Newsweek reported more than two months ago that they had identified some 600 U.S. groups associated with Chinese Communist Party influence, including the New York-based Chinese elite group C100, which was founded nearly 30 years ago with the help of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as one of the groups associated with the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front System. In response, the C100 issued a statement saying that these inferences are completely false.
In the statement, C100 said that as an American organization, they strongly oppose any foreign influence on American society and its democratic system, including the Chinese Communist Party, and noted that C100 is a non-profit, non-partisan American organization dedicated to promoting the full participation of more than five million Chinese Americans in American society and to fostering constructive dialogue and relations between the people and leaders of the United States and the Greater China region.
This is not the first time the Committee of 100 has been allegedly linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front. in a November 2018 Hoover Institution report titled “Chinese Influence and U.S. Interests: Raising Constructive Vigilance,” the Hoover Institution stated that the Chinese Communist Party is fully infiltrating all areas of the United States, stating in the article, “The Chinese Communist government believes that overseas Chinese are not foreign nationals, but ‘fellow Chinese’ and should remain loyal to their home country and work together to achieve the Chinese dream. The United Front agencies are using inducements and encouragement to get overseas Chinese to support the interests of the CCP, and Chinese in the U.S. should understand this new shape.
Hoover Report: Chinese Consulate Pressures the Hundred Clubs
In the notes of this report, the former vice president of the Committee of 100, Gu Pingshan, is mentioned by name. It reads, “The Chinese Embassy has targeted prominent Chinese Americans through the Committee of 100, and members of the Committee of 100 say that the Chinese Consulate has put tremendous pressure on the Committee of 100 members to toe the party line. A number of prominent Committee of 100 members openly supported the goals of the Chinese Communist Party, one of whom was Gu Pingshan, a senior member of the Committee of 100 and an overseas director of the Beijing-based China Overseas Friendship Association.
After the report came out, Gu Ping-shan felt it was unfair. According to an interview article in the Bay Area’s Sing Tao Daily, “Gu Pingshan Refutes Hoover Report’s Bridge-Builders Are Suspected of Disloyalty,” Gu said, “In the San Francisco Bay Area, supporters of peaceful reunification come from all different backgrounds, and allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party is not a necessary condition or a valid assumption, and as someone with a bicultural background, I see things from both sides of the Pacific, and I believe that a Chinese-American perspective can add significantly to the public dialogue on U.S.-China relations. I strongly object to my loyalty being condemned simply because I am willing to speak out.
Also outraged by this is Xianbiao Wu, president of the 80-20 Education Foundation. According to an article published by Xianbiao Wu in an online forum, “Are the Hundreds So Timid? He sent a letter to the Hoover Institution asking for evidence or retraction of the accusation and an apology to the Committee of 100 and the Chinese community. At the same time, the Education Foundation publicly called on the Committee of 100 to “either deny the allegation or commit to stop such interference from the Chinese Communist Party in the Asian American community.
According to Wu Xianbiao, while the Hoover Institution has responded positively, the Committee of 100 has remained silent. He made public an email from the two co-chairs in response to then-President Wu Huayang of the Committee of 100, concluding that the Education Foundation, as an “interested bystander,” did not take sides, but only had reservations about the article published by the Hoover Institution.
According to the email released by Xianbiao Wu (http://www.pavatar.us/forum_topic/8899/百人会如此胆怯吗?) , the two co-chairs of the Hoover Institution said that Mr. Gu has written extensively on U.S.-China relations, that this is not an issue, and that “we wholeheartedly support his First Amendment rights. At issue is the involvement of some Americans in the activities of organizations created and led by the Chinese Communist Party. “We believe that these organizations function no differently than lobbying organizations, and that they should be registered as agents of foreign governments along with their participants.
The two co-chairs noted that Mr. Gu has participated in at least three United Front organizations. The Australia Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of China is essentially a lobbying arm of the United Front Work Department, and the Council of Chinese Overseas Friendship Associations and the China Overseas Exchange Association, both administered by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Communist Party of China State Council, were merged into the United Front Work Department in 2018.
