The United Front: How China Manages its Hall of Mirrors

On August 5, Shujun Wang, a 75-year-old naturalized United States citizen was convicted in Brooklyn federal court of acting as an unregistered agent for China. He was accused of providing information on pro-democracy activists to China's Ministry of State Security (MSS). 

First in a series on China's United Front

"The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real," according to Breon Peace. He is the US District Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. "Wang was willing to betray those who respected and trusted him." 

During the brief one-week trial, the jury heard how Wang, a naturalized US citizen, had been secretly working for the MSS since 2006. He provided it with information on Chinese nationals living in the New York area. 

The jury convicted him on all charges after one day of deliberations. He now faces up to 25 years in prison. His codefendants, four suspected MSS agents, remain at large and are presumed to be in China. 

A Respected Academic Mascarading as an Activist

Wang was a respected academic in the local Chinese community. Before coming to the US in 1994, he had been an expert in Chinese military history at a university in Qingdao. That same year he started a two-year stint as a visiting scholar at Columbia University. 

He later co-founded the pro-democracy Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation of Flushing, Queens. Many group members are prominent dissidents critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime of Xi Jinping. The group says its mission is "to promote China's constitutional transformation."   

"This defendant infiltrated a New York-based advocacy group by masquerading as a pro-democracy activist all the while covertly collecting and reporting sensitive information about its members to the PRC's intelligence service," said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division.

Following instructions from his MSS handlers, Wang gathered information on groups that Beijing considers "subversive." Those included Hong Kong democracy and Taiwan independence advocates, Uyghurs, and Tibetan activists. He recorded his interactions with prominent dissidents in approximately 163 email diaries and other encrypted correspondence accessible by the MSS. 

Also, he lied to law enforcement on multiple occasions. The jury was shown messages exchanged between Wang and his MSS handler. In one, the handler even urged Wang to book his air flight early to save money.

It is not clear when Wang began working for the MSS or what his motive was.

Wang also continues to protest his innocence. "They got the evidence wrong," he said. "It's unfair. They are playing with justice. It's fiction." Outside the courthouse one of his lawyers, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, said: "He certainly didn't mean to hurt anyone. He spent his life fighting the communist regime and, you know, life is complicated."

The Case of the Self-Exiled Billionaire

There was another case involving a seven-week trial in New York as well. Only a couple of weeks before Wang was convicted, a Manhattan jury unanimously found self-exiled billionaire Guo Wengui guilty on nine counts. (He is also known variously as Ho Wan Kwok, Miles Guo and Miles Kwok.) The charges against him included racketeering conspiracy and various securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering charges. 

Like Shujun Wang, Guo is a native of Shandong Province. He had become a fabulously wealthy real estate mogul in China who allegedly developed close ties to officials in China's security agencies. However, in 2014 he fled to the US after learning that he was going to be arrested. 

The Chinese government has requested multiple Interpol arrest warrants for Guo since 2014. He was wanted on charges including bribery, kidnapping, fraud, money laundering and rape. 

Guo is now one of Beijing's most sought-after fugitives. Chinese officials have been trying to convince US officials, until now unsuccessfully, to extradite him back to China. That no doubt is because of his political activities as much as his alleged nefarious business practices while still in China. 

Guo's Life in America

After arriving in the US, Guo cultivated political ties. He also used Twitter posts and YouTube videos to spread scandalous but unconfirmable stories about CCP officials. Among them were some close to President Xi Jinping. 

Guo raised a stir in 2020 when he and Steve Bannon, former chief strategist for Donald Trump, announced plans to overthrow the Communist regime in China. Subsequently, Guo used the publicity to raise money from thousands of online followers.

According to a statement issued by Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams, Guo "brazenly operated several interrelated fraud schemes, all designed to fleece his loyal followers out of their hard-earned money so that Guo could spend his days in his 50,000 square foot mansion, driving his $1 million Lamborghini, or lounging on his $37 million yacht."

Guo now faces decades in prison. 

Trouble with Following the Law

One of Guo's defense lawyers was Sidhardha Kamaraju. He argued that Guo had become the "founder and face" of a movement advocating democracy in China. Kamaraju said that the prosecution had failed to prove that Guo ever "took a penny with the intent to undermine the political movement he invested so much in."

