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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28507 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Chinese Asset in NY State Government

Linda Sun was born in China, moved to the US with her parents at the age of five, and later became a US citizen. She rose up to become the Deputy Chief of Staff for the governor. I know plenty of folks who maintain dual citizenship with other countries, but I don't know how serious the USG was/is about making Chinese nationals "really" renounce their Chinese citizenship in order to become US citizens, nor do I have any idea if Sun did/did not.

She was a subject of interest starting in at least 2020, when she was interviewed by the FBI about her trip to China. While not knowing whether she's categorized a dual citizen (which I do know, for many purposes, the security apparatus of the USG treats as synonymous with "foreign national" for many purposes) or simply a former Chinese citizen with Chinese heritage, I also don't know what the state of these sorts of FBI inquiries are. Have they become a more routine/random matter, where they just occasionally drag some folks in this category in to question them and see if anything comes up? Or did they already have some reason to be suspicious of her in 2020? Her recent indictment acting as a foreign agent, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy includes events going back to 2015 (quite a few in the 2018-2019 years), but it's not clear at what point the FBI or anyone else became aware of any of them or to what extent they motivated the 2020 interview. NYT describes it as "questions were repeatedly raised".

This took years and a significant quantity of behavior bubbling up to get to the point where she was finally fired (March 2023). I can't currently find any details of the firing, but the NY governor's press secretary said that she was fired for "misconduct". Another year and a half, and we got an indictment. This may all be a very plausible timeline for how these sorts of things generally go.

So. Paul Manafort. He joined Donald Trump's campaign in March 2016 (when they were likely scrambling to get any sort of organization going), was promoted to campaign manager three months later in June, then fired two months after that in August, essentially immediately after Trump received his first security briefing.

To this day, there are still people (some even in TheMotte) who think that Paul Manafort is the smoking gun of Trump's culpability with Russia. That Trump obviously must be guilty for having that guy on his campaign. That it proves that "Trump's campaign" was working with Russia, and that it's Trump's personal fault.

On the other side, I personally believe that Paul Manafort and his Russian collaborators made a victim out of Donald Trump, and I can remain perfectly consistent in saying that I think that Linda Sun and her Chinese collaborators made a victim out of the NYS governments that employed her.

I think someone could make a plausible argument that both Trump and specific folks in the NYS gov't were culpable, though I probably would be pretty skeptical; as I said, I think the timeline in the Sun case is plausibly fine. But I would need an absolutely phenominal argument to support the proposition that Trump was personally culpable for Manafort, but that individuals in the NYS government were not culpable for Sun... otherwise, frankly, I would have to chalk such a position up to pure partisanship.

I find the timing of this alongside the Russia Today fake indictments of Russians who will never face a real trial to be suspicious. The DOJ has lost its presumption of objectivity, and it really feels like they are trying to say, "pay no attention to the fact that the DNC of our second largest state was severely compromised by the PRC. A few right leaning youtubers got paid a few million dollars by a media company secretly financed by Russia!"

Frankly, one interpretation of this whole affair is that Lauren Chen and her husband were scamming the Russians, because the Russians don't seem to have got anything they wanted out of this. They paid a lot for very little. Still, it would be a foolish thing for Chen to do.

These influencers are mostly just regular conservative culture warriors, and half of them are only reluctantly voting Trump. They're not especially pro-Russia, although they're not especially keen on the US's role in the conflict either. They mostly don't talk about it. Matt Christiansen, in particular, strikes me as a relatively fair-minded and moderately conservative libertarian type--no rabble-rouser by any means. The views these people express seem relatively normal among online right-wingers, the kind of people and views which are being systemically excluded from mainstream channels and outlets. While I don't expect it to be part of Russia's intent, I am reminded of how Western governments have in the past funded outside or underground media organizations to counter state-controlled media in foreign dictatorships.

