Liz Cheney’s Hunter Biden Problem: Husband’s Firm Reps China Companies, Dictatorial Regimes

Philip Perry is a partner at Latham & Watkins, which works on behalf of foreign entities, including some flagged as threats to U.S. national security.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) called on the U.S. to stand up to the “generational threat” posed by China while unveiling a major report on Beijing’s “malign behavior” at the same time her husband’s law firm was working on behalf of companies linked to China’s military, intelligence, and security services.

All of LW’s work discussed in this article was legal, and Perry didn’t work directly on these accounts. But as a partner at the firm, he benefits and profits from all its work.

Perry’s firm’s work for Chinese entities and countries whose human rights abuses and authoritarian rule have troubled the U.S. for years seems to conflict with his wife’s frequent calls for America to stand up to autocratic regimes like China. The dynamic is one familiar to longtime observers of Washington, D.C.: a power couple calling out the very behavior from which they benefit.

“It’s the kind of say one thing do another that Americans hate in Washington, D.C.,” former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Tuesday. “Liz Cheney will have a lot of explaining to do to the Wyoming voters.”

In September 2020, House Republicans publicized the final version of an extensive report conducted by the China Task Force, a body comprised of 15 members of Congress, including Cheney. The review examined the multifaceted threat to the U.S. presented by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

“China is rapidly developing a military force that is capable of winning regional conflicts and they’re expanding their military footprint globally,” Cheney said at a press conference where the report was unveiled. “The government of China and the Chinese Communist Party have gone to school on the United States — they’ve looked at our capabilities … and they have developed capabilities to counter those.

“We must counter the Chinese Communist Party globally as it seeks to establish more robust logistics and basing infrastructure around the world as it seeks to project its own military power. It is very important for everyone to note that we are in the midst of a battle between freedom and totalitarianism. The question we all face is whether the United States and our allies will set the rules of the road into the future or whether the Chinese Communist Party and that authoritarian, totalitarian regime will set the rules of the road.”

The month before Cheney’s press conference, LW “advised” Tencent, the mammoth Chinese technology company, on becoming a shareholder in Voodoo, a leading video game developer.

Tencent is one of 15 companies designated by Beijing “to facilitate industry-wide coordination” with the Chinese government on artificial intelligence (AI), according to a Pentagon report to Congress from last year.

Analysts believe AI will play a central, “game-changing” role in China’s military innovation and future warfare strategy and say it’s already making a difference.

The CIA concluded Tencent received funding from the Chinese Ministry of State Security early on in its foundation when they were trying to build the so-called Great Firewall to censor the internet inside China, Foreign Policy reported in 2020. Tencent denied the allegations.

Tencent, which LW has represented on multiple occasions, has also been researching quantum computing since 2018 and is “entrenched in the Chinese government’s high-tech, dual-use innovation drive,” according to RWR Advisory Group, which highlighted several examples of Tencent’s ties to the Chinese military. “These dual-use applications have been designated by the Chinese government as strategic military resources and key to civil-military fusion efforts.”

Experts note the line between what’s meant for civilian use and military application is non-existent in China.

“While the U.S. government often twists itself into knots determining what is classified or unclassified, the Chinese government often sees little-to-no distinction,” said Craig Singleton, an adjunct China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Instead, Beijing is focused on collecting and harnessing any and all useful information to power its defense modernization. This includes everything from foundational knowledge taught on U.S. college campuses to cutting edge research, much of which is not technically classified but still has potential military applications.”

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