This article is from Democracy Digest

China is making fresh efforts to influence Chinese communities around the world to advance Beijing’s interests, requiring heightened vigilance from democratic countries, a new study says. A unit in China’s ruling Communist Party known as the United Front Work Department engages thousands of organizations to collect intelligence, encourage technology transfer, counter dissident movements and generate support for other Beijing objectives, said the report (see below) by the nonpartisan Australian Strategic Policy Institute, The Wall Street Journal’s Kate O’Keefe reports: 

The department focuses its influence operations overseas on Chinese diaspora communities and foreign elites, the report said. While Beijing has used the united front system for decades, President Xi Jinping renewed the department’s mission as part of a push to make China a global power. In recent years it has turned to increasing its control over Chinese- language media abroad, funding research at prominent think tanks and using China’s popular WeChat messaging platform and other social media to censor, surveil and shape dialogue on policy issues, it said.

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