A headline-grabbing congressional committee will take its investigative work on Communist China to the Heartland this week.
On Thursday afternoon, U.S. Representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), chair and Ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, respectively, will lead a roundtable discussion in the eastern Iowa farm community of Dysart.
The remote congressional event will focus on the Chinese Communist Party’s agricultural technology theft, according to the lawmakers. Farmers and stakeholders will talk about the impacts of the CCP’s “malign tactics to undermine American agriculture,” states a committee press release.
Dysart was the site of a high-profile campaign to steal agricultural technology a little over a decade ago.
In 2012, a Dysart farmer spotted a well-dressed man identified as Mo Hailong, also known as Robert Mo, digging up valuable hybrid seeds. Mo, a Chinese national, sent the seeds to China. The FBI ultimately arrested the thief and six accomplices after they stole $30 million worth of U.S. AgTech.
He was sentenced to 36 months in prison in 2016 for conspiracy to steal trade secrets. A federal court also ordered the forfeiture of two farms in Iowa and Illinois that were purchased and used by Mo and others during the course of the conspiracy, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
A report by the U.S. Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimated the annual cost to the U.S. economy exceeds $225 billion in counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets. The figure “could go as high as $600 billion.” China, the report notes, is the leading culprit.
“China, whose industrial output now exceeds that of the United States, remains the world’s principal IP infringer. China is deeply committed to industrial policies that include maximizing the acquisition of foreign technology and information, policies that have contributed to greater IP theft,” the update to the 2017 report states. “IP theft by thousands of Chinese actors continues to be rampant, and the United States constantly buys its own and other states’ inventions from Chinese infringers. China (including Hong Kong) accounts for 87% of counterfeit goods seized coming into the United States.”
At Thursday’s roundtable, Iowa farmers and Select Committee members will discuss the Chinese Communist Party’s past and ongoing attempts to steal America’s agricultural technology, “serving as yet another example of the CCP’s tentacles of espionage threatening everyday Americans’ livelihoods,” the committee’s press release states.
The committee has been busy since its creation at the start of the current session. On July 20, members held a hearing on the Biden administration’s strategy for the People’s Republic of China.
At that hearing, Gallagher pointed to an alarming shift in focus in its China policy in the pursuit of healing torn relationships. He noted the Chinese spy balloon debacle and the administration’s delayed policies to “end Huawei export licenses, restrict outbound capital flows in critical sectors, and hold CCP officials responsible for the Uyghur genocide accountable.”
“Clearly, the push for high-level engagement has come at the cost of defending ourselves from CCP aggression,” Gallagher said in his opening statements.
– – –
M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Mike Gallagher” by Mike Gallagher.
