The Communist Party of China (CPC) has recently issued regulations on the united front work, formally formulating the work of the united front in the form of a legal document. The move is seen by observers as highlighting the CCP’s sense of crisis and its ambition to seek to expand its influence globally in the face of Western democracies’ counterattack against the CCP’s united war threat. Observers point out that the United States and other Western democracies must unite to forcefully counter the CCP’s united war activities overseas.
In early January 2021, the CCP issued the newly revised Regulations on the Work of the United Front of the Communist Party of China (the “Regulations”). Previously, the CCP’s Political Bureau meeting on December 21, 2020, discussed and approved revisions to the “Regulations on the Work of the United Front” (for trial implementation), which were first officially issued by the CCP in September 2015.
Article 2 of the Regulations, in defining the meaning of the CPC’s United Front under the new situation, says, “The United Front refers to the alliance led by the CPC and based on the alliance of workers and peasants, including all socialist workers, builders of socialist undertakings, patriots who support socialism, and patriots who support the unification of the motherland and are committed to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. “
The head of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China recently answered a question from the official media on the regulation, saying that the prominent feature of the revision of the regulation is “the centralized and unified leadership of the Party over the work of the united front throughout the text. Among the new additions to the Regulations, he said, is a chapter on “‘overseas united front work and overseas Chinese affairs,’ emphasizing the need to work to maintain and promote China’s unification, achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and promote the building of a community of human destiny.”
U.S. Slams Communist Party’s United Front Activities in U.S.
The Communist Party’s “Regulations on the United Front Work” comes at a time when the United States is attacking the Communist Party’s United Front activities in the United States and countering the threat they pose to U.S. national security.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently noted that the CCP has long worked to spread Marxism-Leninism and exert its influence around the world, and that “the CCP’s United Front Department coerces and bullies those who oppose Beijing’s policies by funding and supporting overseas organizations to spread propaganda.”
Pompeo also accused the CCP’s United Front Work Department of frequently coercing overseas academics, the business community, civil society groups, and overseas Chinese groups, including members of minority and religious groups who have spoken out against CCP human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet, and other parts of China, and of using political intimidation and coercion by specifically naming and maliciously collecting personal information “against any individual perceived to be contrary to the CCP’s interests of individuals.”
In a speech to the Wisconsin State Legislature last Sept. 23, Secretary Pompeo warned U.S. state and local governments to beware of attempts by the CCP and its agents to influence local U.S. governments and conduct surveillance and espionage.
He said the State Department is reviewing two organizations operating in the United States that are part of the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, one of which is the Association for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China and the other is the U.S.-China Friendship Association. More than a month later, on October 28, the U.S. government announced that it had designated the National Association for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China (NACPU) as a “foreign mission” and withdrawn from an agreement to promote local cooperation between the U.S. and China.
China’s Communist Party Exposes Its Sense of Crisis and Ambition
Xie Tian, chair professor at the Aiken School of Business at the University of South Carolina, told VOA that the Communist Party’s announcement of its first “United Front Work Regulations” is a revelation of its sense of crisis and ambition to control overseas Chinese at a time when Western countries are resisting the Communist Party’s increasingly aggressive overseas United Front work.
He said, “I think the fact that the CCP is releasing this regulation now is actually a kind of double-edged sword. One of them is that the CCP has a sense of crisis. Many people in the overseas diaspora are now becoming more and more anti-communist, very anti-communist. This is something that the CCP is very aware of, and it is a very frustrating signal to the CCP for overseas Chinese who cannot be controlled or who do not agree with the CCP ideologically or in terms of understanding. The reason why I say that this is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, the CCP hopes to use this to strengthen its united war activities overseas, on the other hand, the CCP has exposed its ambition to control overseas Chinese, so that these overseas people, these people who are not willing to be controlled by the CCP anymore, but also the Western governments, the U.S. government, are more clearly alerted and aware of the intentions of the CCP’s ambition, which is actually very foolish for the CCP as well. “
In an interview with the Voice of America, Dr. Yang Jianli, founder of the U.S.-based human rights organization Citizen Power, said the timing of the CCP’s release of the United Front Work regulations is cause for concern.