I wonder if the reason the Russians targeted these influencers is because they actually believed the left-wing claims about all the right-wing grifters being pro-Russian, and so they decided to capitalize on that by actually funding them. They then discovered that the influencers weren't really all that pro-Russian at all, and then they felt like they had been cheated (and maybe they were?). However, the whole funding scheme is then exposed, and it has now seemingly confirmed the original left-wing claims that these right-wing influencers were all just pro-Russian grifters. Ironies abound.

Of course, if it was more like a scam to take Russian money but then just do whatever, then it has now backfired quite badly on them.

Maybe its 4D decision theory chess?

Now that people know that it is Russian policy to throw large amounts of money to vaguely pro-Russian influencers with no-strings attached, people with large platforms will be more willing to sprinkle in anti-interventionist rhetoric in the hopes of getting that sweet sweet kremlin money.

Frankly, one interpretation of this whole affair is that Lauren Chen and her husband were scamming the Russians, because the Russians don't seem to have got anything they wanted out of this.

I think this is pretty common in intelligence work, the CIA routinely pays huge sums to large numbers of people who provide shitty, fake or useless information in the hope that some day, one of them might be in a position to hear something or accidentally find themselves in a useful role. It was the same in the Cold War (on all sides).

A few billion a year on human intelligence that is 99% useless is chump change.

I guess $10 million sounds like a lot, but it's not really in this context, especially if they were spending $100,000-$400,000 per month on multiple influencers for a handful of hours content that didn't really include anything in the way of Kremlin propaganda. It sounds like the Russian agents were none too happy with how things were going. Is that because Chen was just bad at her job or did she just not care? Of course, it gave those agents blackmail power over Chen and perhaps others, but what good is that? These are quite marginalized figures who have little or no instituational knowledge or pull to do anything for Russia. It all seems so absurd. But you're right, governments piss away money like this all the time.

Of course, I presume there are similar shenanigans going on elsewhere, but the DoJ likely has less interest in exposing them. These influencers are politically safe targets, but that just makes the Russians even more incompetent.

I'm curious to see how this plays out.

As of now Pool seems to be turning on his handlers

I know nothing about the guy, what's his deal?

As of now Pool seems to be turning on his handlers

Is he though? Russia doesn't give a shit if we think they suck donkey balls or that Putin is a scumbag. They care that we keep funding Ukraine and sanctioning their economy.

what's his deal?

It's a long story but basically: street journalist millennial covers Occupy Wall Street, gets into the burgeoning journo outlets of the era (Vice when they were hot shit) doing real investigative journalism, leaves them exactly as they go woke because he can see the writing on the wall, plays the youtube game hard (and I do mean hard, the guy used to publish news videos every day essentially by himself) at the right time. Makes a ton of money by catering to disaffected liberals, libertarians and other people thrown out of the left wing that aren't straight unadulterated MAGA and ends up at the head of his own small media empire, which includes his own news website and a couple of podcasts.

It's surprisingly not that uncommon a route, in retrospect I can think of two other guys who fit the bill. But Tim's special sauce is that he's a shrewd businessman from the school of hard knocks. He's got the most boring inoffensive content relative to how political commentators usually are but he knows how to position and market it very well.

This makes this particular thing a bit surprising because if there's anyone I would expect to properly vet funding sources it's him. He's been cultivating his reputation over the years to appeal to a particular demographic and he had some run ins with shady people in the past (who can forget the Jack Murphy drama?).

You can see him in this tweet executing a very competent defense in my opinion, but someone in his org fucked up, this is going to do permanent damage to his brand.

As for whether he's bought and paid for, I doubt it. Tim isn't the sort of person you can buy with money. You can fund him because he's useful for you to be around and you can nudge him towards particular things because he will follow algorithmic trends and rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and propaganda, but the guy that sacrificed his entire career to build his own thing for independence's sake isn't going to so directly sell out.

