Chinese Communist Party is stepping up efforts to stifle dissent abroad

Report points to the co-opting of ethnic Chinese living outside China and targeting by intelligence services
By Owen Churchill

The Chinese Communist Party monitors individuals and groups operating abroad that it sees as dissenters. Pictured, Chinatown in New York. 

China’s ruling Communist Party is pursuing an aggressive, covert infiltration of US educational and social institutions to quell dissenting voices and strengthen its soft power overseas, according to a report written for an influential US congressional body.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is seeking “to co-opt ethnic Chinese individuals and communities living outside China”, said the report, published on Friday by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Methods include threatening to imprison family members of Uygur people living in the US unless they agree to spy for the Communist Party, the report said.
At the same time, “a number of other key affiliated organisations guided by China’s broader United Front strategy conduct influence operations targeting foreign actors and states,” said the paper, referring to the United Front Work Department, a government body charged with strengthening adherence to the ruling party both within and outside China.
Uygurs and their supporters march near the United Nations headquarters in New York in March.

The research paper, titled “China’s Overseas United Front Work: Background and Implications for the United States”, is intended to inform further action by the commission, which reports to Congress with recommendations on legislative action related to China.
The commission’s report highlights the scrutiny to which the CCP subjects overseas Chinese, not only as carriers of soft power but also as resources for the monitoring of anti-party individuals and groups operating abroad.
The paper pointed to Xi Jinping’s declaration at the CCP’s National Congress last year that the party would “maintain extensive contacts with overseas Chinese nationals, returned Chinese and their relatives and unite them so that they can join our endeavours to revitalise the Chinese nation”.
The publication comes amid rising international scrutiny of China’s detention of up to 1 million Uygurs in re-education camps in its East Turkestan colony. 

Attention from the global community was renewed recently when a UN panel grilled Chinese representatives on the subject at a hearing on racial discrimination around the world.
As the CCP – in conjunction with Chinese state media – scrambles to discredit such concerns, scores of Uygurs living in the US are being targeted by Chinese intelligence services, according to the report.
Intelligence services are “threatening to send their families still in East Turkestan to internment camps, or keep them there, if the former do not agree to spy for China”, said the report, which draws extensively from media reports and interviews with experts on China’s overseas presence.


Megha Rajagopalan, a reporter for BuzzFeed News in Beijing, had her application for a visa renewal denied.

Megha Rajagopalan – a journalist who has reported on human rights abuses in East Turkestan and who was forced to leave China after her visa renewal application was recently denied – told the commission that the harassment of Uygurs living outside China was consistent with the United Front’s objective to quash voices of dissent against the ruling party.

The commission’s report also draws attention to the subversion role played by the Chinese Students & Scholars Association (CSSA), which has established campus organisations for Chinese students abroad.
A number of CSSAs have denied government affiliation, but not all: the group at the University of Tennessee, for example, lists the Chinese embassy in the US as one of its sources of funding.
Last year, after the University of California at San Diego invited the Dalai Lama to speak at its commencement ceremony, the CSSA at the university spoke out in protest and said it was coordinating with the Chinese consulate on the matter.
There are signs that the US government is growing wary of the CCP’s influence and surveillance tactics detailed in the report.
The US military budget for 2019, recently signed into law, includes a stipulation that no Pentagon funding can be granted to educational institutions that allow Confucius Institute study programmes.

US President Donald Trump signs into law a defence budget that forbids the Pentagon from funding educational institutions that allow Confucius Institute study programmes. 

Operating under the auspices of the CCP, Confucius Institutes offer language and cultural courses to non-Chinese students. 

They offered instead a sterilised, party-approved picture of Chinese culture that proactively glosses over contentious subjects like Tibet.
Acknowledging that move by US lawmakers, the commission’s report said that improved transparency – regarding, for instance, US universities’ relationships with Confucius Institutes – and oversight “hold great promise for countering the most subversive and anti-democratic of the CCP’s influence operations.”
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission has also played a role in efforts to prevent the transfer of advanced technologies to China through acquisitions.
Earlier this year, the body recommended expanded authority for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review – and, if necessary, halt – Chinese firms’ acquisition of US companies if technologies developed or produced by the company could be adapted for military purposes.
The recommendation helped advance the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernisation Act (FIRRMA), which provides greater powers to CFIUS and is now US law.

China 'ejects' US journalist known for reporting on East Turkestan repression

Foreign correspondents condemn decision to deny visa to Megha Rajagopalan
By Emma Graham-Harrison

Police in Kashgar, a city in China's East Turkestan colony.

China has “effectively ejected” an American journalist from the country, a journalists’ association has said, after she won a reputation for hard-hitting reporting on the country’s East Turkestan colony.
Megha Rajagopalan, a correspondent for BuzzFeed, wrote on Twitter that she would be moving on to another beat after the foreign ministry in Beijing “declined to issue a new visa”.
The decision to deny her a visa was condemned by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC). 

“We are attempting to get clarity from the foreign ministry on its reasoning for effectively ejecting a credentialed foreign journalist,” it said in a statement.
“We find this extremely regrettable and unacceptable for a government that repeatedly insists it welcomes foreign media to cover the country.”

Rajagopalan, a former board member, had “conducted herself according to the highest journalistic standards while in China”, the organisation said.
China has previously delayed visas, or refused to renew them, for individual correspondents or media outlets that have angered the government with their coverage.
In 2012 a reporter for al-Jazeera English was refused a visa renewal, prompting the broadcaster to shutter its China bureau. 

In 2015 a correspondent for France’s L’Obs magazine was also forced to leave, after writing a critical report on Beijing’s policies in East Turkestan.
The foreign ministry said Ursula Gauthier’s article in current affairs magazine L’Obs, “openly supports terrorist activity, the killing of innocents and has outraged the Chinese public”.
Several reporters for the New York Times were also refused visas, in the years after a 2012 story on the wealth of the family of the former premier Wen Jiabao.

‘We’re a people destroyed’: Uighur Muslims across China are living in fear

Rajagopalan had been recognised, by her peers and with press awards, for extensive and in-depth reporting on mounting surveillance and repression in East Turkestan.
She did not directly accuse the Chinese government of expelling her for coverage of East Turkestan, saying the ministry told BuzzFeed it was a procedural issue. 

But she also noted that she would continue to cover developments in the region from a distance.
“I also want to make clear that though I can’t do it from inside China any more, I’m not going to stop reporting on and speaking about state surveillance, repression and incarceration of millions of Muslim ethnic minorities in East Turkestan,” she said on Twitter.

New investigation explores China's surveillance of Uighurs

CBS News

NEW YORK -- A new investigative report explores China's surveillance program targeting Uighurs, a Muslim minority group living in East Turkestan.
"Spy For Us – Or Never Speak to Your Family Again" was written by BuzzFeed reporter Megha Rajagopalan.

She explained to CBS News that the Chinese government fears Uighurs will be part of separatist threats.
"In the past, China has dealt with terrorist attacks that they've blamed on Uighur militants, and there are reports of Uighurs going to fight with extremist groups in Iraq and Syria," she said. 

"But by and large what we're seeing here is the collective punishment of literally millions of ethnic minorities in China for the actions of a small handful."
A BuzzFeed investigation looks into China's surveillance program in the Xinjiang province.

Rajagopalan reports thousands of Uighurs are being targeted, even when they leave the country, and many are forced into so-called "reeducation camps" for reasons as small as having contact with friends or family members who live overseas.
"Certainly speaking to a journalist is reason enough for you or your family to be sent to one of these camps," she said.
In East Turkestan, Rajagopalan says there's been a rise in what she calls "techno authoritarianism," which is a combination of human policing, DNA databases and technology like facial recognition. She says there is even airport-style security before people can go into shopping malls.
China's Ministry of Public Security did not respond to BuzzFeed's request for comment. 

However, Rajagopalan says there has been some pushback from the international community, including the U.S.
"I think as awareness continues to grow about this issue, and frankly, as these abuses continue to grow in scope, which in all likelihood they will, I think the hope of these Uighur groups is that there will be a greater response from the international community," Rajagopalan said.