It’s a shocking revelation. Thousands of American kids have, over time, been attending camps in China run by a Beijing intelligence and influence agency. Once there, the youths are indoctrinated with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda. Some are even given military training and may be taught to act like “Little Overseas Chinese Police.”
This information, revealed in a report released Monday by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), is par for Beijing’s course. The Chinese regime has long been injecting its propaganda into American schools via its “Confucius Institutes.” It has been using Chinese-market-access-denial threats to bully U.S. businesses into doing its bidding and to, incredibly, censor our movies. Beijing even has operatives on American soil who harass Chinese-descent dissidents and try to forcibly return them to China.
Get ’Em Young
The latest revelation certainly has historical precedent. For example, there was the German American Bund in the 1930s. It comprised ethnically German Americans who supported Germany’s Nazi regime. There also was “American Taliban” and Islamic convert John Walker Lindh, who in 2001 joined the Taliban’s fight in Afghanistan against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.
Now we have what the Chinese government bills as the “Root-seeking Summer Camp In China.” It’s allegedly an opportunity for Chinese-descent children living in the U.S. and elsewhere to imbibe Chinese language and culture. The DCNF has discovered, however, via analysis of Chinese government announcements and the program’s website, that the camps are run by Chinese intel.
These programs inculcate preteen and older kids with CCP propaganda, the DCNF also reports. Moreover, some are essentially boot camps run by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Ministry of Public Security (MPS) officers. The DCNF states that the Chinese government itself reveals this in social media posts.
Manchurian Candidate Assembly Line?
As the DCNF tells us, it
found multiple examples of Chinese-American children attending “root-seeking” camps run by Chinese security and military personnel.
In August 2016, over 50 children from the U.S., Canada, Portugal and other countries participated in an 8-day camp in and around the city of Suqian in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, according to a social media post from that city’s Foreign Affairs Office.
Among other activities, the social media post states that the children trained at the Jiangsu National Defense Education and Training Center in Suzhou, which is a roughly 62-acre military base featuring obstacle courses and field combat training areas, according to a local government website. Photos from the camp show two Chinese soldiers wearing fatigues alongside a group of several dozen participants standing in front of a “Jacob’s Ladder” obstacle course.
The following year, campers from the U.S. and the United Kingdom donned matching green shirts and camouflage shorts during two days of military training in Beijing, according to a social media post made by the training center. Photos from the July 2017 camp show the children marching, saluting, doing pushups and standing at parade rest under the watchful eye of People’s Liberation Army soldiers. Other photos show participants smiling and hugging the soldiers.
The program has grown markedly, too. In fact, a 2018 New York Chinese Consulate announcement informed that the number of diasporic Chinese teens participating yearly exceeded 10,000.
Then there’s the matter of camps overseen by the MPS. At these sites, reports DCNF, children are designated “Little Overseas Chinese Police” and may be threatened into functioning as informants. “We’re always watching you,” the DCNF relates, quoting a national security analyst’s epitomizing of the message. “[W]hy don’t you help us keep tabs on mom and dad or grandma and grandpa or brother and sister?”
What If Vlad Did This?
To be clear, these Beijing-disposed Chinese-descent Americans are a minuscule percentage of the U.S.’s approximately 4.3 million ethnically Chinese citizens. The vast majority of this demographic likely would reject such indoctrination. In fact, most are probably unaware that the camps even exist. This is for the same reason almost all Americans are:
The mainstream media bury this shocking story.
Consider, however: What would the reaction be if Russian-descent American children were attending corresponding programs in Russia?
Given our pseudo-elites’ PDS (Putin Derangement Syndrome), it would surely get front-page, nationwide coverage. It would be used to further catalyze Americans’ emotions in favor of our imprudent Ukraine intervention.
True to Form
The root-seeking camps are in reality, though, an extension of what Beijing does with its general population. Last year, for instance, the DCNF reported that the PLA “is training kindergarteners to handle firearms and fight like soldiers in boot camps across China…, according to dozens of school social media accounts.”
And what kind of activities do the children enjoy? Well, the camps frequently provide “different types of toy high explosives to the ‘little soldiers,’ the schools’ social media accounts show,” the DCNF also writes.
The Next Wars of Unification — for the World?
This is all, however, part of China’s long-term effort to supplant the U.S. as the world’s dominant power. Just consider the following New American reporting, relating to what I mentioned earlier:
- “China Now Leads the World — at Bullying” — our businesses into submission, that is.
- “China in the Classroom: How the Reds Are Reaching American Students’ Minds.” (This concerns the aforementioned “Confucius Institutes.”)
- “Forget North Korea: Watch Out for Chinese Censorship of Hollywood.”
Moreover, it’s said that the Chinese aren’t merely gung-ho nationalistic (which they are). Many, their elites particularly, also believe they possess an innate superiority that bestows upon them a right to world dominance.
Unfortunately, our quite inferior (pseudo)elites have been aiding them in this regard. Just consider the Thursday headline, “Gates Foundation spent millions supporting Chinese military collaborators and the CCP.”
The good news is that there is a bit of pushback from patriotic Americans. As an example, Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) just issued an executive order mandating the arrest of CCP operatives effecting “influence” plots in the Lone Star State.
But, hey, our pseudo-elites would rather we just focus on Russia, whose economy is about the size of Texas’. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Putin can’t afford to buy our establishment the way Xi Jinping can.
