Members of the House issued a report on Monday talking about an “influence” strategy employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) known as “united front work” that has made its way to the United States.
Led by the Central United Front Work Department, the effort is a “unique blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations,” the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party explains in a six-page memo.
The CCP uses united front work “to shape its political environment, including to influence other countries’ policy toward [China] and to gain access to advanced foreign technology,” the memo says, adding that it is carried out “by an extensive and well-documented network of organizations.”
This network, the memo adds, operates “in parallel” to China’s “foreign ministry and intelligence services that seeks to influence universities, think tanks, civic groups, other prominent individuals and institutions, and public opinion broadly.”
Examples of united front work-linked activity, cited from various media reports, include a front group stoking protests against Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in the United States and secret Chinese police stations in places such as New York City that experts say are used to go after opponents of the CCP. The memo also lists various targets of united front work, including ethnic minorities and people with roots in Taiwan.
“United front work damages U.S. interests through legal and illegal technology transfer, surveillance of Chinese diaspora communities, promotion of favorable narratives about the PRC through ostensibly independent voices, and the neutralization or harassment of critics of the CCP,” the memo states in a section arguing why the united front work matters. “The United States has no direct analogue, and the U.S. Government has struggled to counter united front work with traditional counterintelligence, law enforcement, and diplomatic tools.”
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Such influence operations have been reported in other countries as well. After a think tank in Australia warned about the united front work branching out in that country in 2020, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called the report “fallacious” and insisted, “China has been developing foreign relations based on principles of mutual respect and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.”
The House panel memo was released in the weeks after President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in California, and the two sides pledged to resume military talks amid rising tensions over Taiwan, Beijing’s spy balloon that flew over the continental U.S. earlier this year, and more.
“Through its united front work strategy, which Xi Jinping has called a ‘magic weapon,’ the Chinese Communist Party uses every tool at its disposal, whether legal or illicit, to influence the American people and interfere in democratic societies. Our bipartisan memo on united front work will help the American people recognize and resist the CCP’s malign influence,” Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) said in a statement.
“An important, but little understood, aspect of the Chinese Communist Party’s misinformation, propaganda, and influence efforts both in the PRC and abroad is the CCP’s united front system. This background memo provides information about united front activities, and can be a potentially helpful guide in addressing and countering them,” added ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL).