The Board of Trustees of Preston High School wants to express
our gratitude and appreciation to the administration,
faculty and staff of Preston High School.
During these unprecedented and challenging times, we are truly
BRONX TIMES REPORTER,50 NOVEMBER 13-19, 2020 BTR
inspired
by your personal commitment to the school and each student,
and all you have done to make a difference in the lives of our
PHS families and the local & extended Bronx community.
Our students, families and alumnae thank you for who you are and what you do.
Your resilience and flexibility are awe-inspiring.
We thank you, appreciate you and applaud you.
PRESTON HIGH
SCHOOL
2780 Schurz Avenue
Bronx, New York 10465
www.prestonhs.org
BY FRANK VERNUCCIO
China has moved in a massive
way to infl uence American
politicians, universities
and other centers of infl uence.
One well-known example:
when a famous basketball
player criticized Beijing
for its violations of human
rights, the entire NBA establishment,
eager to expand its
presence in the People’s Republic,
forced him to recount.
Hollywood has changed movie
scripts to please Chinese investors.
In colleges across the
nation, Confucius Institutes
run by Beijing infl uence what
is taught in our schools. Individual
professors as well as
university administrations
have been on the take for this
purpose. The prominent and
powerful Joe Biden family
has been vastly enriched by
highly questionable fi nancial
dealings with China.
In response to these and
other factors, a working group
was convened by the Hoover
Institute. The group found
that China’s coercive and covert
activities endanger America’s
core values. According to
the report, “The Chinese Communist
party-state leverages a
broad range of party, state, and
non-state actors to advance its
infl uence-seeking objectives,
and in recent years it has signifi
cantly accelerated both its
investment and the intensity
of these efforts.”
The ruling Communist
Party uses a broad range of
national institutions to accomplish
its infl uencing goals.
These include, but are not limited
to, the United Front Work
Department, the State Council
Information Offi ce, the Communist
Party’s Foreign Affairs
Commission, the Central
Propaganda Department, the
International Liaison Department,
the All-China Federation
of Overseas Chinese and
the Chinese People’s Association
for Friendship with Foreign
Countries.
In addition to general propaganda
and infl uencing activities,
a great deal of attention
is paid in two key areas,
the Hoover Report notes.
The fi rst is the Chinese-
American community. “China
has long sought to infl uence
— even silence — voices critical
of the PRC or supportive
of Taiwan by dispatching personnel
to the United States
to pressure these individuals
and while also pressuring
their relatives in China.
Such activities not only interfere
with freedom of speech
within the United States but
they also risk generating suspicion
of Chinese Americans
even though those who accept
Beijing’s directives are a very
small minority.”
More popularly recognized
in recent years has been the
extraordinary effort by Beijing
to steal technology. To
some extent, this has actually
been aided by some U.S. leaders.
Bill Clinton, while serving
as president, approved the
sale of Cray supercomputers
to China. It has been speculated
that the PRC’s attempt to
funnel cash to his re-election
campaign may have been a
factor. In 2015, Barack Obama,
as noted by the Washington
Post, concluded a deal allowing
China to buy more U.S.-designed
reactors and pursue a
facility or the technology to reprocess
plutonium from spent
fuel, and allowing that nation
to purchase reactor coolant
technology that could be used
to make its submarines quieter
and harder to detect.
The Hoover Report notes
“China is engaged in a multifaceted
effort to misappropriate
technologies it deems
critical to its economic and
military success. Beyond economic
espionage, theft and the
forced technology transfers
that are required of many joint
venture partnerships, China
also captures much valuable
new technology through its
investments in U.S. high-tech
companies and through its
exploitation of the openness
of American university labs.
This goes well beyond infl uence
seeking to a deeper and
more disabling form of penetration.
The economic and
strategic losses for the United
States are increasingly unsustainable,
threatening not
only to help China gain global
dominance of a number of the
leading technologies of the future,
but also to undermine
America’s commercial and
military advantages.”
The Hoover panel stressed
that “three broad principles”
should serve as the basis for
protecting the integrity of
American institutions inside
the United States while also
protecting basic core American
values, norms and laws.”
They include transparency
and careful monitoring of
China’s activities in the U.S.,
cooperation between universities
and think tanks to enhance
sharing and pooling of
information concerning Chinese
activities and promoting
more closely coordinated collective
action to counter China’s
inappropriate activities
and pressures and demanding
that any access to U.S. institutions
should result in equal
access by Americans to their
Chinese equivalents.
Editor’s note: All views in
this column refl ect the author’s
opinion and should be verifi ed
by outside sources.
CIVIC CENTER
COMACTA
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