updated: August 24, 2020
In recent years there has been growing scrutiny over Chinese influence in the West, ranging form talent exchange programs, such as the Confucius Institutes (CI) in academia, to the notorious Thousand Talents Plan or Program (TTP), as well as the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), The United Front Work department (UFWD), and the CCP’s relationship to Western companies, operating both inside and out of China, as well as corporate party cells, certain methods used to obtain information, and links to organized crime. Its a long list.
It’s time we took a close look into the crisis of Chinese spying, propaganda and influence in the West, that is finally getting the exposure and concern it deserves, after the recent wake-up call to the West as to the true nature of the CCP through their wolf-warrior diplomacy around the CCP virus.
They have leveraged the pandemic to their advantage every step of the way.
Significant initiatives that are closely affiliated with CCP espionage activities in the United States and in foreign Western companies operating in China target;
- Academia
- Corporate
- Media
- Politics
1. Academia
‘Donations’ received;
It is hard to overstate the importance of China for US colleges and universities.
China is by far the leading supplier of international students to the US, with more than 130,000 graduate students and 148,000 undergraduates enrolled in 2017-2018. Those students bring vital tuition dollars into the US system. China’s own universities are also rapidly developing research capacity that the US cannot ignore. New York and Duke Universities have opened outposts in China.
A larger examination by the US Dept. of Education (DOE), which says its enforcement efforts, since July 2019, have triggered the reporting of approximately $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign money, much of it from China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Last year, the department also sent letters to Georgetown University, Texas A&M University, Cornell University, Rutgers University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland requesting a full audit of all funds received from foreign entities.
In addition, both Harvard and Yale are accused of failing To report hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign donations, and the University of Texas (UT) is being investigated for it’s links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as of May, 2020.
In February of 2019, a Senate report described China’s influence on the U.S. education system as “effectively a black hole,” because universities were failing to report foreign money.
It’s worth noting that the official Chinese website for the Thousand Talents Program has recently been shutdown; https://www.1000plan.org.cn/
Dictating policy on campus;
The CCP’s attempts to dictate policy on campuses is a global phenomenon. One recent example is the story of Drew Pavlou, a student at the University of Queensland. He protested the CCP’s human rights violations in Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang, and the University of Queensland moved to expel him on unrelated erroneous grounds.
The current CCP virus pandemic has caused an international reaction against Chinese infiltration in the West, Pavlou’s case became a cause célèbre, and was covered by The Washington Post and Foreign Policy.
In an interview, Drew recounts in July, 2019, that he organized a small demonstration for Hong Kong, on campus. In the beginning, we were 15 students. By the end of the day, the number had grown to 60;
We were attacked and some students were slammed to the ground and beaten. There were some 300 pro-CCP activists in the beginning, some 500 at the end of the day. So, we were outnumbered ten to one. Although there are Chinese students at University of Queensland ready to defend the CCP, the police told us that most of the counter-protesters, and certainly the violent ones who were wearing masks and sunglasses, were not students. It was an organized attack, with a small group of ringleaders clearly telling the others what they should do.
Drew Pavlov interview
The attack was applauded by state-run Chinese propaganda outlet; Global Times.
The Brisbane-based University of Queensland, the fifth largest in Australia, and one reputed for academic excellence, drew heavy criticism. The whole incident lifted the veil on how the CCP tries to control universities internationally, through the Confucius Institutes; on-campus centers teaching Chinese language and culture that have been widely exposed as propaganda and espionage outlets.
The University of Queensland has close ties with China and the CCP. It may well-be the most CCP-friendly English-language university in the world. It hosts a Confucius Institute, which is very influential in shaping how China is discussed there. The University’s vice-chancellor, Professor Peter Høj, served until 2018 as a senior consultant to the Hanban, the Chinese government’s organization in charge of Confucius Institutes worldwide, and received an award by then China’s vice-premier for this.
Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, released an in-depth report titled; ‘Chinese Communist Party Influence in Australian Universities.’ – August 28th, 2019.
The Confucius Institutes;
(Now rebranded to; “Ministry of Education Centre for Language Education and Cooperation”)
A 2011 speech in Beijing by a standing member of the Chinese Communist Party laid out the case;
“The Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for expanding our culture abroad,”…“It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power. The ‘Confucius’ brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.”
Li Changchun
More than a decade after they were created, Confucius Institutes, the Chinese government-funded educational institutions that teach Chinese language, culture and history, have sprouted up at more than 500 college campuses worldwide, with more than 100 of them in the United States—including at The George Washington University, the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa.
Overseen by a branch of the Chinese Ministry of Education known colloquially as Hanban, the institutes are part of a broader propaganda initiative that the Chinese government is pumping an estimated $10 billion into annually, and they have only been bolstered by growing interest in China among American college students.
