Diplomatic and Political Aspects of Chinese Foreign Policy in the “Grey Zone” of Conflict

China’s United Front Work Department has historically been employed to disguise the domestic economic and political intentions of the CCP. Today it has a massive budget to persuade overseas Chinese and foreign elites to accept and advocate for Chinese foreign policies, investments and participation in infrastructure research and development. Success has increasingly provoked forceful countermeasures in target countries.

In recent years there has been increasing public awareness and concern in western developed states about the People’s Republic of China (PRC) regime’s “efforts to co-opt foreigners to support and promote the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign policy goals^{Footnote 13}”.

In addition, the increasingly pervasive use by agencies of the PRC of covert, corrupt and coercive means to acquire strategic political and economic information and technical knowledge has become a critically pressing issue for Canada and its allies^{Footnote 14}.

Beijing’s strategy to expand the PRC’s political influence in foreign states comprehensively applies the Chinese Communist Party's Sinicized development of Lenin’s United Front Policy reconfigured to serve China’s Communist Party post-revolutionary regime ambitions as a “communist party” that is no longer guided by Marxist political norms.

China’s revolutionary United Front Work was based in a sophisticated doctrine of strategic deception to neutralise societal elements which were previously disaffected by the implementation of China's socialist revolution. Marx put forth that religion is the opiate of the people, meaning he defined religion as a reactionary social force that upholds feudal norms hostile to China’s socialist revolution. Following from this, China’s United Front strategy looks to target key religious leaders through a prolonged process of menace, flattery and bribery with a view to their co-optation into the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the leading state organ for the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front work^{Footnote 15}. These co-opted spiritual leaders are thereby induced, through sophisticated political manipulation, to keep their co-religionists docile against the Communist Party’s overall scheme to regulate and ultimately eliminate religious belief. The current program of cultural genocide and internment camps targeting Turkic Muslims living in Xinjiang was only brought into play after conventional United Front tactics directed at Uyghur and Kazakh leaders failed to neutralise their Islamic identity.

Similarly, over the 10 years after the revolution in 1949, Chinese business people were given various assurances that the Party would protect their economic contributions to national development, the implication being that they should not flee the country out of fear of political persecution for being capitalists in a socialist society. Within a few years, however, gradually these capitalist-run businesses were systematically nationalised in accordance with socialist public ownership of the means of production economic principles. Many of China’s “patriotic capitalists” who remained in the PRC after the Communist Party’s assumption of state power ended up bankrupt and in prison, convicted of alleged crimes against socialism—victims of the United Front’s strategic deception and manipulation.

Today, China’s United Front Work strategy uses a range of methods to influence overseas Chinese communities, foreign governments, and other actors to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing's preferred policies^{Footnote 16}. United Front Work serves to promote Beijing's preferred global narratives, pressure individuals living in free and open societies to self-censor and avoid discussing issues unfavourable to the CCP, and to harass or undermine groups critical of Beijing's policies.

The current Chinese regime under Party General-Secretary Xi Jinping has significantly enhanced the budget and resources of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department^{Footnote 17}. This increase in resources facilitates the activities of United Front Work operatives internationally, including those under diplomatic cover at the Chinese Embassy and the four PRC consulates in Canada. These operatives, as well as others who are Canadian citizens, are covertly supporting the PRC, including through the PRC’s network of 13 Confucius Institutes in Canada which very much function as satellite offices for United Front Work activities.

Much of the focus of United Front Work is on persons of Han Chinese ethnicity. Again, co-optation through menace, flattery and bribery is the United Front’s mission. The United Front discourse insists that all persons of Han Chinese ethnicity, regardless of citizenship status, are “children of the Dragon” who owe residual loyalty to China as represented by the Chinese Communist Party. This is combined with coercion by implied, or in some cases direct, threats to those who have family members in the PRC. They are expected to support Canada’s relations with China on Chinese terms including through political donations to pro-PRC politicians and other support of China-friendly policy measures. There are even reports of leaked documents suggesting that the United Front Work Department has a mandate to increase the number of ethnic Chinese supportive of the PRC elected to Western nations’ democratic legislatures^{Footnote 18}. As Canadians of Chinese background are underrepresented in Federal and provincial legislatures and should be encouraged to run for political office, such reporting casts doubt on the intentions and loyalties of these candidates.

A more fundamental issue is the United Front Work Department’s successful co-optation of non-ethnic Chinese to serve PRC regime interests which form a hostile threat to Canada’s national security. The targets of this approach extend to respected senior politicians and civil servants with responsibility for shaping government policies which impinge on Beijing’s interests. This is supplemented by support from research institutions and think tanks that are associated with large corporations with extensive and lucrative dealings with PRC state and regime-associated business networks and co-opting of Canadian Chinese-language media^{Footnote 19}.

The central point promoted by these consciously or unconsciously co-opted Canadians is that access to China’s growing market is essential to sustained future prosperity for Canada because China’s rise is inevitable and that it will, in the not too distant future, displace a declining US as the new global hegemon. The corollary is to downplay the costs to Canada of doing business in China, such as pervasive Chinese state purloining of intellectual property and proprietary manufacturing processes of Canadian partners.

