How the Chinese Communist Party Disrupts American Society (Part 2)

Download full article: PDF for Reading PDF for Printing

(Minghui.org) Pro-Palestinian protests erupted across the campuses of American colleges in the spring of 2024. They took over buildings, interrupted classes, damaged infrastructure, and threatened Jewish students.

After clearing out a pro-Palestinian barricade at Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, the New York Police Department found that the protesters were surprisingly well-equipped, with industrial-grade chains, gas masks, ear plugs, goggles, hammers, knives, and ropes. They also discovered that 25% of the people they arrested were not students. At the City University of New York, 60% of the arrested protesters were not students.

In its 2022 report the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted that because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses seemingly benign organizations to perform its united front work, its influence is often “covert” or “deceptive” and difficult to trace. In the same 2022 report, the commission recommended that Congress keep an “unclassified directory” of the CCP apparatus of control that includes “organizations affiliated with the United Front Work Department.”

(Continued from Part 1)

Eyes and Ears Outside Mainland China

Since the 1930s, the CCP has had a department expressly responsible for promoting its influence outside of its own jurisdiction. On January 5, 1939, the Central Secretariat of the CCP officially established the United Front Work Department (UFWD) as an arm within the CCP. This department was responsible for creating a “united front” of CCP operations in all aspects of Chinese society—religious groups, ethnic minorities, political parties, business owners, and non-CCP affiliated literati—as well as in overseas societies.

Although the Ministry of State Security (MSS) is the agency primarily responsible for the CCP’s spy operations, the UFWD also coordinates a fair amount of espionage through its covert overseas networks.

Two high-profile cases in the United States convicted TTP members [the CCP’s Thousand Talents Plan (TTP)] of transmitting American trade secrets to Chinese entities. The first individual, Xiarong You, was convicted in 2021. She was a polymer scientist employed at Coca-Cola and subsequently the Eastman Chemical Company from 2012 to 2018.

During her tenure she used trade secrets from the two companies to launch her own company in China—the Weihai Jinhong Group, which received millions in funding from the Chinese government, including from the TTP. These trade secrets cost American companies over $120 million in research and development.

“You’s Thousand Talents Program application and other evidence presented at trial showed that she intended to benefit not only Weihai Jinhong Group, but also the governments of China, the Chinese province of Shandong, the Chinese city of Weihai and the Chinese Communist Party,” said the Department of Justice in a press release about her case. You was sentenced to 14 years in prison, 3 years of supervised release, and was fined $200,000.

In March 2022, Xiaoqing Zheng was sentenced to two years in prison for conspiring to commit economic espionage. Zheng, a former General Electric (GE) engineer for 10 years, stole GE’s designs for ground-based and aviation turbines and gave them to Chinese universities and companies.

“This is a case of textbook economic espionage. Zheng exploited his position of trust, betrayed his employer and conspired with the government of China to steal innovative American technology,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Another UFWD-managed source for espionage comes from its control of overseas Chinese student and scholar associations (CSSAs). “Numerous Chinese students and scholars associations, which are united front groups for Chinese international students, have been involved in suppressing academic freedom and mobilising students for nationalistic activities,” noted the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Politico magazine once interviewed a former U.S. counterintelligence individual who spoke of a case where a CSSA-affilicated graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, “was working for the MSS, and reporting on the activities of other Chinese students on campus.”

Christine Fang, a Chinese national who was enrolled at California State University East Bay, was the president of the school’s Chinese Student Association. She left the United States abruptly in 2015 due to an FBI investigation into her activities, which involved building relationships with American politicians, including romantic and sexual ones. U.S. officials told Axios that Fang was “focused on gathering political intelligence and conducting influence operations in the Bay Area.”

Manipulating the Media

One of the stated goals of the UFWD is to further the CCP’s propaganda, and it also does this using a variety of methods. For instance, the UFWD operates the China News Service, a network of media outlets that disseminate the CCP’s media talking points to the Chinese diaspora.

Notable members of this network include Qiaobao, a Chinese-language newspaper in the United States, and the Pacific Media Group based in Australia.

