US Intelligence Warning: China Escalating Influence Operations

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

China is doubling down on its efforts to influence state and local government leaders in the United States by exploiting the existing web of regional and local US-China relations, the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) warned in July.

“Some of the goals of PRC [People’s Republic of China] influence operations in the United States are to expand support for PRC interests among state and local leaders and to use these relationships to pressure Washington for policies friendlier to Beijing. The PRC understands U.S. state and local leaders enjoy a degree of independence from Washington and may seek to use them as proxies to advocate for national U.S. policies Beijing desires, including improved U.S. economic cooperation with China, and reduced U.S. criticism of China’s policies towards Taiwan, Tibetans, Uyghurs, pro-democracy activists, and others.

“The PRC and CCP [Chinese Communist Party] continue to seek to influence Washington directly… Yet the PRC has also stepped up its efforts to cultivate U.S. state and local leaders in a strategy some have described as ‘using the local to surround the central.’ For the PRC and CCP, targeting state and local entities can be an effective way to pursue agendas that might be more challenging at the national level.”

The US intelligence officials warned US state and local leaders that Chinese influence operations “can be deceptive and coercive, with seemingly benign business opportunities or people-to-people exchanges sometimes masking PRC political agendas.”

The NCSC document also stated:

“Financial incentives may be used to hook U.S. state and local leaders, given their focus on local economic issues. In some cases, the PRC or its proxies may press state and local leaders to take actions that align with their local needs, but also advance PRC agendas, sometimes over national U.S. interests.”

There is nothing inherently new in the National Counterintelligence and Security Center’s July warning; PRC operatives have been working in this way for years, if not decades. One of the organizations that the US intelligence memo explicitly warns against is the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), which describes itself as a “national people’s organization engaged in people-to-people diplomacy of the People’s Republic of China.”

In reality, the organization is actually a front for the foreign influence efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It has been operating successfully in the US for decades, especially by forging numerous sister-city relationships with US cities to influence local US political, business, media and educational leaders. There are more than 200 sister city pairs and 50 sister state/province partnerships between the US and China, and such partnerships, according to US intelligence, can also include business, technical, cultural and educational exchanges between US and Chinese communities.

According to “China’s Influence & American Interests,” a 2018 report by the Working Group on Chinese Influence Activities in the United States, published by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York:

“After forty years of engagement, the US-China focused foundations, educational and exchange programs, research institutes, and arts and entertainment initiatives throughout the country are too many and various to be cataloged…

“While American local governments value such ‘exchanges’ for financial and cultural reasons, ‘exchange’ (交流) has always been viewed as a practical political tool by Beijing, and all of China’s ‘exchange’ organizations have been assigned political missions.”

CPAFFC has been instrumental in sponsoring conferences connecting Chinese officials and others with US governors, mayors, and state and local legislators, according to US intelligence. Since 2011, for instance, CPAFFC was a sponsor of the China-U.S. Governors Forum. In 2019, this forum, which took place in Kentucky, was “billed as an ‘exclusive deal making opportunity’ for investors, industry, and government leaders of both nations.”

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