“China’s Digital Authoritarianism: Surveillance, Influence,
and Political Control”
May 16, 2019
Hearing Before the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Prepared statement by
Peter Mattis
Research Fellow, China Studies
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
* * *
I. OVERVIEW
Chairman Schiff, Ranking member Nunes, distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for
inviting me to appear before you. The Chinese Communist Party’s influence and, particularly, its
political interference in the United States is an important topic as we establish a new baseline for
U.S.-China relations. Any sustainable, long-term strategy for addressing China’s challenge requires
the integrity of U.S. political and policymaking processes. This requires grappling with the challenges
posed by the party’s efforts to shape the United States by interfering in our politics and domestic
affairs.
The United States, its political and business elite, its thinkers, and its Chinese communities have long
been targets for the Chinese Communist Party. The party employs tools that go well beyond
traditional public diplomacy efforts. Often these tools lead to activities that are, in the words of
former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, corrupt, covert, and/or coercive. Nevertheless,
many activities are not covered by Turnbull’s three “Cs” but are still concerning and undermine the
ability of the United States to comprehend and address Beijing’s challenge.
Here are a few of the ways in which the Chinese Communist Party has shaped the ways in which
Americans discuss, understand, and respond to the People’s Republic of China, its rise, and its
activities:
● We have been persuaded that the Chinese Communist Party is not ideological and has
substituted its Leninist tradition for a variation of capitalism.
● We have not responded to violence, coercion, and intimidation committed or instigated by
PRC officials on U.S. soil. These are allegedly criminal acts committed by a foreign
government against our people on our soil, and U.S. authorities did not open criminal
investigations.
● We have not responded to PRC education officials intimidating Chinese students on
university campuses, despite this activity not being consistent with their diplomatic status.
● We have changed our laws at the state level to facilitate the Confucius Institute program to
help the party build beachheads inside universities.
● We often debate our policy options toward China in binary terms: engagement vs
containment; trade war or negotiation; accommodation or war; etc.
Most of my statement will focus on the policies and actions of the Chinese Communist Party for
two reasons. First, as Americans, we are still not prepared to accept the party has sought to shape
and influence U.S. political and business elite for decades. We are still in a process of building
awareness and consensus about the nature of the problem. Second, it is not my place to name names
of American individuals and institutions before Congress. The U.S. Government has the resources
and authority to investigate and analyze the party’s challenge.
The central element to understanding what the Chinese Communist Party is doing and why to shape
the world outside the party is united front work. Mao Zedong described the purpose of this work as
mobilizing the party’s friends to strike at the party’s enemies. In a more specific definition from a
paper in the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency defined united front work as “a technique for
controlling, mobilizing, and utilizing non-communist masses.” Put another way, united front policy
addresses the party’s relationship with and guidance of any social group outside the party. The most
important point here is that what needs to be shaped is not just the Chinese people or world outside
the People’s Republic of China, but rather those outside the party.
United front work also is a tool of political struggle. It is not just a question of activities that we
would call propaganda or public diplomacy. Nor is it limited to what we would call covert action. As
Mao wrote in 1939: “Our eighteen years of experience show that the united front and armed
struggle are the two basic weapons for defeating the enemy. The united front is a united front for
carrying on armed struggle. And the Party is the heroic warrior wielding the two weapons, the united
front and the armed struggle, to storm and shatter the enemy's positions. That is how the three are
related to each other.” Mao’s basic framing of united front work within the party’s toolbox remains
the core understanding within the party today. Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping all have
characterized united front work as a “magic weapon” to facilitate China’s rise in the midst of an
international ideological battleground.
United front activities help the party resolve several dilemmas of the post-Mao era and that became
ever more apparent after the Tiananmen Massacre and the passing of Deng Xiaoping. These are
fundamental questions for the Chinese Communist Party, and they speak to why the party must
spend so much effort trying to shape the world beyond the membership of the party.
1. How to motivate and mobilize the Chinese population without the ideological fervor of the
Mao Zedong era?
2. How to benefit from the outside world while screening out influences and ideas that might
damage the party’s positions?
3. How to enlist the outside world in supporting China’s rise and keeping those doors open
even as the party continues to be repressive?
II. MAGIC WEAPON FOR NATIONAL REJUVENATION
Achieving the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” (中华民族伟大复兴) has two
significant components. The first is making China a great power with global reach. The second is
doing so with the Chinese Communist Party at the helm.
The party defines the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” as having three components. The
first is building “a great, modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally
advanced, harmonious, and beautiful.” Although many of these words are self-explanatory, others
like democratic, culturally advanced, and harmonious mean something very different in the party’s
context than in the American context. “Democratic” is consultative democracy in which the party
leads, and other political inputs are provided through controlled mechanisms like the united front
policy system. “Culturally advanced” and “harmonious” define the party’s relationship with society
and the ways in which Chinese people conduct themselves. The second is national reunification of
all areas claimed by Beijing, regardless whether they were traditionally by China. The third is China’s
emergence as a global leader in terms of comprehensive national power and international influence.
The following quote from Xi Jinping in 2016 explains what united front work is intended to
accomplish in bringing together a unity of effort. When U.S. intelligence officials describe Beijing as
presenting a “whole-of-society” challenge, they are describing an important element of what the
united front policy system is doing.
