https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/key-takeaways-aps-report-chinas-influence-utah-98149071

Prominent Utah officials favoring China, influential Chinese joining LDS, etc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2023 10:35PM by RPackham.

...both here and elsewhere in the past about Mormonism's sometimes more than corgial relationships with authoritarian Communist leaders, particularly the late Eric Honecker of East Germany. So I guess these revelations about Utah's relationships with a very authoritarian Chinese leadership should come as no surprise.

lots of information there, Mr. Peckham, TY...

I wonder how close this association is with Trumpers, and-

What about, are or aren't these supporters of Sino- Utah associations vulnerable or perhaps short-lived due to a) China associations wit Russia & N. Korea ?

What will happen in the U. S. & Utah when China is aggressive (attempts invasion or other take-over) of Taiwan?
My view is nearly a 100% probability that China will move boldly against Taiwan.

What is going on in Utah is a continuation of the state-by-state and country-by-country struggle between China and Taiwan. The struggle began in the 1950s, when each state cajoled and bribed other countries to support its claims to be the rightful government of China.

The battle was fiercest in Africa and Polynesia, where weak governments would sell their votes on the UN China question to the higher bidder. Taiwan had an advantage because it had a prosperous economy, so it invested hugely in generating public support in the United States. Taipei would send specialized propaganda publications to virtually all mayors as well as state and national officials, and starting in 1978 or 1979 it would send delegates of companies and bureaucrats around the country to publicize the insular territory's purchases of goods and services in specific states.

The tide has turned. China now has so much more wealth and stature that it can buy friendship more easily than Taiwan. Honduras just sold its recognition to Beijing because Taipei won't be as generous with financial aid.

Utah isn't really a surprise. People were so eager to get international relationships, sister city relationships, and foreign investment that they had no problem dealing with Taiwan, and now those old habits have just shifted from one sponsor to another.

Hopefully the media attention will force Utah politicians to think about what they are doing rather than just continuing in their old ways.

It’s more than sister city stuff. Chinese spy/infiltrator/whatever moves to Utah, joins Mormon Church, promises to work to get LDS Church into China.

That’s enough to get Mormon politicians to swallow any line he hands them, and jump through any hoop placed in front of them.

Here’s a long article on the subject:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/27/2160477/-Utah-lawmakers-are-doing-China-s-bidding-and-it-could-threaten-national-security?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=main

Don't underestimate the "sister city" stuff.

In the 1950s and 1960s "the China Lobby," meaning at the time Taiwan, spent lavishly on friendships in the United States. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek lived in NYC, and she and Anna Chennault, the widow of the leader of the Flying Tigers who helped the Nationalists so much in the 1940s, were hugely influential. The question everyone asked at the time was whether the Israel Lobby or the China Lobby was more powerful in American politics.

Sister city relationships were formed because they enabled Taiwan to fly American politicians to the island, where they would be wined, dined, and offered female companionship. Nor did you need to be a mayor or state leader to enjoy such junkets or the occasional donation to a local college or rotary club of your choice. If you had power, you were Taiwan's good friend. Under greater scrutiny in the 1970s, when Madames Chiang and Chennault were in their dotage and hence less influential, the more overt forms of corruption were abandoned in favor of slightly less criminal activities.

And what was the upshot of all those silly junkets? Well, when Carter announced his agreement with Deng Xiaoping to normalize bilateral relations, Taiwan's supporters in Congress rose in fury and enacted the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which reversed several of Carter's commitments to China. Whereas the White House had promised to close down the US military pipeline to Taiwan, for instance, the TRA obligated the US to provide whatever weaponry was necessary for the island's self-defense against China. Rather than dropping from $300 million a year to zero, US arms sales expanded to about a billion per annum.

In addition, the TRA explicitly stated that the US would maintain the capacity to protect Taiwan's security from Chinese military action--which was a clearer commitment than the US had ever before made to Taiwan. Put simply, Taipei's allies in Washington overruled and humiliated the president of the United States.

I assure you that Beijing does not yet have the power over US politics that Taipei had in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. China may get there, and we should be concerned about that possibility, but there is no comparison with what Taiwan achieved.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2023 02:40AM by Lot's Wife.

Thanks. I vaguely remember those days, and it is interesting to see how far the echoes carry.

My point was that joining the Mormon Church and offering to get missionaries into China is an entirely different level of political manipulation, giving one enormous sway with Utah politicians, what with the opportunity to be heroes in the eyes of the Q15 and all their Mormon constituents.

