China Seeks to Manipulate Local Officials into Pressing Federal Government to Pursue China-Friendly Policies, US Intelligence Says

Reuters report­ed last month that US intel­li­gence has warned state and local offi­cials that Chi­na aims to manip­u­late them into press­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to pur­sue more Bei­jing-friend­ly poli­cies. Accord­ing to a Reuters report:

July 6, 2022 Chi­na “under­stands that U.S. state and local lead­ers enjoy a degree of inde­pen­dence from Wash­ing­ton and may seek to use them as prox­ies to advo­cate for nation­al U.S. poli­cies Bei­jing desires,” the Nation­al Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Cen­ter said in a bul­letin sent to state and local offi­cials. […] The new coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence bul­letin said that Bei­jing is using a vari­ety of means to manip­u­late state and local offi­cials into press­ing Wash­ing­ton for poli­cies that are more friend­ly to Chi­na.  “PRC (Peo­ples Repub­lic of Chi­na) influ­ence oper­a­tions can be decep­tive and coer­cive, with seem­ing­ly benign busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties or peo­ple-to-peo­ple exchanges some­times mask­ing PRC polit­i­cal agen­das,” it said.

Read the rest here.

The Reuters report says the intel­li­gence bul­letin iden­ti­fied the fol­low­ing orga­ni­za­tions as “front groups” for Chi­nese influence:

• The Bei­jing-based Chi­nese Peo­ple’s Asso­ci­a­tion for Friend­ship with For­eign Coun­tries (CPAFFC)
• The Wash­ing­ton, DC-based Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for Chi­na’s Peace­ful Reuni­fi­ca­tion (NACPU)

In Octo­ber 2020, the US gov­ern­ment des­ig­nat­ed the NACPU as a for­eign mis­sion of Chi­na, say­ing the Unit­ed Front Work Depart­ment con­trols the orga­ni­za­tion. The same state­ment also said the US gov­ern­ment dis­con­tin­ued a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment on estab­lish­ing a forum because the CPAFFC “sought to direct­ly and malign­ly influ­ence state and local lead­ers to pro­mote the PRC’s glob­al agenda.”

The Unit­ed Front Work Depart­ment is a lit­tle-known Bei­jing-based agency with branch­es around the world that seeks to imple­ment the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s (CCP) plans to set up and con­nect an exten­sive net­work of asso­ci­a­tions, busi­ness groups, friend­ship soci­eties, or cul­tur­al groups sup­port­ive of the CCP and to ensure that its over­seas cit­i­zens, and oth­ers of eth­nic Chi­nese descent, stay loy­al. Accord­ing to a US gov­ern­ment report, Unit­ed Front work pro­motes Bei­jing’s pre­ferred glob­al nar­ra­tive, pres­sures indi­vid­u­als liv­ing in free and open soci­eties to self-cen­sor and avoid dis­cussing issues unfa­vor­able to the CCP, and harass­es or under­mines groups crit­i­cal of Bei­jing’s policies.