Philip Lenczycki is an investigative journalist for the Daily Caller News Foundation. He covers China's influence operations in the United States
China Desk:
What got you into investigative journalism and covering issues like China?
Philip Lenczycki:
I lived overseas growing up, and I eventually had the great fortune of traveling to China. In the beginning, that wasn't something that was on my radar as being my future career path, but over time, bit by bit, returning again and again, and eventually having the opportunity to first work and then to study, it became my calling.
Journalism was always a parallel career path, and came and went with different moments of my life and the opportunity to try to go forward with it full on. I embraced that and I thought that, out of all the outlets that I wanted to try it with… the Daily Caller.
China Desk:
How do you believe longform investigative journalism pieces fit into the public policy square?
Philip Lenczycki:
I look around, and part of the genesis of how I find myself to be where I am is that there's only so many individuals who went to China and/or Taiwan and tried to [develop] a skillset. My colleagues went on to business and other endeavors, but not many tried media. So that's one component.
I believe that we unfortunately remain quite ignorant of what's occurring and what the motivations are with the Chinese Communist Party. I think that there's a lot of work to do there. The Daily Caller has been really very open to these types of stories. It's been a good fit, and I think that they're making the most out of my background.
There aren't enough investigative reporters who are applying themselves in this direction. That might also have to do with the outlets they work for. There is no one telling me what I can and can't write, who I cannot go after. I don't think that's necessarily the same at other places. So when the day occurs that I'm told, "No, we can't go after them, they're a donor," or something like that, [I'll] let you know.
China Desk:
What Chinese influence operations are you aware of in the United States?
Philip Lenczycki:
I came to really find my intellectual home looking into the [Chinese] Communist Party, and then looking at the current lay of the land in the United States, I've been trying to understand how it is that so many of our institutions are, to use a hacking phrase at this point, kowtowing to the whims of China.
There turns out to be someone behind the curtain, if you will. That entity goes by the names of a number of different Chinese Communist Party departments. But one of them that we've been hammering away at as of late is the United Front Work Department. This Chinese government agency is responsible for more or less trying to manage non-party individuals. That could manifest as coercion, bribery, or in a number of different carrot or stick type methods. In the United States, we're seeing their touch upon every sector.
Some of my investigations have dealt with government individuals. We did a long investigation into the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank in Washington DC. Current CIA director William Burns was the president of Carnegie beginning in 2015, and continued until his appointment as CIA director in 2021.
We found that there were 20 members of the Chinese Communist Party that were in his employ during his tenure. Furthermore, we found that there were some dozen or so members of this United Front work department, or related to the Ministry of State Security apparatus that were also in their employ. This is both at their DC headquarters as well as their Beijing headquarters at Tsinghua University.
China Desk:
How would you describe the Chinese Communist Party’s actions?
Philip Lenczycki:
It's quite evident at this point that they are a hostile force, they are vicious, and we should be extremely concerned about what they're capable of doing to us, in light of the fact of what they are routinely doing to their own people.
So having lived in China and traveled there for 20 years, I am one of those individuals who, for a period of time, was hopeful that things could be otherwise. There was a rosy period in my cohort where things were looking kind of bright until maybe around the 2008 Olympics, and then sometime thereafter, as we got closer and closer to the entrance of Xi Jinping. It became clear what we were actually dealing with, that they had no intention to go forward with any of the promises that they made, or abide by any of the agreements that they made.
At that point, I think that there was an increasing level of scrutiny, and that it is a type of shame that I suppose that we all bear where we knew about Tiananmen Square, we'd heard what was going on with Falun Gong and whatnot, but still wanted to see what could be. But the only thing we can do at this point is to accept the horrible truth.
One of the big reasons why this will not be an area that investigative reporters will be able to dive into is fear. Not just at a personal level that the Communist Party might come after you, but that the truth of the matter is too horrible to actually face. That it could be pervasive, and that individuals who you might yourself be learning from or working with could be compromised.