Prosecutors readily agreed that the CCP had targeted Guo. However, they said this did not absolve him from obeying US law. 

Then on August 21, the FBI arrested 67-year-old Yuanjun Tang, a naturalized US citizen living in Queens. He allegedly spied on pro-democracy activists and other critics of the Chinese government between 2018 and 2023. This was at the direction of the MSS intelligence officers. 

Tang himself had served time in a Chinese prison for criticizing China's one-party system. However, he had fled to Taiwan in 2002 before being granted asylum in the US. Once in the US, he founded his own pro-democracy non-profit. 

The question is, when was he recruited by MSS? Was it after he arrived in the US and, if so, why did he betray his political principles? Or was it years earlier in China? Was he actually an undercover agent for whom the MSS had fashioned an elaborate cover story? 

China's Busy External World

What these three unrelated cases show is that there is a great deal going on in China's diaspora. The situation is complex, with many different players and many different motives. It can often seem like a hall of mirrors. Nothing can be taken at face value. 

There are, of course, many types of agents. In rare cases, they are "sleeper" agents, such as the Russian couple who returned to Russia as part of the recent historic prisoner exchange. For decades, they had posed as Argentine expats in Slovenia. So deep was their cover, that their two children did not even know they were Russian. The Chinese have such sleeper agents in place worldwide.

The Chinese government also regularly engages in transnational repression. It seeks to intimidate and harass its citizens living abroad regardless of local laws. 

For example, in April 2023, two Chinese nationals were arrested for allegedly helping to establish a secret Chinese police station in Manhattan's Chinatown. They did so at the behest of China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Separately, three dozen members of China's police force have been charged with using social media to harass dissidents in the US.

Beijing's 'Overseas Chinese'

There are many reasons why someone may choose to work for or cooperate with a foreign government. They may share the same ideology, or want money or the desire to feel important and experience excitement. However, their participation may also be due to extortion, either of the individual or family members. 

China has many tools in its espionage toolkit, including legions of hackers. But when it comes to transnational repression, none is more important than the United Front. It is one of the Chinese Communist Party's "three magic weapons," as Mao Zedong himself lauded. 

There are an estimated 50 million ethnic Chinese who have emigrated from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Macao. And their descendants are worldwide. Their situations vary considerably depending on where they came from and where they live now. 

The Chinese government regards Chinese who have become citizens of other countries as kinsfolk distinct from other foreign nationals. And recently in the era of Xi Jinping, China has become more proactive in reaching out to its diaspora to advance its own political agenda. 

Both Chinese living overseas who are citizens of China (huaqiao), and people of Chinese descent who are citizens of foreign countries (huaren) can justifiably feel proud that their once supine homeland has become strong and prosperous. 

As a result, some occasionally overlook the defects of the current political system and the monomaniacal compulsion of the CCP to exercise control of "Chinese" both at home and abroad. That provides fertile ground for the United Front to work its mischief.

What is the United Front? 

The United Front is both a strategy and a mechanism for advancing the interests of the CCP. It has developed into a massive, intricate web of groups and opinionmakers. These can be influenced or guided to do the bidding of the Party. Sometimes these groups or individuals are aware that they are being used. However, in most cases, the groups have been infiltrated by Party supporters who seek to influence them from within. 

The roots of the United Front can be traced back to the "National Revolution United Front" jointly formed by the CCP and the Kuomintang (KMT) during the Northern Expedition of 1926. The two parties later formed another joint front to oppose Japan. 

The United Front as it exists today was created in 1946. As such, it contributed significantly to the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. It has greatly expanded its activities overseas since Xi Jinping came to power. 

Coming next: A look at how China used United Front members against anti-CCP protestors during Xi Jinping's visit to San Francisco in November 2023. 

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Author: John Carroll
John Carroll is a Kyoto-based freelance writer and JAPAN Forward contributor. He is currently writing a book on the religious traditions and superstitions of Japan's ancient capital. And watch JAPAN Forward forthe next installment of his series on the CCP's United Front.