The Chinese Taoist Association- Religious Networks as CCP Tools

Influ­ence oper­a­tions by the Unit­ed Front Work Depart­ment (UFWD) have trans­formed reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions into instru­ments of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s polit­i­cal objec­tives world­wide. Accord­ing to a new Reli­gio­scope analy­sis, the Chi­nese Taoist Asso­ci­a­tion oper­ates as a branch of the Unit­ed Front Work Depart­ment, using Quanzhen Taoist net­works to com­pel Tai­wanese reli­gious prac­ti­tion­ers to attend politi­cized activ­i­ties while estab­lish­ing the World Fed­er­a­tion of Tao­ism to spread Bei­jing’s soft pow­er across Europe, North Amer­i­ca, Asia, and Aus­tralia. The arti­cle begins:

The Chi­nese Taoist Asso­ci­a­tion (CTA), which over­sees Quanzhen Taoist reli­gious activ­i­ties in Chi­na and pre­sides over the new­ly estab­lished World Fed­er­a­tion of Tao­ism (WFT), is a branch of the Unit­ed Front Work Depart­ment (UFWD), which is itself an arm of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (CCP). Although many of the CTA’s lead­ers live as Quanzhen Taoist monks or nuns, these indi­vid­u­als are charged with polit­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties reflect­ing the CCP’s goals, which include “Sini­ciz­ing” the reli­gion at home and spread­ing the PRC’s soft pow­er abroad.

Read more: http://www.religioscope.org/papers/03.pdf

Key Points

• The UFWD cre­ates con­di­tions com­pelling Tai­wanese Quanzhen Taoists to attend gov­ern­ment-run polit­i­cal activ­i­ties and sub­mit to sur­veil­lance when trav­el­ing to main­land Chi­na for reli­gious interactions.
• The World Fed­er­a­tion of Tao­ism, estab­lished in 2023, has forged links with Aus­tralian politi­cians and a UK-reg­is­tered char­i­ty focused on “faith-based invest­ing” while main­tain­ing CCP oversight.
• West­ern WFT affil­i­ates claim inde­pen­dence but mem­ber­ship implies will­ing­ness to remain silent on CCP-sen­si­tive issues, demon­strat­ing the orga­ni­za­tion’s polit­i­cal con­straints despite reli­gious facade.
• A Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty inci­dent in 2020, where a Quanzhen Taoist monk con­duct­ed “sharp pow­er” activ­i­ties, illus­trates how reli­gious net­works can become flash­points for CCP influ­ence operations.

Chinese United Front Work Department: Global Influence Operations

The recent lead­er­ship reshuf­fling with­in Chi­na’s Unit­ed Front Work Depart­ment reflects Bei­jing’s inten­si­fy­ing strat­e­gy to co-opt eth­nic Chi­nese indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing out­side Chi­na while neu­tral­iz­ing sources of poten­tial oppo­si­tion to CCP poli­cies and author­i­ty. The UFWD oper­ates in the US through sophis­ti­cat­ed tar­get­ing of US orga­ni­za­tions using qua­si-offi­cial enti­ties that blur the lines between state and pri­vate activ­i­ty, with the CCP claim­ing the right to speak on behalf of eth­nic minor­i­ty groups, reli­gious move­ments, and busi­ness sec­tors to gain legit­i­ma­cy. Under Xi Jin­ping’s expand­ed man­date, the depart­ment now coor­di­nates sys­tem­at­ic efforts to reshape polit­i­cal dis­course through twelve spe­cial­ized bureaus man­ag­ing every­thing from over­seas Chi­nese affairs to reli­gious groups, fol­low­ing the 2018 con­sol­i­da­tion that absorbed the Over­seas Chi­nese Affairs Office and State Admin­is­tra­tion for Reli­gious Affairs. Recent cas­es demon­strate oper­a­tional reach: high-lev­el polit­i­cal infil­tra­tion in the Unit­ed States includes recruit­ment of gov­ern­ment oper­a­tives along­side ille­gal police sta­tions on Amer­i­can soil that result­ed in fed­er­al charges against 40 Chi­nese nation­al police offi­cers for transna­tion­al repres­sion schemes, while covert net­works oper­at­ing across Ger­many tar­get polit­i­cal elites through what the Jus­tice Depart­ment iden­ti­fies as efforts to intim­i­date, silence, and harass crit­ics liv­ing abroad. The UFWD coor­di­nates an esti­mat­ed 600 orga­ni­za­tions in the Unit­ed States that serve dual pur­pos­es: pro­vid­ing oper­a­tional cov­er for Min­istry of State Secu­ri­ty intel­li­gence gath­er­ing while facil­i­tat­ing tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer, with dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture invest­ments in Peru exem­pli­fy­ing how unit­ed front groups mobi­lize to gath­er med­ical sup­plies and pro­mote CCP nar­ra­tives glob­al­ly, as the first suc­cess­ful for­eign influ­ence con­vic­tion in Aus­tralia high­lights the depart­men­t’s transna­tion­al repres­sion cam­paigns tar­get­ing dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties, democ­ra­cy activists, and eth­nic minori­ties worldwide.

Exter­nal References:

1. Chi­na’s Over­seas Unit­ed Front Work: Back­ground and Impli­ca­tions for the Unit­ed States
2. 40 Offi­cers of Chi­na’s Nation­al Police Charged in Transna­tion­al Repres­sion Schemes Tar­get­ing U.S. Residents
3. The par­ty speaks for you: For­eign inter­fer­ence and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s unit­ed front system

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.