You have to hand it to China for one thing — they play a long game.

Remember back a few months to October. That’s when the infamous Hunter Biden laptop became public information through the diligent reporting of the New York Post. The biggest revelation on the laptop was the formation in 2017 of a joint venture between Biden family members and a Chinese-government-affiliated energy company called CEFC (10% for “the big guy”). According to emails on the laptop, sums changing hands included at least a $5 million “forgivable non-interest-bearing” loan. There was discussion in the laptop emails about much larger sums also moving from China to the Bidens, but since nobody has ever been able to get a Biden to answer any questions about the subject, the full extent of the payments remains a state secret.

But why, you ask, was China paying that kind of money to the Biden family in 2017 — a time when Joe had left office as Vice President, and was just one of many potential candidates for President in 2020? That question was answered by Tony Bobulinski, the guy the Bidens had recruited to be the CEO of their joint venture with CEFC. Bobulinski’s name was all over the laptop emails, which suddenly made him a very public guy, and led him in October 2020 to give interviews to the (NY) Post and others. He also gave a written statement to the Post with the answer to the question of China’s motive:

I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.

And now it turns out that the Chinese picked the right guy to buy influence with. Then again, “picked” may be the wrong word. Could China maybe have just bought them all? We don’t know how many of the Democratic candidates China sought to compromise or succeeded in compromising. At least one other clear instance has come to light, namely Eric Swalwell. There could well have been many others — although it’s hard to imagine that most of them could be as dim-witted as Slow Joe and not have realized what China was up to.

On December 31 Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave an interview to CGTN (that’s China Global Television Network — English language Chinese state TV), in which he made clear that he saw the incoming Biden administration as one that would stop pushing back against China’s demands:

Relations between China and the United States "have come to a new crossroads," Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Thursday in a year-end interview with CGTN, adding that "a new window of hope is opening." Wang called on U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration to "return to a sensible approach, resume dialogue with China, restore normalcy to the bilateral relations and restart cooperation." Noting that China-U.S. relations "have run into unprecedented difficulties" in recent years, Wang said some American politicians "see China as the so-called biggest threat" and have made their China policy based on "serious misconceptions."

Yes, the U.S. will now take a more “sensible approach” to relations with China. I would translate that term to mean, the approach that would be taken by a country whose President is on the payroll of the Chinese state.

What difference might that make? Today’s Wall Street Journal has an answer on the front page. The story has the headline “Hong Kong Police Round Up Dozens Of Opposition Figures.” Excerpt:

Police arrested more than 50 pro-democracy figures they accused of plotting to paralyze the Hong Kong government through the city’s legislature, targeting much of the opposition camp’s leadership in the biggest sweep using a national security law since it was imposed by China six months ago. Those detained on suspicion of subversion early Wednesday included most of the pro-democracy politicians who had sought to run for the city’s aborted legislative council elections last year, as well as other high-profile activists and academics. An American lawyer was also taken away by police. The allegations related to primaries held by the opposition bloc in July to select candidates as part of an effort to win a majority in the lawmaking body and so be able to block government policies.

It appears that in most to all of the cases, the “crime” of those arrested was running as a candidate for the city’s legislature as an opponent of the CCP.

Notice the careful timing of this action by China. The date was selected to be just too late for Trump to do anything about it. Therefore it’ll be up to Biden. But it’s still a couple of weeks before he takes office, so likely the story will be well out of the news cycle by inauguration day. By that time, Biden will have much more important fish to fry, like for example, spending a few trillion on the “Green New Deal” in the effort to cripple the U.S. economy (any incidental help to China will be a pure coincidence). Biden will be able to safely ignore the whole thing, and nobody — at least, nobody in the mainstream media — will ever call him on it.

The New York Times did report today on the story of the round-up of Hong Kong dissidents; but unlike with the WSJ, the story was not on the front page, but rather safely buried on page A8. My searches do not turn up any story at all on the subject in The Washington Post. According to this December 2019 piece in the Free Beacon, all of The Washington Post, the NYT and the WSJ have accepted sums likely in the seven figures from China to publish “advertising” that is thinly-disguised CCP propaganda. Of the three, the one that accepted the most money was the WaPo.