Spalding recalled how Chinese political influence blocked a transparency initiative he was developing as a joint enterprise to examine and uncover the single-party state's degree of control over large American corporations.

"I reached out to a think tank — a major think tank — to run a program to essentially provide information so people can see all of the influence that the Chinese Communist Party had on corporate America, and we worked on this project for a year —  scoping it out, trying to figure out how [many] resources this would take, how much money, how many people — and the think tank had basically agreed to do the study. It was actually going to be more than a study. It was going to be a continuing effort to portray the kind of influence that the Communist Party had over U.S. corporations, and provide that [information and data] in a way that could be accessible to the public, like a transparency initiative."