Washington suffering from bout of paranoia

The United States might be the most powerful country in the world. But Washington is undoubtedly the most paranoid place on the planet as exhibited on Tuesday.

In a front page article, the Wall Street Journal quoted unnamed sources close to US intelligence community accusing Wendi Deng Murdoch, the ex-wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, of lobbying for a high-profile construction project funded by the Chinese government in Washington.

The report said the planned $100 million China Garden at the National Arboretum was deemed a national-security risk because it included a 70-foot-tall tower that could potentially be used for surveillance.

With all my respect for the newspaper, the reporters clearly did not press their sources hard enough on such a serious allegation. Anyone who has visited the arboretum knows that a rough six-storey-tall tower in the 400-acre arboretum might be good for bird-watching. It would be ill-advised as a surveillance spot, given it is far from anywhere, except 360-degree eyeful of lushness - trees, shrubs, bushes and grasses.

It is three miles from the Capitol Hill and four miles from the White House. My office at the National Press Building is probably a better spot for surveillance, only a block from the US Treasury Department and two blocks from the White House.

The China Garden project dated back to 2003 and its construction was approved by the US Congress in 2008. The long-delayed project had been on the joint fact sheet of the annual US-China Consultation on People-to-People Exchange for many years.

I covered the garden's ground breaking ceremony in October 2016. It was attended by senior US Agriculture Department and State Department officials, including then Undersecretary of State Catherine Novelli and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton, now acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Exactly how this might turn out to be a Chinese spy project, as the Journal reported, is simply beyond wild imagination. No wonder the Chinese embassy representative called it "full of groundless speculations".

Using such logic, the Beijing government should not allow any US citizens to have a building or live within three or four miles of Zhongnanhai or the Great Hall of the People because they might pose a national security threat.

Also on Tuesday, Reuters reported that US lawmakers had urged AT&T to cut all commercial ties with Huawei Technologies and reject plans by China Mobile to enter the US market. Those lawmakers threatened US companies that if they have ties to the two Chinese firms, it could hamper their ability to do business with the US government.

The news came a week after AT&T dropped its plan to sell Huawei's latest smartphone, the Mate 10, also under the pressure from US lawmakers.

The lawmakers have also introduced bills lately aimed at banning business with Huawei and ZTE and tightening the scrutiny of Chinese companies investing in the US, on national security grounds.

Some Chinese believe that their government should return the favor by targeting Apple and other US companies that have access to data of Chinese citizens. There is no doubt that the powerful US intelligence agencies, such as CIA and NSA, are exploiting all means possible in China, including through US companies.

I am glad that China has not shown the same paranoia.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com