That so many universities have welcomed the Confucius Institute with open arms points to another disturbing trend in American higher education: an alarming willingness to accept money at the expense of principles that universities are ostensibly devoted to upholding. At a time when universities are as willing as ever to shield students from ‘controversial’ viewpoints, some nonetheless welcome foreign, communist propaganda—if the price is right.
In 2017, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte made an announcement to great fanfare: The university would soon open a branch of The Confucius Institute and that it would;
“…help students be better equipped to succeed in an increasingly globalized world,” and “broaden the University’s outreach and support for language instruction and cultural opportunities in the Charlotte community” according to a press release.
Nancy Gutierrez, UNC Charlotte’s dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Sweden has just closed the last remaining Confucius Institute in the country as relations with China deteriorate further amid the CCP virus pandemic and the the U.S. government’s House recently launched a long-overdue probe of Chinese funding of American universities.
However the University of Maryland (UMD) has a Chinese-specific training center titled thee; “Office of China Affairs (OCA) runs one of the oldest overseas training centers in partnership with China State Administration of Foreign Affairs (SAFEA), and is recognized as a distinguished overseas training center by Chinese government officials and administrators.”
Since our founding in 1996, we have trained over 10,000 mid- and upper-level executives from Greater China. Our Chinese partner organizations include National Government Agencies.
University of Maryland
As reported July 4, 2020, Beijing is abandoning its Confucius Institute brand. What was once an “appealing brand”, the “Confucius institutes” name is now mud. switching to a new look as a center for “language exchange and cooperation”. The Confucius Institute Headquarters, or Hanban, has changed the name to the “Ministry of Education Centre for Language Education and Cooperation”.
Always the language of “cooperation.”
On August 1st, The Epoch Times reported; ‘Report Finds 250 US Collaborations With Chinese Military-Tied Researchers’. The article details how the U.S. academic community has extensively collaborated with Chinese researchers affiliated with the Chinese military, jeopardizing national security, according to a new report.
2. CCP – Corporate Crime Party
The Thousand Talents Program;
Wikipedia describes the TTP as;
“The Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) was established in 2008 by the central government of China to recognize and recruit leading international experts in scientific research, innovation, entrepreneurship and to steal American technology and intellectual property.”
The true nature of the initiative is an open secret, as even highly compromised Wikipedia states the TTP’s true objectives.
China’s Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruitment plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity and national security.
These talent programs seek to lure Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts to bring their knowledge and experience to China and reward individuals for stealing proprietary information.
The TTP is not limtied to just corporate exchange programs, it is very active in Academia as well, luring both Chinese nationals, and US citizens into it’s program [List of CCP operatives recently arrested].
Party Cells in foreign Companies Operating in China;
For decades foreign companies in China have been expected to allow the ruling Communist Party to set up cells in their firms.
The presence of party units has long been a fact of doing business in China, where party organizations exist in nearly 70 percent of some 1.86 million privately owned companies. In 2017 executives from more than a dozen top European companies in China met in Beijing to discuss their concerns about the growing role of the ruling Communist Party in the local operations of foreign firms.
“Senior executives at some foreign invested companies say party organizations can help them to understand in a timely manner Chinese policies, to resolve salary disputes, and provide positive energy for the company’s development,”
Qi Yu, a deputy head of the Communist Party’s Organisation Department
A significant number of major foreign companies operate in China through joint ventures with state enterprises. Foreign business groups have complained that their members are forced to allow Chinese partners access to their technology or risk losing market access.
Hi-Tech Honey Traps;
Executives and engineers at Japan’s largest hi-tech companies and military are often targeted by what’s known as a “honey trap”, set by Chinese women working at hostess bars in Japan.
The bar’s often charge an entry fee of around 20,000 yen ($200), and employ hostesses who are skilled in pouring drinks and flattering egos. The women are available to meet the men at later dates.
It’s reported that the women encourage the men to discuss the new technologies that were being developed at their companies and corporate strategies for operating in the Chinese market. Even if that did not work the men would have been highly susceptible to blackmail.
Before disappearing, a Chinese manager of a hostess bar was questioned by Japanese security who were looking into certain marriages, including one in which a 32-year-old Chinese club hostess married a 52-year-old member of Japan’s Defence Forces.
The officer was a regular at the club, but was dismissed from the service when the case came to light. He has been charged in connection with the marriage. Shukan Jitsuwa Magazine reported the marriage was part of a Chinese effort to obtain information on Japan’s submarine fleet.
“Engineers who encounter Chinese girls at sex parties … are coerced into leaking information,” a source told the magazine. “There are also cases where engineers are in debt to loan sharks. They will be threatened into providing information.”…”China is trying to get submarine technology from Japan through their intelligence services, so they have stepped up their collection efforts.”
