Red Octopus Reaches From Beijing to Los Angeles to Ohio and Beyond
What do riots in Los Angeles and protests in Ohio have to do with the People’s Republic of China?
You might be surprised to learn how far and wide the tentacles of the red octopus reach.
I examined the roles of NGOs (non-governmental organizations, particularly non-profits) in funding and organizing pro-illegal immigration riots in How the Left is Trying to Launch a Civil War, City by City. Now we look at the role played by communist China.
There’s an ever-growing body of evidence, now coming to light under the Trump administration, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not just intentionally poisoning Americans with deadly drugs, it is also partnering with Mexican drug cartels to weaken and sabotage America in a variety of ways.
Why?
The left and China have the same goals – undermine the Trump administration and traditional America.
We can see how it works in Los Angeles, where street gangs work with the cartels, who work with China.
It is not difficult to make the argument that the cartels run L.A.
And the gangs are their military wing on the ground.
Both have made millions in human trafficking by importing drugs and legions of illegal immigrants into California.
They are also able to muster thousands to protest when ICE moves to turn off their pipeline of money, drugs, and human cargo.
Here’s how they do it.
Cartels partner with China
Television station KABC has documented how the cartels, in collusion with China, have turned Los Angeles International Airport into the “drug trafficking hub of the world.”
The airport has become "the cartels' global distribution center."
"Mexican cartels use the Los Angeles area to get drugs into the country and then distributed throughout the country, and also internationally," said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada.
"Mexican cartels have trusted lieutenants and individuals in this area that helped bring the drugs into it, and then broker deals in the Los Angeles area," he added.
That has made fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine abundant in L.A.
In addition, the station reports, “huge quantities are shipped to global markets. It's big business and distribution is everything, and LAX is just one cog in the system. Southern California has become the cartels' unwilling partner.”
The cartels have even figured out how to protect their main supplier of fentanyl, China, from accusations of poisoning Americans intentionally. Instead of importing the drug itself, the cartels bring in raw ingredients, known as precursor chemicals, which are legal.
China flies those chemicals into Los Angeles through the mail, then the cartels “bring the chemicals over the border to their own labs in Mexico, synthesize it into fentanyl, and then smuggle it back to L.A. to be distributed around the world.”
That has given the cartels an unlimited supply of the lucrative and lethal drug, because, according to Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of the DEA in Los Angeles, unlike heroin and cocaine, fentanyl does not need a growing season.
"With synthetics, like fentanyl, I mean, there's an unlimited supply of chemicals. I mean it's never-ending. They just keep getting more and more and more."
The New York Post identified the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels as the biggest manufacturers of fentanyl pills, made at a cost of about 13 cents apiece in Mexico. The cartels sell those pills to Americans for a hefty profit, anywhere from 50 cents to $5.00 per pill.
The drugs are often fake prescription pills, “made to resemble commonly prescribed opioids such as Oxycodone and Percocet and other prescriptions such as Xanax and Adderall, all of which are popular party drugs used by teens,” according to officials.
Chinese Money Laundering
China’s business partnership with the cartels is not limited to drug trafficking.
They are also banking partners.
And business is booming.
The Sinola Cartel has partnered with money laundering groups run by wealthy Chinese nationals living in Los Angeles. The underground bankers helped the cartel launder $50 million in drug profits, according to the Justice Department, after arresting 24 defendants in 2024.
Using a Chinese bank controlled by a money laundering broker, the group uses the drug profits to purchase goods in China, such as electronics, clothing, and precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl.
The goods are sent to Mexico and sold, with the proceeds going to the cartel, according to the U.S. Attorney.
The Chinese laundering system “has exponentially increased the profits of the two Mexican cartels fueling the fentanyl crisis in the U.S.”
The sudden gusher of income for Chinese organized crime groups has made them the dominant money launderers worldwide, and catapulted them into major players in the United States.
They used their money laundering profits to take over the illicit marijuana trade, after the cartels shifted their focus to harder drugs.
“It’s two revenue streams that no one else can compete with,” said former DEA agent Christopher Urben. “They’ve created within the United States, I hate to say it, this super cartel organized crime force.”
American officials fear that has created a critical national security concern because of the close ties between the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese organized crime.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she’s convinced that the Chinese government is behind criminal activity in her state.
