The CCP in Manhattan

I think it’s better to react to this sort of thing with a “don’t get your knickers in a twist” attitude rather than astonished indignation… that governments attempt to influence elections in other countries is not new and it is not new that foreign entities have tried to influence US elections. The interesting thing about Russian interference in 2016 was not so much its existence as its directionality and the ferocity of the denials of the obvious. Nonetheless the means and the motives are worth investigating:

In the past few years, these organizations have quietly foiled the careers of politicians who opposed China’s authoritarian government while backing others who supported policies of the country’s ruling Communist Party. The groups, many of them tax-exempt nonprofits, have allowed America’s most formidable adversary to influence elections in the country’s largest city, The New York Times found.

The groups are mostly “hometown associations” of people hailing from the same town or province in China. Some have been around for more than a century, while dozens of others have sprung up over the past decade. Like other heritage clubs in a city of immigrants, they welcome newcomers, organize parades and foster social connections.

But many hometown associations have become useful tools of China’s consulate in Midtown Manhattan, according to dozens of group members, politicians and former prosecutors. Some group leaders have family or business in China and fear the consequences of bucking its authority. Consulate officials have enlisted them to intimidate politicians who support Taiwan or cross Beijing’s other red lines. In one case, a Chinese intelligence agent and several hometown leaders targeted the same candidate.

The other thing I’ll say is that maintaining influence in an ethnic diaspora requires the investment of a lot of time and effort on the part of home government intelligence agencies; sentimental affection for the homeland often isn’t enough to hold the diaspora to account. The Chinese have exerted that kind of influence regularly through a variety of institutions (what really convinced me of the wisdom of shutting down the Confucius Institutes on campus was learning how much of their work involved the surveillance and disciplining of Chinese students), some of which are detailed in the article. In the future, when the US Intelligence Community is returned to sane control, there’s a fine line between countering that kind of influence and subjecting a diaspora to unnecessary surveillance.

Photo credit: By Njzjz – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152313140