It's something that requires some nuance to understand. Of course, we're not saying every Chinese person is an agent of the Communist Party, that's not the argument. But, only those who steel themselves are going to be able to take this on.
China Desk:
Have you received any backlash?
Philip Lenczycki:
The answer is we have lawyers, and luckily I haven't been in any type of lawsuit. But we are extremely fastidious in our investigations, and so it's been quite revealing the deafening silence that follows. I would imagine that if someone was slandering you, you might say something about it, wouldn't you?
China Desk:
You haven't received any harassment, even online?
Philip Lenczycki:
Don't give them any ideas. Not that I would care. We are going to have to do what we're going to have to do. We're going to just have to see where the chips fall.
Either you can be on the sidelines and feel like you are victimized in life and you've got no say, or you can suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and have at it. This is the lot I've chosen, and I think that the Daily Caller is in the same fight. You take some solace in the fact that you're surrounded by other individuals who want to [join you]. So that's where my heart is.
It's important to think about what it is that the Communist party is and who the individuals are. I think of them as hostages, as victims, trapped in a system that is monstrous. Think about Xi Jinping, for instance. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was purged a number of times. Apparently Xi Jinping's sister committed suicide because of the pressures of the Red Guard, and as has been reported, he decided somewhere along the way to become redder than red. He draped himself in that as a means to protect himself.
But at the end of the day, the system that they have is Game of Thrones. You either win or you die, and as we saw at the recent 20th Party Congress [by the removal from the Politburo of former China leader Hu Jintao], even though you were huge in town yesterday, tomorrow you can get escorted out as though you're yesterday's refuse.
So they're playing for keeps because they have to. I hope there are individuals who will reject the party and reject the entire system, [because] it's a losing endeavor.
China Desk:
Will you be looking into Confucius Institutes or other things like rare-earth minerals?
Philip Lenczycki:
The best stories that I can take on are the ones that awaken the American people to the reality that [Chinese influence is] in their towns. It's on Main Street. The stories about the purchase of U.S. land, that's a brilliant example.
Perhaps America could have received no better wake up call than COVID 19. The mishandling of Covid-19 dovetails with the idea that the Chinese Communist Party's learned nothing from the days of Mao.
This was an epic disaster. I believe history will reflect that this was on the scale of the horrors similar to what occurred after they smelted all the iron and decided to rid themselves of pesky mosquitoes and sparrows, and the famines that followed. This is a national disaster.
Consider the China police station in New York. That’s an interesting story, and there's no doubt in my mind that that was not the only location.
There was a Fujianese Association called America ChangLe Association that was hosting this overseas Chinese police station. They were working with the Chinese consulate and they were working with the United Front Work Department and the propaganda department from Fujian to pull this off. You had the individual who's the former head of the America ChangLe Association, Lu Jin Wong, who went to China to participate in the launching of the overseas police station initiative.
So I'm guessing that that's the exact same model that we're going to see elsewhere. There are going to be these home China associations that represent a certain part of China, that are going to be hosting these government initiatives. It’s important that we suss this out in our communities.
China Desk:
Who exactly are the Chinese Communist Party monitoring and trying to influence? If you begin talking about topics they disagree with, do folks start showing up and paying you a visit? Do they encourage those who support you to say, "Maybe think twice about continuing to support this questionable character?"
Philip Lenczycki:
Number one, we've already seen in indictments that the Chinese Communist Party's agents, administrative state security agents in New York for instance, presented themselves as activists in order to infiltrate these types of communities. So that is most certainly occurring.
I think that it's really important to be as real as we can about how pervasive this is.
I would encourage you to look at some locally elected officials. Public records show the support that they've been receiving from some of these sectors, and this is recent. For instance, we saw that New York City Mayor Eric Adams attended [America ChangLe Association] events. He had received donations from their current head, was introduced to the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs by way of an assistant, an individual who has also met with that same entity connected to the United Front Work Department in China.
What is going on there? Well, I suppose more needs to be done to figure that out. But that's not the only city where this is occurring.