“Attaining the ‘Two Centenary Goals’ requires that our entire society works together
in one heart and one mind. It requires that people of all ethnic groups focus their
thoughts and their efforts towards the same goal. A society that lacks common
ideals, goals, and values, and that finds itself in permanent disorder will never achieve
anything. China has a population of more than 1.3 billion people, and neither the
people nor the country would benefit if we ended up like that. To attain our goals…
[we must rally] all Chinese people under the leadership of the Chinese Communist
Party, and motivating all parties to engage in a concerted effort to bring about the
rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
The United Front Work Department, the executive agency for conducting and coordinating these
operations, provided a similar description of its purpose and activities:
“The history of China and foreign countries shows that whether a political power or
a political party is good or not, its success or failure ultimately depends on the back
of the people. Paying attention to the people's sentiments, obeying the public's will,
striving for the people's hearts, maintaining proper flesh-and-blood ties with the
masses, and winning the sincere support of the masses is a solid foundation for our
country's long-term stability and a fundamental guarantee for the sure victory of our
cause.”
The second important component of the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” is
maintaining the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. The most important threats to party
that must be addressed are the diaspora communities and potentially threatening great powers. The
former have the cultural knowledge to introduce subversive ideas that resonate. The latter have the
material power to undermine or topple the party-state.
The desire to control the political landscape and protect the party’s position found clear definition in
China’s National Security Law (2015). The law describes security in broad terms that go well beyond
physical threats to the territory of the PRC. Security comes from the inside out. Articles Two and
Three of the law state: “National security refers to the relative absence of international or domestic
threats to the state’s power to govern, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, the welfare of the
people, sustainable economic and social development, and other major national interests, and the
ability to ensure a continued state of security. National security efforts shall adhere to a
comprehensive understanding of national security, make the security of the People their goal,
political security their basis and economic security their foundation; make military, cultural and social
security their safeguard…”
This definition has two notable features. First, security is defined by the absence of threats, not by
the ability to manage them. This unlimited view pushes the Chinese Communist Party toward
preempting threats and preventing their emergence. Second, security issues extend to the domain of
ideas—what people think is potentially dangerous. The combination of these themes — preemption
in the world of ideas — creates an imperative for the party to alter the world in which it
operates—to shape how China and its current party-state are understood in the minds of foreign
elites.
One way of making this more concrete is to look at party documents about security threats. In April
2013, “Document No. 9” — “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere” —
identified ideas that undermine the party-state’s security. Among them were the promotion of
constitutional democracy, civil society, and Western concepts of journalism. In the circular’s final
paragraph, it stated the party should “allow absolutely no opportunity or outlets for incorrect
thinking or viewpoints to spread.” Although it would be easy to dismiss this document as a one-off
or unenforced, in 2015 Beijing abducted and held five Hong Kong booksellers, including foreign
passport holders, who sold books ostensibly banned in China. Moreover, Beijing issued new
regulations on counter-espionage last December that clarified the Counter-espionage Law (2014)
and defined activities threatening national security apart from espionage. Among these was
“fabricating or distorting facts, publishing or disseminating words or information that endanger state
security.” Influencing the outside world, therefore, is not just a historical activity of the party, but an
ongoing requirement for national security as defined by the party-state.
III. INTRINSIC TO THE PARTY’S DAY-TO-DAY OPERATIONS
1
The Chinese Communist Party’s management of political influence operations — evaluated on the
basis of the united front policy system — runs to the very top of party, involving senior leaders
directly. The policy systems extends through the party’s hierarchy and spills over into the
government ministries of the People’s Republic of China as well as other state-owned and
-administered organizations. Put simply, united front work is conducted wherever the party is
present. Moreover, united front work is not an “influence operation” or a campaign. It is the
day-to-day work of the party. There are not special orders explaining what to do to achieve what
objectives or the equivalents of a presidential finding.
At the leadership level, four elements point to the importance of united front work and shaping the
world outside the Chinese Communist Party.
1. A Politburo Standing Committee Member Oversees United Front Work: The senior-most
united front official is the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)
chairman, who is the fourth-ranking PBSC member. A look at the leaders who have held the
CPPCC chairmanship suggests that Western observers have been far too quick to condemn
the CPPCC as a mostly-useless advisory body. The list is a who’s who of the party, including
1
Much of this section draws from a forthcoming report for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute co-authored with
Alex Joske as well as “An American Lens on China’s Interference and Influence-Building Abroad,” Asan Forum
, April
30, 2018 <http://www.theasanforum.org/an-american-lens-on-chinas-interference-and-influence-building-abroad>; and
““Russian and Chinese Political Interference Activities and Influence Operations,” in Richard J. Ellings and Robert
Sutter, eds., Axis of Authoritarians: Implications of China-Russia Cooperation
(Seattle, WA: The National Bureau of Asian
Research, 2018).
Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Li Xiannian. The current CPPCC chairman,
Wang Yang, continues a tradition of competent leadership at the top of the united front
system. He exemplifies the need of united front personnel to be highly-disciplined party
cadre, who are nonetheless capable of handling themselves among diverse people and
feigning ideological flexibility.
2. A State Council Vice Premier Has a United Front Portfolio: The vice premier position
serves as the bridge between the party center and the State Council ministries. The vice
premier provides prestige to the united front system as well as a necessary position of
authority to direct and coordinate the ministries’ united front activities. The position often
looks as though the portfolio covers education and culture, because of the overlap with
united front work. At meetings of the united front policy system, this vice premier appears
in protocol order between the CPPCC chairman and United Front Work Department
director. Currently, the position is held by Sun Chunlan.
3. Two Members of the Central Secretariat Have United Front Policy Roles: The directors of
the party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) and Propaganda Department serve on
both the Politburo and the Secretariat of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist
Party of China. Because the Politburo does not meet regularly—its far-flung membership
includes both central party bureaucrats and provincial party secretaries—the secretariat is
empowered to make day-to-day decisions related to policy that has already been settled. This
group is also responsible for moving paperwork among the central leaders and coordinating
the party’s actions. Secretariat membership is not related to relationships that the current
UFWD and propaganda chiefs—respectively, You Quan and Huang Kunming—have but
rather reflects the structure of post–Deng Xiaoping politics. Their presence on the
Secretariat is more institutional than political.
