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Former Sen.Barbara Boxer is now working for a Chinese surveillance firm
12 January, 2021
The inaugural committee for President-elect Joe Biden reportedly returned a $500 donation from former California Sen. Barbara Boxer after it was learned she registered as a foreign agent for a Chinese surveillance firm.
Axios reported that the committee rejected Boxer's donation since the Chinese firm — named Hikvision — has been "accused of abetting the country’s mass internment of Uighur Muslims." According to Justice Department documents published Friday, Boxer provides “strategic consulting services" to Hikvision's subsidiary in the United States.
Hikivision was banned from doing business with U.S. firms absent a government-issued license in 2019, and was accused by the Trump administration of having ties to the Chinese military.
In a statement to Axios, Boxer stated, "When I am asked to provide strategic advice to help a company operate in a more responsible and humane manner consistent with U.S. law in spirit and letter, it is an opportunity to make things better while helping protect and create American jobs.”
During his presidential campaign, Biden said the internment of Uighur Muslims is "among the worst abuses of human rights in the world today."
"The U.S. cannot be silent — we must speak out against this oppression and relentlessly defend human rights around the world," he tweeted in November 2019.
Boxer is the latest California Democrat with reported ties to agents of the Chinese government. In December, Axios published another story revealing that Rep. Eric Swalwell had close ties to a suspected Chinese spy who was sent to gain influence with young, up-and-coming American politicians.
In 2018, it was revealed that Sen. Dianne Feinstein had a suspected Chinese spy on her staff for about 20 years without her knowledge.
27 August, 2021
Mercury Public Affairs has signed an $840K one-year agreement to represent high-flying Hikvision USA, the China government-connected leader in the making of video surveillance systems.
Hikvision, which produces state-of-the-art facial recognition systems, has cameras in operation throughout China and in US airports, prisons, schools and homes. They are used in US military bases and were installed in the American embassy in Kabul Afghanistan until 2016.
Some observers fear that Hikvision, in which the People’s Republic of China owns a 42 percent stake, serves the interests of the Chinese government by sending footage of American activity to intelligence officers in Beijing.
Mercury, an Omnicom unit, provides strategic consulting and management services, such as lobbying, government relations and PA work geared to the National Defense Authorization Act to Hikvision.
It will determine the impact of NDAA provisions on Hikvision and handle its responses to them. Mercury also will do outreach to US government officials.
The $70K monthly retainer contract runs through Aug. 7, 2019.
Mercury is joining Burson-Marsteller on Team Hikvision.
That WPP unit has a $25K monthly retainer deal through the end of the year for issues management, external PR, message development, fact sheets, media relations/monitoring.
In the northwestern region of Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party has imprisoned more than 1 million Muslim ethnic minorities in mass internment camps and built up an all-encompassing surveillance state. Few of the country’s private companies are more deeply enmeshed in the continuing crackdown than Hikvision, one of the main suppliers of video surveillance equipment to the Chinese security services.
It was this involvement that recently earned the company, the world’s largest purveyor of surveillance equipment, a dubious distinction: Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Commerce placed Hikvision on its so-called entities list, meaning that U.S. businesses were no longer permitted to sell vital components to the Chinese company.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE WASHINGTON POST
Senator turned China lobbyist David Vitter has become a self-proclaimed 'proud member of the Hikvision team', a China (PRC) government-owned company banned and sanctioned by the USA.
IPVM obtained an audio recording of a Hikvision USA employee conference call where Senator Vitter declares his 'team', implores the team that Hikvision will survive in the USA and calls out Senator Rubio as 'anti-China'.
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