FPI / October 20, 2022
Geostrategy-DirectA Chinese billionaire linked to large cash payments to Hunter Biden and the Biden family worked for a unit of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) involved in covert influence operations against the United States, a report said.
Two studies of Chinese influence operations identified Ye Jianming as part of a special information warfare unit of the PLA called “Base 311.” The unit is engaged in what Beijing calls the “three warfares” — public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare.
Ye founded a front used by Base 311 called the Huaxing Training Center in Fujian, near the Chinese coast across from Taiwan. The authors are with the Institute for Strategic Research that is part of the French Ministry for the Armed Forces.
According to the publication “Chinese Influence Operations — A Machiavellian Moment,” by Paul Charon and Jean-Baptiste Jeangene Vilmer, Ye, former chairman of the now-defunct CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd., has been held in China on bribery charges since 2018.
Documents and emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop provide details on payments from Ye and his company to the Biden family.
The activities are reportedly the subject of a U.S. federal investigation, according to a Washington Times report by security correspondent Bill Gertz.
Hunter Biden, who worked for a U.S. investment firm, met with Ye and CEFC Executive Director Jianjun Zang in December 2015, while Joe Biden was Vice President. Two years later, Hunter Biden was offered $10 million a year for arranging “introductions,” according to emails contained in the laptop left at a Delaware computer repair shop.
The deal included a gift to Hunter Biden of a 3-carat diamond worth $80,000, one document shows.
The Huaxing Training Center was set up by a Chinese think tank called the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC), funded by Ye’s oil conglomerate, CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd.
The think tank “was identified as a platform for political warfare, affiliated to the former General Political Department. Its links to the PLA and the Party have been well documented,” the authors state.
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