I used to like his street journalist content a long time ago, but he turned into the single worst thing you find on Youtube outside of Elsa/Spiderman content: "read alongs" w/ commentary on news articles. Louis Rossman also turned to the same, to my chagrin. I imagine it's a steady source of easy and cheap content that can be churned out daily, but my god does it feel dumb and insulting to me. It reminds me of school and reading along a text with the teacher.

The sirens of slop are hard to resist. He got from living in a van to owning a compound out of it, so while I do find the click bait titles cringe and his commentary and guests mediocre, it's easy to understand why he did it. You can't really fight the algorithm if you want to make money.

I do miss the old YouTube free for all where people tried the wildest things just to see what sticks.

Remember that one girl that did reply videos to every single popular thing with barely any other content than her cleavage in the thumbnail? People look dumber playing NPCs on TikTok but the game was rigged from the start.

The reply girls are arguably a big part of the reason why modern YouTube isn't what it used to be--the company changed the algorithm to punish reply girls, but it also punished non-garbage content in the process.

I don't exactly respect Tim Pool's political commentary, but I respect him a lot as a person and take this as a demonstration of how easy it is to be caught up in accusations of foreign influence, spying, etc.

Yeah, I know nothing about him. I'm just surprised to see an apology so fast, when anyone familiar with the dynamics here knows that denial is typically the dominant strategy.

I don't think "You can eat my Irish ass" is really an apology.

Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims. I cannot speak for anyone else at the company as to what they do or to what they are instructed.

I guess apology might not be the correct term, but he's not denying that it happened, merely that it influenced him in any way. Nowhere in there does he actually deny that it happened, he throws his handlers under the bus.

So yes, he's an edgy boy using naughty language against journalists. But he starts by basically admitting the allegations before backtracking to say that they're just allegations. He doesn't defend against them or deny or go on the attack.

My first thought was that the funding probably didn't have that much influence on the content produced (certainly it resulted in more videos and podcasts, but this doesn't nessesarily imply coercive editorial influence), but this clip from Tim Pool seems well beyond typical America-first isolationism. Does anyone know if there is context I am missing?

The rest of the program is the context. It's easy to clip out Tim shouting impotently at Ukraine being a slavic shithole of money laundering for his political enemies and say that he's a Russia shill, but he shits on Russia and China too. They're just not involved in the conspiracy narrative of red tribe.

It is in fact really just America-first isolationism. I'm sure you can find Alex Jones doing the same rant about how [country the US funds who lobbies for it] is actually an enemy of the American people. Be it Ukraine, Israel, or what have you.

Yeah. Given how many prominent Democrats still believe in and repeat false assertions about Russia-gate, my capacity for caring is very low.

But it is a valuable NPC detector.

If the Trump–Russia allegations were limited to Manafort and only Manafort, then you might have an argument. But there were several more people in Trump's circle who were indicted in connection with the Mueller investigation, and several more who were implicated due to having ties with Russia but committed no actual crimes. There ended up not being any fire, but there sure was a lot of smoke; it's certainly unusual for so many people in a presidential campaign to have connections to a country the US isn't exactly on great terms with. Combine that with Trump making statements about Russia that weren't exactly in line with what anyone on either side of the political aisle was saying at the time, and suspicion is understandable. If there were evidence that the conduct in question went beyond Sun and deeper into the Governor's office, I would expect there to be an investigation.

otherwise, frankly, I would have to chalk such a position up to pure partisanship.

I don't think Democrats have any qualms about hanging even more shit on Andrew Cuomo.

I’ve never seen anything that points directly to Trump knowing about these things. When the Russian hacks were happening in 2016, it was clear that Russia had state security reasons to not want Hillary in office. And for that matter pushing any division they could to weaken an adversary. But what never seems to materialize is a direct link to specifically Trump. Putin never seemed to talk to Trump, they had aligned interests perhaps, but it’s odd to me that the entirety of “Trump colluded with Russia” stories hinge on one off the cuff joke made when he was asked about it — and anyone watching knew he was joking. But he “asked Russia to hack”. It was sarcasm deliberately turned into evidence.

I would expect there to be an investigation

It appears from the following comments that most of this paragraph is tilting at windmills and, frankly, seems to be fundamentally about partisan misdirection. It's hard to understand how any of it is relevant to the comment I made. Are you literally just trying to completely change the topic to be something about whether there should have been any investigation whatsoever? That seems like a silly thing to do, because not only is it completely unrelated to my comment, but if you had bothered to ask what I think about whether there should have been any investigation at all about certain things, you'd have discovered that I agree that some sort of investigation should have happened (and reasonable people can obviously quibble as to what that investigation should have looked like). Instead, this is presented as some sort of gotcha, that I apparently "don't have an argument" at all, which is pretty bizarre, because you've completely avoided saying a single thing about the argument I made. It's entirely avoidant misdirection, and I'd appreciate it if you spoke plainly about the actual thing I focused on - do you think that Trump was personally culpable for Russia's actions taken against the United States (including their collaboration with Manafort, who was their agent for purposes of FARA), or do you think that Trump was a victim of such?

several more who were implicated due to having ties with Russia but committed no actual crimes

So nothing at all for these ones? You are allowed to "have ties" with a country. And Russia being our enemy is a matter under some contention.

You're allowed to have ties. You just can't be surprised when someone wants to look into them. Russia may not be our enemy, but our relationship with the Putin government circa 2016 wasn't the best.

This is a pretty weak justification for what turned out to be a total media fantasy and witchhunt.

but the whole thing is insane. if you apply this algorithm to any other politician then you will find matches. what about hilllary and the uranium one stuff or anyone that was part of the hillary campaign. the trump-russia thing was the IC community fucking over the president. if you check all the fucking idiots that have interacted with your target then you will find some of them are doing dodgy shit with foreign actors. there is literally no way you can prevent this because people are fucktards and you need to interact with people in order to have a presidential campaign. but it is even more insane because if you look beyond manifort who was a fucktard you are left with carter page who is basically an idiot. it wasn't enough for the IC community to bring attention to the fact that manifort was a fucktard they also needed to take advantage of the fact that page was an idiot then exploit him to make more noise. but don't worry spygate was a conspiracy according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spygate_(conspiracy_theory))

what about hilllary and the uranium one stuff or anyone that was part of the hillary campaign.

Um, the Justice Department spent 2 years investigating this. I don't remember anyone on the left saying they shouldn't; hell, even Trump seemed like he forgot about it by the time it wrapped up. Of course, no one cares about an investigation into a private citizen.

but don't worry spygate was a conspiracy according to wikipedia

Why would I care about Wikipedia's assessment of the issue?

Because Wikipedia is usually the first search result for any random thing any random person wants to research on the internet.

And that person would do well to look elsewhere.

I mean, sure, but we're talking about the average person, who is always going to take the path of least resistance. So it should concern us that said path is heavily tilted toward one worldview.

Name names

Do you seriously not know, or are you just looking for me to name the usual suspects so you can tell me why they were totally railroaded and did nothing wrong, or at least why they weren't Russian agents? Because that's not my argument. I'm not saying that there was any Trump–Russia connection, or that Trump himself did anything his critics accused him of, simply that the information available at the time warranted opening an investigation. If we had a tradition of strict standards regarding these kinds of things I could understand arguments to the contrary, but the Republicans had just spend 2 and a half years looking into Obama's comments after the Benghazi attack. The fact that people who seemed passionate about that at the time couldn't even adequately explain to me what the scandal even was tells you all you need to know. If anyone wants to investigate the New York State government further for possible CCP influence, I'm not going to complain.

but the Republicans had just spend 2 and a half years looking into Obama's comments after the Benghazi attack. The fact that people who seemed passionate about that at the time couldn't even adequately explain to me what the scandal even was tells you all you need to know.

