Commentary
The overseas Chinese community is making news in the United States and elsewhere for actions ranging from land acquisition near sensitive facilities to economic espionage, illegal immigration, and more.
But are these stories just isolated events, or are they dots in a mosaic becoming clearer with each passing day?
What do overseas Chinese have to do with Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream”?
Let’s connect a few of those dots.
Secret Police Stations
In December 2022, Newsweek quoted a report from Safeguard Defenders, a Spanish rights group, that communist China has been operating more than 100 “overseas police service centers” in at least 50 countries. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in June that these “service centers” operate in seven U.S. cities.Safeguard Defenders, which also tracks the disappearances of dissidents in China, stated that these service centers or secret police stations are “an extension of Chinese municipal public security bureaus [PSBs], which pressure Chinese nationals and their families to persuade suspects to return home to face criminal charges.” Safeguard has “traced police service centers back to the PSBs of Fuzhou in Fujian province; Wenzhou and Qingtian in Zhejiang province; and Nantong in Jiangsu province.”
The public security bureau is a Chinese euphemism for a police station. Administratively tied to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), which controls PSBs, these operations are believed to be directly linked to the overseas mission of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) to monitor and stifle dissent among the overseas Chinese and propagate pro-China narratives and facilitate clandestine spying activities through pressure placed on relatives in mainland China.
The UFWD also operates its own “overseas Chinese service centers” housed in various nonprofit organizations as part of the mission of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council. Thus, coordination between the MPS and UFWD is inevitable, given their overlapping missions in the Chinese diaspora.
Land Acquisition
Several stories of Chinese land acquisition near sensitive U.S. facilities have made the news lately. For example, as reported by The New York Times, Chinese-owned agriculture conglomerate Fufeng USA planned to build a giant corn milling facility less than 15 miles from Grand Forks Air Force base in North Dakota, which is home to the RQ-4 Global Hawks of the 319th Reconnaissance Wing. However, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Andrew Hunter concluded in a letter to Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) that the proposed facilities would create “near- and long-term risks of significant impacts” to Air Force operations in the area.Meanwhile, in Texas, a former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general owns 200 square miles near Laughlin Air Force Base, a major U.S. Air Force pilot training facility. And in Montana, according to Fox News, the Chinese firm “Huawei grabbed a large plot of land near nuclear silos that house 50 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
The UK Daily Mail reported last month that “the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] has a stake in 383,935 acres of American agricultural land as of December 2021,” according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report, as well as Smithfield, the world’s largest pork processing conglomerate, which was acquired by the Shuanghui Group for $5 billion in 2013.
According to an FBI Liaison Information Report in February, the Chinese regime is also attempting “to generate undue economic leverage and influence over the U.S. maritime sector [by establishing a strategic presence at Mississippi River ports] to potentially disrupt transportation critical infrastructure and supply chains.”
Military Age Chinese Men Crossing US–Mexico Border
According to Fox News, “Chinese nationals are crossing the U.S.–Mexico border into the U.S. in unprecedented numbers this year,” having eclipsed in April the totals for all of 2022.Per the Daily Caller News Foundation, between October 2022 and June, “Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 14,000 illegal migrants from China at the southern border.” Those numbers include military-age men, as captured in a video that appears to show hundreds of military-aged Chinese men in Panama heading toward the U.S. border at once.
How many did the Border Patrol miss? Are these potential spies, or are they on some kind of undercover mission for the PLA?
Chinese Espionage
In 2011, the FBI uncovered “a massive Chinese ’seed smuggling ring' ongoing in Iowa” run by a Chinese national named Mo Hailong, as reported by the Daily Mail on Aug. 3. Their goal was to steal the latest genetically engineered seeds from DuPont Pioneer.In January, the BBC documented the systematic process of how China “sneaks out America’s technology secrets.” One example was the use of steganography, “a means of hiding a data file within the code of another data file”—in this case, intellectual property from General Electric Power that was hidden in the binary code of a digital photograph of a sunset.
The Gateway Pundit reported on the CCP-perfected process of ongoing “scientific chain migration” in March: “The CCP and PLA scientists would establish themselves as ‘anchors’ in U.S. research institutions and then invite other Chinese scientists into their U.S. laboratories to access American knowledge, skills, technologies and U.S. government funding, which, in turn, would be fed into China’s programs, including those of its military.”
In June, the Daily Mail reported that “suspected Chinese spies disguised as tourists have made multiple attempts to infiltrate US military bases in Alaska.”
According to the Daily Caller News Foundation, on May 25, the new Chinese ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, “asked for the ‘support’ of Chinese ’compatriots‘ in the U.S., and also urged ’Chinese students’ in the U.S. to ’serve the motherland,' according to two open letters written in English on the Chinese Embassy’s website.”
Was that a direct request to Chinese people living in the United States permanently or on student visas to spy for communist China?
Xi’s Praise of Overseas Chinese
In recognition of the importance of the overseas Chinese community to communist China’s modernization, Mr. Xi on Aug. 31 attended the opening ceremony of the 11th National Congress of Returned Overseas Chinese and their Relatives in Beijing. The CCP leader’s praise of overseas Chinese isn’t new, as they’re but one facet of his “Chinese Dream” that he describes as the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Clearly, overseas Chinese have a part to play, but what if Mr. Xi’s meaning differs from the literal translation?Concluding Thoughts
That last piece of the puzzle elucidates a long-running CCP strategy to subvert and steal from its “main enemy,” the United States of America. Viewed as isolated events, each story above is newsworthy but not earth-shattering without context. Viewed together as part of a strategy of infiltration and a coordinated fifth column with potentially nefarious aims, these articles should be of great concern to all Americans who wish to preserve their constitutional Republic from the communists.Connecting the dots leads to the following theory:
- The United Front Work Department runs influence operations worldwide to suppress dissent among overseas Chinese while using them in host countries to push communist Chinese narratives and influence public policy.
- The Ministry of Public Security’s overseas secret police stations (“service centers”) provide the manpower and muscle to coerce dissidents in the Chinese diaspora; to ensure compliance, the MPS can activate public security bureaus in China to pressure relatives of overseas Chinese to force compliance with communist wishes.
- The new Chinese ambassador to the United States encourages overseas Chinese, including students on temporary visas, to “serve the motherland” while knowing full well that the UFWD and MPS already have their names and addresses for “persuasion” as necessary and that subordinate organizations exist in the United States that can monitor and apply pressure.
- The Chinese are acquiring land and properties adjacent to strategic facilities and infrastructure in the United States for the purposes of future geopolitical and economic influence operations; overseas Chinese help provide the necessary manpower.
- The surge in Chinese nationals illegally entering the United States provides additional manpower for Chinese-run cultural exchange organizations, spying, and other nefarious activities and street enforcement muscle for the “service centers.”
- Chinese nationals in the United States continue to get caught stealing U.S. economic and military secrets; who knows how many Chinese spies (some masquerading as students, exchange research scientists, and other innocuous people) have gone undetected for years?
- Mr. Xi provides top cover for the whole operation by publicly praising returning overseas Chinese, giving a wink and a nod to those living in the Chinese diaspora overseas that they'll be welcomed back and possibly rewarded, particularly if they bring some Western technology and know-how with them (and willingly do the bidding of the UFWD and MPS apparatchiks running the whole operation).
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
