Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, when the United States maintained an alli-
ance with the regime of Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan, pro-PRC organ
izations faced challenges gaining traction in the United States. During
the 1950s, the FBI, aided by pro-Kuomintang security organizations,
closely monitored their activities and participants. This antagonistic state
of affairs began to change after President Nixon’s historic trip to China in
1972.1 On February 24, 1973, more than forty Chinese on the East Coast,
most of them immigrants from Taiwan, established the Washington
Association to Promote China Unification to help advocate for Beijing’s
official positions. One of the founders was a professor at the Univer-
sity of Maryland who was actively involved in organizations that already
supported China’s position on Taiwan and Tibet.2 However, a more
beneficial contribution came in the form of advancing US-China scien-
tific, educational, and cultural exchanges that began to be promoted by
-1— a growing number of preeminent Chinese American scientists, engi-
0— neers, and academics who were also advising the Chinese government
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Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
The head of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, Qiu Yuanping, also
leads the China Overseas Exchange Association. Qiu has a career back-
ground with the Party’s International Liaison Department. The presi-
dent of the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification
is none other than Yu Zhengsheng, the former chairman of the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Conference and a former member of the
Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party’s
Central Committee.6
The key goal of the party’s united front work with overseas Chinese is
to gain support for the Communist Party’s efforts to modernize the
country by convincing members of overseas Chinese communities that
the party is the sole representative of China. A second goal is to isolate
competing forces that the party perceives to be adversarial, or even hos-
tile. For example, as part of a massive campaign to monitor, control, and
even intimidate China’s ethnic minorities (no matter where in the world
they are), Chinese authorities are creating a global registry of Uighurs
who live outside of China. Chinese authorities threaten to detain Uighur
relatives who remain in China if they do not provide personal informa-
tion about their relatives living abroad to the Chinese police. This cam-
paign has particularly targeted Uighurs living in Germany but is now
reaching Uighurs in the United States as well.7 Uighurs are not alone;
Tibetan exiles living in the United States have long reported similar
campaigns against members of their families and community. Chinese
security officials have even been known to travel to America on tourist
visas to exert pressure on Chinese dissidents living here.8 FBI agents have
contacted prominent Chinese exiles in the United States offering them
protection from Chinese agents who might travel to the United States
to menace them.9
For most Chinese Americans, however, China’s efforts to influence
them are far more anodyne. The official description of the Overseas
-1— Chinese Affairs Office states its purpose as: “to enhance unity and
0— friendship in overseas Chinese communities; to maintain contact with
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Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
and support overseas Chinese media and Chinese language schools; [and]
to increase cooperation and exchanges between overseas Chinese and
China related to the economy, science, culture and education.” Over the
past three decades, the OCAO has dispatched former reporters and edi-
tors from the OCAO-r un China News Serv ice to establish pro-Beijing
Chinese media organ izations in the West. (Chinese officials have
described such Chinese-language media outlets, schools, and other kinds
of organizations as the “three treasures” [三宝] of united front work
overseas.)10
Officials from Beijing have stated clearly that they do not view over-
seas Chinese as simply citizens of foreign countries, but rather as “over-
seas compatriots” (华侨同胞们) who have both historical connections and
responsibilities as “sons and daughters of the Yellow Emperor” to sup-
port the PRC’s goals and the “China Dream.” As Xi Jinping11 described
it in a 2014 speech to the Seventh Conference of Overseas Chinese Asso-
ciations, “The Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation is a Dream shared
by all Chinese” [emphasis added]. In January 2018, Politburo member and
former state counselor and foreign minister Yang Jiechi made this pre-
sumption even clearer when he called upon the government to expand and
strengthen “Overseas Chinese Patriotic Friendly Forces” in the serv ice
of the “Great Rejuvenation” of the Chinese nation.
In addition to appealing to the cultural affinities of Chinese Ameri-
cans, the Chinese government has also implemented a wide range of pro-
grams to strengthen ties with elite members of this community. China
has appointed hundreds of Chinese Americans to positions in its united
front organizations and provided thousands with f ree trips to China, dur-
ing which they have been feted by senior united front officials. In some
cases, Chinese Americans are offered sen ior positions in united front
organizations. For example, in 2013, one Chinese American, a native of
Guangdong Province, became the first and only foreigner to become a
vice president of the COFA.12
China has used this tactic of handing out what one senior Chinese
American called “honors” to Chinese Americans as a way for united front
departments, and even espionage agencies, to cultivate contacts in the —-1
United States, often to the detriment of other groups—such as Tibetans, —0
—+1
Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
enemies in the United States, the best antidote to such intrusion is for
federal and local governments to do more to strengthen ties to Chinese
American communities and to give greater visibility into the various
inducements and pressures Beijing exerts on t hese communities. That
the FBI has begun to reach out to prominent Chinese in the United
States, offering protection, is a good beginning. But the FBI and the rest
of the US government must approach this problem with g reat sensitivity
and be mindful of the sad history of political repression in the Chinese
American community and the legacy of the McCarthyite purges of the
1950s.
This is particularly important, as such demonization can lead to
the unwarranted targeting of Chinese Americans or long-term Chinese
residents of the United States for alleged crimes involving illegal coop-
eration with China. Over the past decade, t here has been a significant
number of examples of prosecutorial overreach, such as the case against
the hydrologist Sherry Chen, who was exonerated in 2015 of all espio-
nage charges.
A sustained education campaign is also urgently needed to inform
the members of the Chinese American community of the potential adverse
consequences of involvement with China’s united front activities. Chinese
American organizations also need to do a better job of informing them-
selves about the underlying goals of PRC’s united front organizations
as t here are potential reputational costs of allying with them and losing
independence. It can be taken as a positive sign that, for example, the
Committee of 100, an organization founded by many illustrious Chinese
Americans, has begun to debate the possibility of encouraging its leading
members from accepting positions with PRC united front organizations
officially aligned with the Chinese Communist Party.29
China’s activities in the United States can also be made more trans-
parent by requiring spin-off groups from united front organizations in
Beijing to register u nder the Foreign Agent Registration Act as agents
of a foreign power. This would include all of the bureaus of the Peaceful
Reunification Council, the China Overseas Exchange Association, and
the China Overseas Friendship Association, among o thers that are, in —-1
fact, influence-seeking organizations with political implications run by —0
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Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
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Copyright © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.