An internal document from China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) shows that the group ordered its overseas offices in more than a dozen countries to “urgently destroy or transfer sensitive documents” back in August. This refers mainly to documents related to “overseas (CCP) party-building activities.
Qin Peng, a New York-based China affairs commentator, explained that “overseas party building activities” refers to the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to expand its global influence by requiring its overseas Chinese companies to collect intelligence, steal sensitive information, and influence local officials outside the scope of their legitimate business.
The recent leak of a list of nearly two million Chinese Communist Party members has raised global alarm about Chinese Communist infiltration. An investigation of the list by British and Australian media found that at least ten countries employed Communist Party members at their consulates general in Shanghai, and that several multinational companies, including HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, and Boeing, also had Communist Party branches.
The leaked list, which accounts for only 2% of all Chinese Communist Party members, has alerted the outside world to the extent of the CCP’s infiltration in foreign companies.
In addition to infiltrating foreign companies to spread its influence overseas, the CNPC document shows that the CCP’s overseas offices and branches of state-owned enterprises are also “assistants” to Beijing’s infiltration and export.
Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the McDonnell Laurier Institute (MLI), said in June that Chinese SOEs are investing in key areas in Canada in order to increase the CCP’s strategic influence and gather strategically important information: “These companies have strong ties to their counterparts in the CCP government, and they are run by the Chinese Communist Party, which is based within them. These companies have strong ties to their counterparts in the Chinese Communist Party government and they are governed by the Chinese Communist Party organizations located within them.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Canadian Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee last year that Chinese state-owned enterprises, even private ones, are being used by the CCP as “conduits to steal technological innovation:” “They [the CCP] are working through the CCP’s intelligence services, state-owned enterprises, ostensibly private companies, graduate students and researchers, and various agents working for the CCP to do this (steal intelligence).”
The West, led by the U.S. Trump administration, is fighting back against this, such as when the U.S. State Department shut down the CCP Consulate General in Houston in July of this year.
The above-mentioned CNPC documents, which were destroyed in response to a recent spate of actions by Western governments, are a good example. For example, the documents mention that the Australian government searched and confiscated the cell phones and computers of Chinese diplomats.
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