Chapter 08 Infiltrate the United States as the Enemy (2)

Out of the 5.5 million Chinese in the United States, experts estimate that 300,000 are communists who have infiltrated or served the Chinese Communist Party over the years. They are located in many Chinese groups and community groups, working as propaganda for the Communist Party, infiltrating academic groups to steal intelligence and bribing international students to use as unification tools. The activities of these communists in the United States have caused serious concern among the Americans. After four months of dedicated investigation, Newsweek published a lengthy investigative report in October 2020 under the cover of Xi’s Secret Plan to Subvert America pointing out that the CCP had filtered more than 600 groups in the United States including chambers of commerce, hometown associations, academic groups, societies, and media. It had formed pro-communist forces that greatly influenced and even controlled these groups. The Chinese Communist Party’s online army had entered the U.S. and set up fake accounts on Facebook and Twitter, posting articles in rudimentary English to glorify the CCP and incite conflict and confrontation in American society. On social media sites they posted messages supporting “Black Lives Matter’ ‘ and police crackdowns, attempting to reinforce the confrontation between the two sides and incited antagonism. Newsweek found that there were 300 fake accounts of Chinese Communist Party online forces on Twitter and 60 fake accounts on Facebook, using American names which were not real people.

The International Cyber Policy Center of the Australian Institute for Strategic Studies (AIS) found that between February and July 2020, these Chinese Communist Party (CCP) online military accounts posted messages that emphasized the racial divisions and social injustices in the United States to deliberately create internal unrest and promoted China as better than the United States. However, because of the poor English, often with Chinese characters mixed in, grammar and vocabulary use were problematic, difficult to resonate with the Americans and even made people feel annoyed. In Australia, out of the 2240 tweets sent by the Chinese Communist Party’s online army, only 2 netizens responded with praise. It is thus clear that the Chinese Communist Party’s online army is promoting the political goals of the Chinese Communist Party and denigrating the United States but it is very ineffective due to its poor tactics.

In addition to the ineffectiveness of the online army, the CCP has infiltrated the U.S. federal government, state and local governments, as well as companies, university think tanks, social groups, and cultural groups to promote programs that benefit the CCP’s political and economic interests and cultivate interpersonal relationships. Newsweek’s investigation has found that there are more than 600 pro-communist organizations throughout the United States that have been “united” by the CCP, including 83 hometown associations, 32 chambers of commerce, 38 Taiwan organizations that promote the “peaceful reunification of Taiwan,” 10 “China Assistance Centers,” and 5 “China-U.S. China Assistance Centers. “5 “China-US Friendship Associations”, 129 pro-communist educational and cultural groups, and 13 pro-communist Chinese media. Out of the 70 Chinese professional associations, half are infiltrated by the CCP’s “United Front”. There are 265 “Chinese Students and Scholars Associations” at universities across the United States, almost all of which are used as instruments of the CCP’s United Front, controlled by education officials at CCP consulates to serve the CCP’s political infiltration and propaganda.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has noted that the Chinese Communist Party has secretly infiltrated into the United States, reaching into state governments and interfering in local politics, business and community activities. A Chinese Communist Party think tank has created data on state governors, specifically rating whether they are “friendly” to the CCP.

Since 2008, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has proposed the “Thousand Talents Program” to bring in senior scientific and technological talent, most of whom are Chinese American experts and scholars, in order to gain access to various advanced technologies in the United States. In 2013, Xi Jinping came to power with great ambition and began to implement a plan to replace the U.S. world’s hegemon, greatly enhancing the “Thousand Talents Program” by investing heavily and offering salaries three times higher than they got in the U.S. American projects. To publicize the achievements of the Thousand Talents Program, the Chinese Communist Party has allowed the list of participants to be published on the internet where one can see their names, their workplaces in the United States and China and their affiliation with universities or academic institutions. Not all scientists worked in universities, but at least 300 scientists were working in government, and at least 600 scientists were working in the United States.

In 2018, the FBI noted the tendency of the Thousand Talents Program to leak and steal U.S. high-tech secrets. The FBI made the Thousand Talents scholars a priority of its investigation, at the airport, repeatedly intercepting several experts and scholars who carried confidential scientific and technical information, in an attempt to leave the country. The FBI arrested and prosecuted several of them. The FBI’s actions alarmed the Chinese Communist Party, which in September 2018 ordered a moratorium on publicity and reporting on the Thousand Talents Program, removed the list of Thousand Talents Program from the internet and subsequently changed the name of the program to the Overseas High-Level Talent Introduction Program. The program was then rebranded but continued its ploy to pay off the applicants.