“There is so much control by China over criminal organizations that to me it defies belief to think that the Chinese government is not involved,” she added.
Last June, a bipartisan House committee determined the Chinese government subsidizes the production of illegal narcotics for export to the U.S.
The DEA has busted cash couriers in at least 20 states, including Ohio.
But the Chinese networks are particularly “difficult to penetrate due to a lack of Mandarin speakers in federal law enforcement agencies,” and because of the difficulty in cracking WeChat, “the encrypted messaging platform commonly used by Chinese networks to move drug proceeds.”
DEA sources say it will take a massive effort to dismantle the Chinese money laundering network, similar to the federal operation that tackled Italian organized crime 30 years ago.
But, as ominous as that may be, the Chinese mafia is just part of a much bigger problem – the Chinese government’s stealth war on America.
Unrestricted Warfare is Poisoning America
The Chinese call it “Unrestricted Warfare.”
That was the name of a 1999 book by two People's Liberation Army officers that outlined a master plan to destroy America and achieve global domination by using alternative forms of warfare.
One author explained, "the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden."
That includes poisoning Americans.
We are finally waking up to the fact that the Chinese Communist Party is using fentanyl as a weapon to kill or disable as many Americans as possible.
A bill in Congress would require the Department of Homeland Security to “treat illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.”
H.R. 128 recognizes:
• Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.
• Fentanyl is the “deadliest drug threat the United States has ever faced,” according to the Justice Department.
• The Border Patrol seized 27,293 pounds of fentanyl in 2023, enough to kill 6 billion people.
A 2024 report by the Heritage Foundation found:
• China’s facilitation of the fentanyl trade causes 200 deaths per day.
• Synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, caused 75,000 deaths in 2023.
• The fentanyl trade cost the U.S. economy more than $1.5 trillion just in 2020.
A House Select Committee on the Communist Chinese Party found:
• The CCP “directly subsidizes the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics.”
• The CCP offers a tax rebate program for exporting fentanyl precursors.
• Abundant evidence the CCP affirmatively promotes the export of illicit chemicals.
This is why I introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 1 this year, urging Congress to pass legislation designating illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
It passed by a vote of 32-0, with the support of my Democratic colleagues in the Ohio Senate.
Every Democrat but one also voted for my Senate Bill 226 that passed in the Senate 30-1 last year to address another enormous problem posed by China – our need to protect American military installations and critical infrastructure from foreign adversaries.
The legislation was designed to specifically prevent individuals, businesses, organizations, and governments from specific foreign countries from buying land within 25 miles of a military installation, such as bases or airports, or critical infrastructure facilities.
Communist Chinese firms and companies already own 380,000 acres of our country's farmland.
Ohio’s land should not be for sale to those who seek to destroy the American way of life.
A War By Other Means
If the Communist Chinese would do something so brazenly evil as poisoning Americans, they surely would have no compunction about corrupting our political system by spreading propaganda and fostering insurrectionist protests and riots.
Growing evidence indicates that is the case.
Tang Baiqiao, a Chinese political dissident who led student protests during the 1989 democracy movement, said the Chinese Communist Party was behind the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles.
He claimed on X that the riots were not spontaneous but were “orchestrated by foreign and dark domestic forces aiming to create chaos.”
The China Observer reported that wooden planks, shields, and other items were distributed to rioters at a Home Depot.
The website also reported there is an “extensive infiltration of China's (subversive) networks in the U.S. (and that) Antifa is likely one part of it.”
In response to concerns that the CCP was involved, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the agency is “investigating any and all monetary connections responsible for these riots.”
That includes one group with well-known ties to Beijing and already known to have backed the riots, the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
That is “a communist political party linked to networks funded by pro-Beijing tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham.”
He is China's own version of George Soros.
A New York Times investigation discovered how China is using Singham’s non-profits in America to push its communist agenda and propaganda.
And how Singham uses “a tangle of nonprofit groups and shell companies” to work “closely with the Chinese government media machine” to finance its propaganda worldwide.
One objective is to confuse American liberals into supporting communism: “The Times tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Mr. Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.”
