China's communists fund Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party: What the United States Congress was told
An influential United States Congress hearing has been told "one of the major fundraisers for Jacinda Ardern's party" is linked to the Chinese Communist Party and it showed China had penetrated New Zealand's political networks.
As a result, US lawmakers needed to consider whether New Zealand should be kicked out of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance because of problems at its "political core".
The bombshell testimony included claims from a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst that "anything on China that was briefed to Bill English was briefed to Mr Yang Jian", the National MP revealed last year as having trained spies for China.
The hearing of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was aimed at gathering evidence on China's relationship with traditional US allies.
UN Senator James Talent - once touted as Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Defence - raised concerns about "a sharp rise in political donations" from Chinese Government-backed bodies to political parties in Australia and New Zealand.
China's actions included getting people linked to the Communist Party or People's Liberation Army elected and had made it worth the while of political figures "to parrot its line on issues it deems important".
"It's important for the United States to consider that China may be testing methods
of interference to probe for weaknesses in democracies in order to use the same techniques against Western countries in the future."
The hearing heard testimony from former CIA analyst Peter Mattis who said the Chinese Communist Party had worked "very close to or inside the political core" of Australia and New Zealand and "one of the major fundraisers for Jacinda Ardern's party has United Front links".
"That, you have to say, this is close enough to the central political core of the New Zealand system that we have to think about whether or not they take action and what kinds of action. What do they do to reduce the risk?"…
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