China’s global campaign to win friends and influence policy has blossomed in a surprising place: Utah, a deeply religious and conservative state with few obvious ties to the world’s most powerful communist country.
An investigation by The Associated Press has found that China and its U.S.-based advocates have built relationships for years with state officials and lawmakers. Those efforts have paid dividends at home and abroad. The AP found that lawmakers delayed a bill that displeased Beijing, rejected resolutions that conveyed displeasure with its actions and expressed support in ways that improved the Chinese government’s image.
Their work in Utah is emblematic of a broader effort by Beijing to secure allies at the local level as its relations with the United States and its Western allies have soured. U.S. officials say local leaders are at risk of being manipulated by China and have judged the campaign’s influence as a threat to national security.
Beijing’s success in Utah shows “the pervasiveness and persistence of China in trying to influence the United States,” said Frank Montoya Jr, a retired FBI counterintelligence agent who lives in Utah.
“Utah is an important foothold,” he said. “If the Chinese can succeed in Salt Lake City, they can also succeed in New York and elsewhere.”
Security experts say China’s campaign is extensive and tailored to local communities. In Utah, the AP found, Beijing and pro-China advocates appealed to lawmakers’ affiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church, which is the dominant religion in the state and has long dreamed of reaching China.
The Beijing campaign in Utah raised concerns among state and federal lawmakers and drew the attention of the Justice Department.
One state lawmaker told the AP that he was interviewed by the FBI after introducing a 2020 resolution expressing solidarity with China at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. A Utah professor who has advocated for closer ties between Washington and Beijing told the AP that the FBI has questioned him twice. The FBI declined to comment.
‘DECEPTIVE AND COERCIVE’
Beijing’s interest in locally focused influence campaigns is no secret. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said during a 2015 trip to the United States that “without successful cooperation at the subnational level, it would be very difficult to achieve practical results for cooperation at the national level.”
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington told the AP that China “values its relationship with Utah” and that the “words and actions that stigmatize and defame these subnational exchanges are driven by hidden political purposes.”
It is not unusual for countries, including the United States, to engage in local diplomacy. U.S. officials and security experts have stressed that many Chinese cultural and language exchanges have no hidden agendas. However, they said, few nations have so aggressively courted local leaders in a way that raises national security concerns.
In its annual threat assessment released earlier this month, the U.S. intelligence community reported that China is “redoubling” its local influence campaigns in the face of growing resistance domestically. Beijing believes, the report said, that “local officials are more flexible than their federal counterparts.”
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned state and local officials in July about “deceptive and coercive” Chinese influence operations. And Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, last year accused China of seeking to “cultivate early talent – often state and local officials – to ensure that politicians at all levels of government will be ready to take a call and advocate on behalf of Beijing’s agenda.”
Officials in other countries, including Australia, Canada and Britain, have sounded similar alarms.
Those concerns have emerged amid growing disputes between the United States and China over trade, human rights, the future of Taiwan and China’s tacit support for Russia during its invasion of Ukraine. Tensions worsened last month when a suspected Chinese spy balloon was spotted and shot down in U.S. airspace.
LEGISLATIVE AND PUBLIC RELATIONS VICTORIES.
U.S. officials have provided few details about the states and localities that have been targeted by the Chinese government. The AP focused its investigation on Utah because China appears to have cultivated a significant number of allies in the state, and its advocates are well known to lawmakers.
Based on dozens of interviews with key players and review of hundreds of pages of documents, text messages and emails obtained through public records requests, the AP found that China scored frequent legislative and public relations victories in Utah.
China-friendly lawmakers, for example, delayed for a year a measure to ban Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes at state universities, according to the bill’s sponsor. Chinese language and cultural programs have been described by U.S. national security officials as propaganda tools. The University of Utah and Southern Utah University closed their institutes last year.
In 2020, China scored a positive blow to its image when Xi sent a note to a class of Utah fourth-graders thanking them for cards they had sent him to wish him a happy Chinese New Year. He encouraged them to “become young ‘ambassadors’ of Sino-U.S. friendship.”
