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China has sought to harness its tremendous global diaspora to increase its global influence as well as appease domestic nationalistic pressures. It has expanded its control over global Chinese media and culture and weaponized its scholar population in the service of intelligence gathering and subversion. This has tremendously unsettling implications for race relations for ethnic Chinese throughout the world.

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The United Front . . . is a big magic weapon which can rid us of 10,000 problems in order to seize victory

CCP United Front Work Department teaching manual

It is a fortunate truth that, due to modern liberalism, global ethnic populations have largely managed to separate themselves from the backstabbing and skulduggery of state politics. An American-Indian, for instance, is hardly expected to defend Indian foreign policy and French-Algerians are not expected to keep up with the turbulence of Algerian politics. While the debate of whether citizens themselves are complicit in the actions of their government is still ongoing, ethnic diasporas, at least, have widely been accepted as separate entities. However, China is seeking to change that. In its ambitions for even greater global geostrategic influence, China is seeking to conscript its overseas Chinese diaspora into its vicious political conflicts, in the process transforming state competition into race war. This post will examine why, how and further implications.

This post will explore the Xi Jinping era Overseas Chinese policy, following the reforms of the United Front Work Department in late 2014. Unfortunately, due to the lack of accessible scholarship in Southeast Asian countries on the potential subversive effects of Chinese diaspora recruitment (which itself could be a product of Chinese academic subversion), this post will be unable to explore such areas in-depth. However, Chinese policy could be expected to remain largely consistent across countries with large overseas Chinese populations, from Malaysia to New Zealand.

Why use the Diaspora?

The Ethnic Chinese Diaspora has a number of remarkable advantages which make it very tempting as a tool to be deployed on a more and more frequent basis.

Firstly, the Chinese diaspora resolves a key issue with China’s foreign influence- a lack of inspirational values that could motivate foreign nationals to rally to the Chinese banner. The United States, at least to an extent, can recruit people to join its cause through the values of freedom, opportunity and liberalism that it has championed for centuries. Russia too can inspire and recruit allies through its opposite approach of a complete rejection of liberalism, as discussed in a previous article. Other actors have their own inspirational ideological tools as well, such as the revolutionary Islamism of Iran and the social democracy of Europe. However, due to its unideological government and approach to politics, China is in the difficult position of having few inspirational qualities that could persuade foreign nationals to join the Chinese cause. It could pay people off, and it does, of course, but such mercenary assets hardly make for good long term strategy. Sellswords are not known for their consistency through thick and thin. Thus, in lieu of another broader inspirational ideological narrative, China must return to the baser inspirational, uniting force that predates ideology- race and culture. The Chinese diaspora is already in very strategically relevant positions across the world- in Southeast Asia at the gateway between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, in Australia, in its strategic competitor of the United States, as well as substantial pockets in Russian Siberia and Japan. Thus, there is much to gain in terms of foreign influence through using the diaspora.

Secondly, usage of the Chinese diaspora is important towards sentiments of historical nationalism. The Chinese diaspora and its migrations out of China have historically been tied to many instances of great national disgrace for China, especially during the periods of the Taiping Rebellion and the Century of Humiliation. To an extent, in the Confucian framing of state as family, the Chinese diaspora represents the children who fled from home due to the negligence and moral corruption of their parents and the encroachment of strange men from far away. As such, it is important for China, that in its national rebirth, it reasserts control over these lost children in foreign lands.

Lastly, the Chinese diaspora, with respect to its usefulness as an asset to the Chinese state, is a perishable resource. While second and third-generation immigrants might feel a strong compulsion towards their Chinese identity, this might not last the fourth and fifth generations. Factor in the effect of racial intermixing and the perishability of the Chinese diaspora as an asset of the Chinese state becomes more and more real, or at least real enough for the Chinese government to estimate as a certainty. Thus, operating on a “use it or lose it” mentality, China is incentivised to extend its control over its diaspora.

How does China seek to control the diaspora?

However, even if China has decided its wants to use race to influence foreign Chinese and use them to act in China’s interests, how precisely can it “use” race?

The first and most easily understood way that China seeks to leverage control over overseas Chinese is through controlling all Chinese language media. In recent decades, the Chinese Communist Party, operating through the United Front Work Department, has consolidated near-complete control of global Chinese language media, with the notable exception of the Falun Gong associated outlet The Epoch Times. In effect, the CCP is able to launder its propaganda through trusted local Chinese-language newspapers through its network of agreements and influence. This can be seen in New Zealand, where all Chinese language newspapers (except The Epoch Times) have close associations and agreements with the mainland’s Xinhua News Service, receive all Chinese-related news from Xinhua and participate in media training conferences in the mainland. Its leading Chinese language newspaper, the Chinese Herald, is closely linked with the PRC consulate and China has also extended its influence over Chinese radio and television channels. This is a trend that persists throughout the world, from the United States to Australia, and thus can be seen as a wider strategy that seeks to control the information that people with Chinese as their most comfortable language receive.

China, the CCP and specifically the United Front Work Department, however, exercises a wide range of other methods to control its diaspora. It acts as gatekeeper of Chinese Culture, such as through its control over the global Confucius Institute network, which to many overseas Chinese exists as one of the few ways to rediscover a vibrant Chinese cultural heritage that they worry they are losing. It also plays an active part in financially supporting, coordinating and organizing community events for overseas Chinese communities. In doing so, they effectively remove any incentive for these overseas communities to develop their own community organizing institution and infrastructure, while tainting those communities with CCP propaganda and money.

