China Exploits Social Divisions in US to Mobilize Asian Americans

On 6 March 2025, For­eign Pol­i­cy report­ed that Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty-linked groups are strate­gi­cal­ly using Asian Amer­i­can social con­cerns to advance Bei­jing’s influ­ence oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States. The arti­cle begins:

On July 28, 2024, thou­sands of demon­stra­tors gath­ered at Foley Square in low­er Man­hat­tan. Hail­ing from Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ties across dif­fer­ent bor­oughs in New York City, they waved Amer­i­can flags, car­ried signs say­ing “Jus­tice for AAPI,” and chant­ed “Safe Homes, Safe Schools, No Shel­ter!” as they marched across the icon­ic Brook­lyn Bridge and into down­town Brook­lyn. This was the lat­est in a series of protests in recent months against a pro­posed home­less shel­ter to be erect­ed in south Brook­lyn, and was also in sup­port of Coun­cil­woman Susan Zhuang, who had been arrest­ed at an ear­li­er protest for alleged­ly bit­ing a police offi­cer. Present at this (and oth­er sim­i­lar events) was John Chan, a com­mu­ni­ty leader and pow­er bro­ker who has been doc­u­ment­ed by the New York Times and Wash­ing­ton Post as hav­ing close ties to the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (CCP) and the Unit­ed Front, a Chi­nese gov­ern­ment organ tasked with co-opt­ing friends, neu­tral­iz­ing ene­mies, and spread­ing CCP influ­ence glob­al­ly. Reem­pha­sized by Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping as a “mag­ic weapon” for achiev­ing Chi­na’s nation­al inter­ests abroad, Unit­ed Front work entails draw­ing on a vari­ety of offi­cial bod­ies as well as qua­si-offi­cial and civ­il soci­ety groups abroad…

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Key Points:

• Chi­na’s Unit­ed Front tar­gets Chi­nese Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties by exploit­ing divi­sive local issues like crime, edu­ca­tion, and hous­ing policies.
• CCP-linked orga­ni­za­tions mobi­lize protests that appear grass­roots while advanc­ing Bei­jing’s broad­er influ­ence objec­tives across the Unit­ed States.
• Unit­ed Front actors strate­gi­cal­ly frame issues using Amer­i­can polit­i­cal lan­guage to dis­guise their con­nec­tions to the Chi­nese government.
• Chi­nese offi­cials increas­ing­ly lever­age legit­i­mate com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns to dri­ve wedges between eth­nic Chi­nese and main­stream Amer­i­can society.