The People’s Republic of China has a “magic weapon”, according to its founding leader Mao Zedong and its current president Xi Jinping. It is called the United Front Work Department (UFWD) - and it is raising as much alarm in the West as Beijing’s growing military arsenal.
Yang Tengbo, a prominent businessman who has been linked to Prince Andrew, is the latest overseas Chinese citizen to be scrutinised - and sanctioned - for his links to the UFWD.
The existence of the department is far from a secret. A decades-old and well-documented arm of the Chinese Communist Party, it has been mired in controversy before. Investigators from the US to Australia have cited the UFWD in multiple espionage cases, often accusing Beijing of using it for foreign interference.
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The United Front - originally referring to a broad communist alliance - was once hailed by Mao as the key to the Communist Party’s triumph in the decades-long Chinese Civil War.
After the war ended in 1949 and the party began ruling China, United Front activities took a backseat to other priorities. But in the last decade under Xi, the United Front has seen a renaissance of sorts.
Xi’s version of the United Front is broadly consistent with earlier incarnations: to “build the broadest possible coalition with all social forces that are relevant”, according to Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
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Today, the UFWD seeks to influence public discussions about sensitive issues ranging from Taiwan - which China claims as its territory - to the suppression of ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.
It also tries to shape narratives about China in foreign media, target Chinese government critics abroad and co-opt influential overseas Chinese figures.
“United Front work can include espionage but [it] is broader than espionage,” Audrye Wong, assistant professor of politics at the University of Southern California, tells the BBC.
“Beyond the act of acquiring covert information from a foreign government, United Front activities centre on the broader mobilisation of overseas Chinese,” she said, adding that China is “unique in the scale and scope” of such influence activities.
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Some experts say that the long arm of China’s United Front is indeed concerning. “Western governments now need to be less naive about China’s United Front work and take it as a serious threat not only to national security but also to the safety and freedom of many ethnic Chinese citizens,” [politics professor at Johns Hopkins University Dr Ho-fung] Hung said.
[But he and Audrye Wong, assistant professor of politics at the University of Southern California, say that] it’s important to remember that not everyone who is ethnically Chinese is a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party.
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You’re right. The West is well known for employing secret extralegal police in other countries as well.
/s
That /s tells me you think every prisoner at gitmo saw due process…
Do you happen to know when the most recent new prisoner to gitmo was brought there? And how about the most recent kidnapping, assault, or other official international crime by the Chinese government?
Maybe some numbers? There are dozens of known Chinese international, extralegal police stations opened in at least 30 countries. There are less than 30 remaining gitmo prisoners.
Nobody likes gitmo. If a certain “party of law and order” would actually give a crap about law and order, it’d be closed by now. But comparing the two is grasping for straws, especially since one’s actively being expanded while the other has been shutting down since Obama.
The fact you think there are less than 30 prisioners and also think it’s “a republican” thing paints the exact opposite portrait you were trying to paint.
Dozens in 30 countries… OK
The fact that you’re necroing a week old post to spout nonsense without evidence shows just how confident you are in your argument.
The number of prisoners in gitmo have been reported on plenty of times.
Do you live under a rock or something? Feels like every week there’s a new investigation/arrest related to this.
The last FOI was before Oct7th. Give it a few months for the docket to be updated.
Meanwhile you can read the amnesty international report on it.
Also, remind me, there have been only “law and order party” presidents since 2009 when Obama signed the executive order to close the facility right?
How’s that presidential pardon for Snowden? Once there’s a Democrat in power for sure it will happen.
How about the 0 facilities of the US around the world, that don’t exist extra-judicially and never ever result in rape of locals i.e. Okinawans or Italians just to name a few? All of these rapists have been prosecuted by local justice right.
I saw evidence of Chinese persecution of political prisioners in Hungary, which is completely unacceptable and needs to be dealt with. The rest is typical fog of war BS.
What about the Nazis? What about the genocides in Rwanda, Soviet Russia, Cambodia…
Seems we both agree then that the Chinese extralegal, international persecution of political dissidents is unacceptable. The rest, guess we can continue to disagree.
"You’re right. The West is well known for employing secret extralegal police in other countries as well.
/s"
The OP said singling out CCP for extra legal ops is kinda hipocritical.
You said that the west is NOT well known for that.
I gave you an example that you were wrong about it with gitmo.
The rest was just a typical discussion with a US American closeted nazi with the typical “everything bad we do it’s the evil republicans, I don’t support nazis” while burying the head in the sand to insurmountable evidence to the contrary. You’re so brainwashed on the whole exceptionalism shtick, you can’t see your country for what it is.