Tens of thousands of Chinese agents, including academics, students, diplomats and businessmen are scattered around the world actively working to advance the CCP’s agenda in its undeclared war against the West.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also uses “soft power” to advance its influence and interests in foreign countries. “Soft power” is an all-embracing term, covering propaganda, infiltration of foreign political parties and institutions, influence peddling, control of foreign media, the mobilization of overseas Chinese, and threats against dissidents.
To mobilize the vast Chinese global diaspora, numbering over 50 million people, the CCP has developed a highly sophisticated, multi-faceted plan, implemented by several well-resourced agencies targeting overseas Chinese.
Overseas Chinese management is known as qiaowu, with the purpose of rallying support for Beijing amongst ethnic Chinese outside of China through various propaganda and thought-management techniques.[i]
Much of the qiaowu work is conducted by the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the CCP Central Committee. The UFWD targets Chinese social organizations, Chinese-language media, student associations, professional associations and business leaders. The Propaganda Department of the CCP is also central to the campaign.[ii] The UFWD has grown in importance under President Xi Jinping, who described United Front work as a “magic weapon” in the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.[iii]
There are around 50 million people of Chinese ethnicity scattered around the world. A percentage of these owe their allegiance to China, either voluntarily or because of threats against their families in China. Even if only 10 per cent sided with China, it would represent a significant (and dangerous) fifth column in the event of war.
Australia has around 1.3 million Chinese permanent residents, plus, in the absence of Covid, tens of thousands of Chinese students. If only ten per cent owe their allegiance to China, that represents 130,000 agents of a foreign power roaming Australia. These people are organised and controlled by the Chinese embassy in Canberra.
In February 2021Western Australian premier Mark McGowan appointed two pro-Beijing Chinese Dr Edward Zhang and Dr Ting Chen, to his 15-member multicultural council, a policy advisory body where members can earn up to $385 per day.
In 2016 Zhang was reported as condemning the federal government’s position on the disputed South China Sea.
At the time he made this very revealing remark, “We overseas Chinese are the first line of defence for our motherland.”[iv]
The report reveals Zhang is a founding member and honorary chairman of the WA branch of the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China, a group tied to Beijing’s United Front Work Department, an integral part of the state apparatus tasked with recruiting people at home and abroad to push the interests of the Communist Party.
The CCP has launched an orchestrated campaign, across all of its many tentacles in Chinese government and society, to exploit the openness of our institutions in order to destroy them. – former US Attorney General William Barr
Drew Pavlou is a young student from the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia. In July 2019, he organised a peaceful protest highlighting alleged links between his university, the University of Queensland (UQ), and the Chinese state.
But his small group of protesters was confronted by some 300 supporters of the Chinese regime, many of them concealing their identities with masks and sunglasses. Things rapidly turned violent. ‘I was sitting down, leading the sit-in, and they ripped the megaphone from my hands. I got up to confront them and was punched in the ribs and mouth, and things devolved into a brawl. Someone sneaked up behind me and punched me in the back of the head’, Pavlou says. ‘We had drinks with spit in them poured over us. Some students from Hong Kong were choke-slammed to the ground, some were bitten.’[v]
Why the violence? ‘It was intended to try to force people into silence’, he says. Then things got worse. On the evening of the protest, the names and images of several protesters, including Pavlou, were spread across Chinese social media. ‘One Chinese student, who was part of our crowd, had his address, student papers, refugee papers and citizenship details leaked.’
“Ultimately, we had to leave under a police escort,” Mr Pavlou said. “The (pro-CCP) people stayed and sung nationalist songs and chanted for another hour.”
The instigators of the violence were older and didn’t appear to be students, Mr Pavlou said.
“I suspect they were sent by the Consulate,” he said.[vi]
Things escalated even further the following day, when the Chinese consul-general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, praised the ‘spontaneous patriotic behaviour’ of the 300 counter-protesters.[vii] Xu Jie is an adjunct professor at UQ.[viii]
[i] James Jiann Hua To, Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2014).
[ii] Ibid., pp. 73-80.
[iii] Marcel Angliviel de la Beaumelle, “The United Front Work Department: ‘magic weapon’ at home and abroad”, China Brief (Jamestown Foundation, Washington, DC), Vol. 17, Issue: 9, July 6, 2017.
URL: https://jamestown.org/program/united-front-work-department-magic-weapon-home-abroad/
[iv] The Age June 22,2021
[v] https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/the-australian-uni-student-china-wanted-to-silence-whose-simple-protest-sparked-a-living-hell/news-story/4fcea3b66535bed6d6e08a320cd246ae
[vi][vi] https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/the-australian-uni-student-china-wanted-to-silence-whose-simple-protest-sparked-a-living-hell/news-story/4fcea3b66535bed6d6e08a320cd246ae
[vii] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/27/australia-warns-diplomats-after-china-praises-patriotic-clashes-with-pro-hong-kong-protesters
[viii] https://languages-cultures.uq.edu.au/profile/4580/jie-xu