The politicians would be, and apparently were, spectacularly easy marks.

I see. The great irony appears to be that the rubes in SLC believe what the Chinese are telling them. Sitting ducks, they are, stewing in their own venality.

All of this stuff is dangerous to the US. The China Lobby did its best to get the States into a war with China; its agents volunteered troops for the Korean War, then tried to do it again during the Vietnam War, and took every other opportunity to transform local conflicts into existential struggles against the great Asian power.

Chennault also worked as an intermediary between Nixon and SVN in 1968, since both he and Taipei had an incentive to forestall Johnson's peace negotiations with NVN. Nixon and Kissinger repaid the China Lobby by cutting them out of the Sino-American diplomacy of 1971-1973, going to great lengths to deceive and neutralize Taipei and its American supporters through the issuance of the Shanghai Communique in March 1972 and then to the end of the following year, by which time the American people were caught up in the China spectacular and Taiwan had lost its influence. That reinvigorated the state-by-state approach that later brought such valuable results in the Taiwan Relations Act of March 1979.

Cooperating with Chiang Kai-Shek was a fraught game, one that arguably brought down both Johnson and Carter and that might have precipitated nuclear war. What Beijing is doing in US politics now is at least as serious a threat.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2023 06:21PM by Lot's Wife.

Your history of Taiwan-U.S. relations is quite correct, though I had forgotten quite a bit of it. The only addition I would make (and this is from memory) is that when Taiwan was first established, it was not a democracy. That would come much later after the first leader's death (in fact, I don't think the island became a full democratic republic until the 1980s or 1990s).

I also consider Beijing's involvement with Utah's religious and political apparatus dangerous because, unlike his predecessors, save Mao Zedong, the current PRC leader is determined to build a Chinese empire with control and influence way beyond its borders.

I'm impressed. Taiwan is one of those nooks and crannies of history, a bizarre little experiment that appeals to eccentrics like me. Now history. . .

China didn't exercise authority over Taiwan ever, really. In the 17th century Coxinga, a pirate, was based on the island and China basically ignored him. In 1895 Japan annexed the island and ran it as a colony until after WWII. As in Hong Kong, the French Concession and the Bund in Shanghai, and, to a lesser extent, Singapore, the prestigious government buildings in downtown Taipei were built by the Japanese.

When the tide turned in the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949), the Nationalist Party and most of its armies relocated to the island. The Taiwanese were happy when that happened because they wanted to be part of China and thought the Nationalists would be good rulers. Of that they were quickly disabused, for Chiang Kai-Shek's crowd were corrupt and ruthless. In 1947 an argument over a woman selling things on the street without a license escalated into the slaughter of 10-20,000 Taiwanese, creating rifts that have yet fully to heal. The Nationalists were in effect an occupation army supporting Chiang's dictatorship.

Enter the curious character Chiang Ching-Kuo (CCK), who was Chiang Kai-shek's son. When the Nationalists came to power on the mainland in the 1920s, they modeled themselves after the Soviet Union and its Communist Party. CKS sent his son to the USSR to learn about governance, and he stayed there for 13 years, grew fluent in the language, and even took a Russian wife. In China and on Taiwan, that son grew famous for visiting farmers and talking to the common people while his father ruled from on high, ignoring Taiwan and promising always to reconquer the mainland. He also quietly kept his wife and children out of the public eye and eventually fathered children with a Chinese paramour.

The father died in 1975 or 1976 and the son, CCK, took over. He was the one who had to deal with US derecognition in 1978-1979 and, as you note, also pushed for democracy in order to solidify the Nationalists' standing with the Taiwanese and to reinforce Taiwan's now-existential relationship with the United States. When he came to the end of his time in power, the son announced that none of his descendants would become president "because that doesn't happen in a democracy" and threw his support behind a native Taiwanese as his successor.

So you are right. Taiwan was not a democracy until the late 1980s.

  
  
  

It'll never happen. China has standards.

What's on Rusty's laptop?

Maybe China views the LDS church as it really is: a very wealthy corporation. China wants to know all about and make deals with wealthy corporations. They want to compete and learn how the money is being made. China also no doubt sees how religions like Mormonism can work well to support authoritarians. A giant corporation that controls people (with no actual product) is something to learn about!

Just kidding...sort of.

Interesting commentary on this subject by "Mormonish" Landon and Rebecca.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPDLgnalRR8