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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28923 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Chinese Asset in NY State Government

Linda Sun was born in China, moved to the US with her parents at the age of five, and later became a US citizen. She rose up to become the Deputy Chief of Staff for the governor. I know plenty of folks who maintain dual citizenship with other countries, but I don't know how serious the USG was/is about making Chinese nationals "really" renounce their Chinese citizenship in order to become US citizens, nor do I have any idea if Sun did/did not.

She was a subject of interest starting in at least 2020, when she was interviewed by the FBI about her trip to China. While not knowing whether she's categorized a dual citizen (which I do know, for many purposes, the security apparatus of the USG treats as synonymous with "foreign national" for many purposes) or simply a former Chinese citizen with Chinese heritage, I also don't know what the state of these sorts of FBI inquiries are. Have they become a more routine/random matter, where they just occasionally drag some folks in this category in to question them and see if anything comes up? Or did they already have some reason to be suspicious of her in 2020? Her recent indictment acting as a foreign agent, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy includes events going back to 2015 (quite a few in the 2018-2019 years), but it's not clear at what point the FBI or anyone else became aware of any of them or to what extent they motivated the 2020 interview. NYT describes it as "questions were repeatedly raised".

This took years and a significant quantity of behavior bubbling up to get to the point where she was finally fired (March 2023). I can't currently find any details of the firing, but the NY governor's press secretary said that she was fired for "misconduct". Another year and a half, and we got an indictment. This may all be a very plausible timeline for how these sorts of things generally go.

So. Paul Manafort. He joined Donald Trump's campaign in March 2016 (when they were likely scrambling to get any sort of organization going), was promoted to campaign manager three months later in June, then fired two months after that in August, essentially immediately after Trump received his first security briefing.

To this day, there are still people (some even in TheMotte) who think that Paul Manafort is the smoking gun of Trump's culpability with Russia. That Trump obviously must be guilty for having that guy on his campaign. That it proves that "Trump's campaign" was working with Russia, and that it's Trump's personal fault.

On the other side, I personally believe that Paul Manafort and his Russian collaborators made a victim out of Donald Trump, and I can remain perfectly consistent in saying that I think that Linda Sun and her Chinese collaborators made a victim out of the NYS governments that employed her.

I think someone could make a plausible argument that both Trump and specific folks in the NYS gov't were culpable, though I probably would be pretty skeptical; as I said, I think the timeline in the Sun case is plausibly fine. But I would need an absolutely phenominal argument to support the proposition that Trump was personally culpable for Manafort, but that individuals in the NYS government were not culpable for Sun... otherwise, frankly, I would have to chalk such a position up to pure partisanship.

There are no US/China dual citizens. China (like Japan, India, Singapore) doesn't recognize dual citizenship.

Also, is it just me, or do a lot of the individual items under Summary of Criminal Conduct in the indictment (items 9 to 15) come across as nothingburgers? Blocking a meeting? Getting the governor to post a thank you tweet for donated respirators? These are things a politician's chief of staff does, & it's not like she did it in secret and gave no reasons why it's not in the interest of the governor to e.g. have those meetings. And the "visa fraud" is ... so they can get a letter of invitation so some Chinese government officials can visit NY to talk business?

Also:

In a 65-page indictment, prosecutors laid out a yearslong scheme in which Ms. Sun blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office, eliminated references to Taiwan and Uyghurs from state communications and quashed meetings with Taiwanese officials, all in an effort to bolster Chinese government positions.

Are "blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office" and "quashed meetings with Taiwanese officials" not the same thing in different words? Why list the same item twice?

In return, Ms. Sun, 40, and her husband, Chris Hu, 41, received payoffs that included millions of dollars in transactions with China-based businesses tied to Mr. Hu, prosecutors said. They also included travel benefits, tickets to events, a series of Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a Chinese consulate official’s private chef and employment for Ms. Sun’s cousin in China, officials said.

What does "millions of dollars in transactions" mean? Is it a million dollar bribe? Or is it that the China based business did million dollar worth of business transactions with customers?

Are "travel benefits" and "tickets to events" not perfectly normal things to for one government to give another government's representatives in the normal course of business?

There are no US/China dual citizens.

What of someone born in the US of a US father and a Chinese mother the latter of which did not get permanent citizenship in the US?

That child would, by virtue of automatically acquiring US citizenship via being born on American soil, fall under the 5th clause of China s nationality law (specifically the part following the semicolon in the 5th clause) and so would not automatically acquire Chinese citizenship.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/中華人民共和國國籍法

I mean, if one wants to be philosophical, one could worry that there might exist some sort of problematic race condition situations where it all depends on how "fast" the two countries' laws respectively kick in (metaphysically speaking). It also depends on your conception of personhood. If e.g. US law recognizes an infant as a person even as she's sliding down the vaginal canal but hasn't emerged yet, but Chinese law only recognizes after the baby has emerged (this is just a silly example for illustrative purposes), then the US law will always kicks in earlier and therefore (per the exception created by the 5th clause of China's nationality law) preempt the China law from giving her automatic Chinese citizenship.

I can't read Chinese so that article may have better or more up to date information on their own laws, but the English Wikipedia for the same topic says:

While Chinese nationality law does not recognize multiple nationalities, the current legal framework and its practical implementation allow for certain situations where de facto dual nationality occurs: While children born to Chinese parents abroad in general would not acquire Chinese nationality if they acquired foreign nationality by birth, those children who are born to Chinese parents living abroad only temporarily, such as diplomatic staff, humanitarian workers or overseas students, will still be regarded as Chinese nationals and hence be de facto nationals of both the Chinese and the foreign state.

Citing this paper.

All the references I can find on this in languages I read seem to cite voluntary naturalization and permanent residence or citizenship abroad of the Chinese parent (or both) as the suspensive mechanisms. Neither of which applies in this example.

Can you translate the 5th clause?

Well, it goes like this (I've added numbers to label the 3 conjuncts)

If one or both of the parents are Chinese citizens and the individual is born in a foreign country, he or she shall have Chinese nationality; however, if (1) one or both of the parents are Chinese citizens and (2) resides in a foreign country and (3) the individual has foreign nationality at birth, he or she shall not have Chinese nationality.

There's no reference to "permanent residence", as I suppose that's a concept that's only meaningful in some countries, like the US. In your scenario, I would imagine that her being a resident alien is enough to satisfy (2), so it shouldn't create a conflict situation.

It's also worth noting that clause 3 explicitly rules out dual nationality ("The PRC does not recognize dual nationality for Chinese citizens.").

I see this ongoing discussion throughout this thread. And I understand that rules as written dual citizenship is illegal in China. No one is wrong here.

But, the Chinese government doesn't follow their own laws. For example Eileen Gu is a natural born US citizen. There's no record of her ever renouncing her US citizenship. But she wants to compete for China in the Olympics, so now suddenly she is also a Chinese citizen with a Chinese passport. Good to go for the Olympics.

Although she was born and raised in San Francisco, Gu competes for her mother's native China. To do so, the International Olympic Committee requires that she hold Chinese citizenship. But in spite of China's ban on dual citizenship there is no government record of her renouncing her American citizenship.

Rules apply until they don't. A piece of paper with Chinese writing on it somewhere says this is impossible. That's no impediment.

There's no reference to "permanent residence"

I believe you're mistaken. It uses the phrase "resides in a foreign country" in the conjunction. If you have translated this faithfully, and if the legal interpretation doesn't invalidate this meaning, residence in a legal sense is what is meant here. It is not the mere fact of living in a place. It is being settled there.

Whether or not being a student or a diplomat means that you "reside" in the foreign country is a question I'll leave to lawyers, but the paper I linked seems to be of the negative opinion.

The PRC does not recognize dual nationality for Chinese citizens

Not recognizing something just means that it's legally inconsequential, not that it is forbidden or incompatible with other things. In China, much as in a lot of other States, Chinese nationals can't claim they are something else. Even if they have another passport.

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