Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s congratulatory letter to the Overseas-educated Scholars Association of China (OSAC) highlighted its function as a CCP-controlled organization to infiltrate the West, which has attracted international attention.
Authorities in Beijing celebrated the 110th anniversary of the establishment of OSAC, also known as the Western Returned Scholars Association, on Oct. 21. Mr. Xi called on the association to “rally talent from around the world and pool strengths of creativity for the development of the cause of the Party and the country” in his letter.
Mr. Xi also praised the association for its “contribution in uniting overseas Chinese students,” calling on the association to “continue to play its role as a talent pool in serving the country, a think tank of good ideas and proposals and a vital force in people-to-people diplomacy.”
Wang Huning, Mr. Xi’s top adviser and a member of the Standing Committee of the CCP’s Political Bureau, gave a speech at the celebration calling on the association “to better rally overseas students and scholars around the Party.”
Shi Taifeng, head of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, read out Xi’s letter at the gathering.
Different Incarnation of the Association
According to public information, the Western Returned Scholars Association was originally established in October 1913 in Beijing during the republican era of China by famed Chinese intellectuals who were educated in the West, which was years before the CCP was set up by the Communist International run by the Soviet Union in 1921.
The association ceased activities during communist China’s Cultural Revolution. In 1982, it resumed activities under the Secretariat of the CCP’s Central Committee and has been managed by the CCP’s United Front Department, becoming an organization to target Chinese students studying abroad. In 2003, the CCP gave the association another name, “Overseas-educated Scholars Association of China.”
According to its official website, the association currently has 42 local organizations, two member groups, and 15 national and regional chapters. Individual members have exceeded 220,000, and there are 125 standing directors, 287 directors, and 35 overseas directors. They have connections with more than 100 organizations of overseas Chinese students.
Xi’s letter highlighted the association’s affiliation with the CCP’s United Front Work Department and its overseas infiltration function, which caused an uproar among overseas Chinese on social media.
U.S.-based Economist Li Hengqing posted on X (formerly Twitter), “Just learned that this organization turned out to be a united front tool of the CCP. Does Xi Jinping’s congratulatory letter constitute a ‘crime of leaking state secret?’”
A user called “SciTechplusU” posted on X: “This is a major united front system. To give an example, Chen Zhu played a key role in getting France to help China build the Wuhan P4 laboratory [where virus gain of function is experimented and is suspected to have leaked the virus that caused the outbreak of COVID-19]. Chen Zhu is the president of the Western Returned Scholars Association.”
Another user whose account name is “Found in Translation” posted: “Western Returned Scholars Association is a top United Front organization, like the Whampoa Military Academy Alumni Association and The China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, it’s directly connected to the United Front Work Department.”
United States-based writer and current affairs commentator Cai Shenkun also expressed, “The CCP’s methods of infiltration and bribery are beyond the imagination of the West, so that many Western elites have unknowingly fallen into the trap, causing the social systems and even value systems of the West to be constantly undermined, eroded, and disintegrated in the face of various temptations.”
A user named David stated on X: “Deport all the members of Western Returned Scholars Association immediately, no one can be kept [in the West]!”