Shukan Jitsuwa Magazine
An excellent recent (23/08/20) video report on the Thousand Talents Program; ‘China’s Thousand Talent plan is a govt initiative with a ‘national level strategy’‘ by Sky News Australia presenter, Sharri Markson.
3. State-run Media Propaganda Abroad
China is influencing news outlets around the world.
The International Federation of Journalists released a study [PDF] based on 58 journalists unions around the world and it demonstrates the “multi-layered approach that China is taking to reshape the global news agenda” and the study states this indicates;
…the significant role in wide-ranging impact of China’s moves to extend its influence through these initiatives including journalism exchange programs, Union cooperation content sharing training programs, media acquisition, and promulgation of China’s grand infrastructure scheme the belt and Road Initiative.
IFJ Report – The China Story: Reshaping the World’s Media
In other words; China is using all of these systems to influence media in all parts of the world, not just the United States, but everywhere. Of these unions they spoke with a third of them said they were approached by or were in discussions with Chinese journalists unions and of those about a third had a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with these Chinese unions. The IFJ report also states;
Trends show that China is conducting a media outreach campaign in almost every continent, equally targeting the 31 developed and 27 developing countries that participated in the survey.
IFJ Report – The China Story: Reshaping the World’s Media
The report also clearly illustrates how China’s media is increasing its global footprint in the world’s media, and its strategy showed clear signs of targeting journalists to outsource its influence, as it says. It also shows how the Chinese Communist Party is buying influence in news outlets the report says “Chinese companies are more and more buying boats” it’s one of the Chinese Communist Party’s terms, “or building them by taking states in existing legacy companies, or setting up digital joint ventures overseas” according to the report. It adds; while focusing on developing countries, Beijing continues to offer sponsored trips to China for senior journalists from strategic developing countries like Australia where the All China Journalists Association has organized programs including a program with the Australian China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, that has brought at least 28 Australian journalists to China since 2016. This is also the case in the United States where The Chinese Communist Party runs programs under its state-run news outlet Xinhua.
The report also states; “the results have in many cases produced stories that faithfully echo Beijing’s position on issues ranging from the South China Sea, to technological developments in China“
This means that the Chinese Communist Party has open programs targeting journalists around the world. They’re going after unions of senior journalists, and unions of journalists in different countries, targeting them, offering them trips to China, bringing them on these propaganda tours, and instilling them with the Chinese Communist Party’s view on different issues that it cares about.
If a Western Journalist has been ‘brought’ to China, chances are they’ve been brought through through one of these programs, and if they’ve gone on these programs they’ve been indoctrinated with the Chinese Communist Party’s different narratives on these select issues.
The Guardian states; kindergartens, handicraft markets, high-tech companies, hydroelectric dams, political indoctrination camps, these are some of these sites international journalists are whisked around when they take part in all-expense-paid tours in China.
The motive of these invitations is in the mantra of the Chinese President Xi Jinping to “tell a good China story, to the outside world”.
In the past that good China story would have been told through clumsy Communist Party propaganda broadcasts on its state-run news outlets, but during research for the International Federation of Journalists, which is featured in the report just mentioned, they found that Beijing is increasingly outsourcing the storytelling to foreign journalists, who often end up amplifying its messages in their own languages in the pages of their own news outlets. The article states that more than 120 US journalists have also been on such tours as well, as 28 Australian journalists.
And so this brings up the question again; why are the sources of the different news outlets feeding you stories on China? And even if they appear to be grassroots reporting, even if they appear to be done as journalists going to China and getting a first-hand look, who is organizing those trips? Who is the one bringing them on these trips? I’ve said it before for a lot of journalists who traveled to China or to report their living in the Truman Show. Everything around them is fake. They’re being shown a false reality, and it is the false reality that China wants to show the world.
To be clear; for the Chinese Communist Party control of information like this is a military program. They run it under what they call the three Warfare’s doctrine. The three Warfare’s are;
- Media warfare
- legal warfare and
- psychological warfare
Media warfare would be exactly things like this; controlling or influencing outlets of information. Legal warfare would be controlling international institutions of law, and psychological warfare is things that target people like you, people like me. Psychological warfare is changing the way you interpret information, and so when the Chinese Communist Party takes these journalists and brings them on these tours and shows them the reality it wants them to report it is giving them these psychological warfare doctrine, like templates, that support the worldview of the CCP.
So when people hear about issues around the South China Sea, Hong Kong, or when they hear about the different human rights abuses in China they will interpret it through the lens of the Chinese Communist Party’s arguments justifying such actions.
So even when journalists try to be impartial and try to be balanced on issues like this, they’re not actually looking at the facts.
