Republicans have long highlighted suspicious links between Hunter Biden and figures associated with the Chinese Communist Party.

Yet as Fox News recently noted, the China connections don't stop there, as President Joe Biden once boasted of his niece's ties to the county.

Biden said "a rising China" is positive for America

According to the network, Joe Biden highlighted the fact that Casey Owens had lived in China while serving as a special assistant for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue at the Treasury Department.

Those remarks from the then-vice president came during a 2011 speech in which he also declared that "a rising China" is also "a positive, positive development, not only for China but for America…"

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A transcript of Biden speech reads, "As a matter of fact, my niece who -- excuse me, as we say in the Senate, a point a personal privilege -- who graduated from Harvard not too long ago, works for Secretary Geithner, she did exactly what we hope another 100,000 will do: She studied Chinese and went and lived in China and is now devoted to making sure the relationship gets better and better and better."

Biden's words were a reference to the "100,000 Strong Initiative," an Obama administration plan to have  100,000 American students study in China.

Owen communicated with Hunter Biden and business partner

Owens subsequently sent an email to one of her uncle's alias accounts thanking him for the "memorable day" as well as the "very, very humbling" opportunity to hear him speak.

"That was really something else, Uncle Joe. What a way to exit the Treasury," Owens said in a message recovered from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop. "I'm simply happy to be close to you, and I just wanted to say thank you for including me."

Other emails show how in addition to praising her uncle, Owens also regularly communicated with her cousin Hunter Biden and his former business partner Eric Schwerin.

The messages concerned their relationship with China Investment Corporation (CIC),  which is China's largest sovereign wealth fund.

Messages sent from Treasury Department account

Fox News cited an unnamed former business associate of Hunter Biden who said Owens was "definitely a resource" that Hunter Biden made use of in his dealings with CIC.

One correspondence sent from Owens' official Treasury Department account drew attention to a CIC investment conference which took place several weeks earlier.

"FYI on recent CIC investment conference at a resort in Sanya, on Hainan Island, over the weekend of March 27-28," she wrote.