Recently, the CCP has also been discovered to be injecting UFWD-linked personnel into jobs at Western media outlets to manipulate narratives. A series of articles published in The New York Times reiterates many of the CCP’s key propaganda talking points about Falun Gong—a religious minority the CCP has tried to exterminate for 26 years. The lead reporter on this series, Nicole Hong, is the daughter of a known UFWD operative who previously participated in the CCP’s propaganda operations in the U.S.

George Hong, or Hong Zhaohui, has been an honorary director of the WRSA. In 1995, he met with Zhang Weichao, the deputy director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (a UFWD-affiliated organization that was subsumed into the UFWD in 2018) to speak about furthering Chinese language education in the United States. After the visit, 4,500 sets of the standardized textbooks used in China’s schools were sent to the United States. These textbooks were filled with CCP propaganda, from false portrayals of the Japanese to glorifying the CCP’s heroes.

For his dedication to his work for the Party, Hong was received twice in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing by former CCP head Jiang Zemin, and photographed with him.

These tasks and incentives match the pattern of how the UFWD works with members of the Chinese diaspora, according to Yaqiu Wang, research director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House. “People join [the UFWD] for fellowship, out of a misplaced sense of patriotism,” Wang said. “People also join because it gets them a chance to be received by high-level Chinese officials when they return to China to visit, even including [the top leader.] They want this kind of prestige.”

In fact, Hong’s daughter uses several propaganda techniques in constructing her article series. Her portrayal of Falun Gong’s key beliefs relies on a series of straw men obtained by taking the teachings out of context and by people who tried the practice and decided it was not for them. There is not a single instance where a current practitioner or an expert in Asian religions is consulted. She massively downplays the brutality of the persecution—which human rights experts around the world have concurred includes forced organ harvesting—and uses a singular source who is employed by an academic department that was investigated by the Department of Justice for not disclosing CCP funds.

Perhaps most shocking of all, the source that appears to have pitched her the story is a potential school shooter identified by the FBI. This potential shooter has repeatedly expressed a desire to “destroy” the Falun Gong movement, has made threats against two Falun Gong-affiliated religious schools, and is a self-described “sociopath.” After making these threats, he was arrested and is now facing two counts of illegal weapons possession.

Over a period of seven months, this potential shooter made posts on social media detailing his tight collaboration with Hong’s daughter. To date, neither The New York Times nor Hong’s daughter disputed his claims—thus raising concerns that this publicity will encourage the potential shooter’s violent tendencies or even instigate an attempt on Falun Gong schools.

Building Immunity to CCP Influence

American officials have been sounding the alarm about the extent of the CCP’s influence operations in the United States and taking measures to mitigate the disruption it can cause to the United States.

“Communist China is infiltrating United States businesses, universities, and local and state governments. We cannot continue ignoring this threat,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while he was still a Florida senator in 2024.

Representative John Moolenar, Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said that he was appalled by the depth of the CCP’s infiltration into the U.S.“It is shocking—at the highest levels of state government. The Chinese Communist Party isn’t simply way over there. They are on our shores working to subvert the American experience,” he said.

“The Chinese Communist Party is a huge threat to America and a huge threat to our government. Does anyone disagree that as we speak, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to infiltrate our government, various government agencies, and our political system in general?” asked Representative Jamie Raskin during a House Oversight Committee meeting.

Most recently, Secretary Rubio made headlines when he announced on May 28 that he was going to begin revoking visas for Chinese national students who had known CCP ties or were studying in sensitive fields. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification on May 22, citing concerns about Harvard’s links to the CCP and affiliated organizations. This order is currently being challenged in court.

In his Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of State, Rubio emphasized the need to take immediate action and a whole-of-society approach against CCP infiltration.

“The Chinese believe the U.S. is in inevitable decline, and they are on the rise. And because of our own actions, a lot of that is true. If we don’t change course, we are going to live in a world where much of what matters to us in life—from our security to our health—will be dependent on whether the Chinese allow us to have it or not,” said Rubio.