CCP-Linked Stores on Military Bases? This Congressman Is Trying to Close Them Down

Before freshman Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., came to Washington in January, no one seemed to notice that a Chinese Communist Party-linked company had stores that sold health products to our troops.

Though it was once an American-owned company, the vitamin store GNC was purchased by the CCP-linked Harbin Pharmaceuticals in 2020 after GNC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Even prior to the sale, the CCP-linked company held a 40% stake in GNC.

Harrigan, 37, joined “The Signal Sitdown” to discuss his legislation to kick CCP-linked entities off military bases as well as the great power competition between China and the United States.

Shortly after being sworn in, Harrigan introduced the Military Installation Retail Security Act, or MIRSA for short. “It’s like MRSA,” Harrigan told me, “it’s like this infectious disease we just have to rid ourselves of, which is the Chinese Communist Party or other adversarial nations owning companies that are operating on our military bases.” (MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a strain of bacteria responsible for several difficult-to-treat infections in humans.)

The legislation “requires the Department of Defense to do a broad investigation into all of the federal contractors that are working on our military bases and make sure that they aren’t owned by our foreign adversaries,” Harrigan said. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran all make the list.

“When a military base or installation wants to have private contractors come in and actually operate on the base, they sign what’s called a concession contract, and these are contracts that are really not very well vetted, which is a problem in and of itself, but it forces a broad-based review of all of that,” Harrigan explained. But the “teeth” of the legislation, Harrigan told me, is “to kick any private contractor that has lied … to the federal government.” 

The North Carolina congressman added that GNC already has a record of downplaying its ties to Harbin or the CCP in their previous government disclosures.

The risk of GNC stores on military bases is simply “too high to tolerate,” Harrigan contended. “We have risks associated with the potential information that they could collect from our service members.”

The CCP could “know what products they’re purchasing, they know what physical ailments they might be having or trying to correct. GNC even offers free supplement consultations so that they can kind of do a deep dive into your health,” Harrigan explained. “We don’t need foreign-owned cash registers taking the credit cards of our military servicemen and servicewomen, having access to their data.”

The problem is larger than you’d think. GNC has “83 different facilities on our military installations across the country, and they’re wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party,” Harrigan said.

On a previous visit to Fort Bragg, Harrigan found four GNC stores. Fort Bragg is the largest Army base in the country, home to about 55,000 Army troops, which represents about 10% of the Army. Add their families and civilians employed by the bases, and more than 250,000 people have access to Bragg and its four GNCs.

I asked Harrigan if he thought something more nefarious was afoot or if this issue had been simply overlooked by Congress. “It was just overlooked,” he replied. GNC was “initially a U.S.-owned—wholly owned—company. And through a multiyear transition process and a bankruptcy, they became wholly owned by Harbin Pharmaceuticals, aka the Chinese Communist Party.”

That’s a familiar story in the era of America’s growing trade deficit with China: U.S. capital funds the inflow of inexpensive Chinese goods, only to return when Chinese firms acquire American businesses. But the concern becomes especially stark when those firms establish operations on or near U.S. military bases.

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