The United Front in the UK

Historically, the ‘United Front’ was described by Chairman Mao Zedong as one of the ‘three big magic weapons’ of the CCP, along with the People’s Liberation Army and the CCP’s internal ‘party building’. The ‘United Front’ is an essential means by which the CCP maintains support and control of the rest of society in the one-party state of the People’s Republic of China.

Experts on the CCP sometimes refer to a ‘united front network’ or ‘united front networks’, but also to a ‘united front strategy’ and ‘united front work’. This latter term is a translation of the Mandarin Chinese usage (统一战线工作) and reflects the fact that such ‘work’ or activity is meant to be conducted by all CCP members. The CCP says that it wants to use the united front strategy to conduct united front work and thereby “consolidate and develop the broadest possible United Front” (巩固和发展最广泛的爱国统一战线) network of non-CCP elements that nonetheless support the CCP.

The United Front Work Department (UFWD) is key. It is one of the six important departments of the CCP and its staff are dedicated to running what in Mandarin is referred to as the ‘united front system’ (统战系统). Its main role is domestic: to create the “broadest possible United Front” by bringing together non-CCP elements and sectors within China to support the CCP and its aims. Only 7% of the Chinese population are CCP members, so this work is of great breadth and importance. The UFWD:

• Analyses culture, society and economics in order to understand and manipulate non-CCP elements.
• Organises a vast number of ‘people’s political consultative conferences’ (人民政治协商会议) throughout China. At these events, the UFWD takes the temperature and gathers information, rewards supportive non-CCP members, and disseminates CCP policies.
• Monitors, co-opts and helps run non-CCP organisations and groups, from associations of private businessmen, to religious and ethnic minority groups, to cultural and sports organisations.
• Runs its own groups as ‘united front system work units’ (统战系统单位) for specific aspects of united front work. These include the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification which works to build support for the CCP’s policy on Taiwan, and the Western Returned Scholars Association, which interfaces with Chinese citizens who have studied or are studying abroad.

Xi Jinping has greatly strengthened united front work, reinvigorated efforts to use the ‘United Front’ to expand CCP power, and reformed the UFWD and its united front system. Xi’s programme of reform has included the bolstering of the UFWD’s control over what is referred to as ‘Overseas Chinese Affairs’ system, or the qiaowu (侨务) system. For example, from 2017-18 reforms saw the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, formerly part of the Chinese governmental bureaucracy, absorbed by the UFWD, which is part of the CCP bureaucracy. These reforms were intended to “strengthen the [CCP]’s centralized and unified leadership of united front work”.

By means of the qiaowu system, the CCP has long sought to extend united front work overseas, especially amongst Chinese diasporas, particularly amongst temporary (e.g. students) and recent migrants who retain the strongest economic and cultural links to China. As has been extensively explored by experts and academics such as Anne-Marie Brady, Alex Joske and James Jiann Hua To, the qiaowu system has a broad range of general functions, including the following:

• To improve the image of the Chinese government and the CCP amongst the Chinese diaspora
• To cultivate a pro-CCP or ‘patriotic’ network amongst the diaspora by means of propaganda, social outreach and commercial and professional opportunities and incentives
• To propagandise the diaspora and encourage nationalism and views favourable to the CCP on key issues such as that of Taiwan and the South China Sea dispute
• To direct the skills, knowledge and capital of the diaspora towards China’s economic, scientific and military development
• To leverage the diaspora’s political influence in other countries in order to shape politics and the way China is viewed in those countries
• To undermine anti-CCP movements amongst the Chinese diaspora and to enable the harassment of political refugees and dissidents abroad (sometimes termed ‘transnational repression’)
• To gather information and intelligence of all kinds and cultivate an ecosystem for ‘hard’ intelligence operations.

According to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, the UFWD is responsible for “influence and interference activities directed at the Chinese diaspora, from managing relations with prominent Chinese individuals and groups to co-ordinating support for Chinese positions or targeting dissident groups abroad.”

The Chinese embassy in London has over 120 staff. At least one senior diplomat is dedicated to Overseas Chinese Affairs and the operation of the qiaowu system. As of January 2024, this is Jiang Lei 江雷, described on the embassy’s website as Director-Counsellor for Overseas Chinese Affairs 领事侨务公参 . (As of October 2024, this description appears to have been removed.)

Liu Hongmei 刘红梅, a senior official formerly posted at China’s forcibly closed consulate at Houston, worked on qiaowu for the embassy during 2023. Lu Haitian 卢海田, who has now retired to China, served as Overseas Chinese Affairs Counsellor 侨务参赞 in London for much of the past decade.