In addition, Gu Pingshan was received by senior officials of the United Front Work Department as early as 2008, and according to public records on China Social Science, “Mr. Gu was invited to visit China by the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee. Inside the email, it mentions, “This phrase implies that his trip to China was funded by the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China. (http://iqte.cssn.cn/ky/xsjl/201608/t20160824_3174774.shtml)
The Committee of 100 Debate: Whether to Ban Members from Accepting Communist Party Positions
China-US Focus was founded by Tung’s China-US Exchange Foundation in 2011. The website is billed as neutral and objective, but the China-US Exchange Foundation has registered as a “China agent” in the U.S. and has made public the use of its funds, such as paying $984,544 in 2016 to reach out to universities, think tanks and media outlets to write articles for the China-US Focus website, and sponsoring visits to China by 12 media executives and five members of Congress.
The Committee of 100 should have been aware of the problem. In the same report, the Hoover Institution said that it is a positive sign that a committee of 100 prominent Chinese Americans has recently begun debating whether to prohibit members from accepting positions from United Front organizations with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
At present, Gu Pingshan’s profile can no longer be found on the Committee of 100 website, and he has disappeared from the Committee’s membership list. However, there are still several members of the Committee who hold positions awarded by the Communist Party’s official United Front organizations, such as director of the Overseas Friendship Association and positions in Communist Party think tanks. Most of those who have accepted honorary positions in the CCP have their main business in the mainland.
Newsweek’s investigation again points to the Committee of 100
The discussion about the connection between the Committee of 100 and the CCP’s United Front System has not ended. In a report more than two months ago, Newsweek reported that the CCP’s United Front Work Department named H. Roger Wang, an American businessman and chairman of the Committee of 100, as the honorary president of the Nanjing Overseas Friendship Association, a municipal branch of the United Front Work Department’s Global Overseas Friendship Association, on the city’s website.
Wang Heng is the newest figure in China’s current department store industry, and his business empire is in Nanjing. After being elected president of the Committee of 100 in 2018, Wang Heng then actively talked about the Communist Party’s key plan “One Belt, One Road,” saying in an interview with China Daily, “There are now many areas in which the Committee of 100 can actively participate, including ‘One Belt, One Road. (Roger Wang, new chair of C-100, outlines aggressive program)
Newsweek said that the group’s influence and level of interference was determined by crossover membership, regular joint activities, events that demonstrated ideological alignment (with the CCP), high-level meetings (where only people trusted by the CCP could participate), and cross-checking hundreds of CCP documents, Chinese names, positions, and cooperation events described in official CCP media reports, etc., ranging from propagating positive views of China to outright espionage.
Newsweek also noted that members of the organizations involved may not have known that the groups they joined were originally associated with the CCP and originally joined only to promote commerce or community development.
How to deal with the CCP is a problem for everyone
According to Newsweek, the 100 Club’s response to this remains the same three points at the beginning of this article: to firmly oppose any efforts by any foreign government to influence or undermine American society and democracy, and to reaffirm the dual mission of the 100 Club.
This may be precisely the problem. Regarding the first goal of the Committee of 100, CCBA President Yu Jinshan said that the Committee of 100 “claims to oppose foreign countries, including the Chinese Communist Party, interfering in American democracy, but when has it ever opposed the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration of the United States? What it opposes is the U.S. catching Chinese Communist spies; hosting a seminar in Silicon Valley, instead of talking about the Chinese Communist Party’s theft of U.S. intellectual property, it blames the U.S. for not trusting Chinese Communist spies. He said that in terms of serving the community, the Committee of 100 also did not do much. Xinhua News Agency reported that the Committee of 100 “donated 850,000 N95 masks to communities in need,” all to the black, Spanish, and white communities to make connections, but not to the Chinese community.
The goals of the “Committee of 100” are almost always favorable to the Chinese Communist Party, as shown on their website. They never openly criticize the Chinese Communist Party, but the human rights issue they criticize is the U.S. government’s targeting of ethnic Chinese for Chinese spying.
Alvin YH Cheung, a researcher at New York University’s Institute of American and Asian Law, told Newsweek that the problem is not on the surface, but what lurks beneath the surface is hard to discern, “How to deal with the CCP is a problem that everyone has to face. The relationship with the CCP is like any other relationship, you have to set boundaries”.
Returning to the Hoover Institution report, it notes that in the United States there is a tendency to think that private businesses, think tanks, or associations that are not part of the government, are independent of the government. This is not the case in the communist system, where a high degree of centralization and acceptance of Party leadership are its inevitable requirements. How can the United States respond to Communist infiltration? It can only require those organizations affiliated with the United Front to register as foreign powers under the “Foreign Agents Registration Act,” which can make the CCP’s activities in the United States more transparent.
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