This is how the United Front works, the organization with which Xi Jinping is building his network in Europe

Xi Jinping's words spread through the room, where there was respectful silence: The United Front, said the Chinese president, is an important magic weapon for strengthen the dominant position of Paridoand realize the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. It was 2015 and Xi was addressing delegates at the United Front Central Work Department meeting. This mention was a borrowing from the thought of Mao Tse-tung, who already spoke in 1939 of three magic weapons to defeat his enemies: the Communist Party, armed struggle and the aforementioned United Front.

This last organization, very little known outside the field of researchers of contemporary China, has established itself throughout the world as an essential tool for the expansion of Beijing's influence. The United Front has experienced a real renaissance since Xi Jinping came to power, making it a one of the pillars of his regime and provided it with abundant resources, adding 40,000 more cadres to the institution and giving it more authority over other groups. A joint investigation by half a dozen European media, including El Confidencial, revealed the names of the main figures of this group in Europe.

But What exactly is the United Front? It is a very complex network of organizations dependent on the Chinese Communist Party in charge of relations and, ultimately, the absorption of all elements of civil society to put them at its service. Although its current budget is unknown, it is known that in 2019 it amounted to $2.6 billion.

Republican Senator Mike Gallagher, head of the US Senate Select Committee on the CCP, defines it as: United Front Work It is the party's strategy to wage political wars without restrictions through three main tactics: silencing critics of the regime worldwide, promoting propaganda abroad, and manipulating foreign institutions through covert and overtly illegal operations. The New York Times describes it more prosaically, but not entirely accurately, as the CCP's intelligence agency.

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In fact, the full name of the organization is Department of United Front for Labor (DTFU). The last two words only refer to the co-option strategy deployed by it, even if many experts and journalists use this abbreviated name (FU) to designate the group. For the sake of clarity, in this article we will do the same.

Espionage and strategic corruption

The United Front Work Department plays a crucial role in China's foreign influence operations, shaping perceptions, discourses, and policies in line with the goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The main objective of the work of the United Front is promote the goals of the CCP engage and mobilize groups outside the party, typically focusing on influential individuals within those groups to expand their influence, says David Gard, a synologist and analyst at the Prague-based Synopsis Project, which studies contemporary China. Drawing on a complex network of front organizations, businesses, academic institutions and diaspora communities, the FU exerts both national and international influence, combining legitimate activities and covert tactics, he explains. he told El Confidencial.

Peter Mattis, director of the Jamestown Foundation and co-author of a recent book on Chinese intelligence services, describes how the United Front managed to establish itself as a absolute representative of the Chinese populations of the diaspora. Politicians need to engage their community, they need to engage their constituents, but that needs to be done through representative organizations, community clubs, and any place where people come together. It doesn't take much. 99% of all members of an organization could be completely normal citizens, honest patriotic citizens. And yet, it only takes one leader to become the face of that organization and steer it and guide it in a certain direction, he explains.

The activities of this organization are beginning to worry Western governments and analysts because of their often aggressive nature, the scope of which goes well beyond the limits of cooperation or public diplomacy, such as strategic corruption or espionage. According to the US State Department, the FU systematically collaborates with Chinese intelligence agencies. and the last annual report of the Security Information Service, the counter-espionage agency of the Czech Republic, speaks of covert operations on Czech territory carried out by Chinese intelligence services as well as members of Chinese Party organizations, such as the International Department of the CPC Central Committee or the United Front Work Department. The UF often operates covertly and indirectly, making it difficult for democracies to identify and counter its influence, notes Gard.

The most notable recent case is that Linda Soleilthe deputy governor of New York was indicted in early September on criminal charges for acting illegally in favor of China's interests, for example by preventing Taiwanese diplomats from contacting officials in her office or transferring internal documents to Beijing. Although it has not been revealed whether Sun is an active member of the United Front, it is known that Sun met in his hometown of Nanjing in 2017 with Wang Hua, the organization's top official in Jiangsu province. , from whom he received instructions to be an ambassador of China-US friendship and actively promoting solidarity among Chinese immigrants in New York, according to Chinese media at the time.

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The organization has also been involved in other similar scandals. In 2022, MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, issued an alert regarding an Anglo-Chinese lawyer named Christine Ching Kui Leewho was accused of operating covertly through the United Front to cultivate relationships with influential figures to ensure that the UK's political landscape was favorable to the interests of the CCP. In Australia, security services also revealed the activities of a Chinese community leader called Di Sanh Sunny Duongfirst person prosecuted under new law cracking down on foreign interference. Groups allegedly organized by the FU They attacked the demonstrators in San Francisco last November during Xi Jinping's visit for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.

The United Front in Europe

The joint investigation in which El Confidencial participates, based on the leak of a list with the names of members from all over the world, also revealed some problematic cases. For example, the Swedish channel TV4 discovered that the pro-CCP stance of one of the people on the list, Professor Tony Fang of Stockholm University, is due to his membership in the organization, something that does not appear on his curriculum vitae. For over 15 years, Fang has written opinion pieces in Sweden's leading newspaper encouraging Chinese investment in Swedish businesses, mitigating the dictatorial nature of the People's Republic of China, and opposing Sweden's entry into the NATO.

Likewise, Direkt36 support exposed FU activities in Hungary. For example, one of its members, Cao He Pingis an influential businessman who chairs the Sino-Hungarian Association, in which at least one Hungarian parliamentarian holds an important position and whose events take place in the presence of Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Pter Szijjrt. Direkt36 also describes the FU's involvement in organizing Xi Jinping's visit to Hungary last August and the mobilization of the Chinese community in Budapest to welcome him.

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More worrying, also revealed by this publication, is everything surrounding the secret agreement between the Hungarian and Chinese governments to build a campus of the Shanghai Fudan University in Budapest thanks to a Chinese credit. The controversy sparked led the mayor of the district in which the work was planned to name the public spaces surrounding it with the names of communities oppressed by China, such as Dalai Lama Street or Uyghur Martyrs Street.

In response, the mayor received a letter signed by 16 Chinese associations claiming to be representative of the 40,000-strong Chinese community, which stated: “We must conform to the political thinking of the host country, but also with the expectations of the motherland, China. This is why we felt bad when the names of the streets surrounding the Fudan University area were changed in a way inconsistent with the political thinking of the motherland, and demanded that the change of offensive names be reconsidered for at least 10 of these organizations. belonged to the United Front, as Direkt36 was able to verify. An incident very similar to that which occurred in 2017 when the University of Salamanca tried to organize Cultural Days on Taiwan, as we described in our investigation into the United Front in Spain.

Exploit freedoms

The FU interacts with the Chinese diaspora to promote loyalty to the CCPoften mobilizing them as tools of influence. This can create tensions within diaspora communities and between them and their host countries, particularly when their members are pressured to align with Beijing's positions, says Gard. This network of organizations controlled and guided from Beijing, takes the voice of our citizens [de origen chino] and they present them to our government, but using their own voice and putting their own words, their own script. In other words, they are taking away our citizens' voice and trying to represent them to our government, Mattis says.

The United Front system poses significant challenges to democracies because it operates through covert, complex and multi-faceted influence tacticsexploiting the freedoms, transparency and democratic standards of open societies. The system seeks to infiltrate the political, academic, business and media sectors, targeting elites and diaspora communities to shape narratives, influence policies and even facilitate technology transfer, says Gard. Democracies often struggle to respond effectively due to the difficulty of identifying these influence operations, their legal gray areas, and the need to balance countermeasures with the protection of civil liberties. Global awareness and coordination are crucial to meeting this challenge, he concludes.