Beijing’s Political Warfare in Canada: Tracking the Footprints of the United Front Work Department

Canada has long been a target of China’s United Front influence campaign. Important ethnic Chinese organisations have been effectively taken over by Beijing, as have most Chinese language media. Chinese embassies and consulates monitor the Chinese ethnic community and coordinate United Front activities.

In the winter of 1998 the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) published an externally-commissioned report entitled Beijing’s United Front Strategy in Hong Kong, and it was a provocative document in the context of the time. This was just a few months after the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty after 156 years of British rule. There was still a lot of euphoria in the air, joy at the end of colonial rule, and delight at the return to the embrace of the motherland. As we know now, the hangover and grim dawn of reality were just around the corner. But in those brief months of bright optimism, the paper set out in detail how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had used its main agency of political warfare, the United Front Work Department (UFWD), to seduce Hongkongers into believing the handover was going to be the beginning of a bright new age for the territory. The message was that Beijing would allow Hong Kong to rule itself with “a high degree of autonomy” and to purposefully progress to full democracy in the territory.

Behind these commitments, the United Front waged a more detailed charm offensive. Dozens of local groups, organisations, and individuals in Hong Kong, ranging from business tycoons to Triad criminal gangs, were neutralised by money or flattering privileged access to PRC institutions.

Near the top of the commissioned report was the following statement: “The significance of United Front work cannot be overstated. To assess the ramifications of United Front work, it is necessary to understand its nature, the institutions supporting its ventures, its targets, and finally, its expected outcomes. In this context, Canada cannot claim disassociation from the phenomenon, if only because of the sheer size of its Chinese community”. The report ended by speculating that after having re-acquired Hong Kong, the CCP would turn its attention to Taiwan. “As the divide and rule tactics that characterise United Front work will form the basis of this campaign, Canada must exercise vigilance to ensure that the rights and freedoms of Chinese-Canadians are not threatened,” it said.

The predictions in this analysis have come to pass, but sadly and unforgivably, Canada and Canadian institutions have largely failed to take to heart the warning at the end of the report. We face a situation today where United Front groups have managed to get themselves and their agents of influence deeply entrenched in Canadian society. They are not only a daily danger to the rights and freedoms of Canadians of ethnic Chinese heritage and others over whom China claims a governing/political stake, such as Tibetan and Uyghur Canadians, but they are also increasingly a distorting presence in Canadian public life as a whole. That is clearly shown in elements of the debate around the extradition of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies.

The United Front was founded by the CCP in the 1930s as a channel for securing and maintaining relationships with non-communist groups. To that end, it always downplayed the revolutionary and authoritarian elements of the CCP’s character. Instead it portrayed the party as a benign organisation of reformers. That approach to United Front work has continued. The Front fell into disuse during the rule of Mao Zedong, but was revived when Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978. At first the new United Front was used as an agency to attract investment and technology from the Chinese diaspora and susceptible Western business leaders for Deng’s program of economic reform and opening-up.

There was a significant change in the direction of United Front work around the year 2000. At that time the emphasis shifted from encouraging members of the Chinese diaspora to get involved with the revival of China, to being able to influence and control those people in their home countries. One of the first visible pieces of evidence of that change in Canada was successful moves by UFWD agents to take effective editorial control of almost all Chinese language media in the country. Similar moves were made in Australia and the US. This is in line with established CCP strategy, which gives propaganda a high priority in political warfare. The editorial takeovers were achieved either by direct investment in Canadian Chinese language media by pro-CCP companies or by letting media proprietors who also had investments in China know that the survival of those assets depended on their outlets giving a favourable view of the Beijing administration.

Another significant change came after Xi Jinping became CCP General-Secretary and President of the PRC in 2012 and 2013. Xi has massively increased both the responsibilities and the resources of the UFWD. The objective, as always, is to use a variety of methods to influence diaspora communities, foreign governments, and other elements in society such as the business and academic sectors to support Beijing’s policies and purposes.

The premier overt United Front organisation is the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). This is ostensibly a legislative advisory body that meets annually to bring the interests of non-communist citizens of the PRC to Beijing’s attention. However, the CPPCC’s value as an outside voice is a fabrication. Two-thirds of its 2,158 delegates are CCP members who can and do overrule unwelcome suggestions. For the rest, members include delegates from Potempkin independent non-communist political parties, state-controlled religious organisations, representatives of ethnic minorities, and members of the Chinese diaspora sitting as delegates of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. The Communist Party has always held out appointment to the CPPCC as the most prestigious honour it can bestow on members of the diaspora. Canadians of Chinese heritage or PRC citizens with permanent resident status in Canada usually figure among the overseas delegates. In recent years the emphasis has been on appointing people in Canada associated with universities, including one instance the principal policy adviser to the president of one of Canada’s major universities.