4. In 2015, Xi Jinping Established a United Front Leading Small Group: As part of the effort
revitalize and better coordinate united front activities under Xi Jinping, the party established
a leading small group. It functions as platform to coordinate and raise the status of united
front work across the bureaucracy, bringing together senior officials from numerous state
and party agencies for united front study tours across China. Interestingly, the last time the
party created a united front leading small group — in 1986 under the leadership of Xi
Jinping’s father Xi Zhongxun — it coincided with a similar description of problems to be
resolved: expanding scope and responsibilities coinciding with a lack of central direction.
The Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy at the central level has four key bodies for building and
exercising political influence outside the party — and especially outside China. The United Front
Work and the Propaganda departments also have subordinate elements at the provincial and local
levels.
1. United Front Work Department: The UFWD is the executive and coordinating agency for
united front work. It has a variety of responsibilities at home and abroad, including in the
following areas: Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan affairs; ethnic and religious affairs;
domestic and external propaganda; entrepreneurs and non-party personages; intellectuals;
and people-to-people exchanges.17 The department also takes the lead in establishing party
committees in Chinese and now foreign businesses. The UFWD operates at all levels of the
party system from the center to the grassroots, and the CCP has had a united front
department dating to the 1930s.
2. Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC): The CPPCC, according to the
organization’s website, is “an organization in the patriotic united front of the Chinese
people, an important organ for multiparty cooperation and political consultation.” The
advisory body mediates between important socials groups and the party apparatus. The
CPPCC is the place where all the relevant united front actors inside and outside the party
come together: party elders, intelligence officers, diplomats, propagandists, military officers
and political commissars, united front workers, academics, and businesspeople. They are
gathered to receive instruction in the proper propaganda lines and ways to characterize
Beijing’s policies to both domestic and foreign audiences. Many of these individuals,
particularly if they hold government positions, are known for their people-handling skills and
have reputations for being smooth operators. CPPCC membership offers access to political
circles, political protection for business, and minor perquisites like expedited immigration.
The CPPCC standing committee includes twenty or so vice chairpeople who have a protocol
rank roughly equivalent to a provincial party secretary. At the central level, the CPPCC
includes more than 2,200 members, but the provincial and local levels include another
615,000.
3. International (Liaison) Department: The International Department, founded in 1951, is the
party’s diplomatic arm, handling relationships with more than 600 political parties and
organizations as well as individual, primarily political, elites. The department previously
handled the CCP’s relationships between fraternal Communist parties and cultivated splinter
factions of Moscow-dominated Communist parties after the Sino-Soviet split. The activist
bent of the International Department disappeared as the department began re-establishing
itself in 1970–71 following the tumultuous early years of the Cultural Revolution.
Interestingly, the department originated as a UFWD bureau before being carved out into an
independent entity.
4. Propaganda Department: The Propaganda Department has been a core part of the CCP
since 1924. The official description of its duties includes conducting the party’s theoretical
research; guiding public opinion; guiding and coordinating the work of the central news
agencies, including Xinhua and the People’s Daily; guiding the propaganda and cultural
systems; and administering the Cyberspace Administration of China and the State
Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television. The Propaganda
Department cannot be regarded as an entirely internal organization that broadcasts outward
to the extent that it is involved in influence-building abroad. For example, China Radio
International developed in the 2000s a covert international network of radio stations to hide
the CCP’s direct role in broadcasting Chinese-language propaganda inside target countries.
The Propaganda Department presumably also plays a role in the cooptation, intimidation,
and purchase of Chinese-language print media outside China.
The State Council ministries and many other organizations with a party committee also conduct
united front work. These organizations all offer unique platforms and capabilities that the united
front policy system can draw upon for operational purposes. Below are a few of the examples of the
organizations outside the party that perform united front work or have united front work
departments attached to their party committee:
1. Ministry of State Security
2. Ministry of Foreign Affairs
3. Ministry of Civil Affairs
4. Ministry of Education
5. Ministry of Culture and Tourism
6. Chinese Academy of Sciences
7. China Baowu Steel Group
8. China National Overseas Oil Corporation (CNOOC)
9. State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC)
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) deserves special mention, because it operates both inside and
in concert with these other influence-building actors as well as outside this system. During the
Chinese Revolution, the PLA served almost as the party’s expeditionary arm. It duplicated all of the
party’s functions within a military organization. The PLA was and remains the armed wing of the
Chinese Communist Party and not China’s national army. As the party’s armed wing and as the
ultimate guarantor of the party’s power, the PLA still mirrors the party structure from leadership to
leading agencies to tactical execution.
1. Central Military Commission: Headed by Xi Jinping, the Central Military Commission serves
as the nexus between the party and military leadership. Historically, the two military vice
chairmen included an officer who risen through the PLA’s political work system; however,
since 2012, two experienced operations officers have held the vice chairmenships. The CMC
also includes the minister of national defense and the director of the Political Work
Department. The former, like the vice premier for united front work, serves as the link
between the PLA and the State Council. The latter oversees the bureaucracy responsible for
military propaganda and political influence operations.
2. Political Work Department: This department is the successor to the General Political
Department, which was dissolved in the reorganization of the PLA launched in November
2015. The department’s Liaison Bureau is the military agency that contributes most to the
party’s united front work. It operates much like an intelligence service with officers using
official and non-official cover, but focused on strategic targets relevant to military
operations. Two of the Liaison Bureau’s most notable targets have been Taiwan and
Okinawa.
