Voice of America (VOA) reported that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is leveraging the U.S. legal system, using the law as “both a sword to attack opponents and a shield to protect its interests.”

Chinese drone manufacturer DJI filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) on October 18, alleging that DOD’s inclusion of the company on the list of companies cooperating with Beijing’s military was erroneous and had caused significant financial losses. China’s semiconductor firm, AMEC, filed a similar lawsuit in the U.S. on August 16. Previously, Chinese companies Xiaomi and Hesai successfully removed themselves from the list by suing DOD. Analysts told VOA that these Chinese companies’ success was not due to a lack of military involvement, but because they exploited loopholes in the U.S. Administrative Procedure Act.

In addition, the CCP can use its state power and resources to hire top-tier U.S. law firms to start legal battles to coerce or even silence organizations or individuals from criticizing it.

Li Rui, Mao Zedong’s former secretary and a senior member of the CCP, left behind diaries detailing the inner workings of the party and his own views. According to his wishes, his daughter, Li Nanyang, handed over the diaries to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. However, Li Rui’s widow, Zhang Yuzhen, filed a lawsuit in Beijing in April 2019 to reclaim the diaries (so that she could take them back to China) and won the case. Stanford University filed a countersuit in the U.S. This ongoing legal battle has lasted for over five years and required Stanford, Li Nanyang, and her attorney’s law firm to spend thousands of hours. Zhang Yuzhen hired four different law firms, three of which are among the largest in the U.S. Li Nanyang’s attorney pointed out that Zhang would not be able to hire those U.S. attorneys on her own, which Zhang neither confirmed nor denied.

Anna Puglisi, a former senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, published a scholarly paper in May 2024 titled “How China’s Hybrid Economy Distorts Competition.” The paper highlighted the CCP’s direct or indirect relationship with companies like BGI Genomics and MGI Tech, and how China uses market access to protect its own global companies and undermine other global players. In June and July of this year, Puglisi received letters from prominent U.S. law firms hired by BGI and MGI, accusing her of defamation and demanding that she and Georgetown University retract the paper and cease related analysis.

In May 2019, Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), a nonprofit based in Washington, testified during a congressional hearing on transportation and infrastructure, stating that BYD and CRRC, two Chinese companies, are state-owned and state-supported, and had begun securing lucrative contracts funded by U.S. taxpayers to provide rail transit vehicles and electric buses for major U.S. cities. He warned that this trend would systematically undermine the competitive landscape of the U.S. locomotive and vehicle manufacturing industries. BYD filed a defamation lawsuit against AAM and several of its employees. The lawsuit dragged on for nearly two years, with several dismissals and unsuccessful appeals, until October 2022, when the Supreme Court refused to hear BYD’s appeal, ruling that BYD failed to prove that AAM’s statements were defamatory. However, the chilling effect of the lawsuit became apparent when AAM’s insurance company, Hartford, partially canceled AAM’s insurance in April 2021.

Source: VOA, October 23, 2024
https://www.voachinese.com/a/ccp-us-law-repression-20241020/7817608.html