The Times says Singham “and his allies are on the front line of what Communist Party officials call a ‘smokeless war.’ Under the rule of Xi Jinping, China has expanded state media operations, teamed up with overseas outlets and cultivated foreign influencers. The goal is to disguise propaganda as independent content.”
And, “the result is a seemingly organic bloom of far-left groups that echo Chinese government talking points, echo one another, and are echoed in turn by the Chinese state media.”
Singham funds many of the groups engaged in recent protests against Israel and the United States, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the People’s Forum, the Answer Coalition, and CodePink.
These groups are self-described socialist organizations stoking discontent to push an anti-capitalist, anti-American agenda.
In his #1 bestselling book, Blood Money, investigative reporter Peter Schweizer detailed how “Singham has been actively coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party for many years now.”
That book exposed the “Chinese Communist Party’s covert operations in the American drug trade, social justice movement, and medical establishment to sow chaos and decadence in the United States.”
Schweizer says, “As with the BLM riots in 2020, the L.A. disturbances are not spontaneous or chaotic. They have been planned, supported, and even staffed by activist organizations whose goals have nothing to do with immigration law or the plight of day laborers lingering in Home Depot parking lots.”
Schweizer has also documented how the dark money group Arabella Advisors has funded the groups behind the left’s “No King’s” protests this summer by showering them with $114.8 million since 2019.
That money primarily comes from the left’s billionaire activists, including George Soros, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Hansjorg Wyss.
On The Record has documented in detail how Wyss, the radical leftist from Switzerland, tried to use his foreign millions to subvert the Ohio Constitution last year by funding a pro-gerrymandering ballot amendment.
The 89-year-old Wyss may be sidelined politically now that he “is facing a sexual harassment lawsuit from a now-former female employee in California who claims Wyss groped her, shared unwanted information about his sexual past and then ultimately retaliated against her when she denied his advances.”
But Singham is stretching his tentacles.
The People’s Forum is another Singham-funded organization that is an ally of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and openly advocates on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party’s various causes.
Both organizations have called for more anti-ICE protests, using X to post the times and places protestors should gather.
Both groups are allied with the American far-left group, Code Pink.
The founder of Code Pink, Jodi Evans, married Singham, founder of the two previously mentioned pro-CCP groups. He donated $1.4 million to her group.
Evans then began a campaign in 2020 called, “China Is Not Our Enemy.”
Previously a critic, she now calls China “a defender of the oppressed and a model for economic growth without slavery or war.”
She defends China’s oppression, enslavement, and possible genocide of the Uyghur ethnic minority, calling them terrorists.
Evans also partners with groups that spread pro-CCP narratives.
Congress has finally noticed all this communist interbreeding.
The House Oversight Committee now plans to “issue a formal document request to Singham regarding his funding of a communist group linked to the L.A. riots and the CCP.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has written to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Patel, asking them “to assess whether The People’s Forum and CODEPINK should register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act because of their alleged ties to Beijing.”
From Beijing to the Heartland
Guess where else these groups are active?
The Columbus branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation was one of the organizers of the July 4 protest at the Ohio Statehouse.
It was nominally a protest against the president’s pro-growth legislation and deportations of violent criminals.
But, judging from the media coverage, it was more of an opportunity to once again call Trump a nazi.
And it was sponsored by Communist China.
Getting the picture?
The other big protest organizer in the Buckeye State is the Ohio division of the national radical-left group Indivisible.
Soros has given $8 million to Indivisible and Wyss has donated $2.5 million.
On The Record has documented how the state chapter, Indivisible Central Ohio, generally sponsors four protests around the state every Saturday, and plenty more on other days.
On the Record has also documented how Indivisible's founders were inspired by Chairman Mao.
That is Indivisible's role model – a savage tyrant responsible for more than 70 million deaths.
On the Record also reported how investigative journalist Azra Nomani discovered how Indivisible and the Democratic Party make their nationwide protests seem community organized.
She says these groups use digital platforms, pre-scripted chants, preprinted signs, and nationwide toolkits to manufacture the appearance of grassroots activism.
Nomani says the nationwide protests are actually a staged partisan campaign led by Democratic Party political operatives, multi-million dollar nonprofits, and professional protest companies.
And now we know China is backing them, too.
These protests are the opposite of a grassroots movement organized by normal Ohioans.