However, the most insidious, though perhaps initially unintended, way that the CCP seizes control of its diaspora is the poisoning of race relations for overseas Chinese. Through aggressively utilizing the overseas Chinese it has compromised, it can raise overall national alarm towards Chinese for many countries, prompting furious reaction towards ethnic Chinese. However far from limiting China’s influence, this angry reaction only strengthens its grip on the local diaspora. In sparking off this racial conflict, the CCP effectively sends a message to its diaspora: “The World hates you. Only China can protect you.” Thus it effectively ties ethnic Chinese to the Chinese state, whether the global diaspora likes it or not.

It is important to notice what this implies:

China extends its control over the Chinese diaspora by the simple act of exercising its control of the Chinese diaspora.

To an extent, a parallel can be drawn with Islamist terrorists, who aim to recruit more disaffected Muslim youths worn down by Islamophobic societal retaliation to Islamic terror. With every incident of local Chinese communities organizing pro-China political action, Chinese student organizations speaking out against anti-CCP research and Chinese ex-CIA agents turning traitor for the CCP, the credibility of the Chinese diaspora in their respective national communities decreases, and the narrative of the World vs China and the Chinese people becomes more convincing for both Chinese and non-Chinese globally.

How does China seek to use its controlled diaspora?

As Chinese diaspora control operations are still at an early stage, it is hard to draw concrete conclusions on precisely how China aims to use its diaspora after successfully compromising it. One should not be so naive so as to believe that China only aims to foster positive pro-China sentiment in its diaspora without further action. As stated earlier, the strategic and Confucian-nationalistic imperatives both demand a high degree of actionable control.

However, some inferences could be drawn by examining a more specific overseas Chinese population that China has already succeeded in controlling more closely- the Chinese scholar population. In strategically relevant countries, Chinese student unions have been found to be coordinating with the Chinese government in political action. In both the United States and Australia, the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations, which receive generous funding from Chinese consulates, were found to report students and professors engaging in anti-CCP academic research to the Chinese Ministry of State Security, as well as organize protests and meet directly with university administrators to pressure them to act in ways more amenable with the Chinese government. One can imagine how this system could be extrapolated from Chinese scholar communities in universities to ethnic Chinese communities on a national context.

At what cost?

In examining Chinese strategy, it pays to take a step back and try to view this whole phenomenon from the eyes of another non-Chinese government. Through doing so, one uncovers that painful, heartbreaking dilemma- when a foreign adversary is targeting a minority in your country for recruitment into its intelligence, subversion, sabotage and theft operations and is largely succeeding in recruiting that minority, what options do you have left but systematic surveillance, discrimination and disenfranchisement? 

Does a form of ethnic apartheid suddenly become a reasonable option, or god forbid, the only reasonable option?

It is far too difficult to predict who would win if China succeeds in transforming state conflict into race conflict. There are reasonable arguments that it would strengthen China given the sheer size, wealth and talent of its diaspora. There are also reasonable arguments that the diaspora is more useful to China as a mostly neutral mediating partner which can allow more effective cultural and economic export and that sparking off this race war would end such utility. However, some predictions can definitely be made. Ethnic Chinese minorities in Australia, the United States, New Zealand and even Europe will likely see their livelihoods threatened, their relationships under stress and their patriotism put in question. 

When considered on a micro-scale, the devastating implications shine through even more harshly: Consider the already difficult experience of the second, or third-generation Chinese immigrant. Already burdened with the usual difficulties of integration and identity that most immigrants face, Chinese immigrants, including and especially immigrant schoolchildren, will have to deal with increased suspicion from colleagues at school and workers, teachers, employers and government officials.

It is also worth considering the possibility of overreaction by states driven paranoid by the spectre of Chinese influence. Even if China is not running subversion operations in everywhere in every state, the very presence of Chinese subversion operation in some locations could very likely prompt a “better safe than sorry” attitude and expand this race struggle beyond where China intends for it to extend. At that point, the global Chinese race relations might enter a death spiral of mutual fear and suspicion, with both real and perceived CCP escalations matched by both real and perceived reaction from other states. The ugliness of Red Scare McCarthyism will be combined with the toxic element of racial discrimination and overseas Chinese, their states and eventually China itself will be the worst for it.

Further Reading

Concern grows over Beijing’s use of Chinese diaspora for espionage, following arrest of ex-CIA agent. (2018, January 17). Retrieved from https://www.todayonline.com/world/concern-rises-over-beijings-use-chinese-immigrants-espionage-following-arrest-ex-cia-agent.
Brady, A.-M. (2017). Magic Weapons: China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping. Magic Weapons: China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping. Wilson Center. Retrieved from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/magic_weapons.pdf
Chan, E. (2019, September 26). Fifth Column Fears: The Chinese Influence Campaign in the United States. Retrieved from https://thediplomat.com/2019/09/fifth-column-fears-the-chinese-influence-campaign-in-the-united-states/
Jakhar, P. (2019, September 7). Confucius Institutes: The growth of China’s controversial cultural branch. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49511231
Kynge, J., Anderlini, J., & Hornby, L. (2017, October 26). Inside China’s secret ‘magic weapon’ for worldwide influence. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/fb2b3934-b004-11e7-beba-5521c713abf4
Thompson, D. (2019, November 7). Countries are pushing back against China’s overbearing influence campaigns. Retrieved from https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/countries-are-pushing-back-against-chinas-overbearing-influence-campaigns
Hu, S. (2007). Confucianism and Contemporary Chinese Politics. Politics & Policy, 35(1), 136–153. doi: 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2007.00051.x
Mattis, P., & Joske, A. (2019, June 24). The Third Magic Weapon: Reforming China’s United Front. Retrieved from https://warontherocks.com/2019/06/the-third-magic-weapon-reforming-chinas-united-front/