On October 2, following the news that President Trump and the first Lady tested positive for COVID 19, China’s official Youth League Weibo account organized a live video group chat session titled, “The Virus Finally Found the Person who Understands it the Best” and encouraged the followers to post comments that are related to the word “懂” (“understand”). The live chat used a popular Chinese song titled, “He doesn’t know” to insinuate that Trump doesn’t know China. Trump often says that no one understands China better than he does, so those pro-CCP youths in China have given him the nick name, “King of Understanding” because of it. During the session, there were comments that cheered the news, but there were also comments criticizing the youth league for hosting the chat session. At the same time, the official Weibo account of the Political and Legal Committee also joined the live video chat.

In a 51 second video, a number of comments had the word “understand” in it. There were also people posting comments such as “(Trump contracting COVID 19 is) China’s National Day gift.” Another comment was, “It’s okay, two more bottles of disinfectant please.” At the same time, people posted complaints about the live video comment session. One person wrote, “I hope you can understand the meaning of these things that the CCP Youth League has issued.” “Your cheer on this side of the ocean gave voters on the other side of the ocean a chance to share the same hatred, stupid as a pig” “Once again it challenged the bottom line of my understanding of human moral values.”

Since the news of Trump contracting COVID 19 first appeared, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs basically repeated diplomatic rhetoric. The Ministry openly cheered about the news, also fearing that it would further harm Sino-US relations. So the youth league hosting a live video group chat session became a channel to guide the opinion of the younger generation and let the pro-CCP youths express their hatred against the U.S. The Youth League’s Weibo and Zhihu accounts have gained popularity among young people in China since they use the internet pop culture. They have become a public opinion tool for the CCP to disseminate its propaganda information targeting the country’s youth.

Source: Epoch Times, October 5, 2020
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/20/10/5/n12454878.htm

In October, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a first-of-its-kind Homeland Threat Assessment. The report mentioned major threats that countries such as China and Russia pose, including cybersecurity and foreign influence. Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf called China a long-term strategic threat to the United States.

The report stated that the United States faces potential threats that China poses in terms of cyber security, foreign influence, and supply chains.

On October 6, Wolf tweeted, “The most long term strategic threat to Americans, our Homeland, and our way of life is the threat from China.”

The report said, “China already poses a high cyber espionage threat to the Homeland and Beijing’s cyber-attack capabilities will grow.”

“Chinese cyber actors will, almost certainly, continue to engage in wide-ranging cyber espionage to steal intellectual property and personally identifiable information (PII) from U.S. businesses and government agencies to bolster their civil-military industrial development, gain an economic advantage, and support intelligence operations. China possesses an increasing ability to threaten and potentially disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure.”

DHS expects China’s cyber operations against U.S. companies to focus on critical manufacturing, defense, the industrial base, energy, healthcare, and transportation sectors.

“Chinese operatives probably are waging disinformation campaigns using overt and covert tactics—including social media trolls— to shift responsibility for the pandemic to other countries, including the United States.” “Since August 2019, more than 10,000 suspected fake Twitter accounts with suspected ties to the Chinese Government have been involved in a coordinated influence campaign.”

On the 2020 U.S. presidential election, “China likely will continue using overt and covert influence operations to denigrate the U.S. Presidential Administration and its policies and to shape the U.S. domestic information environment in favor of China. China will further use its traditional ‘soft power’ influence toolkit—overt economic measures and lobbying—to promote U.S. policies more aligned with China’s interests.”

China will also “seek to cultivate influence with state and local leaders directly and indirectly, often via economic carrots and sticks such as informal and legal or social agreements that seek to promote cultural and commercial ties. Chinese officials calculate that U.S. state- and local-level officials enjoy a degree of diplomatic independence from Washington and may leverage these relationships to advance policies that are in China’s interest during times of strained relations.”

In terms of economic security, “China and Russia will continue to represent the top threats to U.S. supply chain security, given the sophisticated intelligence and cyber capabilities they can use to infiltrate trusted suppliers and vendors to target equipment and systems. Criminal actors also will engage in efforts to compromise supply chains, with such methods as inserting malicious code in a third party’s software to conduct operations against firms that use the software.”

The report identifies China’s threat in U.S. supply chains of medical products. DHS is “targeting illicit Chinese manufacturers who produced and disseminated fraudulent or prohibited COVID-19 PPE and medical supplies to the United States. This has resulted in the seizure of over 1,000,000 FDA-prohibited COVID-19 test kits and 750,000 counterfeit masks.”

“China is collecting information on U.S. supply chain shortages and is using the COVID-19 crisis to build additional leverage with the United States. … China could exploit future shortages of critical supplies by conditioning their provision on U.S. acquiescence in other matters important to Beijing.”

On academic institutions and research, “China—which has mobilized vast resources to support its industrial development and defense goals—will continue exploiting U.S. academic institutions and the visa system to transfer valuable research and intellectual property (IP) that Beijing calculates will provide a military or economic advantage over the United States and other nations.”

“China will remain the leading source of U.S. trade policy violations. Actions by China-based criminal organizations will continue to present the principal challenge to U.S. enforcement of trade laws and policies in the year ahead, despite progress in U.S.-China negotiations aimed at addressing this issue.”

Wolf told CBS during an interview that the China threat “cuts across a variety of different threats, from the cyber threats we see, from foreign influence, to supply chain security, to exploiting our academic and visa systems, foreign investment here in the U.S., trade policy violations and the like.” He said, “It goes on and on and on. …”  “Just across the board, threat after threat stream, we see China playing a very significant and enhanced role really trying to do the U.S. some long-term harm.”

Source: Voice of America, October 7, 2020
https://www.voachinese.com/a/dhs-homeland-threat-assessment-china-20201007/5612461.html