Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn warned Tuesday that service centers linked to the Chinese Communist Party could be “surveilling” Americans.
Daily Caller News Foundation reporting exposed service centers in seven U.S. cities that are operated by a Chinese intelligence agency and communicated with Beijing’s national police authority. Blackburn said that the CCP was using these centers to push “soft propaganda” and conduct surveillance on Chinese Americans in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
“This is part of that soft propaganda that the Chinese Communist Party has pushed forward. We’ve seen it in Confucius classrooms, Confucius Institutes, sister city programs and now we find out that these cultural centers have actually been used as surveillance centers so that the Chinese Communist Party can surveil people that are here in the U.S., Chinese citizens that are here in the U.S. or individuals that have come here to work,” Blackburn said. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: GOP Senators Demand Biden DOJ Provide Answers On CCP Intel-Linked ‘Service Centers’)
The Chinese Communist Party is setting up centers in the U.S. to surveil on Americans.
The DOJ must investigate this serious threat to our national security. pic.twitter.com/26ipRM8KqR
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) July 11, 2023
Blackburn and seven other GOP senators called for an investigation into the service centers in a July 10 letter addressed to the FBI and the Department of Justice. The senators alleged in the letter that the goal of these centers is to target Chinese Americans who share views contrary to the ideals of the CCP.
“The CCP’s intent is clear with its operation of these [Overseas Chinese Service Centers]: to intimidate and surveil Chinese Americans with dissenting opinions,” the letter reads.
Blackburn also said that the group of senators that endorsed the letter want to investigate the extent to which the CCP is using these centers to surveil U.S. citizens.
“We know that they are doing it on Chinese people. What we are wanting to do is to see how far this has spread. Are they surveilling Americans? We are looking at the seven cities where we’ve been able to pinpoint these OCSCs … and look at what they are actually doing behind these closed doors. What type of surveillance are they getting?” Blackburn told Bartiromo.
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