In December 2024, Chen Jinping, a 60-year-old Manhattan resident, pleaded guilty to opening and operating a secret Chinese police station for China’s Ministry of Public Security in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood. Chen was arrested with “Harry” Lu Jianwang in April 2023, following an FBI investigation into the outpost.
Though these arrests were the first of their kind, according to Justice Department officials, American authorities suspect that China has these kinds of outposts all over the country.
And China’s nefarious activities in New York City hardly scratch the surface. For decades, Chinese operatives have infiltrated American universities and companies, smuggled drugs and human beings across America’s borders, and stolen American intellectual property and technology—even corn seeds from fields in Iowa.
President Donald Trump was one of the first to see the threat of China clearly. Under the president’s leadership, Republicans in Congress are trying to prevent and punish this malign Chinese activity. This week, one of the House Republicans spearheading that effort, Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, joins “The Signal Sitdown” to discuss.
“My passion for this policy started in my district,” Hinson said. The aforementioned seed-stealing spies were operating in Hinson’s backyard. “There was actually a Chinese spy ring busted stealing seeds out of a cornfield in Dysart, Iowa.”
“They wanted to take them back to China. They want to cheat,” Hinson explained. “It’s all about reverse engineering because there is so much R&D that has gone into seed technology so that we can grow the most resilient, best yielding plants in the world.”
China’s unfair trade practices can often be more subtle than outright theft, however. “[The Chinese] are using tactics like transnational shipment,” Hinson told The Daily Signal.
“So, especially in the auto-parts industry, for example,” Hinson explained, “something coming in from China is gonna be tariffed, so then they ship it through Singapore or Vietnam or someplace with a lesser tariff to get around our tariff laws.”
“They’re economically cheating and getting a better deal,” Hinson continued. “Meanwhile, you’ve got American producers trying to play on that same playing field and it’s not level.”
Hinson has introduced the Protecting American Industry and Labor from International Trade Crimes Act with Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., to provide federal law enforcement more capacity to crack down on these trade practices.
“What we’re trying to do is make sure that President Trump’s Department of Justice… [will have] the resources and a specific task force to be able to go after these malign actors who are, again, intentionally cheating,” she explained.
“We think this cost is hundreds of billions of dollars every year on the low end,” Hinson said. “This has been decades in the making, right? You’ve got entire industries that have been ceded and now China owns them.”