These protests and riots are funded and organized by far-left foreign billionaires and the Chinese Communist Party.
From Los Angeles to Columbus and beyond
How has China got away with it?
As Schweizer discovered, the CCP is backed by a powerful elite in America that has gotten rich off cooperation with China.
That includes big guys who get 10%.
Schweizer says, “The CCP's influence on media, education and technology ensures that young Americans will grow up hearing, reading and believing that principles of America's founding were lies designed to hide unmitigated evil.”
I would caution my fellow Americans, as incredible as that sounds, don’t underestimate the power of the hidden hand behind all of this.
That hidden hand in Beijing is already linked to funding protests, providing supplies for riots, pushing propaganda, poisoning Americans while addicting and demoralizing millions of others, helping flood the country with illegal immigrants, and partnering with the cartels and international organized crime.
The good news?
There’s new sheriff in town.
We eagerly look forward to what Kash Patel and the FBI reveal about the CCP’s involvement in the riots.
And China’s war on America by other means.
Postscript
Why has it been so easy for Communist China to rapidly gain such influence over a major American city?
Perhaps because the mayor of Los Angeles was a disciple of Communist Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Mayor Karen Bass is in the news right now because she is outraged at the sight of ICE agents enforcing immigration law. She bizarrely calls that “unconstitutional” and has launched a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
To make sense of that, perhaps it helps to know her background.
In the 1970’s, Bass worked in Cuba for Castro’s "Venceremos Brigade.”
She went to Cuba at least 8 times in the 1970’s.
Maybe more.
The Brigade said she visited Cuba every six months.
When she was vetted as a potential running mate for Joe Biden in 2020, Bass claimed she was building houses in Cuba and taking tours of healthcare facilities.
Those who looked into the Brigade found something much more insidious.
The Atlantic described the Brigade as “a joint venture of the Castro government and Students for a Democratic Society, the leftist, antiwar organization that gave birth to the Weather Underground terrorist group.”
"The Venceremos Brigade is a radical Marxist group that was conceptualized by Fidel Castro and managed by his regime's top spy agency,” said Mercedes Schlapp, Trump 2020 Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications.
“The Cuban dictatorship used Venceremos to recruit young American leftists under the guise of humanitarian work that concealed its true objectives, which were to weaken American democracy and destabilize our hemisphere.”
The American Presidency Project at U.C. Santa Barbara called the Brigade “a Marxist group started by the Castro regime to subvert American interests, weaken democracies, and spread communism around the world.”
"To be a member of the brigade, you had to be confirmed as a Marxist-Leninist," a sheriff's deputy who infiltrated the group testified to the U.S. House in 1972.
The Washington Post reported, “A communist newspaper from 1975 suggests she (Bass) was a leader and organizer in her native Southern California.”
She was more than that, according to a national security expert.
“She was a talent scout and recruiter,” according to J. Michael Waller, Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy.
“Karen Bass was trained in revolutionary warfare and subversion during her many decades in the Cuban regime-sponsored Venceremos Brigades,” he added.
Bass was the "leader of the Venceremos Brigade in southern California," according to Tablet Magazine.
The Los Angeles Times reported the Venceremos Brigade allegedly trained radical young Americans in "terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare.”
The New York Times reported Senate testimony by police explosive experts that Brigade "members were taught how to make bombs while in Cuba."
Bass has presented no evidence that her ties to Cuba are harmless.
Just the opposite.
She described Oneil Cannon as her mentor.
He was “a top member of the Communist Party USA for decades,” according to Politico.
Bass’s strident opposition to enforcing federal law is even more striking when you consider she already has a historic crisis to fix.
It has now been six months since her deadly incompetence contributed to wildfires burning down the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, when firefighters all-too-often found fire hydrants empty.
16,000 structures were destroyed.
Her Cuban-style bureaucracy has issued a mere 90 rebuild permits.
Maybe she’s just waiting for the Chinese to scoop up some prime real estate at fire sale prices.
Dr. Terry Johnson represents Ohio Senate District 14
He is a retired physician, retired military officer (including two tours in Iraq and one posting in Kuwait), and a former four-term State Representative. Dr. Johnson served as Scioto County Coroner from 2002-2010.