Emails obtained by the AP show that the Chinese embassy and the students’ Chinese teacher coordinated the exchange of letters, resulting in heavy coverage in China by state-controlled media.
One Chinese state media outlet reported that the Utah students jubilantly exclaimed, “Grandpa Xi really wrote back to me. He’s great!” Portraying China’s most authoritarian leader in decades as a kindly grandfather is a familiar trope of Chinese propaganda.
Xi’s letter also drew positive attention in Utah. One Republican lawmaker said on the floor of the state Senate that he “couldn’t but think how incredible it was” that the Chinese leader would take the time to write such a “remarkable” letter. Another Republican senator enthused on his conservative radio show that Xi’s letter “was very kind and very personal.”
Dakota Cary, a China expert at security firm Krebs Stamos Group, said that, with such comments, Utah lawmakers are “essentially acting as mouthpieces for the Chinese Communist Party” and legitimizing their ideas and narratives.
“Statements like these are exactly what China is targeting for influence campaigns,” he said.
SPY AGENCY INTEREST.
China’s interest in Utah is not limited to its officials and advocates engaged in diplomacy, trade and education. U.S. officials have indicated that China’s civilian spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), has shown interest in Utah, court reports show.
In January, former graduate student Ji Chaoqun was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges related to spying for China. The Chicago student told an undercover agent that he had been tasked by his spy handlers to “meet people, some American friends.” He was baptized in a Latter-day Saint church and told the undercover agent that he “had been going to Utah more frequently lately” before his arrest, according to his Facebook page and court records.
Ron Hansen, a former U.S. intelligence officer in Utah, pleaded guilty to attempting to sell classified information to China. Hansen said he had been tasked by China’s spy service to assess several U.S. politicians’ views on China. The FBI found the names of Utah elected officials among confidential documents he stored on his laptop, court records show. Hansen was sentenced in 2019 to 10 years in federal prison.
Hansen was well known in Utah political circles and helped organize the first U.S.-China National Governors Forum, which was held in 2011 in Salt Lake City, according to court reports and interviews. The U.S. State Department canceled the forums in 2020 because of concerns about Chinese influence efforts.
“UTAH IS NOT LIKE WASHINGTON D.C.”
The AP found that groups of up to 25 Utah lawmakers routinely traveled to China every two years since 2007. The lawmakers have partially used campaign donations to pay for trade missions and cultural exchanges, and relied on China and host organizations to pay for other expenses.
On the trips, they forged relationships with government officials and were quoted in Chinese state media in ways that support Beijing’s agenda. “Utah is not like Washington D.C.,” Greg Hughes, then speaker of the Utah House of Representatives and an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump, told Chinese state media in 2018 as the former president ramped up pressure on Beijing over trade. “Utah is a friend of China, an old friend with a long history.”
In an interview last month with the AP, Hughes said trips to China made him “optimistic” about the country and the prospects for improved trade. However, he said he now believes the visits were pretexts for Chinese officials to influence him and other lawmakers.
“It’s not a trip worth making,” Hughes added.
Utah does not require public officials to report in detail on their foreign travel or personal finances, so it is difficult to determine the lawmakers’ financial ties to China. However, some of Utah’s most pro-China lawmakers have personal business connections related to China.
Senator Curt Bramble told the Courthouse News Service (a news service with an emphasis on civil litigation) last year that his role as a part-time legislator and as a business consultant occasionally overlapped and that he “had clients in China – a dozen, sometimes – some of them on legislative tours, some of them in consulting.”
In an interview with the AP, Bramble said none of his clients are based in China, they just do business there. He declined to identify them.
Bramble, a Republican who represents a conservative district, also dismissed fears of undue Chinese influence in Utah.
