United Front Work Department

United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
中共中央统一战线工作部
Formation 1942
Type Department directly reporting to the Central Committee
Headquarters 135 Fuyou Street, Xicheng District, Beijing
Location
  • Beijing
Head
 You Quan
Executive deputy head
 Zhang Yijiong*
Deputy heads
 Bagatur*, Xu Lejiang*, Shi Dagang, Ran Wanxiang, Dai Junliang
Discipline Secretary
 Su Bo
Parent organization
 Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
Website www.zytzb.cn
*Minister-level rank
This article is part of a series on the
Politics of China
United Front

The United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (UFWD; Chinese: 中共中央统一战线工作部) is an agency of the Communist Party of China that manages relations with various important and influential elite individuals and organizations inside and outside China. These are people and entities are outside the Party proper, who hold social, commercial, or academic influence, or who represent interest groups. Through its efforts, the UFWD seeks to ensure that these groups are supportive of and useful to Communist Party rule. It reports directly to the Party's Central Committee.[1]

History

The United Front Work Department was created during the Chinese civil war, and was reestablished in 1979 under Deng Xiaoping.

Civil war and gaining power

United front policies were most used in two periods before Liberation, namely from 1924 to 1927, and from 1936 to 1945, when the CCP cooperated with the Nationalist Party ostensibly to defeat the Japanese.[2] The simplest formulation of UF work in the period was to "rally as many allies as possible in order to... defeat a common enemy."[2]

In the early years the CCP also used United Front policies to cooperate with "disaffected warlords, religious believers, ethnic minorities, Overseas Chinese, and "minor parties and groups," that is front groups for the Communist Party to appear democratic.[2] The Party's united front strategies were effective against the Nationalists, when combined with military force, "ideological work," and alliance building, which eventually isolated the enemy.

The Party communist agitators were able to persuade "minor parties and groups" in China that the Nationalists were "illegitimate and repressive while the CCP embodied progress, unity, and democracy."[3]

After seizing power the communists continued to deploy united front strategies to train new communist intellectuals, "and, using thought reform based on criticism, began the transformation of the old society intellectuals." This involved violent elimination of what were termed "bourgeois and idealistic political beliefs," to install faith in "class struggle and revolutionary change."[4] The CCP required the intellectuals to have "faith in class struggle and revolutionary change."[4]

Reform-era

In the late 1970s the policy was used for the common cause of economic reform. From there the Party expanded the scope of its work internationally during the reform era, and again following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The department includes a bureau tasked with handling Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas affairs, and articulates the importance of using overseas Chinese populations to promote reunification.[5] It played an important role in building support for "One country, two systems" in Hong Kong during the 1980s and 1990s, operating under the name of the "Coordination Department."[6] The UFWD has been critically described as serving to co-opt non-Communist community leaders outside China, and "using them to neutralize Party critics," sometimes coercively.[7]

Scholar of Chinese political history John P. Burns presents in his book The Chinese Communist Party's Nomenklatura System excerpts from internal party documents demonstrating the role of the UFWD. The UFWD is to "implement better the party's united front policy and to assess and understand patriotic personages in different fields... so that we can arrange for correct placements for them and fully mobilize and bring into play their positive role in the four modernizations and to accomplish the return of Taiwan to the motherland so as to fulfill the cause of uniting the whole country, and to carry forward and solidify the revolutionary, patriotic united front."[8]

The United Front Department was used in the early years of communist rule "to guarantee CCP oversight" over groups that were not directly associated with the Party and government. Those groups, including NGOs, were brought under the authority of the UFWD, whose job it was to “continuing to play its part in mobilizing and rallying the whole people in common struggle” after the Liberation in 1949. When the CCP "shifted its focus from the “mass line” to “class struggle,” the real united front disappeared. While the United Front Department still existed, its duties of uniting with all forces for the “common struggle” shifted mainly to serving the Party’s leadership and “consolidating the proletarian dictatorship,"" according to Brookings Institution Visiting Fellow Zhang Ye.[9]

Operations and affiliations

The United Front Work Department of the Party Central Committee and the State Council is the most direct link between the Communist Party leadership and minority groups in China. The UFWD uses the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference to carry out its united front activities.

