In the undeclared war between the United States and China, a persistently worrisome issue is the secret influence that the Chinese Communist regime is attempting to exert on Americans.
Many times, Americans perceive Chinese influence operations to be like scenes from the James Bond movies, but in reality, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) employs various tactics to shape narratives about China and its intentions towards the U.S. Understanding these methods is crucial to grasping how the CCP views America and where it seeks to influence discourse.
Recently, a former senior aide to the New York governor, Linda Sun, was arrested for allegedly acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the CCP. While warnings about collaborating with the CCP have been issued to individuals, the arrest of a governor’s senior aide has still shocked many. One of the reasons for the surprise is what kind of assistance an advisor at this level could provide to foreign hostile powers like the CCP. Such aides rarely have contact with national security information. It is crucial to gain a better understanding of the assistance agents offer to the CCP in order to comprehend how the regime attempts to understand and influence the U.S.
Sun was not accused of providing sensitive information to the CCP, such as military movements or similar national security data. Rather, she was charged as an unregistered foreign agent seeking to benefit a foreign government. She stands accused of preventing the governor from meeting with groups not approved by Beijing or deleting references to Taiwan in official statements.
To comprehend the actions of the CCP within a broader control framework it operates domestically, we must understand the regime’s relentless focus on maintaining control and managing information, from the organized bureaucratic systems at the national level down to every residential community in China.
The second-largest institution in the CCP’s budget is the United Front Work Department, surpassing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, focusing on influencing foreign countries, institutions, and individuals through various means. Though the United Front Work Department might overlap with intelligence and security agencies’ tasks, its primary aim lies in actively shaping other countries’ perceptions of China. This offers a broader scope of activities than traditional security or intelligence operations.
We witness such patterns elsewhere as well. The tens of thousands of full-tuition-paying Chinese students studying in the U.S. avoid criticizing the CCP or mentioning issues like Hong Kong democracy or Uyghur rights, as universities fear angering Beijing. Think tanks in the U.S. are cautious in their China-related research due to concerns about cyber-attacks, fearing their studies could become targets of CCP aggression. Solely by admitting students or granting researchers access, the CCP significantly influences discussions and conversations about China in the U.S.
Most people usually believe that the CCP regime seeks to exert a one-sided malevolent influence. However, this assumption is incorrect. Like other external forces attempting to influence discourse, the CCP cannot replicate its state-owned media domestically, such as CCTV, as it would appear outdated and blatantly propagandistic. To gain acceptance, influencers must sound authentic, thereby opening doors to some extent for criticizing the CCP. The purpose of influence operations isn’t to entirely replicate CCP ideology but to blur thoughts and loyalties.
Chinese-funded universities in the U.S. have offered some criticisms of the CCP, though not extensive, and they do not sound like official Chinese media. American companies with business interests in China lobby for the CCP, giving the regime plausible deniability regarding who is pushing what agenda. This approach aims to create confusion while simultaneously denying responsibility.
The CCP terms its influence and infiltration in the U.S. as efforts to impact the “whole society,” involving Chinese companies, citizens, institutions, and more. In the U.S., we often perceive this as espionage or actions threatening security, but this isn’t the battle the CCP is currently waging. The sooner we realize that the CCP seeks to permeate at all levels—from meetings, press releases to how we discuss China—the better equipped we are to address these threats.
Christopher Balding, a former professor at Fulbright University Vietnam and the HSBC Business School at Peking University, specialized in researching the Chinese economy, financial markets, and technology. As a senior researcher at the Henry Jackson Society, he lived in China and Vietnam for over a decade before moving to the U.S.