3. Strategic Support Force: The creation of the Strategic Support Force as part of the 2015
reforms integrated the PLA’s signals and electronic intelligence capabilities with its tactical
information warfare elements.
IV. VECTORS AND MECHANISMS
The Chinese Communist Party’s political influence operations come through five primary vectors:
community organizations, wealthy proxies, Confucius Institutes, exchanges, and consulting
agreements. None of these avenues for influence are bad by themselves. Often only a few
individuals camouflaged by the myriad China engagements are working on behalf of the united front
system, but they might be difficult to point out without implicating individuals who are guilty, if
anything, of nothing more than naivete.
1. Overseas Chinese Community Organizations: The Chinese communities outside the PRC
contain an alphabet soup of ethnic community organizations, including chambers of
commerce, hometown associations, friendship societies, and cultural promotion centers.
These organizations exist for all the same reasons that ethnic community organizations come
together. They provide useful community resources and services, even as ones tainted by the
united front system bring the party’s influence along with them. In most of the problematic
organizations, the membership probably is unaware of the connections. The leadership
sitting atop co-opted organizations become the community leaders through which politicians
engage their local Chinese communities. They also can be quoted in media as being
community leaders, even in cases where the organization exists in little more than name.
There are several indicators for whether a community organization — or rather its leadership
— is working on the party’s behalf. None of these indicators by themselves is sufficient, but,
taken together, they are strongly suggestive. The first is whether the organization’s officers
participate in united front delegations and conferences back to China. Sometimes these
officers have special advisory roles with united front work units. The second is contact with
the local PRC embassy or consulate, and whether these officials participate in the
organization’s events. The third includes changes, such as a shift from using traditional
characters to simplified characters or visible changes to the amount of money used to put on
events.
2. Wealthy Proxies: Wealthy businesspeople working on the party’s behalf are one of the most
important vectors for the party’s influence abroad. Although many of these individuals are
PRC citizens or emigres, some businesspeople from other states are influenced, coopted, or
fully recruited to the party’s cause. Their primary value is the ability to move money quickly
outside of China and, in democratic societies, the ability to spend that money legitimately
without generating the alarm that comes with more direct state activity. Where the united
front system is active, two or more businesspeople will provide a significant chunk of the
financial support for large united front-linked community organizations as well as other
relevant political or social causes. For example, in Australia, Chau Chak Wing and Huang
Xiangmo appear to have been the most active financial supporters of Beijing’s efforts to
interfere in Australian politics. Their money bought access to the major political parties,
platforms for pro-China voices, and supported community groups like the Australian
Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification.
The easiest group of these proxies to identify come from Hong Kong. Their wealth has been
built with the party’s assistance. Although their families may have built successful businesses
in one or two industries, a hallmark of these businesses is sprawl across numerous, unrelated
industries. These businesspeople often can be identified because they are members of the
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Congress
system. Their Hong Kong residency gives them legitimacy and credibility that their
counterparts in China do not have. For example, former Hong Kong chief executive Tung
Chee-hwa has been able to reinvent himself as a philanthropist to donate money to U.S.
think tanks, academic programs, and sponsor trips for journalists, students, and politicians to
China. Tung, however, became Beijing’s man in Hong Kong after the party bailed his
company out of bankruptcy in the mid 1980s, and he began representing the party’s interests
to the British. Tung now serves as a vice chairman of the CPPCC, which gives him standing
within the party at roughly the level of a provincial party secretary.
3. Confucius Institutes: The Confucius Institute program — ostensibly under the Ministry of
Education and Hanban — creates a beachhead in university administration through which
the party’s influence can expand. Although a Confucius Institute appears focused on
language training and cultural programming, they sometimes provide opportunities for staff
to move into influential positions. Confucius Institute directors can be found on faculty
committees and advising engagement offices on how to handle China. In some cases, the
institutes have given Beijing a voice in a university’s hiring decisions for China-related faculty
and affected the kind of speakers invited to the university. Australia’s John Fitzgerald, an
astute observer of the party’s influence operations, wrote that accepting a Confucius
Institute signaled a university was “prepared to make an exception for China on questions of
academic freedom, teaching curriculums, and research integrity.” Not every Confucius
2
Institute has proven to be problematic, but it has depended on whether the university avoids
exceptions and ensures the institute operates within the agreement.
4. People-to-People Exchanges/Diplomacy: The united front policy system sponsors and
arranges hundreds of trips to China each year. These trips are used in a myriad different
ways to earn good will and to influence analysts and politicians. They offer opportunities for
the party to persuade them of China’s rectitude or to refute critical arguments. Even if the
latter does not persuade the critic, their fellow participants may be persuaded or inclined to
see the critic as needlessly provocative. The trips also give party officials evaluate potential
targets personally. Not only is there personal interaction, but there often is substantive
discussion of ideas and policy positions.
5. Consulting Agreements: Hiring senior officials after they retire has become common
practice. Beijing may have pioneered the process decades ago, pressing companies that
wanted to do business in China to hire their favored former officials to close business
agreements. Perhaps the most noteworthy recent example is former Australian trade minister
Andrew Robb’s $880,000 (AUS) salary for minimal work on behalf of the Chinese firm
Landbridge. Robb resigned from this position ahead of the deadline to register under
Australia’s new transparency scheme for former officials. In some cases, former officials
work for Chinese or Hong Kong businesspeople through their personal consulting
companies, obfuscating the sources of their income.
The relationships formed through from these vectors serve to open doors into institutions and
networks for exploitation. Most often there is a sequence of the relationship that goes through
periods of development, testing, and exploitation.
