American technology companies including Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Google have repeatedly attended and sponsored the China-based Global Mobile Internet Conference alongside Chinese Communist Party linked tech companies such as TikTok, Tencent, and firms designated as Chinese military collaborators by the U.S. Department of Defense including Huawei.
The annual conference is hosted by Great Wall Club (GWC), a group comprised of executives from Chinese companies such as Tencent and their Silicon Valley counterparts.
This collaboration, however, poses a national security threat and runs the risk of intellectual property theft and espionage per the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Tencent, for example, has been characterized by the U.S. State Department as a “tool of the Chinese government” with “no meaningful ability to tell the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ‘no’ if officials decide to ask for their assistance,”and is among the bevy of Chinese companies banned or on track to be banned by the Trump administration.
Huawei, which has been identified by the Defense Department as assisting the Chinese military for over two decades, and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, are also targets of the bans – and repeat attendees of the 2009-founded Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC).
Firewall Fealty.
Alongside these CCP-compromised companies, American tech companies including Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Snapchat, and Microsoft have participated as sponsors, exhibitors, and speakers at the Beijing-based GMIC for several years.
The conference, which overwhelmingly counts attendance and support from Chinese companies, also has explicit CCP connections; for example, a 2018 GMIC partner was the Beijing Association for Science and Technology which provides “scientific argumentation and policy consulting as a member of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.”
Over the years, companies such as TikTok, Tencent, Twitter, Facebook, and Google have not just attended the conference but actively contributed as sponsors and exhibitors. In other words, American corporates are attending – if not funding – events contributing to the technological ascent of China.
Prominent executives from the aforementioned companies along with Huawei – banned by the Trump administration for providing the CCP backdoor access to its devices and user data – have also recurringly spoken at the event.
Even The United Nations Development Program, a recipient of U.S. taxpayer dollars, served as a partner of the conference in 2018.
Beijing Biden(s).
Another company repeatedly attending GMIC is Megvii, an artificial intelligence and facial recognition company that has been crucial to the development of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state, frequently used to repress Uighurs in Xinjiang.
Despite the company’s algorithms enabling human rights abuses, BHR Partners, a private equity firm directed by Hunter Biden since its 2013 founding, funneled $460 million into the company in 2017.
BHR Partners was the notorious billion-dollar joint venture between Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment fund founded by Hunter Biden and Obama-era Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson in 2009, and the state-owned Bank of China occurring less than two weeks Hunter Biden traveled to China alongside his father.
Not only has Megvii repeatedly served as a GMIC sponsor, it has sent executives as speakers to address the conference.
Writing On The (Great) Wall.
This unearthed conference comes on the heels of Attorney General Bill Barr slamming American corporates, especially those in the tech sector, for being “all too willing to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party” and “pawns of Chinese influence.” These revelations also follow the Trump administration’s continued assault on Chinese tech companies such as TikTok and Tencent – trojan horses for poaching Americans’ data at the behest of the CCP.
While a transfer of TikTok to Microsoft has been floated as a potential panacea to the app’s CCP liaising, events like GMIC and other CCP-sanctioned conferences, show why American corporates are equally compromised by the CCP.
