Obama's Man in China Now Beijing’s Man in Washington

[Happy New Year]

Former ambassador Baucus appears regularly on Chinese propaganda
outlets

As the novel coronavirus wreaks havoc across the world, the Obama
administration's ambassador to China has found a second lease on
life as a pro-China talking head on regime propaganda outlets.

Former ambassador Max Baucus has given at least four different
interviews to Chinese propaganda outlets in the last two weeks,
repeatedly comparing the U.S. rhetoric about China to both the
McCarthy era and Nazi Germany.

"Joe McCarthy [and] Adolf Hitler … rallied people up, making people
believe things that were really not true," Baucus said during a May
12 interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), a regime
mouthpiece. "The White House and some in Congress are making
statements against China that are so over the top and so
hypercritical, they are based not on the fact, or if they are based
on fact, sheer demagoguery, and that's what McCarthy did in the
1950s."

Since his retirement in 2017, Baucus has been a reliable critic of
the Trump administration's increasingly confrontational China
policy—chiefly the decision to wage a trade war with Beijing. He
once warned that the White House's decision to impose additional
tariffs was a "slap on the face" to China. But Baucus's recent
comments in the pandemic era have been more sympathetic to China—and
critical of the United States—than ever before.

His post-retirement public statements praising China have coincided
with his burgeoning overseas investments. In 2017, he founded the
Baucus Group, a consulting firm that advises both American and
Chinese businesses, according to his U.S. Chamber of Commerce
biography. He also sits on the board of directors for Ingram Micro,
a U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, as well as
the board of advisers for Alibaba Group, one of China's largest tech
companies.

Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage
Foundation, said that it was "inappropriate" for a former ambassador
to speak ill about his own government on a foreign propaganda
outlet.

"It's like going to China and … talking about your own government
that way in meetings. I think that would be pretty inappropriate,"
Lohman said. "So it would be inappropriate speaking on state media."

Baucus's public statements have received considerable attention from
Beijing's propaganda outlets. When the former ambassador compared
President Donald Trump's criticism of China to rhetoric used by
Adolf Hitler and Joe McCarthy during a May 6 interview with CNN,
Chinese propaganda outlets quickly amplified Baucus's comments about
how Trump was "a little bit like Hitler in the '30s" and that
Americans were worried about "getting their heads chopped off" if
they voice their disagreement with the U.S. government's China
policy. Xinhua News Agency, a state-owned outlet, extensively cited
Baucus's attacks in a May 8 article, using it as evidence that the
Trump administration is attempting to "deflect criticisms about
their blunders by blaming China." The article was syndicated in
party-controlled mouthpieces such as Global Times and People's
Daily, according to the Investigative Research Center.

Baucus then appeared on CGTN on May 12 to double down on his Hitler
and McCarthy comparison, blaming the Trump administration for
flaming "sheer demagoguery."

"[The current U.S. rhetoric] is somewhat reminiscent, nowhere close
to that yet, somewhat reminiscent of the McCarthy era and somewhat
reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s," he told CGTN.

The former ambassador also gave an exclusive interview to Global
Times on May 14, where he said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's
claim that the virus may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory
"makes no sense" and accused both Democrats and Republicans of being
tough on China to score political points in an election year.

Baucus again appeared on CGTN on May 15, where he claimed that
America is "sliding toward a form of McCarthyism" because the Trump
administration is pressuring policymakers to be tough on China. The
former ambassador did another CGTN media hit on May 16, this time
appearing alongside his wife Melodee Hanes, who blamed the
presidential election for making dialogue "difficult."

"There are a lot of pretty smart people in the United States who are
not speaking up. People in office, moderates, especially moderates
on the Republican side," Baucus said on May 15. "They are afraid to
speak up, they are intimidated, intimidated by President Trump. And
it's kind of sliding toward a form of McCarthyism—how it is
politically incorrect to speak the truth, speak the truth to power."

When the Washington Free Beacon called the phone number listed for
Baucus's home address, no one answered. A lawyer representing Baucus
Group, the ambassador's consulting firm, also did not respond to a
request for comment.

While Baucus rarely enjoyed this much attention from Chinese state
media outlets after his retirement, this is not the first time he
has spoken to Chinese media outlets in recent years. Baucus also
gave an exclusive interview to People's Daily in March 2018,
criticizing U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods as the "wrong policy" and
"too confrontational." He has also spoken at events backed by the
China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, a registered foreign agent of the
Chinese government according to a 2018 congressional report.

Lohman, the Heritage Foundation expert, said that while Baucus has
the right to appear on any domestic and foreign outlets, he should
not have addressed a propaganda outlet with the same degree of
candidness that he did with CNN.

"I think he must have gotten wrapped up in the media performances
because when you shift from CNN to Global Times or CGTN, you've gone
to an entirely new level," he said. "And there I think you just have
to express yourself differently. It's not an appropriate place to
air political differences."


https://freebeacon.com/national-security/obamas-man-in-china-now-
beijings-man-in-washington/