2
John Fitzgerald, “Unis Could Bide Their Time and Escape the Long Arm of Beijing,” The Australian
, March 2, 2018,
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/inquirer/unis-could-bide-their-time-and-escape-the-long-arm-of-beijing/new
s-story/202b5b9462af59a9f38f57aaee13b7b8.
1. Developing the Relationship: From my experience and research, I think there are two
beginnings to problematic relationships with the Chinese Communist Party’s united front
system. The first is party-sponsored trips to China. Whether the sponsorship comes from
different united front platforms or more overtly through the International Department,
these delegations provide several useful services for the party. Most obviously, a relationship
can be established between the visitor and the party. The party also gets the opportunity to
assess the visitors, their views, and, depending on the visitors’ security awareness, their
personal and professional networks. The second is someone deliberately directed to seek the
position. This indicates the willingness to exploit an opportunity as much as any kind of
long-term planning.
A key element of developing relationships is the massive collection of data on individuals
who play influential roles or who might prove useful to the party. This line of effort —
historically called “social affairs work” — draws upon the human and technical collection
capabilities of the party-state. Delegations and exchanges provide opportunities to learn
more about individuals, exploit their electronics, and ask about who is important. Retired
officials are interviewed. Now, computer network operations are launched at databases for
employment, healthcare, and travel records as well as government personnel files. This data
is fed into large databases that track personal and family networks, receptivity to China, and
their public and online presence.
2. Formal Agreement and Testing: The formal agreement sets a baseline for what will come.
Poorly negotiated agreements — such as some of the original Confucius Institute
agreements that contained secret clauses or required the university to defend publicly the
reputation of the institute — invite abuse. Even well-structured agreements are meaningful
only if they are enforced and the institution stands up for itself. Once a foothold has been
established, the parameters of the relationship will be tested to see how an institution
responds. As Vladimir Lenin reportedly observed, “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter
mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” In the case of Confucius Institutes, this
probing has involved testing the institute’s voice in university affairs, holding external events
under the university’s name, and using institute funds to affect hiring decisions for China
studies faculty elsewhere in the university.
3. Compromise and Exploitation: Compromise takes severals forms depending on how
attentive the institution is to the agreement and the relationship. One of the most common
ways relates to the individuals running China-related programs. In some cases, they are
recruited directly by the party. In others, they are former PRC government officials or
already connected to the party’s united front system. In still others, the individuals’
incentives are shaped by the home institution to push simply for more engagement and to
ignore potential problems with their partners in China. From there, access and opportunity
are manipulated to ensure the standing of the individual and their ability to have a public or
institutional voice to further the party’s objectives. The difficulty in identifying, especially
from open sources, how this compromise comes about is that the party is most often is
opening a door for someone to succeed. Without specific evidence of how the opportunity
that made someone successful arrived, who is to gainsay how that success was achieved.
V. WHAT IS THE HARM?
The harm caused by Beijing’s political influence and united front operations takes several forms,
even if we accept many of these activities as being legitimate actions of a foreign state inside the
United States or other countries.
1. Western Politicians Become Symbols for the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule: By using
party-controlled community organizations for their outreach to ethnically-Chinese
constituents, Western politicians become propaganda fodder for the Chinese Communist
Party. Politically-aware Chinese in the People’s Republic of China (and sometimes abroad)
can recognize these groups for what they are: pawns of the party. The reason for the
publicity surrounding these meetings and fundraisers is to broadcast back into China the
message that Western politicians care about liberalism at home, but not for Chinese people,
and that they stand on the side of the party. They reinforce the image of the party’s strength.
Vaclav Havel captured this dynamic in his essay The Power of the Powerless
by describing a
greengrocer placing a slogan of regime loyalty in his shop window. He does not believe in
the regime or its ideology, but he does so to make his life a little bit easier. Nor do people
necessarily notice or read the slogan, because similar slogans can be “found in other shop
windows, on lampposts, bulletin boards, in apartment windows, and on buildings.” The
presence of these slogans becomes part of the “panorama of everyday life.” This panorama
“reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what
everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don't want to
be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the
game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquility and security.” By participating even
inadvertently in united front-sponsored events, U.S. politicians and their foreign
counterparts help the Chinese Communist Party build Havel’s “panorama of everyday life”
for the Chinese people and their own ethnic Chinese citizens.
2. The Chinese Communist Party Mediates Between Chinese Citizens and Their Elected
Representatives: The network of united front “community organizations” creates a fake civil
society. The community which is supposedly represented is supplanted by the Chinese
Communist Party, unless politicians reach directly to membership or deal with
uncompromised organizations. The party’s interests become the constituency interests that
are presented to officials.
3. The Marketplace for Ideas is Distorted: Having a pluralistic, democratic society means
engaging with differences of opinion. There is a natural ebb and flow. As noted above, the
defining feature of the party’s united front operations is the effort to control platforms
rather than just the narrative. As platforms are compromised, the voices and messages they
carry change. They may not specifically represent the Chinese Communist Party, but they
will avoid criticisms or subjects that are intrinsically damaging to the party’s image, standing,
and legitimacy.
4. The Party Suppresses Discussion of China’s Future: The Chinese Communist Party’s control
inside China means that any version of China’s future without the party must be discussed
and decided beyond China’s borders. The extent to which the party monopolizes the social
space of Chinese people — especially those who would like to return to their home country
— is the extent to which the party can preempt the transmission of liberal political values
into China and discussion of China without reference to the party.