How does disinformation work? disinformation works exactly through things like this, it is what the Chinese Communist Party would call the “borrowed boat” strategy – you want to use someone else’s boat, you use someone else’s news outlet, an established, credible appearing news outlet that’s willing to carry your narratives for you, because were these same narratives stated through state-run news outlets, as the Guardian pointed out, then it would be seen as propaganda from the CCP itself, not as credible news reporting from major news outlets.
For the Chinese Communist Party ideology is important because as far as they’re concerned social stability is based on ideology. The Chinese people not revolting against what they see the CCP doing against them is based on ideology. The international community not sanctioning China for its abuses of its own people is based on ideology. For the Chinese Communist Party ideology ties into its international influence how do countries regard China? Will China get sanctioned for its different policies? All of this is based on the control of information, and for them this is a major strategic agenda.
Another example is China is using its “Tongs” to give the illusion of grassroots support for its new Hong Kong law. State-run China Daily said this; “as of 11:00 p.m. on Monday five hundred ninety three thousand seven ninety-seven overseas Chinese from about 160 associations had signed the petition endorsing the law“.
Now if you were to read this report let’s say in China Watch, or one of the mainstream news outlets it publishes, it or if you were to read China Daily, which they distribute in Washington to influence politicians, if you were to read this many would believe there’s grassroots support among Chinese for this law here’s what it’s really about; it says these 160 Chinese associations 160 associations it names these associations. These associations are not grassroots, these associations are not independent, these associations are the tongs, and the Chinese Communist Party controls many of these tongs.
So in other words here’s what the Chinese Communist Party is doing; it’s using its control of these Chinese fraternal organizations in different parts of the world and having them sign these declarations supporting this national security law to give the illusion that the Chinese people abroad support what it is doing and that is not the case. Many of these organizations push the CCP’s agendas in overseas communities and the Chinese Communist Party manages these organizations through its United Front Work Department.
4. CCP – Chinese Communist Politics
Canada – Project Sidewinder;
The Chinese government and Asian criminal gangs have been working together in drug smuggling, nuclear espionage and other criminal activities that constitute a grave threat to Canadian security, a secret study by federal law-enforcement and intelligence analysts says.
The study, known as Project Sidewinder, was considered by some CSIS managers to be so controversial that it was watered down and rewritten before a sanitized version was circulated to other government agencies, according to sources familiar with the history of the document.
The Sidewinder report describes an alliance among the Beijing government and its espionage services, Hong Kong tycoons and Chinese criminal gangs known as triads. The ultimate objectives included:
-Winning influence with Canadian politicians.
-Stealing high-tech secrets.
-Laundering money.
-Gaining control of Canadian companies in real estate, media and other sectors.
Chinese embassy spokeswoman Qin Xin denied that her government is involved in espionage or criminal activities in Canada or poses any threat to Canadian national security. “These kinds of accusations are totally groundless,”
Qin Xin, Chinese embassy spokeswoman
The report also says Ontario Hydro believes it was the victim of theft of nuclear technology “by an individual of Chinese origin.” The man sent hours worth of material by fax to a telephone number at a Chinese state science and technology commission.
Chinese intelligence services have set up “front companies” in Canada solely for espionage purposes, including theft of business secrets, the report says. The companies have regular contacts with the triad gangs.
Drawing on intelligence developed by other Western countries, the analysts say there is a well-established relationship between the Communist government in Beijing and the Hong Kong-based triads.
The study also says more than 200 major firms in Canada are influenced or owned by triads, tycoons or Chinese national companies.
For example; a Chinese-language film-production studio in Ontario was owned by triad figures who were in regular contact with Chinese diplomats posted here, the report says.
The study notes various real-estate purchases, including hotels, in Toronto, Vancouver and other Canadian cities by the owner of a large south Asian gambling casino. The man was put on a Canadian police watch list 10 years ago because of his alleged involvement in organized crime.
Update; June 16th, Science; ‘Fifty-four scientists have lost their jobs as a result of NIH probe into foreign ties’
“Some 54 scientists have resigned or been fired as a result of an ongoing investigation by the National Institutes of Health into the failure of NIH grantees to disclose financial ties to foreign governments. In 93% of those cases, the hidden funding came from a Chinese institution.“
This in-depth report from NTD exposes much of How the CCP infiltrate and manipulate the West;
Updates on addressing CCP Influence on the West;
updated June 26, 2020
26/06/20 – Trustware, a digital security company makes a discovery; “Trustwave SpiderLabs has discovered a new malware family, dubbed GoldenSpy, embedded in tax payment software that a Chinese bank requires corporations to install to conduct business operations in China.”
26/06/20 – Shaoquett Moselmane, an Australian NSW Labor minister’s home is raided, along with his Chinese national ‘assistant’s’ house. Moselmane has a long history of pro China/Islam rhetoric, and anti-Australian comments.
The Heretic 
A good read ☺
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