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National Review
How Does Ossoff Think about China? A Documentary He Made on Beijing’s Investment in Africa May Hold Clues
Jon Ossoff has billed himself as a hard-hitting “investigative journalist,” orchestrating exposés on “corruption, organized crime, and war crimes” as CEO of the documentary movie firm Insight TWI. But specialists say that his 2015 documentary on China’s affect in Africa was naively framed and parroted CCP rhetoric.In the buildup to Georgia’s runoff elections on January 5, Senator David Perdue’s marketing campaign has launched a number of assault advertisements alleging that Ossoff “won’t hold China accountable” and suggesting that he is likely to be susceptible to CCP affect like fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell, who unwittingly fashioned a relationship with a Chinese spy early in his profession. The assaults started after National Review reported that Ossoff initially didn’t disclose funds from a CCP-tied media firm that licensed two of his documentaries.Ossoff’s marketing campaign has mentioned that the Hong Kong media conglomerate PCCW — which is partially owned by a Chinese state-backed agency and whose main proprietor has spoken out in opposition to the Hong Kong democracy protests — represents simply “one of dozens of TV stations and distributors in more than 30 countries that have aired Jon’s work.” However, the Ossoff camp has supplied shifting explanations relating to the quantity PCCW paid Ossoff’s documentary firm and why that determine was not included on his preliminary monetary disclosure type. On Tuesday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that in 2012, Ossoff promoted Chinese state-run media outlet Xinhua News.But what are Ossoff’s precise views on China? While he has labeled Perdue’s assaults “ridiculous,” Ossoff’s coverage platform makes no point out of China, and even lacks a foreign-policy portion.Ossoff’s reluctance to articulate his views on America’s chief geopolitical rival is curious in mild of the way in which he billed himself as an skilled nationwide safety hand throughout his failed 2017 House run. Ossoff touted his “five years of experience as a national security staffer in the U.S. Congress” throughout that marketing campaign, although that descriptor turned out to be an embellishment.In the absence of an actual file, these within the 33-year-old Ossoff’s potential views on China can look to a 2015 documentary titled “The Battle for Africa,” which he executively produced in coordination with Qatari state-backed media Al Jazeera. The documentary explores the flood of Chinese funding into Africa — whereas the vast majority of TWI’s movies are Africa associated, that is the one one with a China focus.> Last 12 months @sorious visited Kenya, Botswana, and Ghana to research the that means of China’s huge arrival in Africa. https://t.co/AyTTkMgBYX> > — Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) September 16, 2015In a press release to National Review, Ossoff spokesperson Miryam Lipper mentioned that “Jon Ossoff produced reporting to shine a light on Chinese expansionism in Africa, which national security experts in both parties agree is a growing threat to long-term American interests, while David Perdue ran factories in China in cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party. (This week, the Washington Post detailed how Perdue built his career traveling around Asia helping American firms such as Reebok source cheap labor.)But while Lipper implied that the “The Battle for Africa” was an investigative project, Ossoff’s 50-minute documentary, broken up into two parts, never mentions China’s ambitious Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative (BRI) — despite highlighting some of its specific ventures and quoting Chinese nationals closely tied to the project.BRI, which began in 2014 and has poured hundreds of billions into overseas infrastructure deals, is part of a grand, strategic, influence web promulgated by the Chinese Communist Party.“Belt and Road is not this concept where you can go toe-first in, or where you can have one foot in, one foot out in the long run,” Michael Sobolik, a fellow in Indo-Pacific studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, told National Review. “Once you get hooked up into cooperation with this network, you are part of this bigger picture that China’s trying to achieve.”In the opening ten minutes, TWI host Sorious Samura explains how “China’s policy of no-strings-attached investment contrasts starkly with the tradition of western-conditional aid” and cites the construction of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), which was financed by a $3.2 billion loan from the Chinese in 2014.“Before signing off on these multibillion dollar deals, Chinese officials are not demanding, like the West is, that African leaders conform to Western standards of human rights, economic reform, and anti-corruption,” Samura explains. “In Africa, many see this as a welcome break from the evangelism of Western governments who have been accused of putting on due pressure on them to adopt western-style democracies.”To Joshua Eisenman, associate professor of politics at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, the description reflects the status-quo thinking of the time.“The beginning of the documentary is certainly on the friendly side, which is not surprising given it was made in 2015,” he told National Review. “It is not propaganda, but it does echo certain elements of Beijing’s official propaganda line, for example, that China’s presence is both unique and positive compared to the West.”To explain how the documentary missed the mark, Eisenman pointed out that, five years in, Kenya is struggling to service the Chinese debt for its massive railway project — which is operating with millions in monthly losses.“The documentary seems to confuse debt for infrastructure deals with trade and grants,” he elaborated. “The narrator talks about these monies as if they would never need to be paid back . . . Five years ago, many in Beijing and in African capitals downplayed the debt issue, but today we see that in some cases the problem is reaching a crisis point.”At one point, Samura raises the question of “what will be the future of human freedom” on the continent if China becomes the primary foreign funding source in Africa. But rather than exploring the question in depth, the documentary immediately pivots to an interview with Hongxiang Huang, a Chinese national who founded the “China House” in Kenya. The “China House” website states explicitly that it aims “to integrate China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) into global sustainable development.”When asked about “criticism” of Chinese policy not making investment in Africa contingent on human rights, Huang argues that China’s history of lifting “a huge population out of poverty” shows “it’s actually doing really well in terms of human rights.”Sobolik said that Samura’s lack of pushback on the claim “speaks volumes about the documentary.”