Structure

The United Front consists of eight minor political parties and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce. It maintains a close relationship with the State Administration for Religious Affairs, which oversees the five officially sanctioned religions, and plays an active role in managing ethnic and religious minorities, particularly in Tibet.[10]

According to a March 19, 2018 document, the United Front Work Department will absorb the State Administration of Religious Affairs and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office to become two internal bureaus. The UFWD will also oversee the actions of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. Consequently, the UFWD will become China's main agency overseeing ethnic, religious and overseas Chinese affairs.[11]

Overseas operations

Some national intelligence agencies have expressed concern that the mandate and operations of the UFWD can constitute undue interference in other nations' internal affairs.[7] In their book Nest of Spies: the startling truth about foreign agents at work within Canada’s borders, de Pierrebourg and Juneau-Katsuya allege that the United Front Work Department “manages important dossiers concerning foreign countries. These include propaganda, the control of Chinese students abroad, the recruiting of agents among the Chinese diaspora (and among sympathetic foreigners), and long-term clandestine operations.”[12] In 2007, the Communist Party increased the United Front Work Department’s budget by $3 million to further bolster China’s “soft power” abroad.[12]

List of heads of the department

  1. Wang Ming (1942 － 1947)
  2. Zhou Enlai (1947 － 1948)
  3. Li Weihan (October 1948 － December 1964)
  4. Xu Bing (徐冰) (December 1964 － 1966)
  5. Interregnum (1966 － 1975)
  6. Li Dazhang (November 1975 － May 1976)
  7. Ulanhu (May 1976 － April 1982)
  8. Yang Jingren (April 1982 － November 1985)
  9. Yan Mingfu (November 1985 － November 1990)
  10. Ding Guangen (November 1990 － December 1992)
  11. Wang Zhaoguo (December 1992 － December 2002)
  12. Liu Yandong (December 2002 － December 2007)
  13. Du Qinglin (December 2007 － September 2012)
  14. Ling Jihua (September 2012 － December 2014)
  15. Sun Chunlan (December 2014 － November 2017)
  16. You Quan (November 2017 － incumbent

See also

Related PRC government agencies

References

  1. ↑ Carol Lee Hamrin and Suisheng Zhao, "Decision-Making in Deng's China", (New York, NY: East Gate, 1995.), pp 66 - 67.
  2. 1 2 3 Gerry Groot, "Managing Transitions: The Chinese Communist Party, United Front Work, Corporatism and Hegemony," Psychology Press, Nov 12, 2003, pp. 2-5
  3. ↑ Groot 2003, p. ~7
  4. 1 2 Groot 2003, p. 8
  5. ↑ United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, '华侨、华人工作的基本任务 Archived 2012-04-02 at the Wayback Machine., March 23, 2009.
  6. ↑ Christine Loh, "Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong", (Hong Kong University Press, 2010), p 148.
  7. 1 2 Holly Porteous, “Beijing’s United Front Strategy in Hong Kong” Archived September 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine., Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Commentary 72 (1998)
  8. ↑ John P. Burns, The Chinese Communist Party's Nomenklatura System: A Documentary Study of Party Control of Leadership Selection, 1979-1984, M.E. Sharpe, 1989. pp. 36-37
  9. ↑ Zhang Ye, China's Emerging Civil Society Archived 2004-12-24 at the Wayback Machine., Brookings Institution, June 2003
  10. ↑ William A. Joseph,"Politics in China: an introduction", (Oxford University Press, 2010), p 169.
  11. ↑ "It's the covert unit behind China's growing global influence. And it's getting bigger". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 2018-03-22.
  12. 1 2 Fabrice De Pierrebourg and Michel Juneau-Katsuya, “Nest of Spies: the starting truth about foreign agents at work within Canada’s borders”, HarperCollins Canada, 2009. pp 160 – 162
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