In addition to United Front international organisations’ branches in Canada, there are a number of home-grown groups the Front has either suborned or whose influence it has promoted. The two most important of these organisations are the Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver, and the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organisations. The Vancouver Benevolent Association was founded in 1896, and for much of its history has been regarded locally as the true government of the city’s Chinatown. However, in recent years it has fallen under the influence of the United Front and become an umbrella organisation for most of the Chinese-Canadian groups in British Columbia. This was demonstrated most clearly in June 2019 when full page advertisements appeared in two Chinese language newspapers, Sing Tao and Ming Pao. The statements decried the pro-reform demonstrators in Hong Kong, accusing them of being rioters causing chaos and of being separatists trying to break up China. The statement was followed by the names of 200 Chinese-Canadian organisations, most of which are identifiable as United Front operations. In the Toronto editions of the two newspapers carrying similar statements, The Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organisations was the lead voice. This also criticised the pro-democracy demonstrators, and vigorously supported the Hong Kong police and Beijing’s selected Hong Kong administration.

The Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organisations (CTCCO) also figured large in a rally held at Markham in August 2019, also vilifying the Hong Kong demonstrators. Former Ontario provincial cabinet minister Michael Chan spoke at the rally, held in his old constituency, and other speakers included several former executive members of the CTCCO and Chinese Canadians for China’s Reunification.

Ten years ago the CTCCO lobbied strongly and successfully for the Toronto District School Board to contract with Beijing for the PRC government to finance and manage Confucius Institute classes in Toronto schools. The purpose of the institutes, paid for and staffed by Beijing, is ostensibly to promote knowledge of Chinese language and culture. But the Toronto agreement was cancelled in 2014 when parents rallied to object when it was shown that institute came under the authority of the United Front. New Brunswick, which had Confucius classrooms established in schools across the province, last year moved to end the agreement because of concerns about their true purpose. CSIS has warned colleges and universities in particular that a prime purpose of the institutes is to act as espionage outposts for the nearest Chinese consulate or embassy. As a result, several Canadian colleges and universities have cancelled their agreements for Confucius Institutes, but, at the time of writing there are still 13 agreements in force.

Slightly outside this circle of CCP-controlled organisations in Canada, but still a United Front operation is the Chinese Student and Scholars Association (CSSA). There are currently about 120,000 students from China studying in Canada and the CSSA maintains branches in all the colleges and universities to which they are attached. The superficial purpose of the associations, all of which are closely linked to the nearest Chinese consulate or embassy, is to provide back-up and support for the young people far from home and family.

Behind that, however, are other purposes. One is to keep a close watch on the activities of the students while they are in Canada to ensure they do not get involved in political or religious pursuits the CCP considers traitorous. There are examples of students being given long prison sentences when they return home for activities while at foreign universities. To keep watch on dissidents, spies are planted among the students to report back to Chinese diplomats.

Another purpose of the CSSA is to be able to marshal cohorts of students to mount pro-Beijing demonstrations when needed. This has happened to welcome visiting Beijing senior officials, but also to oppose visits to Canada by people the CCP considers enemies, such as the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama. A victory for the United Front and the CSSA is that on at least two occasions recently students have rallied in opposition to situations at their universities without having to be marshalled by the United Front. One was at McMaster University early in 2019 when Chinese students started an on-line protest against plans for an exiled Uyghur to talk about the detention and “re-education” of around one million Uyghurs by Chinese officials in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region. Soon afterwards, in March 2019, there was a similar incident at the Scarborough campus of the University of Toronto. Chinese students mounted an online campaign calling for the overturning of the election to the presidency of the students’ union of an ethnic Tibetan Canadian, Chemi Lhamo.

In both instances the CSSA members contacted the Chinese consulate in Toronto for help and support after they had launched their own protests. At McMaster University, the Students Union in September 2019 stripped the CSSA of its official status and privileges because of its links to the PRC government and the United Front.

For Canada, like other middle powers such as Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan, which are also vulnerable to the political warfare campaigns launched against them by the United Front, there is one central and very difficult question. How does a democracy that believes in freedom of speech and freedom of association respond to a belligerent organisation like the United Front without abandoning or undermining its own core values? One of the greatest strengths of democracies is transparency and that is the weapon that should be deployed first with energy and persistence. Legislative options should also be explored, such as the Australian and Taiwanese examples of laws outlawing political infiltration by foreign governments, and restrictions on retired officials working for foreign companies and government-linked institutions.