From spy balloons to an influx of undocumented migrants from the communist country entering the U.S., there has been significant speculation in recent years about China’s apparent intention to infiltrate and weaken America.

Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer took a deep look at the issue for his latest book, “Blood Money: Why The Powerful Turn A Blind Eye While China Kills Americans,” and identified a few key ways that the U.S. is already under direct assault.

The ongoing fentanyl crisis is a major aspect, he wrote, referring to China’s role in the overdose epidemic as “drug warfare.”

Schewizer argued that the strategy could be rooted in retaliation for the Opium Wars of the 1800s during which British merchants supplied China with the potent drug in an alleged effort to weaken its economy.

“Even today, military officials express outrage about the way Great Britain’s Opium Wars reduced China to a minor power,” he wrote. “From the perspective of President Xi [Jinping] and the Communist Party, what better means of rising to power and avenging the Opium Wars than by turning the tables against the Western world that it blames?”

Of course, drugs represent just one avenue by which Schweizer maintains that China is targeting the U.S. 

From the NYPost on BLOOD MONEY: pic.twitter.com/rJvGDLj7ZS

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) February 26, 2024

“It’s a complex strategy, a hydra of drugs, disease, propaganda, and illicit pistol parts, each contributing to social chaos and killing Americans,” he added.

The book not only presents a damning assessment of China’s behavior, but also a scathing rebuke of the relative inaction against the threat by U.S. leaders.

“Rather than confronting the reality that Beijing is wreaking havoc on our soil, they focus on domestic policy minutiae,” he concluded.

As for the reasons behind the reluctance to take the threat seriously, Schweizer identified two main categories.

“Some of our leaders … have financial ties to the Chinese state and don’t want to see the flow of money disrupted,” he said of the first group.

The others, he reasoned, choose inaction over acknowledging a reality that “would require our leaders to accept a profound paradigm shift and would force extremely difficult choices that would also dramatically disrupt the lives and livelihoods of elites from Silicon Valley to Wall Street.”