These officials are tasked with meeting and building ties with selected groups and individuals from British Chinese communities. UKCT continues to research how this works, including by speaking to those who have been involved at the peripheries. It appears evident that UFWD officials seek to bring people into their network above all through positive inducements. To quote a recent essay by UKCT’s director, Sam Dunning:

“United Front work, as it affects diasporic communities, constitutes an intelligent, sensitive, creative, constructive, and partly open strategy. Much of it is positively framed and perceived as desirable by certain portions of diasporic Chinese groups – especially where they are not aware of the UFWD or its hand in setting up a group or activity, or if they have not encountered the problematic side of the UFWD as it affects the CCP’s enemies amongst the ‘Overseas Chinese’. In engaging with United Front work, members of the diaspora may find enjoyment, a sense of belonging, and financial or other career-related opportunities.

“This is by design: UFWD material emphasises the need for ‘Overseas Chinese affairs work’ to support and elevate Chinese traditional culture, to protect the rights of ‘Overseas Chinese’, and to provide useful services and opportunities to them. The Chinese economic boom of recent decades provides an obvious means of patronising ‘Overseas Chinese’ businessmen, but also scientists and artists. UFWD-promoted activities in the UK thus far this year have included a singing competition, an impressive array of Chinese New Year celebrations and activities, religious and cultural events, educational, academic and business networking activities.

“The sinister aspects of ‘Overseas Chinese affairs work’ extend to surveillance, threats, defamation campaigns, cyber-attacks, and action taken against family members of targets –and here the UFWD involves other actors, such as China’s Ministry of Public Security or Ministry of State Security. However, a large part of the very point of United Front work is to influence people in such a way that as little as possible of this suppression is required, and that any suppression deemed necessary is as easy as possible to carry out in as controlled an environment as possible.”

As well as the qiaowu system, all CCP members in the UK (both staff at the embassy and other individuals who may be working in private business or public bodies such as universities) are technically supposed to conduct united front work in their interactions with potentially friendly foreigners. This means using the lessons of united front strategy to convince and persuade people to support, or at least not to oppose, the CCP.

It is also important to emphasise that qiaowu is not just about politics, but about technical knowledge and science too. UFWD strategy documentation translated by UKCT and publicly available resources refer to the “technological strength held by Overseas Chinese abroad”. Chinese technologists and scientists in public bodies and business may be targets of and participants in united front work, with a view to having them “gradually turn into a new force in unifying the motherland and revitalizing China”. The UFWD urges its staff to “encourage and support Overseas Chinese to care for and participate in the modernization of the motherland, to introduce capital, technology, and talent for the construction of the motherland”.

As described above, whilst the UFWD is a CCP department with dedicated staff (called cadres), and all CCP members are supposed to do united front work, the ‘United Front’ as a network of non-CCP members is not a single organisation. United front networks can be said to consist of those who have been informally brought into the fold of favoured friends by Chinese diplomats and UFWD cadres.

Most British Chinese people have nothing to do with the ‘United Front’.

As well as being offered financial and personal inducements of many kinds (as described above) and invited to events run by the Chinese government in the UK, some favoured individuals may be involved in setting up or running a branch or wing of a UFWD-run or -overseen organisation in the UK, or they may be invited to China to take part in UFWD-organised conferences.

Such invitations typically involve a quasi-honorary appointment. For example, one set of conferences is run by the Chinese Overseas Friendship Association (中华海外联谊会), which has long been overseen by the UFWD and was formally absorbed by it in 2018 following Xi’s reforms. A handful of UK-based Chinese citizens or ethnic Chinese British citizens have attended its conferences over the years, and each attendee has in such cases been appointed as a COFA ‘councillor’ (理事). Each COFA council lasts roughly 5 years and typically consists of hundreds of such councillors from around the world. The rights and responsibilities of councillors are written out in the COFA constitution, which is technically approved by councillors. However, UKCT’s research suggests some councillors conceive of themselves simply as guests at the conference, as opposed to holding any meaningful role at COFA.

Whilst there is no formal definition, people can reasonably be said to be part of a united front network if they have accumulated close relationships with Chinese diplomats or CCP cadres, roles or appointments linked to the ‘United Front’ or UFWD (including at groups that have received formal certification of some kind from the UFWD or Chinese diplomats), financial or professional benefits linked to these connections (including formal contracts to work for the UFWD or Chinese state bodies), and so on. The basis on which one might refer to someone as part of a united front network is strengthened further if such an accumulation has been accompanied by the person’s repeatedly praising the CCP, spreading its propaganda, attacking its opponents, or engaging in high-priority work in the CCP’s interest, such as enabling technology or knowledge transfer to China, or facilitating elite networking in a foreign country for CCP members.