What does China’s ‘magic firearm’ of sway do?

The People’s Reuncover of China has a “magic firearm”, according to its set uping directer Mao Zedong and its current plivent Xi Jinping.

It is called the United Front Work Department – and it is raising as much alarm in the West as Beijing’s growing military arsenal.

Yang Tengbo, a notable businessman who has been connected to Prince Andrew, is the procrastinateedst overseas Chinese citizen to be scrutinised – and sanctioned – for his connects to the UFWD.

The existence of the department is far from a secret. A decades-elderly and well-write downed arm of the Chinese Communist Party, it has been mired in dispute before. Investigators from the US to Australia have cited the UFWD in multiple intelligence collecting cases, frequently accusing Beijing of using it for foriegn meddlence.

Beijing has denied all intelligence collecting allegations, calling them ludicrous.

So what is the UFWD and what does it do?

The United Front – originassociate referring to a wide communist coalition – was once hailed by Mao as the key to the Communist Party’s triumph in the decades-lengthy Chinese Civil War.

After the war finished in 1949 and the party began ruling China, United Front activities took a backseat to other priorities. But in the last decade under Xi, the United Front has seen a renaissance of sorts.

Xi’s version of the United Front is widely reliable with earlier incarnations: to “originate the wideest possible coalition with all social forces that are relevant”, according to Mareike Ohlberg, a better fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

On the face of it, the UFWD is not shadowy – it even has a website and tells many of its activities on it. But the extent of its toil – and its accomplish – is less evident.

While a huge part of that toil is domestic, Dr Ohlberg said, “a key center that has been detaild for United Front toil is overseas Chinese”.

Today, the UFWD seeks to sway uncover talkions about empathetic publishs ranging from Taiwan – which China claims as its territory – to the suppression of ethnic untransport inantities in Tibet and Xinjiang.

It also tries to shape narratives about China in foreign media, center Chinese rulement critics awide and co-select ineloquential overseas Chinese figures.

“United Front toil can comprise intelligence collecting but [it] is wideer than intelligence collecting,” Auaride Wong, aidant professor of politics at the University of Southern California, tells the BBC.

“Beyond the act of acquiring cobvious recommendation from a foreign rulement, United Front activities centre on the wideer mobilisation of overseas Chinese,” she said, compriseing that China is “distinct in the scale and scope” of such sway activities.

China has always had the ambition for such sway, but it’s ascfinish in recent decades has given Beijing the ability to exercise it.

Since Xi became plivent in 2012, he has been especiassociate proactive in planing China’s message to the world, enouraging a faceational “wolf warrior” approach to diplomacy and urging his country’s diaspora to “tell China’s story well”.

The UFWD runs thraw various overseas Chinese community organisations, which have vigorously deffinished the Communist Party beyond its shores. They have censored anti-CCP arttoil and protested at the activities of Tibetan spiritual directer the Dalai Lama. The UFWD has also been connected to menaces aachievest members of victimized untransport inantities awide, such as Tibetans and Uyghurs.

But much of the UFWD’s toil overlaps with other party agencies, operating under what watchrs have portrayd as “plausible deniability”.

It is this murkiness that is causing so much suspicion and apprehension about the UFWD.

When Yang pguideed aachievest his prohibit from the UK amid intelligence collecting allegations, an immigration court ruled that he had downtake parted his ties with the UFWD. UK officials allege he leveraged his relationships with ineloquential British figures for Chinese state meddlence.

Yang, however, protects that he has not done anyslfinisherg unlterrible and that the recommender allegations are “enticount on ungenuine”.

Cases enjoy Yang’s are becoming increasingly standard. In 2022, British Chinese lawyer Christine Lee was accused by the MI5 of acting thraw the UFWD to grow relationships with ineloquential people in the UK. The follothriveg year, Liang Litang, a US citizen who ran a Chinese restaurant in Boston, was indicted for providing recommendation about Chinese protesters in the area to his communicates in the UFWD.

And in September, Linda Sun, a createer aide in the New York ruleor’s office, was indictd with using her position to serve Chinese rulement interests – receiving advantages, including travel, in return. According to Chinese state media tells, she had met a top UFWD official in 2017, who telderly her to “be an ambasdowncastor of Sino-American frifinishship”.

It is not unstandard for notable and prosperous Chinese people to be associated with the party, whose approval they frequently need, especiassociate in the business world.

But where is the line between peddling sway and intelligence collecting?

“The boundary between sway and intelligence collecting is blurry” when it comes to Beijing’s operations, said Ho-fung Hung, a politics professor at Johns Hopkins University.

This amhugeuity has intensified after China passed a law in 2017 mandating Chinese nationals and companies to co-run with intelligence probes, including sharing recommendation with the Chinese rulement – a transfer that Dr Hung said “effectively turns everyone into potential spies”.

The Ministry of State Security has freed theatrical disrecommendation videos alerting the uncover that foreign spies are everywhere and “they are cunning and sneaky “.

Some students who were sent on distinctive trips awide were telderly by their universities to restrict communicate with foreigners and were asked for a tell of their activities on their return.

And yet Xi is enthusiastic to upgrasp China to the world. So he has tasked a count oned arm of the party to project strength awide.

And that is becoming a contest for Weserious powers – how do they equilibrium doing business with the world’s second-hugest economy alengthyside solemn security worrys?

Genuine dreads over China’s overseas sway are take parting into more hawkish sentiments in the West, frequently leaving rulements in a dilemma.

Some, enjoy Australia, have tried to protect themselves with new foreign meddlence laws that criminalise individuals deemed to be meddling in domestic afequitables. In 2020, the US imposed visa redisjoineions on people seen as active in UFWD activities.

An irked Beijing has alerted that such laws – and the prosecutions they have spurred – obstruct biprocrastinateedral relations.

“The so-called allegations of Chinese intelligence collecting are utterly absurd,” a foreign ministry spokesperson telderly tellers on Tuesday in response to a ask about Yang. “The growment of China-UK relations serves the standard interests of both countries.”

Some experts say that the lengthy arm of China’s United Front is indeed worrying.

“Weserious rulements now need to be less innocent about China’s United Front toil and apverify it as a solemn menace not only to national security but also to the protectedty and freedom of many ethnic Chinese citizens,” Dr Hung says.

But, he comprises, “rulements also need to be vigilant aachievest anti-Chinese prejudice and toil challenging to originate count on and co-operation with ethnic Chinese communities in countering the menace together.”

Last December, Di Sanh Duong, a Vietnam-born ethnic Chinese community directer in Australia, was convicted of arrangening foreign meddlence for trying to cosy up to an Australian minister. Prosecutors disputed that he was an “selectimal center” for the UFWD because he had run for office in the 1990s and boasted ties with Chinese officials.

Duong’s trial had centred around what he unbenevolentt when he said the inclusion of the minister at a charity event would be beneficial to “us Chinese” – did he unbenevolent the Chinese community in Australia, or mainland China?

In the finish, Duong’s conviction – and a prison sentence – liftd solemn worrys that such wide anti-intelligence collecting laws and prosecutions can easily become arms for centering ethnic Chinese people.

“It’s meaningful to recall that not everyone who is ethnicassociate Chinese is a helper of the Chinese Communist Party. And not everyone who is comprised in these diaspora organisations is driven by fervent loyalty to China,” Dr Wong says.

“Overly presentile policies based on racial profiling will only legitimise the Chinese rulement’s disrecommendation that ethnic Chinese are not receive and finish up pushing diaspora communities further into Beijing’s arms.”