5. Undermining the Integrity of Policymaking: At its worst, the party’s political influence and
united front operations distort policymaking and the process of gathering information to
feed into the policy process. The primary targets of united front work are socially influential
individuals, such as politicians, prominent businesspeople, intellectuals, and sometimes even
celebrities.
There is some reason to suspect that the united front system plays a role in feeding foreign
intelligence services information. In conversations with former U.S. intelligence officials and
serving foreign ones, they described questionable sources over the years whose information
seemed to good to be true. The sourcing for their political reporting appeared sufficiently
plausible and good to encourage officers to avoid placing too much scrutiny on the policy
implications of the reporting or how it seemed to slant the party’s politics and positions.
6. Facilitating Intelligence Operations and Technology Transfer: The united front network of
organizations and relationships in overseas Chinese communities has been used to facilitate
the theft and transfer of technology from the U.S. companies and research institutions. For
example, as Alex Joske of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute explained at recent
conferences in Canberra and Melbourne last month, Tesla’s problem with Chinese theft of
its intellectual property was entirely predictable. Those involved were nested within and had
even established UFWD-linked organizations related to talent recruitment and technology
transfer. Current and former intelligence officials inside and outside the United States believe
the Chinese intelligence services make use of the spotting and assessing opportunities
created by united front system-sponsored visits to China for education, culture, and
business.
VI. THE U.S. PROBLEM WITH UNITED FRONT WORK
The United States has long been a target for the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to build political
influence. The risks in the United States largely stem from our dismissive attitudes about the dangers
we face and the seriousness with which the party has sought to influence U.S. opinions, especially at
elite levels.
The United States is often juxtaposed against Australia and New Zealand. U.S. analysts are
dismissive that the kinds of problems that happened in those countries could happen in the United
States. One of my former colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency dismissed united front work
as a largely tangential issue in an interview. The way in which this analyst described the problem —
or rather its absence — is symptomatic of a larger malaise within the communities with
responsibility and competence to evaluate Beijing’s attempts to build political influence and interfere
in other countries’ politics:
“You know when I was working in the government we didn’t care that much about
the activities of the United Front Work Department and I think there’s still a reason
why we really shouldn’t care that much about their activities. You know, this is not
Australia … So the United Front Work Department is of course the group under the
Communist Party whose job it is basically to work on overseas Chinese and get them
to support the government, basically. In short, that’s what they do. And, you know,
look, there was some serious things going on in Australia. You know, they were
doing this. But I think it’s important for us to remember that the Chinese population
in Australia is a much larger portion of a much smaller total population. There were
some interesting challenges in Australian campaign finance laws that allowed
foreigners to contribute directly to, you know, these elections and so on, but we
don’t have these things in the United States. And from my observations I do not see,
for example, the Chinese diplomatic presence here or even some of their, you know,
think tanks and so on doing anything like what they were doing down there. Maybe
not yet, and maybe that’s what the concern is, but I find it over- overwrought.”
I want to take apart some of the problems in that statement, because they highlight the mix of
arrogance and ignorance typical of American attitudes about the party’s potential to have a real
impact in the United States. First, it inaccurately characterizes united front work as getting overseas
Chinese to support the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China. Overseas
Chinese are a focus of the party for the reasons identified above; however, they are not the sole
focus and they never have been. For example, when Beijing began planning how to handle Japan
diplomatically in the 1950s, two of the party’s most senior and experienced influencers were given
the responsibility: Zhou Enlai and UFWD deputy director Liao Chengzhi. They made the decision
to cultivate Japanese businesspeople by helping them succeed in China, even as Tokyo was frozen
out diplomatically. The businesspeople would then form a natural constituency to push Japanese
leaders toward Beijing, giving the latter the leverage to hold out for more generosity from Tokyo.
Second, the statement treats our ethnic Chinese citizens and residents as undeserving of their full
freedoms, because they are not a significant enough part of the U.S. population. They deserve to
have their rights protected and crimes against them investigated, regardless of race or creed.
Third, the United States does have stronger campaign finance laws than Australia previously had (a
problem they rectified last year), but that has not meant immunity from the problem of the Chinese
Communist party trying to directly influence U.S. politics. We might recall the Clinton campaign
finance scandal involving China in 1996, which may not have had a substantial impact on U.S. policy
given that the Democratic National Committee was able to return the Beijing-linked donations
without financial difficulty. The legal protections and the publicity of the campaign finance scandal
forced the party’s efforts underground and to work through American proxies who could legally
donate to political campaigns.
Fourth, even well-informed people are mostly unaware of the scale of the Chinese Communist
Party’s operations inside the United States. Below are just a few facts about what is taking place in
the United States that I consider to be relatively solid and reflect what is actually happening (or
happened) rather than analysis.
1. The Chinese Communist Party pressures Chinese students — either directly or through their
families — to conform to the codes of speech and behavior acceptable inside China.
2. In the space of a few hours, my research assistant and I identified more than 250
organizations in the United States with individuals who actively and probably wittingly work
to support the party’s united front activities.
3. The party’s united front system has sponsored dozens of visits by hundreds of local and
state government officials, journalists, and students to China. Such visits are used to
influence and evaluate the participants for their future usefulness.
4. Beijing pressured and incentivized MSCI to expand the share of Chinese stocks on its
emerging markets index. The move will likely move more than $1 trillion into China.
5. U.S. thinks tanks and civil society groups have conducted surveys of American attitudes
toward China and U.S.-China relations on behalf of the influence bureaucracies outlined
above. Major Chinese multinational companies have discussed with U.S. lobbying and
consulting firms projects to map U.S. policymaking on China beyond the scope of their
business and investments in the United States.
