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Although the United Front Work Department has attracted much media attention,
and the term “United Front” has become a euphemistic one for many analysts writing about China’s influence activities abroad, the scope of the UFWD’s activities in China’s external influence operations is actually limited. Its primary target audience
is the Chinese diaspora in general, and its elite members in particular. The mission
of engaging and influencing nonethnic Chinese audiences, individuals, and foreign institutions is assigned to other specialized Chinese entities—such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education,
the Ministry of State Security (e.g., China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations), and other institutions that have well-trained professionals and long-standing
ties with their counterparts overseas.
International [Liaison] Department
The CCP’s International [Liaison] Department (#RE44#8) is in charge of “party-to- party relations” (3#fRX¥) and has the primary mission of cultivating foreign political parties and politicians around the world. This Party organ has existed since before 1949 and was formerly charged with maintaining China’s fraternal ties with other communist and socialist parties around the world, but in the wake of the Cold War, the CCP/ID drastically broadened its mandate to interact with virtually all political parties abroad (except fascist and racist parties). Today it claims to maintain ties with over 400 political parties in 140 countries, receives about 200 delegations,
and dispatches about 100 abroad every year. CCP/ID exchanges have provided an important prism through which the CCP and other organizations in China monitor the outside world and absorb lessons for China’s own modernization. This kind of information gathering goes well beyond traditional intelligence collection (although,
to be sure, the ID also engages in this activity).
Through its interactions with political parties all over the world, the CCP/ID serves
an important function as a kind of “radar” for identifying up-and-coming foreign politicians before they attain national prominence and office. Having identified such rising stars, the CCP/ID brings them to China (usually on all-expenses-paid visits) often offering them their first exposure to China and trying to make the best possible impression on them. Another key dimension of this function has been to expose CCP leaders at the provincial and sub-provincial levels to the outside world— often for the first time. Many provincial Party secretaries, governors, mayors and other
leading local cadres are taken abroad on ID delegations every year. The CCP/ID has
Appendix 1
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