Lawmaker Demands Hearing on Spread of Chinese Propaganda in Congress – By Adam Kredo (Free Beacon) / Dec 23 2019
Rep. Banks seeks to expose China Daily’s subversion of U.S. law
Rep. Jim Banks (R. Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, is pressing congressional leaders to hold a hearing on the proliferation of Chinese Communist government-funded propaganda across Capitol Hill, according to official communications obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Following a Free Beacon exposé on the routine breach of federal law by China Daily, a propaganda organ run by the Chinese government, Banks is calling on his colleagues to investigate how and why Communist propaganda is arriving on the doorsteps of nearly every congressional office each day.
Banks spearheaded a related effort in September, when he petitioned congressional authorities and the Department of Justice to investigate China Daily‘s appearance across Capitol Hill.
The lawmaker’s effort to hold the Communist Party paper accountable to federal law comes on the heels of a Free Beacon report exposing how China Daily has repeatedly violated federal disclosure laws by failing to tell officials how much it spends to publish regime-approved advertising in some of the nation’s leading newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and at least 30 others.
China Daily‘s advertising supplements are designed to look like they are part of a U.S. paper’s reporting pages. The ads paint the Communist regime in a glowing light and downplay the nation’s routine human rights abuses. The failure by China Daily to disclose how much it is spending on this influence campaign appears to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, a federal statute designed to compel transparency in foreign influence operations.
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