FT's long-time Beijing bureau chief and its Asia Editor Jamil Anderlini narrates a remarkable story,
When Roger Roth received an email from the Chinese government asking him to sponsor a bill in the Wisconsin state legislature praising China’s response to coronavirus, he thought it must be a hoax. The sender had even appended a pre-written resolution full of Communist party talking points and dubious claims for the Wisconsin senate president to put to a vote. “I’ve never heard of a foreign government approaching a state legislature and asking them to pass a piece of legislation,” Mr Roth told me last week. “I thought this couldn’t be real.” Then he discovered it was indeed sent by China’s consul-general in Chicago. “I was astonished . . .[and] wrote a letter back: ‘dear consul general, NUTS’.”... China’s goal was to publicise the resolution in state propaganda to validate party rule back home. But now the Wisconsin senator plans a very different bill. While praising the Chinese people, it will “strip the brutal Chinese Communist party naked for the world to see . . . as well as the damage it has done to the whole world through covering up this coronavirus,” Mr Roth said. It is likely to pass with a hefty majority.
Pls do read the resolution draft that was sent (yes!!) to the legislator here. Read in particular the last paragraph.
Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Wisconsin State Senate that... (2) the Wisconsin State Senate encourages the United States government to continue to follow the WHO recommendations and work together with the WHO and other countries toward the goal of preventing the virus from taking more lives.
The audacity and diplomatic chutzpah are stunning.
This is no proxy effort like that allegedly by the Russians, this is state-sponsored interference in US domestic politics.
It's staggering that the diplomat has not been expelled. It's also telling that but for some articles with stray references, the liberal media like the NYT and Washington Post have hardly highlighted this. Imagine the counterfactual if this were a correspondence by a Russian diplomat praising Trump.
Do we need any more proof as to why events like Brexit and Trump happen?
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