Hochul Official Joined Back-Channel Dialogue With Chinese Government Party

The administration of New York Governor Kathy Hochul assigned a senior state government official to participate in back-channel talks led by a Chinese Communist Party bureau allegedly involved in espionage and co-opting foreign political leaders.

This individual was slated to deliver remarks on a Zoom call on October 19, 2023 with the CCP’s International Department and several Chinese officials linked to the Party’s political influence organs, according to emails and documents obtained by National Review under a public records disclosure law. Hochul’s then-director of Asian Affairs, Elaine Fan, coordinated the official’s participation. The official was only referred to as a “senior representative of New York State” and is not named in the correspondence.

In a statement, Hochul’s press secretary Avi Small suggested that the administration’s involvement in the dialogue was authorized and that the State Department had coordinated its role in the talks: “The Hochul Administration has strong vetting procedures in place to review potential invitations and determine their provenance. It is not uncommon for the United States Department of State to ask state government officials to participate in conversations with foreign counterparts.”

At the time, the Biden administration was seeking a diplomatic rapprochement with Beijing, following the Chinese spy balloon incident in February 2023. The White House was so eager to revive high-level talks with China that top Biden officials at the State Department delayed human-rights sanctions and other tough measures that would have irked Chinese officials, Reuters reported.

Two months after the videoconference to which the Hochul administration sent a New York State official, General Secretary Xi Jinping visited San Francisco. Then, in January 2024, International Department minister Liu Jianchao, the lead Chinese delegate to the virtual talks, met with top Biden administration officials in Washington, D.C.

Meetings involving the International Department are controversial given its role in espionage and malign political influence schemes. Safeguard Defenders — the human-rights watchdog group that was first to reveal the existence of a secret Chinese government police station in New York City — has said that Liu was the architect of a global repression and kidnapping campaign in one of his prior roles. The Justice Department has brought numerous cases in recent years targeting alleged Chinese agents who played a role in those efforts.