Americans working at the Libyan embassy died after it was invaded by a crazed mob. Turns out the Obama administration had advanced notice this was possible, but chose not to increase security. After the incident, to cover their asses, they framed the maker of an unrelated anti-Islam documentary for inciting the mob, and prosecuted him. Then, in the years that followed, they all insisted that nothing untoward had happened whatsoever, and it was all a case of "Republicans pounced". A microcosm of Obama's (Hillary's) Libya policy, which replaced a dictator with a broke country that has become a civil war, an open-air slave market, and a transit hub for migrants into Europe. "We came, we saw, he died." Now, ten years on, Democrats have successfully convinced themselves that nothing happened and talking about Benghazi is proof that the speaker is some Republican crank who probably tends toward conspirwcy theories.

but I don't know how serious the USG was/is about making Chinese nationals "really" renounce their Chinese citizenship in order to become US citizens,

USG doesn't recognize dual citizenship and doesn't care if you renounce or not. It's China's policy to disown any citizens who naturalize in any other country. Under Chinese law she automatically lost her Chinese citizenship the moment she gained American citizenship.

Article 9

Any Chinese national who has settled abroad and who has been naturalized as a foreign national or has acquired foreign nationality of his own free will shall automatically lose Chinese nationality.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/LivinginChina/184710.htm

第九条　定居外国的中国公民，自愿加入或取得外国国籍的，即自动丧失中国国籍。

https://www.nia.gov.cn/n741440/n741547/c1013967/content.html

Edit: It seems that children under 18 can be naturalized in a foreign country without losing Chinese citizenship. I'm not sure of the legal reasoning but I guess it's probably considered that it's not fully of their own free will.

Any Chinese national who has settled abroad and who has been naturalized as a foreign national or has acquired foreign nationality of his own free will shall automatically lose Chinese nationality.

There's probably another exemption for Chinese sleeper agents?

There's also the question of whether someone has relatives back in China who can be threatened--that isn't going to disappear if they lose Chinese citizenship.

I don't see why citizenship even matters here. Nobody cares that someone in the US can vote in China; they care that they may be an agent for China's government. Getting US citizenship doesn't prevent that. If anything, getting US citizenship makes it worse because the agent can't be deported.

Would be funny if that was made explicit in the law:

"Any Chinese National spying for China in a foreign country may have their citizenship status revoked temporarily as a cover. But if they make it back to China safely we will reinstate their citizenship."

I find it interesting that you wouldn't run afoul of this if your second nationality is obtained through jus sanguinis. If you're born in China of a Chinese and an Algerian, you are automatically both.

There's some weird issues you can run into when countries try to pass laws that ban dual citizenship outright even though some nationalities are impossible to renounce. But the Chinese setup seems clever enough not to violate international law in this way.

I prefer Occam's razor.

Trump is a rich american man, holding the world's most powerful position, with none of his assets tied up with Russia. He isnt in Putin's pocket, because Putin has no leverage.

Even sexploitation is not useful anymore. Niether the stormy daniels nor hunter biden stories could sink either campaigns.

No one wakes up to having been compromised overnight. It is a decades long process of conceding leverage to a foreign authority. There are breadcrumbs everywhere and clear narratives emerge.

I cant imagine a single scenario or natrative where any sitting US president can be compromised by a foreign Govt. Trump or otherwise.

I cant imagine a single scenario or natrative where any sitting US president can be compromised by a foreign Govt. Trump or otherwise.

Picture this. You are president. Your son is a bit of a fuckup with expensive and transgressive tastes. You still love your son. Foreign agents end up with damaging information about your son, and are threatening to release the information, which could put your son at risk of serious jail time. On the upside, they offer bribes in exchange for favors to you and your son (which seem like a generous offer at first, but will then give them direct leverage on you). You could: a) turn your back on your son, let him face the music, etc... unacceptable, he might be a fuck up, you might be cynical career politician, but you still love your son. b) abuse your position officially to shield your son... it would cause immense harm to your legacy, your cause, your party, the reputation of your country for following its laws. Half the country already by default hates you, the other WILL hate you if you do this, and you will hand over the next election to your rival. It remains an option at the last minute when you are on your way out and have little to lose, but... hardly ideal, and not an immediate solution. c) give in to their demands. Maybe negociate them to something smaller, something you could have plausibly done outside of their influence.

