As for India, where relations with China have been strained in recent years, the Indian Express quoted sources as saying that the Indian consulate in Shanghai had hired Chinese Communist Party members when they were recruited by Chinese state-run recruitment agencies, according to a comparison with the leaked database of Chinese Communist Party branches and members. In response to reports of Chinese Communist Party members infiltrating India and China’s collection of personal data from India, Indian China expert Zheng Guijin expressed deep concern that India and democratic countries and institutions should address the potential challenges posed by China’s global authoritarianism, given the large number of Chinese Communist Party members involved in surveillance and collection of foreign personal information.
The Indian Consulate in Shanghai has employed at least one CCP member. The CCP member employed by the Indian Consulate in Shanghai worked at the Indian Consulate in Shanghai for three years from 2014 to 2017. The report cited sources as saying that at least seven CCP branches were linked to India, involving a total of 91 CCP members.
According to the comparison, the CPC branches with links to India include the CPC branch committee of the India project of Shanghai Power Plant Engineering Company, the joint party branch and management party branch of the India Research Institute, the party branch of City India Tenth Factory, the party branch committee of the India regional center of Shanghai Urban Construction International Engineering Company, the party branch committee of Shanghai Beer India and the party branch of the India sales department.
Regarding the relationship between these CCP branches with links to India and the CCP Central Committee, and the employment of CCP members by Chinese recruitment companies providing recruitment services to foreign consulates, the Chinese Embassy in India issued a statement saying, “The number of CCP members exceeds 90 million, all ordinary people who serve the people wholeheartedly, so what is there to fear? It is ridiculous to consider more than 90 million CCP members as spies.”
The Indian media earlier revealed that Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co., Ltd, which is linked to the Chinese Communist Party, has collected information on more than 10,000 individuals and organizations, including India’s president, prime minister, political figures and influential people.
Writing in India Today on Friday (25), Jabin T. Jacob, associate professor of international relations and governance at Shiv Nadar University, said that reports of Chinese Communist Party infiltration in India are “not surprising” and that Communist Party members are the ladder of success for the Communist Party to move forward. Communist Party members are the stepping stone to success in any activity, and are present in every organization and institution in China and abroad.
Zheng noted that similar intelligence activities exist in the United States, but that the nature and goals of CCP infiltration, and the fact that it operates differently from political parties in other countries, merit detailed study. He added that the CCP is to some extent an “extremely exclusive political organization” and has a monopoly on power in China, meaning that the brightest and the best compete for membership, and once in the party, “there is a great incentive for individuals to follow and develop the party line. As a result, Communist Party members have been involved in everything from strong official measures of racial discrimination against Tibetans, Uighurs and other minorities, to Chinese companies collecting private information for the government overseas.
Understanding the U.S. approach to the CCP, Zheng believes that there is now good reason to monitor the activities of CCP members outside of China and to impose reasonable restrictions.
Zheng said that the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, India’s claim that China does not and will not require companies or individuals to collect information on other countries for China by installing “backdoor” software, and Beijing’s claim that companies such as huawei or Jitterbug will not share information with Beijing, “is a kind of ‘misinformation’. This is ‘misleading'”. He also said that China passed a “vaguely worded National Security Law in 2017, implying that companies must share information with the government when needed.”
In addition, Zheng argued that China’s recent militarization of the South China Sea, its war-wolf diplomacy, and its claims that the New Crown virus originated in other countries show that Beijing does not care about respecting the sensitive issues or jurisdictions of other countries.
Zheng emphasizes that most CCP members are engaged in ordinary work in other countries, essentially spying on each other, and that CCP members are still required to be sensitive to and serve the interests of the party and state globally.
The article further discusses that Chinese companies have invested under Chinese President Xi Jinping‘s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, invested in key foreign technologies and media to support China’s access to technology and the Party’s propaganda efforts, worked with local politicians in the name of “corporate responsibility” or donated to local politicians’ constituencies, assisted Chinese embassies there, and supported China’s diplomatic and other missions during the epidemic.
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