CHINA-UNITED FRONT WORK DEPARTMENT

The CCP CC's United Front Work Department (UFWD) located at 135, Fuyou Street, next to the Communist Party leadership's compound, has increased its activities since xi Jinping took over.  The UFWD's operations in several countries is directed towards charming, co-opting or attacking well-defined groups and individuals in order to win support for China’s political agenda, accumulate influence overseas and gather key information. The “China United Front Course Book”, a teaching manual for its cadres, details the organisation’s global mission. It exhorts cadres to be gracious and inclusive as they try to “unite all forces that can be united” around the world, but also instructs them to be ruthless by building an “iron Great Wall” against “enemy forces abroad” who are intent on splitting China’s territory or hobbling its development. “Enemy forces abroad do not want to see China rise and many of them see our country as a potential threat and rival, so they use a thousand ploys and a hundred strategies to frustrate and repress us,” according to the book. The UFWD has nine bureaux covering almost all the areas in which the Chinese Communist Party perceives threats to its power. The work distribution among the Bureaux is: i) The Parties Work Bureau: The first bureau deals with China’s eight non-communist political parties and recommends their members for positions in the National People’s Congress [parliament] and other bodies. Though these parties have little or no power, they are seen as an important part of China’s political structure. (ii) The Minorities and Religions Bureau: China has 55 official national minorities. The UFWD is charged with building coalitions of shared interests to ensure that distinct identities do not evolve into separatism. It is also charged with ensuring that all practising religions in China regard the Communist party as their highest authority. (iii) The Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Overseas Liaison Bureau: Maintaining loyalty to the Communist party in Hong Kong and Macau is an important United Front function. Taiwan work focuses on building coalitions with those who identify with mainland China while seeking to undermine those that support the island’s independence. Cultivating loyalty among more than 60m overseas Chinese is seen as crucial to burnishing China’s reputation abroad. (iv) The Cadre Bureau: Little is known about the work of this fourth bureau, which focuses on cultivating cadres and operatives throughout the vast United Front system. The number of United Front officials and operatives is unclear, along with the organisation’s budget and spending patterns. (v) The Economics Bureau: Strives to cultivate loyalty among people and areas that have been left behind by the country’s economic advance. It plays an active role in poverty alleviation, especially in “old revolutionary base” areas such as in north-east China. (vi) The Non-Party Members, Non-Party Intellectuals Sixth Bureau: is charged with cultivating support among intellectuals and other influential people who have no party affiliation in China. (vii) The Seventh Bureau or Tibet Bureau: focuses on efforts to suppress separatism in Tibet and undermine the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in northern India. This is a key aspect of United Front Work. It also seeks to win hearts and minds around the world by stressing Beijing’s contributions to the economic development of Tibet and its preservation of the region’s cultural legacy. (viii) The New Social Classes Work Bureau: The emergence of China’s vast middle class since the 1990s has created an influential group of people who have capitalist reforms to thank for their wealth and may thus feel little fealty to the Communist party. This bureau is dedicated to fostering unity among this group. (ix) The Ninth Bureau: is responsible for China’s vast north-west frontier region of Xinjiang, which is home to millions of Muslims that belong to minority nationalities such as Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Tajiks. This bureau is charged with cultivating loyalty and suppressing separatism among these minority peoples.

The hard edge of United Front is evident in its current struggle over the future reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama, the 82-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader who Beijing castigates as a separatist bent on prising Tibet from Chinese control. Tradition dictates that after a Dalai Lama dies, the high priesthood of Tibetan Lamaism searches for his reincarnation using a series of portents that lead them to his reborn soul in a child. The leaders of Tibetan Buddhism live in exile with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, northern India, raising the prospect that a reincarnation may be found somewhere beyond China’s borders. Beijing is alarmed. The last thing it wants is for the man it has called a “splittist” and a “wolf in monk’s clothing” to be reincarnated in territory it does not control. United Front is charged with crafting a solution. The plan so far, officials said, is for the Communist party — which is officially atheist — to oversee a reincarnation search themselves within Chinese territory. Partly to this end, it has helped create a database of more than 1,300 officially approved “living Buddhas” inside Tibet who will be called on when the time comes to endorse Beijing’s choice. “The reincarnation of all living Buddhas has to be approved by the Chinese central government,” says Renqingluobu, an ethnic Tibetan official and a leader of the Association for International Culture Exchange of Tibet, a United Front affiliate. “If [the Dalai Lama] decides to find the reincarnation in a certain place outside of Tibet, then Tibetans will wonder what sort of reincarnation is this and the masses will think that religion must be false, empty and imaginary after all,” said Renqingluobu on a recent visit to London. United Front is making sure the next Dalai Lama will hail from within China's borders.  Venturing into the realm of the metaphysical may appear counter-intuitive for atheist United Front operatives, but all of China’s national religious organisations come under the auspices of United Front work. These include the Buddhist Association of China, the Chinese Taoist Association, the Islamic Association of China, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Three-Self (Protestant) Patriotic Movement. The main point is Beijing’s insistence that all religions in China must regard the Communist party as their highest authority. 
For Beijing, growing social diversity after nearly four decades of economic reform has emphasised United Front’s value in maintaining loyalty and support beyond the mainstream Communist faithful. Successive leaders have lauded United Front but none more so than Xi Jinping, who made several moves in 2014 and 2015 to upgrade the status and power of the organisation. Xi Jinping has expanded the scope of United Front work, adding the ninth bureau for work in Xinjiang, meaning that the organisation now oversees China’s fierce struggle against separatism in the region. He also decreed the establishment of a Leading Small Group dedicated to United Front activity, signifying a direct line of command from the politburo to United Front. But perhaps his most important step to date has been to designate United Front as a movement for the “whole party”. This has meant a sharp increase since 2015 in the number of United Front assignees to posts at the top levels of party and state. Another consequence has been that almost all Chinese embassies now include staff formally tasked with United Front work, according to officials who declined to be identified. This has given a boost to United Front efforts to woo overseas Chinese. Even though more than 80 per cent of around 60m overseas Chinese have taken on the citizenship of more than 180 host countries, they are still regarded as fertile ground by Beijing. “The unity of Chinese at home requires the unity of the sons and daughters of Chinese abroad,” says the teaching manual. It recommends a number of ways in which United Front operatives should win support from overseas Chinese. Some are emotional, stressing “flesh and blood” ties to the motherland. Others are ideological, focusing on a common participation in the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese people”. But mainly they are material, providing funding or other resources to selected overseas Chinese groups and individuals deemed valuable to Beijing’s cause. Stipends are funded by a number of United Front subsidiary organisations such as the China Overseas-Educated Scholars Development Foundation. Li Xiguang, a head of Tsinghua University’s International Center for Communication Studies says “In the beginning the Chinese government talked about culture — Peking opera, acrobatics — as soft power. When Xi Jinping came to power, he was totally different from previous leaders. He said China should have full self-confidence in our culture, development road, political system and theory.” Xi Jinping’s elevation of United Front’s importance and power suggests that Beijing will further its efforts. 







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