China’s global campaign to win friends and influence policy has blossomed in a surprising place: Utah.
Dakota Cary, a China expert at the security firm Krebs Stamos Group, said in making such comments Utah lawmakers are “essentially acting as mouthpieces for the Chinese Communist Party” and legitimizing their ideas and narratives.Spy agency interest
“Utah is not like Washington D.C.,” then Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes, a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, told the Chinese statein 2018 as the former president ratcheted up pressure on Beijing over trade. “Utah is a friend of China, an old friend with a long history.” “China’s not going anywhere. China’s going to be a world force. They’re going to be a player for the foreseeable future and trying to understand what that implies for the United States or for the state of Utah and get a concept of that seems to be a valuable endeavor,” he said.
Taowen Le, a Weber State University professor who has championed China to religious and political leaders in Utah for decades, worked for many years as a paid representative of China’s Liaoning provincial government.From 2003 through 2017, Le had another job — as a paid representative of China’s Liaoning provincial government. Provincial governments are largely controlled by Beijing and Liaoning has had a longstanding “sister” relationship with Utah.
State Senate President Stuart Adams turned to Le when Utah was scrambling to obtain large quantities of drugs that Adams thought could be used as potential treatment against the coronavirus in early 2020, emails and interviews show. While the church has historically been an outspoken advocate for religious freedom, Le sought to stop Utah lawmakers from supporting religious figures or groups discriminated against by the Chinese government.and brutal crackdown of its minority Muslim Uighurs, Le chastised the legislator in text messages and compared unflattering media coverage of the Chinese government to that of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith Jr.
“I don’t consider myself a lobbyist because I’m not a lobbyist. I’m just someone who cherishes the relationship between the U.S. and China,” Le said in an interview in his Weber State office.“I do believe he’s lobbying,” Adams said. “He advocates very hard on China.”Another Utah resident whom lawmakers said regularly has advocated better relations with China was Dan Stephenson, the son of a former state senator and employee of a China-based consulting firm.
A few months after that trip, Stephenson provided Anderegg with the draft language for a pro-China resolution the state senator introduced in 2020 expressing solidarity with China during the pandemic, Anderegg told the AP.A Chinese diplomat’s efforts to win passage of a similar, with the state’s senate president publicly blasting it as a piece of propaganda.
Stephenson said he worked only briefly — without pay — for the China Academy of Painting. He added he did not witness any spy agency involvement.Stephenson said he’s never taken any action at the direction of the Chinese government and never accepted compensation from it.
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