Now I'm not saying this happened, at least, probably not exactly like this. I think in reality there was an option d) let the media circle the wagons with the party and try as hard as they can not to make this a crisis, but I think it shows a scenario where someone could plausibly compromise a sitting US president. Especially if he was compromised before he had that option (say he was not the president and not preferred presidential candidate at the time so couldn't assume the media would try to smother the story).

There are no US/China dual citizens. China (like Japan, India, Singapore) doesn't recognize dual citizenship.

Also, is it just me, or do a lot of the individual items under Summary of Criminal Conduct in the indictment (items 9 to 15) come across as nothingburgers? Blocking a meeting? Getting the governor to post a thank you tweet for donated respirators? These are things a politician's chief of staff does, & it's not like she did it in secret and gave no reasons why it's not in the interest of the governor to e.g. have those meetings. And the "visa fraud" is ... so they can get a letter of invitation so some Chinese government officials can visit NY to talk business?

Also:

In a 65-page indictment, prosecutors laid out a yearslong scheme in which Ms. Sun blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office, eliminated references to Taiwan and Uyghurs from state communications and quashed meetings with Taiwanese officials, all in an effort to bolster Chinese government positions.

Are "blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office" and "quashed meetings with Taiwanese officials" not the same thing in different words? Why list the same item twice?

In return, Ms. Sun, 40, and her husband, Chris Hu, 41, received payoffs that included millions of dollars in transactions with China-based businesses tied to Mr. Hu, prosecutors said. They also included travel benefits, tickets to events, a series of Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a Chinese consulate official’s private chef and employment for Ms. Sun’s cousin in China, officials said.

What does "millions of dollars in transactions" mean? Is it a million dollar bribe? Or is it that the China based business did million dollar worth of business transactions with customers?

Are "travel benefits" and "tickets to events" not perfectly normal things to for one government to give another government's representatives in the normal course of business?

Are "blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office" and "quashed meetings with Taiwanese officials" not the same thing in different words? Why list the same item twice?

I think the first one might be "literally didn't let them into the building" and the second might be "deleted appointments from the governor's schedule".

There are no US/China dual citizens.

I wouldn't say exactly zero.

Although she was born and raised in San Francisco, Gu competes for her mother's native China. To do so, the International Olympic Committee requires that she hold Chinese citizenship. But in spite of China's ban on dual citizenship there is no government record of her renouncing her American citizenship.

Eileen Gu pulled it off. And if I understand correctly the Chinese government determined she was a Chinese citizen in record time. Right quick to get her qualified for the Olympics. She got a fresh Chinese passport and everything.

And some writer I never heard of before says they accidentally got dual US/China citizenship and discovered that fact as an adult. https://time.com/charter/6148188/eileen-gus-identity/ Whoopsie-daisey. I bet if they didn't renounce their Chinese citizenship they could have kept it on the down low.

On somewhat of a side note, but unlike the US department of state, which takes upwards of two months to issue passports, and sometimes multiple years to approve visa petitions, Chinese bureaucracy is considerably faster... I've gotten papers processed by the NYC consulate before in under a week.

Yeah my visa applications for China took a few days. I got a 60 day visa in around a week and years later a 90 day visa also around one week turnaround.

If you read the entire indictment, it looks like there was a sort of quid pro quo going on. Sun's husband met with Chinese government officials who facilitated his business exporting seafood from the United States to China. They earned millions of dollars from this business, which they didn't report on tax forms and laundered into the United States through purchases of real estate and luxury cars. There were also a series of lower-level gifts like covering travel to China and giving them event tickets. In return, she was basically doing the Chinese government's bidding to the extent that her position allowed. She was regularly meeting with Chinese officials and keeping them abreast of her actions.

