Georgia Senate candidate Jon Ossoff was revealed to have business ties to a pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) company, PCCW Media, which opposes the pro-Democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Ossoff, as the head of a London-based film company, failed to initially disclose these ties, as National Review uncovered in September:
“Ossoff, whose role as CEO of a London-based producer of investigative documentaries has drawn scrutiny over the years, reported in an amended financial statement that he has received at least $5,000 from PCCW Media Limited over the last two years — a detail that has previously gone unreported. Ossoff did not disclose his ties to PCCW in his initial financial report, which he filed in May.”
Ossoff eventually amended his disclosures to reflect the ties, though did not list the exact amount his film-company received, but rather the minimum, $5,000, that he is required by law to disclose.
As it turns out, PCCW is partially owned by China Unicom, a company maintained by the Chinese government. In 2017, a host of powerhouse Chinese companies invested a total of $11.7 billion in China Unicom, including Alibaba and Tencent.
Alibaba’s CEO is a member of the CCP, and the company is a top developer for a prominent propaganda app run by the Chinese government. Tencent is a notorious technology tool of the Chinese government, known for surveilling its billions of users and censoring anti-CCP language. Its social media platform, WeChat, also was found to censor vital information about coronavirus. The tech giant is an obvious puppet of the authoritarian Chinese government, and was even labeled as an “enabler of Chinese government oppression” by the United Nations Human Rights Watch.
A handful of GOP Senators sponsored legislation to restrict officials in the United States from holding ties with Chinese technology companies, including Tencent. They labeled Tencent as the CCP’s "glorified surveillance arm" that seeks to "to conduct international surveillance and present an ongoing threat to the United States and our allies.”
Ossoff’s campaign previously contended that the Senate hopeful “strongly supports” the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, but these business ties suggest otherwise.