companies to develop and manufacture new electric vehicles in Asia. Ford has 16 new electric models coming out of China in the next few years, and GM intends to launch 20 electric models in China by 2023.

To be fair, the entire worldwide auto industry seems eager for an all-electric future. Nearly all of the world’s auto manufacturers are investing heavily in EV. There’s a reason for this, and it has less to do with the environment and more to do with the industry’s bottom line.

Despite Stevens claiming that China is not the “bogeyman,” recently, there has been a surge in Chinese espionage against the United States and the Chinese stealing American intellectual property. Last year, former President Donald Trump’s administration had ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, Foreign Policy reported. This was a “significant diplomatic escalation between the two rival powers. U.S. officials who spoke to Foreign Policy indicated that the consulate closure is a response to a surge in Chinese espionage in the United States.”

In the Trump administration, Morgan Ortagus, a State Department spokesperson, said Washington directed the closure of the consulate “to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.”

The report continued:

Ortagus did not cite a specific incident that prompted the move, but she raised accusations that China violated U.S. sovereignty. The closure was announced after a sweeping indictment was unsealed in federal court in Washington state outlining years of Chinese state-directed hacking and theft of intellectual property affecting victims across the United States and in other countries.

“The United States will not tolerate the PRC’s violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated the PRC’s unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs, and other egregious behavior. President Trump insists on fairness and reciprocity in U.S.-China relations,” Ortagus said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

Chinese officials also denied the country’s involvement in stealing American intellectual property, even though the United States has repeatedly accused them.

In a House of Representatives hearing last year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai brought up when there was a China-linked cyberattack on Google in 2009. According to CNN Business, the company said at the time there was some of its intellectual property was stolen. The report continued that the United States “has long said that intellectual property theft has cost the US economy billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs.” In turn, Chinese officials, according to the report, have since repeatedly been rejecting any of the accusations that there are “foreign companies are treated unfairly, arguing any tech secrets handed over were part of deals that had been mutually agreed upon.”

At the time, the Trump administration had “already largely blocked Chinese telecom giant Huawei from working with American suppliers, and says it’s ‘looking at’ banning the hugely popular short form video app TikTok.”

The Chinese government is committing acts of genocide against the Uyghur people. Even more so, Chinese manufacturing is using them as forced labor. A report from CNN claimed, “The Chinese government’s alleged actions in Xinjiang have violated every single provision in the United Nations’ Genocide Convention, according to an independent report by more than 50 global experts in international law, genocide and the China region.”

Looking deeper, a report from Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy think tank in Washington, DC, which CNN reported on, claimed that the Chinese government “bears state responsibility for an ongoing genocide against the Uyghur in breach of the (UN) Genocide Convention.”

The report continued:

It is the first time a non-governmental organization has undertaken an independent legal analysis of the accusations of genocide in Xinjiang, including what responsibility Beijing may bear for the alleged crimes. An advance copy of the report was seen exclusively by CNN.

Up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to have been placed in a sprawling network of detention centers across the region, according to the US State Department, where former detainees allege they were subjected to indoctrination, sexually abused and even forcibly sterilized. China denies allegations of human rights abuses, saying the centers are necessary to prevent religious extremism and terrorism.

The Chinese have also been engaging in forced labor for manufacturing, but Stevens still considers that the United States should have good business with China. Since they have “opportunity” by using the American free market. The New York Post detailed a report that a woman in the United States had found an “SOS” box with decorations from a Sun Yi, which had writing that exposed the Chinese re-education camps.

The report noted this was not the first story that had made it out of China and the work camps. There is a book by Amelia Pang, which was detailed in the report. Pang’s book explained that China has more than one thousand “re-education” or “detox” camps providing all types of forced labor to manufacturers to turn out cheap products that can be sold everywhere. The report added the items were sold to places like Walmart to Saks Fifth Avenue. The independent Australian Strategic Policy Institute did a study that also found “between 2017 and 2019, more than 83 brands, including Nike, Apple, and BMW, were sourced from Chinese factories where workers — mainly Muslim Uyghurs — were held against their will.”

Last Congress, former Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman (VA) offered a motion to recommit that would prohibit the Export-Import Bank from providing loans to support the Chinese government, even though the money could be spent on Chinese spying operations and the stealing of intellectual property and technology from the United States.

Stevens voted no for Riggleman’s motion which would have prohibited the Chinese Government from getting loans:

The Agency may not provide a loan, guarantee, or insurance benefitting the Government of China (whether as a lender, obligor, or end user), with respect to which credit assistance from the Agency is first sought after the effective date of this subsection if the lender, obligor, or end user knowingly provides significant financial, material, technological, or other support to, or significant goods or services in support of any of the following policies, activities, or entities of the Government of China:

The motion specifically also cited the ongoing theft of the United States’ intellectual property from the Chinese. It said, “The theft of United States intellectual property or the illicit transfer of technology from a United States.”

The motion had failed 203 to 218. There were nine Democrats who voted for it, Stevens not being one of them.