China consistently holds out the prospect of greater Canadian access to China’s massive and growing market by reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers if Canada makes concessions to China on non-trade aspects of the bilateral relationship. The expectation is that if Canada wants enhanced access to China’s highly protected markets, it must not challenge the PRC’s pervasive flouting of international norms, nor counter regime activities such as cyber-espionage and covert, corrupt and coercive activities which further Beijing’s geostrategic interests in Canada^{Footnote 20}.

These activities/interests include:

• allowing installation of Huawei 5G software and hardware equipment in Canada’s Bell and Telus networks;
• allowing unfettered Chinese state firms’ and PRC regime associated corporations’ acquisition of Canadian companies, energy reserves, mines and farm land; and
• eliminating the review process for Chinese state firms and PRC regime associated corporations’ acquisition of high tech including satellite technology and laser technology applicable to directed energy weaponry.

In terms of the PRC’s larger global interests, Beijing expects that Canada take no effective action (such as Magnitsky list sanctions) against China’s program of cultural genocide against Turkic Muslims and other human rights concerns (including in Hong Kong), as well as Beijing’s use of agents to harass, threaten and menace Uyghurs, Tibetans and China democracy activists in Canada. Canada is also expected to politically shun Taiwan and the Tibetan Government in exile in Dharamsala.

It is well documented that some western politicians and policymakers support a China policy that amounts to supporting PRC regime interests^{Footnote 21}. Some of these politicians have experienced lucrative careers related to China after retirement from public service, although there is no evidence of any improper connection between the two.

There are, however, substantive indications regarding Chinese influence operations in other countries that could have as yet undiscovered complements in Canada. In June 2018, the Parliament of Australia enacted two acts of legislation: the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act^{Footnote 22} and the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Act^{Footnote 23}. These have been characterised by the Government of Australia as “strong new laws against those who seek to undermine our national security and our democratic institutions and processes^{Footnote 24}>”. The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act requires more transparency in reporting of senior officials’ post retirement income. Before it went into effect in March 2019, Andrew Robb, formerly Minister for Trade and Investment and Bob Carr, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs (and some other prominent Australians) resigned from their China-related activities^{Footnote 25}.

Robb negotiated the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. In 2015, the PRC suggested that Canada could negotiate a free trade agreement with China on similar terms, but the Government of Canada has demurred in part because the Australia-China agreement has not been deemed of sufficient benefit to Australia while China is doing very well out of it^{Footnote 26}. In October 2016, it was announced that Robb had joined the Landbridge Group as a "high-level economic consultant" with compensation amounting to almost $880,000 per year. This Chinese company had been granted a 99-year lease on the Port of Darwin in 2015 when Robb was the Minister for Trade and Investment. The Chair of the Landbridge Group is Ye Cheng, a billionaire with links to the Chinese Communist Party^{Footnote 27}. It was further reported that Robb had accepted the $73,000 per month position immediately after ceasing to be a member of the Australian Parliament^{Footnote 28}.

Carr was Australia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs until 2013 when he was appointed to head the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Sydney. The Institute was established with a donation from Huang Xiangmo, a Chinese billionaire with links to the Communist Party of China^{Footnote 29}. Mr. Huang was a permanent resident and political donor in Australia, but he was denied re-entry into the country on national security grounds in 2018^{Footnote 30}. Carr is alleged to have become Australia’s most prominent and vocal advocate for Xi Jinping’s China. In May 2019 he was accused of having improperly pressured Australian Labor Senator Kristina Keneally to grill the Australian Prime Minister about the role and employment contract awarded to his consultant and former adviser John Garnaut.

But there is no evidence that Robb or Carr have done anything improper or illegal^{Footnote 31} and the reason for their resignations just prior to the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act coming into effect has not been publicly provided. The Government of China has suggested that Australia’s politicians, in enacting this legislation, are motivated by xenophobia and racism. Lu Kang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry when asked about the Australian legislation responded saying “we hope that all countries could cast off Cold War mind-set and strengthen exchanges and cooperation on the basis of mutual respect and equal treatment^{Footnote 32}”.

Because China’s authoritarian single Party dictatorship’s policies of societal repression are repulsive to liberal democratic sensibilities, the PRC has largely failed in its generously-funded attempts to engender soft power engagement with Western states. Instead money-power engagement has been central to achieving elite capture of politicians, business leaders and think tank academics. Appointment to high paid positions in Chinese state and regime companies, China-associated law firms, or boards of foreign relations institutions with associated travel and prestige has fostered a large number of influential proponents of the interests of the PRC embedded in Western countries. The lack of transparency over influential westerners’ income derived from foreign sources is troubling. There is too much secrecy in this regard. Murky foreign funding should be required to be publicly exposed on the principle that sunshine is an excellent antiseptic.

Moreover given the seriousness of the security threats outlined above, it is evident that the Government of Canada does not employ nearly enough people with native or near-native fluency in Mandarin and Chinese dialects who also have sophisticated knowledge of the culture and norms of the Chinese Communist Party. Several western states are putting resources into scholarship programs to incentivise graduate students to gain this high-level expertise. This vital capacity demands years of intense work, therefore more short-term solutions must also be considered. Canada can achieve a balanced, equal, mature and comprehensive relationship with the PRC based on genuine reciprocity^{Footnote 33} only by placing considerable resources into short, medium and long-term tools.