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“China’s eyes and ears — dangerously close, too dangerous to lead.”
— Voice-over in an ad aired by Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)
China has emerged as a flash point in the battle between DeSantis and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley for the GOP Republican presidential nomination. Haley, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has pitched herself as a hawk on China. This slashing attack ad in support of DeSantis suggests that, as governor, Haley allowed a Chinese company to get “dangerously close” to a U.S. military base and that therefore she is “too dangerous to lead.”
This is one of those cleverly crafted ads that string together a series of verifiable facts to create a compelling narrative. Let’s see how well it adds up.
In her campaign for president, Haley has warned repeatedly about Chinese investments in the United States. “Chinese investors have bought nearly 400,000 acres of American land, much of it near military bases,” she wrote in a Wall Street Journal article in June. “I’ll do everything in my power to prevent China from buying any more land and force it to sell what it already owns.”
Yet, as governor from January 2011 to January 2017, she recruited Chinese companies to her state. Chinese capital investment in South Carolina more than doubled, from $308 million in 2011 to nearly $670 million in 2015.
Nachama Soloveichik, the communications director for the Haley campaign, says the threat perception has changed since Haley was governor. As we have previously noted, Haley has sought to distance herself from the specifics of these deals, but she acknowledged at an Iowa town hall last month: “I recruited a fiberglass company.”
That fiberglass company, China Jushi, is the subject of this ad. Let’s go through the ad line by line.
“This Chinese company, run by Communist Party officials, supplies materials for the Red Army.”
China Jushi, which Forbes says has 14,000 employees and $2.7 billion of revenue, is a partially state-owned enterprise. China National Building Material Company Limited, a state-owned company, owns nearly 27 percent of China Jushi, according to China Jushi’s website. Meanwhile, the company has a dedicated Communist Party Committee with 618 members. President and vice chairman Zhang Yuqiang serves as the company’s party committee secretary, and board chairman Chang Zhangli is a party committee member. Several top officials of CNBM also are party officials.
The company supplies at least one product to the Chinese military. On China Jushi’s website, the company advertises that the end-use markets for its products include “Military, Defense and Security.” The website displays a Chinese military armored scout car, the Norinco QL550, which was seen operating in Tibet in October 2017.
“America’s army trains over half of all new soldiers at a South Carolina base.”
Fort Jackson, which says it provides basic training to more than 45,000 soldiers a year, trains 54 percent of all new soldiers and 61 percent of all female soldiers, Lt. Col. James Allen, the fort’s director of operations, told the State newspaper in 2016.
“The connection? Governor Nikki Haley helped the Chinese company set up shop five miles from our base — on land she gave them.”
In 2016, China Jushi announced that it would establish a manufacturing plant in South Carolina’s Richland County — an announcement that Haley in a news release called “a huge win for our state.” On Facebook, she declared: “Get excited! China Jushi is creating 400 new jobs” and investing $300 million “right here in Columbia!”
As we noted, she recently took credit for recruiting the company.
When the ad mentions “land she gave them,” the ad displays the text “197 acres free” and an image of Haley holding out her hands as if she’s handing over a gift. The ad cites one of our fact checks, in which we said the company would receive almost 200 acres of county-owned land free of charge if promised investments were made.
As we explained: “According to the contract between the county and China Jushi, a key part of the deal was the company’s receiving 197 acres of land, valued at $4.9 million. The company would have been required to pay back part of the land’s value if it did not invest an expected amount of money or create an expected number of jobs.”
In other words, no money changed hands. That’s certainly different from paying for land, although Soloveichik responded that it was also different from “free” land. She also noted that the contract was between the company and the county, not the governor.
But the South Carolina Coordinating Council for Economic Development, which is chaired by the state’s commerce secretary, who is appointed by the governor, provided about $7 million in incentives to facilitate the Jushi deal. So the state government certainly played an important role in luring the company to the state.
The company factory is about five miles from Fort Jackson.
“Where they fly China’s flag, serve China’s interests. China’s eyes and ears — dangerously close, too dangerous to lead.”
This is where the ad makes a huge leap in logic.
During this voice-over, the text of the ad says: “Haley’s favored company ‘deeply implemented red culture.’”
This line refers to a China Jushi report, issued in 2022 in English, that extols the company’s achievements, including: “We have publicized and implemented the 20th National Congress of the CPC [Communist Party of China] and deeply implemented the innovative practice of red culture.” The Chinese Communist Party seeks to promote revolutionary and socialist values through what it calls red culture, such as through art, literature, music and other endeavors.
Okay, but what they are making at the South Carolina plant is fiberglass. There is no indication it is a spy center for China, as suggested by the ad’s use of the phrase “eyes and ears.”
When the South Carolina Senate approved a bill this year banning Chinese citizens from buying or controlling property in South Carolina, Frank Win, an employee of China Jushi, testified: “I just believe the people working at a Chinese company, they do not represent the political regime in China.”
The bill made an exception for companies already doing business in the state, so, in theory, China Jushi could expand in the future. We repeatedly sought comment from the company about the ad. Although we were promised a response, we did not receive one.
This year, the Biden administration enacted a rule that foreign nationals or companies would need to get approval from the U.S. government before buying land within 100 miles of eight U.S. Air Force bases in six states. The move came after a Chinese company last year bought 370 acres for a corn-milling plant that would have been about 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, one of the military installations on the list. Permission for acquisition was revoked after the military raised objections.
The regulation was an expansion of an existing rule that lists about 200 sensitive military facilities that would require government approval for land purchases by foreign entities within one mile of the facilities. But Fort Jackson, besides being five miles from China Jushi, is not on the list. In South Carolina, only a Marine Corps station in Beaufort and Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter are listed as sensitive facilities.
South Carolina residents perhaps should be more worried about the company’s environmental practices than whether it poses a national security risk. South Carolina officials imposed nearly $500,000 of fines, among the largest in recent state history, for the company’s violation of environmental regulations.
In a July 30 interview with “Face the Nation” on CBS, Haley demurred when asked whether she would call on Chinese companies to leave South Carolina. “I would say, ‘Look, we’re going to make sure we know exactly what you’re doing,’” she said. “What we need to do is make sure there’s no sensitive technology being stolen.”
A Never Back Down spokesman had this to say: “While Nikki Haley was wooing Chinese Communist Party officials and calling China a friend, China was infiltrating our country, stealing seeds from Iowa farms and hacking the personal information of millions of Americans.” The spokesman added, “Haley may naively believe this CCP-run company praised by Xi himself poses no threat to the U.S. military bases nearby, but Ron DeSantis understands the threat, and that’s why he banned China from buying land in Florida.”
(Soloveichik, meanwhile, cited as an example of hypocrisy two instances in which she said DeSantis, who in May signed a bill restricting Chinese land purchases, allowed Chinese companies to expand in Florida, but we could find no evidence that he was involved or provided state incentives.)
Never Back Down tends to have rigorously researched ads, and this one makes a series of verifiable statements until the dots fail to connect at the end. An ordinary viewer is left with the impression that Haley made a serious national security blunder when she welcomed a Chinese fiberglass factory to her state.
But notwithstanding the company’s ownership, there is no indication that this fiberglass factory is designed to spy on a military base five miles away. Fort Jackson is not even on a list of sensitive facilities — and the factory is not close enough to merit additional government scrutiny even if Fort Jackson were on the list.
Never Back Down earns Three Pinocchios.
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Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/04/desantis-groups-ad-attacks-haley-with-facts-offers-false-conclusions/