
Image source: Committee on Oversight and Accountability Youtube Screenshot
CV NEWS FEED // Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Cella this week testified before lawmakers at the capitol that the U.S. government is not prepared to address the rising threats posed by China.
At the Tuesday morning House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Cella criticized the federal government’s response to what he called the “existential threat” posed by the CCP, including the foreign power’s actions toward a U.S. military base in his home state of Michigan.
“Political warfare by the government of the People’s Republic of China [PRC], the Chinese Communist Party, poses an existential threat to the United States of America,” Cella told House lawmakers at the hearing.
Cella served as the U.S. Ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu from 2019 to 2021, under the Trump administration. He was also a cofounder of CatholicVote.
Cella told the Committee that while in his role as ambassador, he “[witnessed] … firsthand the CCP’s impactful use of political and economic warfare across the Indo-Pacific.”
“Through this,” he noted, “China has effectively bypassed our historic defensive barriers in the Pacific called the First and Second Island Chains, endangering Hawaii, Guam, U.S. territories, and our friends and allies there.”
“Despite ample warning by Pacific Island leaders, the federal government did little over the years … to stop China’s ominous advance,” Cella testified.
Committee Chairman James Comer, R-KY, noted that Cella is the “cofounder and director of the citizen-led Michigan-China Economic Security and Review Group (MCESRG) which monitors and counters … subnational incursions from the CCP to protect the security of the state of Michigan.”
>> REPORTS: COMMUNIST CHINA BUYING LAND NEXT TO U.S. MILITARY BASES <<
Cella also said that he has “witnessed malign influence through a subnational incursion and influence operation by a PRC-based and CCP-tied lithium ion battery manufacturer, Gotion, in Green Charter Township, Michigan.”
“And that’s just one of many examples across the United States” of how China “threatens our national security and sovereignty,” he pointed out:
Roughly 70 miles from Gotion’s proposed facility is a secure U.S. military installation known as Camp Grayling. It’s the hub of the National All-Domain Warfighting Center, which trains our troops and those of our allies, including Taiwan, in strategic and tactical battle operations.
Gotion submitted a voluntary declaration to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in the spring of ‘23 – quite surprisingly declared … an “uncovered real estate transaction.”
Camp Grayling is operated by Michigan Army National Guard and is located in the northern portion of the state’s Lower Peninsula. CFIUS is a federal government committee that is chaired by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
In November 2023, CatholicVote reported that Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, both Democrats, allowed Gotion “to open factories producing batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) in their states.”
>> BLUE STATES EMBRACE CCP-LINKED GOTION <<
In his testimony, Cella added that, more recently, the Biden-Harris administration “proposed a rule that added over 50 U.S. military bases, including Camp Grayling, for required reviews by CFIUS when a deal involving a foreign company such as Gotion falls within a 100-mile radius of a military facility.”
“Perplexingly, while our defense officials likely instituted this rule” to protect “critical assets” at Camp Grayling, the rule “is not retroactive and does not apply to Gotion,” Cella observed:
Through my volunteer work for the MCESRG in recent days, I was alarmed to discover federal officials either ignored or overlooked a February 2020 U.S. Treasury Department CFIUS rule regarding joint-use military facilities that covers the Gotion transaction given the Army airfield at Camp Grayling.
Cella stated that he wrote to Biden-Harris administration Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Rosen “requesting he examine Gotion’s declaration” under the aforementioned Trump administration rule.
>> U.S. BUSINESS LEADERS GIVE STANDING OVATION TO XI JINPING <<
“Court filings this past Friday revealed offers by Gotion to now recall trustees that seem to involve elite capture, corruption influence peddling, and enrichment,” he went on to say:
These offers include all-expense-paid trips to China, a sweetheart real estate purchase that would have netted a recall trustee $2 million, and employment in the event that they were recalled.
Text messages between a Gotion official and a recall trustee read: “We got each other’s backs, and you have my back now. Now, it’s my turn to help.”
These text messages “were never disclosed and below the radar of the federal government,” Cella said.
In his opening statement, Chairman Comer specified that the hearing “is the third in the Oversight Committee’s investigation into the federal government’s response to the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a strategy known as political warfare.”
“The CCP employs this strategy to infiltrate and influence communities and critical sectors across the nation,” he explained. “The CCP’s ultimate goal is to weaken and destroy its main enemy, which the Party has identified as America.”
During the hearing, Rep. Michael Cloud, R-TX, said the issue at hand is “certainly one of the most urgent matters that we are dealing with.”
“I find it odd that as we watch the news, very often it’s not that they’re lying … it’s just we’re not talking about things that are essentially important and things that are going to matter 20, 30 years from now,” the congressman added. “Well, this topic certainly will, and how we address it.”
Cloud asked Cella if he could explain what he has seen “in regards to our State Department, and what you think you should be doing to counter what we’re seeing coming from China?”
Cella replied that “one element I think that is lacking within the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), for instance, would be to have a segment, a section on political warfare, what it is.”
>> GENERAL: JUDEO-CHRISTIAN SOCIETIES ARE MORE ETHICAL, MORAL <<
He further indicated that the FSI – which the State Department uses to train diplomats – should emphasize more who the CPP is “and what their objectives are,” and what diplomats should do about this “before they head out to post, and what they need to do when they’re at post.”
Cella added that the United States should use its “Judeo-Christian roots … as a means of outreach in terms of soft power and engagement.” He said that this “has a mighty impact.”
“China doesn’t do that,” the former diplomat said. “They don’t know how to do that.”