“China is not going away. China is going to be a global force. It’s going to be a player for the foreseeable future and trying to understand what that implies for the United States or for the state of Utah, and getting a concept of that, seems to be a worthy endeavor,” he said.
TIES FORGED BY TWO UTAH RESIDENTS
Many of the ties between Utah and China have been forged by two state residents with ties to the Chinese government or organizations that experts say are alleged front groups for China, including its civilian spy agency, the AP found.
The two men advocated for and against the resolutions, arranged meetings between Utah lawmakers and Chinese officials, accompanied lawmakers on trips to China and provided advice on how best to curry favor with Beijing, according to emails and interviews.
Reviewing the AP’s findings, legal experts said the men’s connections to Chinese officials suggest they should register with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA. The law generally requires anyone working on behalf of a foreign entity to influence lawmakers or public perception to register, but its scope is the subject of significant debate and its application has been uneven.
“If I were representing any of these individuals, I would have significant concerns about their exposure to FARA,” said Joshua Ian Rosenstein, an attorney who handles such matters.
One of the men, Taowen Le, has advocated for China to religious and political leaders in Utah for decades. Le, a Chinese national, moved to Utah in the 1980s and has been a professor of information technology at Weber State University since 1998. Le converted in 1990 to the Mormon faith.
From 2003 to 2017, Le held another job: paid representative of China’s Liaoning provincial government. Provincial governments are largely controlled by Beijing, and Liaoning has long had a “sister” relationship to Utah.
Le’s defense continued after he said he left the Liaoning payroll, emails and interviews show. He has frequently forwarded messages from Chinese government officials to Utah lawmakers and helped the Chinese Embassy arrange meetings with state officials.
After embassy officials tried unsuccessfully last year to get Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s staff to schedule a meeting with China’s ambassador to the United States, Le sent the governor a personal request to agree to the meeting.
“I still remember and appreciate what you said to me at the New Year’s party held at your home,” Le wrote in a letter adorned with photos of him and Cox posing together. “You told me that you trusted me to be a good messenger and promoter of friendship between Utah and China.”
Stuart Adams, president of the state Senate, turned to Le when Utah was trying to obtain large quantities of drugs that Adams thought could be used as a possible treatment against the new coronavirus in the early 2020s, emails and interviews show.
Le, who belongs to the same congregation as Adams, said in an email to another lawmaker that he got the Chinese embassy to assign two staffers to work “tirelessly” on the request until it was satisfied.
RELIGIOUS SALES PITCH
A hallmark of Le’s approach is to use his religion in his arguments to lawmakers. He quoted scriptures from the Bible and the Book of Mormon in his e-mails, text messages and letters, and added positive comments that Russell Nelson, president and prophet of the Church, has said about China.
Chinese officials have tried to cultivate friendly ties with the Church. When visiting Utah, diplomats and officials from China often meet with senior members of the Church, as well as lawmakers, e-mails and other records show.
Expanding into China has been a major goal for the Church, which plays a major role in Utah politics and the state’s overall identity. Many of the state’s residents lived abroad as missionaries, and several of Utah’s public schools have strong Chinese immersion programs through the senior year of high school.
While the church historically has been an outspoken advocate of religious freedom, Le sought to prevent Utah legislators from supporting religious figures or groups discriminated against by the Chinese government.
When a Utah lawmaker sponsored a resolution in 2021 condemning China’s brutal and well-documented repression of its Uighur Muslim minority, Le chastised the lawmaker in text messages and compared the unflattering media coverage toward the Chinese government to that of church founder Joseph Smith Jr.
“Pray to God and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit as you ponder these issues instead of relying solely on such biased media reports,” Le said.
The resolution failed that year and a similar one introduced in January failed to get a hearing.
THE “ADVANTAGES” OF CHINA
Le has served as a committee member of the China Overseas Friendship Association, which has ties to the United Front Work Department, a Chinese Communist Party organization that the U.S. government says engages in covert and malign foreign influence operations.
