The New China Lobby is composed of corporate executives, bankers, lawyers, and lobbyists who promote, advocate, and lobby for Chinese Communist interests.

I n Washington, the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t have to hack or trick Americans — it usually just buys them off. Too many politicians, bureaucrats, and their ilk suffer from willful blindness at best or naked greed more commonly. The result is a New China Lobby paralyzing Washington, as Chinese Communists wage economic war and prepare for actual war.

China does, of course, have actual spies in Washington. After the 1996 election, for example, the Democratic National Committee had to return more than $2.8 million from Chinese agents and military intelligence. The scandal resulted in nearly two dozen criminal convictions. In another case, Chinese double agent Katrina Leung, over more than a decade, received $1.7 million from the FBI, slept with at least two FBI agents, and stole classified material, including information about a highly classified counterintelligence program.

Chinese agents have also insinuated themselves into key political circles. Senator Dianne Feinstein employed a Chinese spy for around two decades — even as Feinstein served on and chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The spy worked as her driver, her liaison with San Francisco’s Chinese community, and her representative at the Chinese consulate. Eric Swalwell, a California congressman and a former member of the House Intelligence Committee, also had a close relationship with a Chinese spy, Christine Fang. She befriended Swalwell, raised money for his campaign, and apparently had a romantic relationship with him. In 2022, Virginia Congressman Don Beyer fired a longtime aide after it emerged that she was scheduling meetings with congressional staffers on behalf of the Chinese embassy.

But while these serious scandals received extensive media coverage, a more insidious and subversive scandal has festered for decades with less attention. That scandal is the rise of what I call the New China Lobby: corporate executives, bankers, lawyers, lobbyists, ex-politicians, and more who promote, advocate, and lobby for Chinese Communist interests.

Examples abound. Former Senators David Vitter and Barbara Boxer both lobbied for a Chinese company that provided facial-recognition technology and hundreds of millions of dollars in services to Xinjiang’s genocidal authorities. Former House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Ed Royce lobbied for Tencent, the tech giant that helped censor the NBA. Former Senator Joe Lieberman lobbied for the blacklisted Chinese telecom giant ZTE, which he had criticized as a security risk while in public office.

But it’s not only former lawmakers and officials working for China after they leave office; the revolving door goes both ways. China’s sympathizers and advocates too often return to office and bring their pro-China instincts with them. Take, for instance, every modern secretary of the Treasury. Coming mostly from Wall Street, they have tended to have a strong affinity for China, if not deep ties to it.

And sometimes it’s more explicit. In 2021, President Biden nominated Christopher Fonzone, who had represented the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, as the intelligence community’s top lawyer. Fonzone had previously served on President Obama’s National Security Council, so he knew well the dangers Huawei posed to America. What’s more, he refused to foreclose working for companies like Huawei in the future. I opposed Fonzone’s nomination and delivered a simple warning to members of the New China Lobby on the Senate floor. “If you wish to serve in the United States government in the future, let me be very clear,” I warned. “Do not do business with the Chinese Communist Party, or its military, or the companies that support it. Stop it today. Don’t take the work. Don’t take the meeting. Don’t cash the check.” I opposed the nomination of Kate Heinzelman as the CIA’s top lawyer on the same grounds: she had worked for a Chinese pharmaceutical giant and refused to rule out similar work in the future.

One other technique of the Chinese Communists is to target the family members of politicians and officials. Of course, the most egregious and notorious example is Hunter Biden. He earned more than half his total income from Chinese businesses between 2013 and 2018, rode on Air Force Two with his father to business meetings in Beijing, and helped arrange White House meetings for Chinese clients. Hunter knew full well what he was doing: he and his uncle Jim (Joe Biden’s brother) even met with a Chinese associate whom Hunter called the “spy chief of China.” What’s most concerning about the Hunter Biden saga is the credible evidence that Joe Biden benefited from the riches paid to his family.

Although the Hunter Biden story is the most extreme, it’s not unique. China also cultivated, for instance, members of the Bush family. Prescott Bush Jr. started doing business in China in the 1980s, when his brother was vice president, and he was among the first American businessmen to return to China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. After his brother lost the presidency, he helped form a pro-China lobbying group known as the U.S.–China Chamber of Commerce. He acknowledged that his family ties were a “big asset” in China and advised other businessmen “to be sure you’ve got the party bosses working with you.”

Neil Bush followed a similar path when his brother became president in 2001. He has traveled to China more than 150 times, raking in millions of dollars and aiding the Chinese regime and its companies. He received over $2 million from a Chinese semiconductor firm partly led by Jiang Zemin’s son, served on the board of a Chinese company that illegally provided $1.3 million to his brother Jeb’s 2016 campaign, and even sent two million respiratory masks from North America to China at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2019, Neil delivered a speech condemning criticism of China’s human-rights record, surveillance state, and Thousand Talents plan as “clearly flawed and based on half-truths or all-out fake news.”

Although there’s no evidence that either President Bush was influenced by his respective brother’s business dealings, it’s nonetheless telling how widely China casts its net. Communist China plays the long game and they start early in cultivating the New China Lobby.

Excerpted from Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, by Tom Cotton. Copyright 2025 by Thomas B. Cotton. Published with permission from Broadside Books and HarperCollins Publishers.