United Front Work Department

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 a department that reports directly to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which gathers intelligence on, manages relations with, and attempts to influence elite individuals and organizations inside and outside China.[1][2] The UFWD focuses its work on people or entities that are outside the Party proper, especially in the overseas Chinese community, who hold social, commercial, or academic influence, or who represent interest groups.[3][4] Through its efforts, the UFWD seeks to ensure that these individuals and groups are supportive of or useful to Chinese Communist Party interests and potential critics remain divided.[5][6][7]

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
Formation1942
TypeDepartment directly reporting to the Central Committee
Headquarters135 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
Websitewww.zytzb.cn
*Minister-level rank
China
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History

The United Front Work Department was created during the Chinese Civil War, and was reestablished in 1979 under paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Since 2012, the role and scope of the UFWD has expanded and intensified under Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China.[8][9][10][11]

Civil war and gaining power
See also: First United Front and Second United Front

United front policies were most used in two periods before the Chinese Communist Revolution, namely from 1924 to 1927, and from 1936 to 1945, when the CCP cooperated with the Nationalist Party ostensibly to defeat the Japanese.[12] The simplest formulation of UF work in the period was to "rally as many allies as possible in order to... defeat a common enemy."[12]

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.[12] 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."[12]

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 instil faith in "class struggle and revolutionary change."[12] The CCP required the intellectuals to have "faith in class struggle and revolutionary change."[12]

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 unification.[13] 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."[14] 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.[15]

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."[16]

The UFWD 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.[17] Based on their actions in Taiwan and elsewhere the United Front Work Department appears to be used as a cover to conduct intelligence operations against targets of interest to the CCP.[18]

Structure

The UFWD is reported to have over 40,000 personnel.[19] It oversees and directs eight minor and subordinate political parties and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce.[20] It historically maintained a close relationship with the now-absorbed State Administration for Religious Affairs, which has overseen the country's five officially sanctioned religious organizations. In 2018, the United Front Work Department went through a reorganization in which it absorbed the State Administration for Religious Affairs and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office to become two internal bureaus.[11][21][22] The UFWD has also taken a leading role in antireligious campaigns in China under the official pretense of "sinicizing religions."[23]

The UFWD also directs the State Ethnic Affairs Commission.[24][25] As such, the UFWD is China's main agency overseeing and managing ethnic, religious and overseas Chinese affairs.[26][24] The UFWD plays an active role in the sinicization of ethnic and religious minorities, particularly in Tibet and of the Uyghurs through the Xinjiang re-education camps.[27][28][25]

The Department has thirteen subdivisions, including nine bureaux (局 jú) and four other units:[29]

  • General Office (办公厅): Oversees the functioning of the Department, including its finances, security, assets, and work with other government and Party bodies.
  • Policy and Theory Research Office (政策理论研究室): Handles ideological and policy research, internal propaganda, and the drafting of important documents. Works with other government agencies to develop propaganda efforts abroad.
  • First Bureau—Party Work Bureau (一局，党派工作局): Governs affairs related to the eight minor, non-Communist parties legally allowed to operate in China.
  • Second Bureau—Minority and Religious Work Bureau (二局，民族、宗教工作局): Researches and recommends policy on minorities and religious affairs in the country, and liaises with other government agencies in their related work.
  • Third Bureau—Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and Overseas Liaison Bureau (三局，港澳台、海外联络局): Coordinates and communicates with friendly figures in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
  • Fourth Bureau—Cadre Bureau (四局，干部局): Handles personnel matters, including the political training, selection, and examination of non-Party members in leadership positions in the government.
  • Fifth Bureau—Economic Bureau (五，经济局): Coordinates with figures from the private sector.
  • Sixth Bureau—Independent and Non-Party Intellectuals Work Bureau (六局，无党派、党外知识分子工作局): Liaises with intellectuals not formally affiliated with the Communist Party.
  • Seventh Bureau (七局): Responsible for ethnic minority and religious work, particularly as it relates to Tibet.
  • Eighth Bureau—New Social Class Representatives Work Bureau (八局，新的社会阶层人士工作局): Focuses on the "new social class", i.e., the rising Chinese middle class.
  • Ninth Bureau (九局): Responsible for research, analysis, and policy recommendations for issues in Xinjiang.
  • Department Party Committee (机关党委)
  • Retired Cadre Office (离退休干部办公室)

Internal and overseas operations
See also: Chinese intelligence activity abroad, Chinese information operations and information warfare, and Political warfare

Scholar Alex Joske has noted that there is no clear distinction between domestic and overseas UFWD activity and often overlap between the two.[4] Scholar Martin Thorley has described the UFWD as being able to call upon a "latent network" of civic, educational, and non-governmental groups and affiliated individuals internally and abroad for its political purposes, especially in times of crisis.[30] For instance, the UFWD uses members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference to carry out influence-building activities, often covertly.[1][31] The UFWD and its affiliated groups have also served as cover for intelligence agents of the Ministry of State Security.[4] In the non-covert realm, the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries has been described as the "public face" of the UFWD.[32] Scholar Jichang Lulu noted that the UFWD and its proxy organizations "re-purpose democratic governance structures to serve as tools of extraterritorial influence."[33]

Multiple national intelligence agencies have expressed concern that the mandate and operations of the UFWD can constitute undue interference in other nations' internal affairs.[34][15] 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.”[35]

An Atlantic writer stated China runs thousands of linked and subsidized pro-government groups across Europe, to "ensure that its overseas citizens, and others of ethnic Chinese descent, are loyal", to "shape the conversation about China in Europe", and to "bring back technology and expertise", and that the UFWD plays a "crucial" role in this project.[36]

In March 2018, it was announced that the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office would be absorbed into the United Front Work Department.[22][37] With the absorption of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, the UFWD gained full control of the country's second largest state-run media apparatus, the China News Service.[22] In 2019, the UFWD partnered with the Cyberspace Administration of China to promote united front work with social media influencers.[4]

In April 2020, Global News reported that UFWD-linked organizations in Canada were activated in January 2020 to purchase, stockpile, and export personal protective equipment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China.[38]

Reaction

A 2018 report by the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted that the UFWD regularly attempts to suppress overseas protests and acts of expression critical of the Communist Party of China in what U.S. legal analysts consider conspiracy against rights.[1] In May 2020, the White House released a report titled "U.S. Strategic Approach to the People's Republic of China", which stated that "CCP United Front organizations and agents target businesses, universities, think tanks, scholars, journalists, and local, state, and Federal officials in the United States and around the world, attempting to influence discourse and restrict external influence inside the PRC."[39][40] In June 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute issued a report advocating a multi-dimensional response involving law enforcement as well as legislative reform for greater transparency of foreign influence operations.[4] The same month the Republican Study Committee called for sanctions on the UFWD and its top leadership.[41]

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

References
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  2. "The United Front in Communist China" (PDF). Central Intelligence Agency. May 1957. pp. 1–5. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 23, 2017. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
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