China Expanding ‘Increasingly Brazen’ Influence Operations In The US And Beyond, Gov’t Report Warns

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to accrue and exercise influence in foreign countries including the U.S. are becoming more advanced and frequent, according to a new U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) report.

The report finds that under the watch of Chinese President Xi Jinping, CCP apparatuses — such as the United Front Work Department (UFWD) — have grown more advanced and ambitious in their influence operations, which include targeting foreign countries’ media environments, business elites, academic institutions and political figures to co-opt and advance China’s interests. The key idea behind the CCP’s so-called “united front” work is to co-opt or coerce individuals outside of the CCP into facilitating the party’s interests, even if those individuals are “lesser enemies” who can be manipulated for a period of time to the disadvantage of the party’s “greater enemies,” the USCC report states.

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The USCC published the report on July 17.

“For CCP leaders, influencing how the outside world views and engages with China is a matter of regime survival and a means of advancing national interests. The Party-state recognizes that the success of certain objectives—such as the CCP’s unquestioned rule over China, the absence of criticism regarding CCP policies, the Party’s unequivocal claim to speak for the Chinese diaspora in a way the outside world acknowledges, and the unification of Taiwan with the Mainland—depends partly on the behavior of foreign leaders and publics,” the USCC report states. “Under Xi’s rule, China’s overseas influence activities are now more prevalent, institutionalized, technologically sophisticated, and aggressive than under his predecessors.”