The United States also has a limited capability to respond to the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts
to build political influence. We have built-in resilience because we are large country with diverse
centers of political, economic, cultural, and intellectual power. The natural churn of democratic
politics also bolsters the natural resilience of the United States. However, the limited capability to
generate and sustain a public conversation
1. Civil Society Capacity: The United States, as it stands today, is woefully short of journalists
and researchers who can bring these issues into the public light. The United States is more
than ten times more populous than Australia; yet, we have less than half the number of
journalists who have reported the issue. The same is true of Canada relative to the United
States. Most U.S. reporting has been done by a columnist, a freelancer, and a journalist who
is currently unemployed. I am hopeful that this will change as experienced China
correspondents return home and report China-related stories from inside the United States.
The Chinese-language media landscape in the United States also has succumbed almost
entirely to the party’s efforts to co-opt and control media outlets. Wealthy proxies or
party-controlled front organizations sometimes directly purchase the outlets. In other cases,
Beijing organizes advertising boycotts to drive the media outlet out of business or into
compliance with the party’s wishes. The only independent outlets seem to be run by the
Falungong, and they have not been able to maintain a consistent quality of journalism to
make them credible sources of information.
Academic research provides a disappointing picture. The research skills and language
capability is present, but the knowledge and output is not. The last book published by an
American scholar on united front work was by a Stanford professor in 1967. The united
front system also has not featured in most of the general textbooks on Chinese
policymaking, even in areas, such as the party’s relationship with business, where the
system’s importance is clear. A growing cadre of researchers also is emerging, but they are
too junior at the moment to carry the weight of public discussion. They also have had to pay
the burden of building this expertise on their own.
2. Government Capacity: As a former government analyst, I wish I could say with full
confidence that the U.S. Government has the resources and knowledge it needs across the
board. I do not think that is the case, despite some pockets of excellence and a few
outstanding individuals with a long period of time on target.
The Intelligence Community needs to think through what it means to have an analytic and
operational career in counterintelligence and countering foreign political
influence/interference. Laws and principles may be country agnostic, but the capabilities to
enforce will be specific to each country. There are some general skillsets common to all
forms of security intelligence — including counterintelligence, counterterrorism,
counter-narcotics, and counter-proliferation — but linguistic and regional/area studies
knowledge is required to research, understand, and unravel the networks.
At the policy level, the interagency process does not seem well-geared for countering foreign
political interference. Different agencies possess different elements of the response, but
coordination and clear responsibilities seem to be lacking. Allied security officials have
commented privately on what seems to be disarray within U.S. delegations on leadership,
substance, and protocol. A new agency or bureaucratic entity devoted to the problem seems
inappropriate. Such a reorganization would likely disrupt the intelligence components of the
system that are working without changing the bureaucratic dysfunction at the policy level.
The best fixes may be in the White House, where a deputy national security advisor or an
NSC senior director with the rank of deputy assistant to the president could be appointed to
coordinate the efforts to counter foreign interference. Outside the White House, there are
too many senior stakeholders who also must oversee much broader national and homeland
security portfolios.
The U.S. Government also needs to think through how to push information into the public
realm to drive the conversation, to explain its actions, and build public support. Open source
researchers can do quite a bit to map to the Chinese Communist Party’s united front system
and the networks of front organizations at the intersection of technology transfer,
intelligence, and political influence. However, such work requires having solid pegs into the
system from which to begin. Some of the very open political influence operations are
relatively easy to track because of the individuals public affiliations with the united front
system. Identifying, for example, the Ministry of State Security operations for political
influence is much more difficult if not frequently impossible. Government identification —
either through some sort of regular public report, taking cases to trial, etc. — allows
researchers to expand off of what the government has done, providing even more context
and possibly more leads to additional activities of concern. Having more of this information
available also helps justify U.S. government actions, especially administrative responses that
can be opaque even within government, in ways that lay and expert communities can
understand and debate .
VII. GUIDING PRINCIPLES IN RESPONDING
1. Transparency: Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Out in the open, people have to make
choices about whether to continue on in their conflicts of interests or compromised
relationships. This applies equally to government and law enforcement responses to political
interference. Administrative responses done quietly are not as effective as public
prosecutions and explanations, which help create risk and inject new information into the
public sphere for discussion.
2. Conversation and Debate: The legislature draws the line between legal and illegal. Federal
government resources always will focus predominantly on the illegal side. In a democracy,
we would not want it any other way. What is unacceptable or improper, however, is not
necessarily what is illegal. Civil society must be able to discuss in reasonable terms what is
taking place
3. Protect Space for Critical Discussion of China: Whether it is Chinese-language media
outside of China, university spaces, or any other platform where discussion of contemporary
China takes place, they all are vulnerable to the party’s pressure. And they all are targets of
the Chinese Communist Party. They need support, protection, and sometimes even
cultivation.
4. Consequences Create Risk: Until the Chinese Communist Party faces consequences for its
actions, they are not in danger of overstepping the mark or overestimating their ability to
influence or intimidate. Without successfully taking cases to and winning at trial, without
administrative penalties, Americans who actively assist the Chinese Communist Party at the
expense of U.S. interests will have no reason to scrutinize their actions or to desist. Risk is
required to deter behavior that undermines democracy.
5. Civil Liberties as much as National Security: Because the Chinese Communist Party puts
so much emphasis on overseas Chinese communities and individuals, countering Beijing’s
efforts means ensuring ethnically-Chinese citizens and residents can enjoy equal protection
under the law. National security and the resources brought to bear in its name are negative,
defensive powers rather than positive or creative. Civil liberties protections and the resources
deployed for this purpose, however, are the latter. They serve to guarantee constitutional
freedoms, creating and preserving the free space for speech and association. Enabling
democratic practices is at least as important preventing the exploitation of democracy.