A United Front publication included a 2020 profile of Le after he attended a meeting in Beijing of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a prestigious advisory body controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
“I deeply perceive the advantages of China’s system,” Le told the publication.
He told the AP that he was interviewed by the FBI in 2007 and 2018 about his ties to the Chinese government. He noted that his advocacy has always been self-directed.
“I don’t consider myself a lobbyist because I’m not a lobbyist. I’m just someone who appreciates the U.S.-China relationship,” Le said in an interview in his office at Weber State University.
Adams, the Senate president, stated that he feels otherwise.
“I think he’s lobbying,” Adams punctuated. “He’s advocating very hard for China.”
LAWMAKER’S SON BECOMES CHINA ADVOCATE.
Another Utah resident who lawmakers said has regularly advocated for better relations with China is Dan Stephenson, the son of a former state senator and an employee of a China-based consulting firm.
Emails and other records show Stephenson advised the Utah Senate president on how to make a good impression with a Chinese ambassador and helped a Chinese province in its unsuccessful efforts to build a ceramics museum in Utah.
Stephenson has promoted China in Utah for several years and has boasted of being well-connected with government officials there.
“I heard more than once from Chinese government officials that China is prioritizing its relationship with Utah,” Stephenson told lawmakers at a committee hearing. Shortly before that testimony, Stephenson accompanied Jake Anderegg, a Republican state senator, on a trip to Shanghai and Beijing that included meetings with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials.
A few months after that trip, Stephenson provided Anderegg with a draft of a pro-China resolution the state senator introduced in 2020 that expressed solidarity with China during the pandemic, Anderegg told the AP.
The resolution passed nearly unanimously.
Efforts by a Chinese diplomat to get a similar resolution passed in Wisconsin failed, and the state Senate president publicly criticized it as propaganda.
Anderegg told the AP that he was interviewed by FBI agents seeking information about the origins of the Utah resolution.
“It seemed pretty innocuous to me,” Anderegg said of his resolution. “But maybe it wasn’t.”
Stephenson said the FBI has not contacted him and that no Chinese government officials were involved in the resolution.
LINKS TO ALLEGED FRONT ORGANIZATIONS
Stephenson has ties to Chinese groups allegedly active in covert foreign influence operations, the documents show.
He is a partner in the Shanghai-based consulting firm Economic Bridge International. William Wang, the company’s CEO, is a Chinese national and a board member of the China Friendship Foundation for Peace and Development, according to an online biography. The group is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party United Front.
Stephenson also worked for the China Painting Academy, which has been used by China’s Ministry of State Security as a front to covertly meet and influence elites and officials abroad, according to Alex Joske, author of the recently published book “Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World.”
Stephenson said he worked only briefly – and without pay – for the China Academy of Painting. He added that he did not witness any spy agency involvement.
WORK ALIGNED WITH THE WISHES OF THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT
Stephenson stated that he never acted at the direction of the Chinese government and never accepted compensation from it.
“I work to promote Utah’s economy, to help U.S. businesses succeed in China and to foster healthy business and people-to-people ties,” Stephenson said.
His work at times aligned with what Chinese government officials sought and in ways that experts say likely aided Chinese Communist Party messaging.
Stephenson urged Utah elected officials to make videos to air on Shanghai television to lift the spirits of that city’s residents in the early 2020s as they struggled with COVID-19, according to emails obtained by the AP.
“You can’t buy this kind of positive publicity for Utah in China,” Stephenson said in an email introducing the videos.
The request originated in the Shanghai government, according to Stephenson’s email, and came as officials in China struggled to suppress public anger at communist authorities for reprimanding a young doctor – who later died – for his repeated warnings about the dangers of the disease.
Many lawmakers recorded videos where they read sample scripts provided by Stephenson, and a compilation of those videos was uploaded to a Chinese social networking website. The compilation ends with dozens of lawmakers shouting in unison “jiayou!” – a Chinese expression of encouragement – on the floor of the Utah House of Representatives and the floor of the Utah Senate.