This week a naturalized U.S. citizen was convicted of spying for Beijing. Wang Shujun reported to no fewer than four communist handlers, passing on information about stateside Chinese dissidents. The trick was to befriend them, gain their trust, report them.
Although this ended up as a spying case, Beijing often uses a political tool, the United Front, to accomplish the same thing: transnational repression.
The United Front works “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party.” When it is not neutralizing the opposition or reporting dissidents, it is taking control of local Chinese news outlets and organizations.
United we fall
The United Front embodies the same concept used after World War II in countries subjected to communist rule, a “united front” of communists with noncommunists.
Even today there are still eight noncommunist political parties in China acting as controlled opposition. (For example, the parties cannot choose their own leaders; they are chosen by the CCP.) Beijing has expanded the concept beyond parties to prominent nonparty individuals, social groups, charities, and various organizations. These are enlisted to do the work of the United Front: to promote communist China, silence its critics, and influence host societies and governments.
The United Fronters gained attention late last year when they beat and intimidated demonstrators in San Francisco during a visit by Xi Jinping. Even Congress noticed. Said John Moolenaar (R-MI), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, “The CCP-directed attacks on human rights activists during Secretary General Xi’s visit to San Francisco last November were an outrageous violation of American sovereignty and the values we all hold dear. This thuggery—also known as transnational repression—has no place in America.”
Which is not to say that it has no place in San Francisco. Activists who tried to enlist police help encountered indifference and ignorance.
Why? Consider the famous case of billionaire Zhang Li, “embroiled in a corruption scandal involving the former director of the San Francisco Department of Public Works, Mohammed Nuru, between 2015 and 2020.”
Zhang “was accused of bribing San Francisco officials, including Nuru, so that his company’s U.S. affiliate, Z&L Properties, Inc., could acquire construction project permits in the city.” Not only that, but from 2014 to 2015, “Z&L Properties, Inc. reportedly bought land across California, such as in San Francisco, Fremont, Santa Clara, San Jose and Los Angeles, with the intention of building 3,400 housing units.”
California, baby. Money talks, Fronters walk.
Positive, pragmatic, open
More recently, in April 2024, the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, headed for China, where she tried to “secure investments in San Francisco’s struggling economy” and get the communists to open a university downtown. This is not a person to cross the communists or their instruments.
The Bay Area Council Economic Institute puts it this way: “The Bay Area is in a strong position to interpret China to the U.S., and the U.S. to China, as it continues to build a positive, multifaceted relationship. While China will remain a sometimes controversial topic in Washington, states, regions and private companies tend to see China more pragmatically. The Bay Area has shown a particular affinity and openness to China….”
Take your demonstrations elsewhere, my friends.
The United Front organizations are said to be GONGOs, government-organized nongovernmental organizations.
And yet, according to a 2018 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “At the operational level, United Front activities are coordinated by the CCP’s United Front Work Department (UFWD)….
“The CCP continues to lay the groundwork in the United States for United Front operations that could be similar to those that have achieved success in some U.S.-allied countries (e.g., Australia and New Zealand, where the CCP has effectively monopolized Chinese-language media outlets and taken over Chinese community organizations)….
“The UFWD, which is the primary organization responsible for United Front work within China and United Front operations targeting Chinese communities abroad, is a high-level Party body that reports directly to the CCP’s Central Committee.”
Maybe there is less GONGO here than meets the eye.
Long way to go
Back to Wang Shujun: “Chinese intelligence services have been known to coerce overseas Chinese to function as operatives targeting other overseas Chinese.”
So there is some duplication of effort, although one wonders if United Front “volunteers” sometimes cross over to the intelligence services.
Until the San Francisco events were publicized, there seemed to be little interest in United Front activities. The USCC report recalls that “Michelle Van Cleave, former U.S. national counterintelligence executive, testified to the Commission in June 2016 that counterintelligence in the United States” is not so much about finding the traitors as about “ ‘understanding how an adversary uses intelligence against [the United States].’ ”
We have a long way to go before the United Front members here can be regarded as traitors. Our government does not even seem to regard them as nuisances. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