6. Maintain the Integrity of Rules and Processes: When relationships with Chinese
Communist Party organizations go awry or become exploitative, most cases — excepting
those involving recruited or compromised agents — involve foreign partners who do not
monitor and enforce their own guidelines and procedures. To protect against conflicts of
interests and outright compromise, organizations that seek to do business, promote
exchanges, collaborate on research, or otherwise have institutional relationships need to
establish and stick to rules and procedures. Exceptions and exemptions need to be done in
the open with clear explanation; otherwise, it is too easy to slip toward compromise and
exploitation.
VIII. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CONGRESS
1. Revise the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) to include more robust reporting
requirements, more robust penalties for non-compliance, and a publicly-accessible
database of FARA registrants updated frequently.
Others have more fully outlined the fixes that need to be made related to the Foreign Agent
Registration Act, but I would like to emphasize a few points. First, the reporting
requirements for describing the activities are quite minimal. Companies and individuals that
wish to be safe provide more; however, that is not the general rule. Expanding the reporting
requirements to include more substance and specificity about the messages delivered or
services provided would make the reporting mechanism more transparent. Separately,
additional reporting could be made a part of Congressional ethics standards. Second,
non-compliance with FARA seems to have few if any consequences. The current approach
to enforcement is largely about voluntarily self-policing. Third, the United States should
revise its approach to presenting FARA data, modeling its public-facing database on the
Australian Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (FITS). The FITS database is updated
on a regular, rolling basis rather than the quarterly approach to FARA. The database and
accompanying documentation is comparatively clear and accessible.
2. Request a review of the Department of Justice’s decisions not to prosecute
espionage-related cases.
The intelligence, law enforcement, and prosecutorial capabilities for responding to espionage
are the same resources that will be used to address the greyer areas of political influence and
interference. A review of decisions not to prosecute should be completed to understand
what problems — whether investigative competence, resources and funding, political
expediency, or any other factors — undermined taking the cases to trial. This review should
be undertaken by Congress, and the Department of Justice should be encouraged to do their
own review and report it to the appropriate committees.
3. Expand the mandate of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC)
to include the civil liberties and human rights of ethnic Chinese living outside the
People’s Republic of China.
Congress created the CECC in 2000 “to monitor China’s compliance with international
human rights standards, to encourage the development of the rule of law in the PRC, and to
establish and maintain a list of victims of human rights abuses in China.” The treatment of
overseas Chinese at the hands of Beijing is closely related to this mandate.
The human rights of overseas Chinese would be a logical expansion, given that they are
subject to two issues. The first is Beijing’s willingness to surveil and apply pressure to these
communities as well as to subvert community organizations. The second is the absence of a
response from their home governments to the Chinese Communist Party’s actions. The
former is the infringement of the rights of overseas Chinese; the latter is the absence of
often constitutionally-guaranteed protections.
4. Develop and fund educational programs to support mid-career expertise building
and language skill maintenance.
Existing programs focus almost exclusively on undergraduate and graduate students, most
often at the beginning of their careers. Creating space and time for experienced professionals
to brush up on language skills or pursue useful personal projects would help ensure
continued learning. Government employees have some access to similar programs, but there
needs to be greater recognition of the value of education and being away from the desk.
Private sector employees need new programs and sources of support to be able to take the
time to study and return to work.
5. Create a national training center for community workers to support language
training and understanding foreign government operations in ethnic communities
within the United States.
Community outreach programs in the United States are decentralized owing to the federal,
state, and local government structure. Unifying these programs would be unnecessarily
complicated and put the different levels of government at odds with one another. To ensure
awareness of issues in ethnic communities, Congress should create a national training center
for community workers. Overseas Chinese communities are not the only ones subject to
harassment or infringement of their civil rights by a foreign government. The center should
support language training, either through residency programs or individual grants for local
programs.
Those most affected by a coercive foreign government do not have a ready outlet for
reporting the problems they face. Law enforcement works best when officers are dealing
with familiar issues and challenges. Building a cadre of informed community workers outside
the justice system serves at least two purposes. First, it provides navigators for those
individuals willing to stand up and report the problems. Community workers can help such
an individual navigate law enforcement when they may be reluctant to come forward.
Second, community workers can serve as an important source of information outside
traditional law enforcement and intelligence channels.
6. Use Congress’s institutional powers to press the executive branch for transparency
on actions taken against China, especially where the actions are administrative.
American opinions are shifting about China, but much of the public discussion remains
caught in limbo between the old policy paradigm and the uncertainty of today’s new era of
competition. Consequently, the administration needs to be more transparent than the
executive branch typically is inclined.
The visa denials for Chinese scholars is a perfect example from recent news. Many U.S. and
international scholars have been dismayed by the news, and the merits of excluding those
individuals or revoking their visas is not obvious to the public. The particular of case of Zhu
Feng, a Nanjing-based professor, having his visa revoked shows why the executive branch
needs to be more transparent publicly. Although he is a well-known scholar known for his
amiable humor, Zhu also has been supported by and done work for the political warfare
element of the People’s Liberation Army. This is available from open sources. Putting a few
simple criteria out in public for visa denials and alerting inviting institutions what criteria was
triggered would be a useful positive step for handling the visa issues going forward. Without
such information, many otherwise knowledgeable people about China assumed the worst
about the administration’s intentions and actions.
The administration also should be encouraged to use the legal system and press charges
where appropriate. The legal process forces the U.S. Government to commit to a course of
action and making some information public. That information, especially after a conviction,
becomes as close to ground truth as a possible on sensitive subjects for which there is not
much clear, public information.
