America’s Top Generals Walked Straight Into China’s Influence Machine

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By Ben Smith

The Chinese Communist Party didn't need to penetrate the Pentagon. It built a private network around it, and stocked it with some of America's most senior retired generals and admirals.

That's the core finding in Natalie Winters' new report on the Sanya Initiative, a decade-plus military dialogue funded by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) and run in coordination with the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC). Congressional investigators have identified CAIFC as a front for the PLA's former General Political Department, responsible for intelligence collection and "propaganda and perception management." The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission specifically cited CAIFC's role in Sanya.

Winters summarized the findings Tuesday on X:

The first delegation, named in CUSEF's own 2008-2009 annual report, included retired Adm. William "Bill" Owens, former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer, former Pacific Command chief Adm. Joseph Prueher, former Southern Command chief Gen. Charles Wilhelm and former Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane. By 2009, the combined American-Chinese delegation had traveled to Hawaii, Washington and New York, where they sat down with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, members of Congress and senior State Department officials.

The glossy brochures called it a peaceful exchange. What they left out was CAIFC's actual mandate. Congressional investigators described the group as performing the "dual roles of intelligence collection and propaganda and perception management" as part of the CCP's broader United Front system, an influence apparatus designed to cultivate foreign elites and neutralize opposition to Beijing's objectives.

The warnings were public as early as 2011. Mark Stokes, a former Pentagon official and co-author of a landmark study on PLA political warfare, testified before the commission that the Chinese side's intentions were spelled out in the initiative's own first report:

"The Chinese side says we wish you would advocate these positions," Stokes testified, adding that American editorials later appeared with a "stark similarity" to what the Chinese participants had pushed. Hearing co-chair Jeffrey L. Fiedler responded: "Sounds like it was a successful narrative that was placed."

A 2013 investigation by John Garnaut found a striking imbalance in the initiative's early deliverables. The American side had agreed to try to delay a Pentagon report on China's military power until after Taiwan's election, viewed the U.S. election cycle as an opportunity to shape military relations, and discussed writing opinion pieces to counter critical coverage of China's military. Garnaut found no comparable list of commitments from the Chinese side. Shortly after those early Sanya meetings, Owens published opinion pieces urging Washington to treat China as a friend and end arms sales to Taiwan.

Owens insisted his involvement was purely philanthropic and kept separate from his business interests. "This has been a purely philanthropic activity for me, and I have never directly or indirectly used these contacts or associations for any commercial purpose," he told Garnaut. The timeline tells a different story. In September 2009, the same year the delegation met Clinton and Mullen, Owens began consulting for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant already drawing national security scrutiny in Washington. He later founded Amerilink Telecom Corp. to market Huawei equipment in the U.S., including a bid for a major Sprint network contract. Sprint ultimately rejected Huawei after Congress and national security officials raised alarms. Owens continued publicly defending the company anyway.

The program kept growing. By 2013, CUSEF was calling Sanya an "established military-to-military exchange." Later participants identified by Winters included former CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid, former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno, former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert and others. At the 2019 meeting, Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia delivered the keynote. Active-duty officers from both countries had attended earlier sessions as observers, including the 2017 meeting in Beijing.

The Sanya name eventually faded. The operation didn't. The initiative moved to the Stimson Center in 2020, and in November 2023, Stimson brought four recently retired American three- and four-star generals to Beijing for the 12th dialogue, once again co-hosted with CAIFC.

This report follows Winters' separate investigation into CUSEF-funded press trips for American journalists in exchange for favorable coverage of Beijing, which RedState covered last week. Retired generals and compliant reporters served the same master. They just offered Beijing different kinds of access.

By 2011, U.S. officials had publicly tied CAIFC to intelligence collection and influence operations. The dialogue kept expanding anyway. Washington's national security establishment kept showing up. The label changed. The closed-door channel, and the leverage it gave Beijing, survived.

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