These are things a politician's chief of staff does, & it's not like she did it in secret and gave no reasons why it's not in the interest of the governor to e.g. have those meetings.

That's certainly a defense. But, "My actions were totally in the interest of New York State and had nothing to do with the millions of dollars my husband's business earned after meeting with Chinese government officials or the thousands of dollars of gifts and travel compensation I got and didn't include on my ethics report" may not play particularly well with a jury.

The nature of the business environment in China makes it very likely you'll be mixing it up with government officials on a regular basis.

But yeah if those translations are faithful it's pretty clear she was working for the interests of her PRC contacts.

That's certainly a defense. But, "My actions were totally in the interest of New York State and had nothing to do with the millions of dollars my husband's business earned after meeting with Chinese government officials or the thousands of dollars of gifts and travel compensation I got and didn't include on my ethics report" may not play particularly well with a jury.

I agree that if there really exists an financial arrangement whereby money is exchanged for political favor, then that completely changes the nature of her actions. However, the way it's presented in media and in the indictment is as if those actions on her part (such as blocking the meeting) constitute illegal activities in and of themselves, as if she can be convicted for simply being politically chummy with the Chinese, with or without the alleged kickbacks.

The listing of "travel benefits", "tickets to events" and "salted ducks" as instances of kickback is particularly odd. It makes you wonder why they felt the need to appeal to such ambiguious evidence if they had actually solid evidence proving the financial quid pro quo.

That's how indictments (and civil complaints) work. They list a bunch of facts and then allege that the fact pattern means that the person broke the law (or committed a civil wrong). They don't have to include every detail or spell out every implication. They aren't the last word in the evidence that's going to be presented at trial, either. All that's necessary is that they state enough facts that a jury can make a reasonable inference that the alleged acts were violated, and they've done that.

The listing of "travel benefits", "events to tickets" and "salted ducks" as instances of kickback is particularly odd.

Lol, you're obviously younger than me. Before they cracked down on that sort of thing, event tickets was one of the biggest kickback schemes around. Why do you think corporate luxury boxes became so popular? When I was a kid if there was anything I wanted to go to there was always a chance my uncle (who was a facilities manager for a downtown skyscraper) could get them from a vendor. When I was in high school my friend's dad was in sales and he bought like a dozen tickets to every show at a local concert venue to give to customers. There were always a few shows a year no one wanted tickets to so a whole bunch of us would go. The ethics people started cracking down on that so the new thing became trips. If a vendor wanted to make sales he'd invite his customers to, say, an all-expenses paid hunting trip at a ranch in Wyoming. Ostensibly to talk business. This was soon cracked-down on and most companies started limiting their purchasing agents to gifts under $100, which has been steadily revised downward to the point where anything more than a fruit basket is prohibited. For a while, there was still and old school of purchasing agents who pretty much wouldn't do business with anyone who didn't give kickbacks, and were kind of flummoxed when the new generation of vendors didn't have anything to offer because 90% of their customer base wasn't allowed to accept anything, and the new generation of purchasing agents never knew of a world where that was even conceivable. This wasn't really that long ago (within the past 20 years), so it's understandable that stuff like this is still considered a red flag.

Kind of a shame really, because it's not as though genuine corruption dries up and goes away forever. You can't bribe politicians, but you can hire their children, or donate to their foundations. Maybe someone can make a case that cracking down on gifts is good -- cracking down on explicit bribes is good. But any culture that facilitates gift-giving is personal and human and doing something more than just facilitating efficient market transactions.

There are no US/China dual citizens.

What of someone born in the US of a US father and a Chinese mother the latter of which did not get permanent citizenship in the US?