“The fact that there was no countervailing argument to that was especially concerning,” he explained in an interview with National Review. “Because if you accept the argument that human rights is about exclusively the material wellbeing of the most amount of people — which is basically utilitarianism — then you sacrifice the dignity of the individual, which is the bedrock of the entire understanding of western human rights, the inherent dignity of the individual person. And for me, that’s not an inconsequential difference.”In Part I of “The Battle for Africa,” Samura additionally speaks to a consultant from AVIC International, a world holdings subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China — “China’s Boeing,” Sobolik explains. Samura highlights how AVIC has completed plenty of offers in Kenya, together with the constructing of a brand new terminal on the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.“I feel like for the China and the Kenya, we more feel like brothers,” AVIC’s Ling Qin tells the host. “ . . . We have the same kind of history, we are kind of conquered, and so we truly understand each other. I think there are so many things we can share with our friends from Kenya, because not so far ago we are almost the same situation. So if China was in that case — we can make it — why can’t Kenya, why can’t Africans?”No point out, nonetheless, is made from how AVIC International “actively participates in building ‘the Belt and Road Initiative,’” per the agency’s web site. Also unnoticed is any reference to AVIC’s standing as a large participant within the arms trade — since 2015, it has ranked within the high ten of the most important arms-producing firms internationally. In June, the Pentagon introduced AVIC as one among 20 Chinese companies “owned by, controlled by, or affiliated with China’s government, military, or defense industry.”Sobolik mentioned that the documentary’s profiling of AVIC, on high of the usage of “win-win” and different buzzwords to explain the China-Africa relationship, echoed “the rhetoric of Chinese diplomacy.”Samura closes Part I by profiling college students at Nairobi’s Confucius Institute, an entity current on school campuses around the globe, to point out how “the real battle for Africa is not between east and west, it’s a battle to control our own destinies, that only we Africans can fight. And for some of us, that battle starts in the classroom.”In latest months, Confucius Institutes have drawn intense scrutiny. In August, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo introduced that the State Department has designated utilized the “foreign mission” standing to the institutes, explaining they had been a part of the CCP’s “propaganda apparatus.”“They post the same issues for any country they’re in,” Sobolik mentioned of the Confucius Institutes. “Yes, you learn about Chinese language. But the story that you’re told about Chinese history or recent history especially is curated by the Chinese Communist Party, which, which for understandable reasons is a big problem, and that is incredibly naive to ignore.”Part II of the documentary explores how some African leaders have been in a position to leverage China’s rising presence to counter western affect and higher advocate for native pursuits.“China’s increasing influence brings into focus the ability of African governments to negotiate better deals in a new and competitive environment,” Samura explains. In the tip, he holds up Botswana — which “unlike most African countries . . . is more cautious about the free-flowing cash from the east” — as the best.Sobolik factors out that Beijing’s indifference to native corruption undermines the notion that Chinese funding will enhance high quality of life for Africans.“The irony here is if the whole message of the documentary was about political reform in African countries, you’re not going to get that by cozying up to China, because there’s no incentives if you take money from China to fight corruption within these governments,” he continued. “There’s no incentive towards good governance. It rewards the status quo. And that was a tension that the documentary never addressed.”Eisenman, the Notre Dame professor, added that, by specializing in previous abuses by the west, the documentary makers elided the query of China’s long-term pursuits in Africa and the way they could differ from these of the African individuals.“This documentary represents an African perspective in as much as it compares China’s presence to previous groups of foreigners who came to Africa. Unfortunately, it largely overlooks China’s intentions in Africa and how Africa fits into Beijing’s larger strategy towards the developing world,” he mentioned. “Without understanding China’s geostrategic intentions, the country appears as a benevolent force, a message that is only magnified when it is juxtaposed with the bullying and abuses of western nations.”It is unclear how intimately Ossoff was concerned within the creation of “The Battle for Africa” — TWI didn’t return requests for remark. As CEO of TWI, Ossoff “vets story ideas, helps prepare interview questions and attends to film production, editing and security arrangements for his staff,” in line with the latest New York Times profile.In a podcast quickly after the documentary’s launch, director and TWI worker Clive Patterson — an outspoken Ossoff supporter on Twitter — didn’t point out the Georgia Democrat, however did clarify the movie’s inspiration, saying Samura held, “quite dear to his heart,” the notion that “the west is just constantly kind of coming down with unrealistic expectations on African leaders or Africa as a continent — just doesn’t get Africa.”Ossoff was employed as CEO of TWI in 2013 at age 26 because of a fateful dialog he had as a young person with Ron McCullagh, a former BBC journalist and founding father of what was then known as Insight News Television.It appears that Ossoff was extra prepared to debate his views on China earlier than he entered the political enviornment. McCullagh recalled for the Times that, at a dinner in 2003, Ossoff informed him “his thoughts on Chinese and American relationships, the importance of the China Sea” in addition to the “strategic importance for the world of freedom of trade in that part of the world.”“[T]he detail, knowledge he had of the situation was just very impressive,” McCullagh mentioned of the “very memorable dinner.”
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