He said, “The global boycott of China is related to China’s very strong posture some time ago, including the war-wolf diplomacy and, more importantly, the substantial authoritarianism and regression that has made people disappointed with China’s continued progress. In addition, China’s military strength, unfair economic competition, theft of intellectual property rights, etc., have made everyone very guarded. Although Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party, has very solid power in China, China is experiencing an unprecedented crisis in the international community.”
Yang said one of the key reasons the CCP attaches importance to united front work, especially overseas, is that it has largely helped China gain huge benefits in the international community. Therefore, he said, in the current international climate, the CCP’s united front work is very important.
Evolution of the target of the “United Front”, one of the three major treasures
In the history of the CCP, the “United Front” is known as one of the “Three Great Treasures” (united front, armed struggle and party building) of the CCP in “defeating the enemy in the Chinese Revolution.
The “United Front Department of the CPC Central Committee” (United Front Department) is directly under the CPC Central Committee. According to the website of the United Front Department, the concept of “united front” was first proposed by German thinker Friedrich Engels. Former Chinese Communist Party leader Qu Qubai first proposed that “the national united front against imperialism has become a fact” in his article “The Future of the Anti-Imperialist United Front after May 30th” on Aug. 18, 1925. The former Chinese leader Mao Zedong first proposed the “anti-Japanese national united front” in his report “On the Strategy of Opposing Japanese Imperialism” at the Wajao Fort Conference in Anding County, Shaanxi Province, on December 27, 1935.
On August 9, 1945, Mao Zedong proposed in his statement “The Last Battle against The Japanese” to adhere to the “united front of the people from all walks of life”. On July 6, 1949, former Chinese Communist Party Premier Zhou Enlai first proposed the “People’s Democratic United Front” at a congress of literary and artistic workers. People’s Democratic United Front”.
After China entered a new period of reform and opening up in the 1970s and 1980s, former CPC leader Deng Xiaoping proposed on September 1, 1979 that “the united front at this stage can be referred to as the revolutionary patriotic united front.” In June 1981, the “Patriotic United Front” was formally proposed in the Communist Party’s resolution on several historical issues of the Party since the founding of the country.
Article 2 of the recently issued Regulations of the CPC on United Front Work says that the United Front is “an important asset for consolidating the Party’s ruling position and for building a socialist modern state and achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Article 37 of the Regulations specifies the main tasks of the united front work overseas, “to strengthen ideological and political leadership, to enhance the love of the motherland and understanding of the Communist Party of China and socialism with Chinese characteristics among overseas Chinese and those who have studied abroad; to encourage overseas Chinese to participate in China’s reform and opening up and socialist modernization, and to integrate into the great national rejuvenation. “
CCP’s United Front Activities in the U.S. Are Everywhere
Xie Tian, chair professor at the Aiken School of Business at the University of South Carolina, said the Chinese Communist Party has used foreign exchange earnings from its trade surpluses with the United States and other countries to infiltrate the united war activities carried out by Western democracies very seriously. He said that according to incomplete statistics, the CCP’s United Front Department allegedly directly controls about 600 Chinese associations such as reunion societies, hometown associations and student-scholar associations in the United States. On the other hand, he stressed that the CCP’s United Front is not only targeting overseas Chinese and overseas Chinese, but also infiltrating all aspects of mainstream society in the U.S. without relaxing at all, and at the same time.
He said, “A Communist Party official said not long ago that for more than 500 members of Congress in the U.S., for each one of them, they have at least $3 million at their disposal, and they use $3 million to get a U.S. congressman. Other people, including government officials such as governors of states, the Chinese Communist Party United Front is working on. Not only Chinese scholars and professors, but also Westerners, such as the head of the chemistry department at Harvard University, have been united by the CCP. The infiltration of the entire academic community, the infiltration of the media, the direct purchase of space, the planting of content, the infiltration of Wall Street, the infiltration of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, are all very alarming. The Chinese Communist Party has effectively infiltrated American society, completely from top to bottom.”
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