That child would, by virtue of automatically acquiring US citizenship via being born on American soil, fall under the 5th clause of China s nationality law (specifically the part following the semicolon in the 5th clause) and so would not automatically acquire Chinese citizenship.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/中華人民共和國國籍法

I mean, if one wants to be philosophical, one could worry that there might exist some sort of problematic race condition situations where it all depends on how "fast" the two countries' laws respectively kick in (metaphysically speaking). It also depends on your conception of personhood. If e.g. US law recognizes an infant as a person even as she's sliding down the vaginal canal but hasn't emerged yet, but Chinese law only recognizes after the baby has emerged (this is just a silly example for illustrative purposes), then the US law will always kicks in earlier and therefore (per the exception created by the 5th clause of China's nationality law) preempt the China law from giving her automatic Chinese citizenship.

I can't read Chinese so that article may have better or more up to date information on their own laws, but the English Wikipedia for the same topic says:

While Chinese nationality law does not recognize multiple nationalities, the current legal framework and its practical implementation allow for certain situations where de facto dual nationality occurs: While children born to Chinese parents abroad in general would not acquire Chinese nationality if they acquired foreign nationality by birth, those children who are born to Chinese parents living abroad only temporarily, such as diplomatic staff, humanitarian workers or overseas students, will still be regarded as Chinese nationals and hence be de facto nationals of both the Chinese and the foreign state.

Citing this paper.

All the references I can find on this in languages I read seem to cite voluntary naturalization and permanent residence or citizenship abroad of the Chinese parent (or both) as the suspensive mechanisms. Neither of which applies in this example.

Can you translate the 5th clause?

Well, it goes like this (I've added numbers to label the 3 conjuncts)

If one or both of the parents are Chinese citizens and the individual is born in a foreign country, he or she shall have Chinese nationality; however, if (1) one or both of the parents are Chinese citizens and (2) resides in a foreign country and (3) the individual has foreign nationality at birth, he or she shall not have Chinese nationality.

There's no reference to "permanent residence", as I suppose that's a concept that's only meaningful in some countries, like the US. In your scenario, I would imagine that her being a resident alien is enough to satisfy (2), so it shouldn't create a conflict situation.

It's also worth noting that clause 3 explicitly rules out dual nationality ("The PRC does not recognize dual nationality for Chinese citizens.").

I see this ongoing discussion throughout this thread. And I understand that rules as written dual citizenship is illegal in China. No one is wrong here.

But, the Chinese government doesn't follow their own laws. For example Eileen Gu is a natural born US citizen. There's no record of her ever renouncing her US citizenship. But she wants to compete for China in the Olympics, so now suddenly she is also a Chinese citizen with a Chinese passport. Good to go for the Olympics.

Although she was born and raised in San Francisco, Gu competes for her mother's native China. To do so, the International Olympic Committee requires that she hold Chinese citizenship. But in spite of China's ban on dual citizenship there is no government record of her renouncing her American citizenship.

Rules apply until they don't. A piece of paper with Chinese writing on it somewhere says this is impossible. That's no impediment.

There's no reference to "permanent residence"

I believe you're mistaken. It uses the phrase "resides in a foreign country" in the conjunction. If you have translated this faithfully, and if the legal interpretation doesn't invalidate this meaning, residence in a legal sense is what is meant here. It is not the mere fact of living in a place. It is being settled there.

Whether or not being a student or a diplomat means that you "reside" in the foreign country is a question I'll leave to lawyers, but the paper I linked seems to be of the negative opinion.

The PRC does not recognize dual nationality for Chinese citizens

Not recognizing something just means that it's legally inconsequential, not that it is forbidden or incompatible with other things. In China, much as in a lot of other States, Chinese nationals can't claim they are something else. Even if they have another passport.

There is an explicit clause (the 3rd clause) that says they don't recognize dual citizenship involving China and a different country.

Also, the second sentence of the 5th clause basically creates an exception for cases where a child (i) is born abroad to a Chinese parent and (ii) acquires citizenship of that country in the process. It rules that in such cases the child does not have Chinese citizenship.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/中華人民共和國國籍法

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