Last week, the Jamestown Foundation published the second installment of a two-part investigation by researcher Sze-Fung Lee into “PRC Consulate Gray Zone ‘Pop-up’ Events in New York and Beyond.” The People’s Republic of China (PRC) Consulate in New York has already been under scrutiny over the roles of several of its officials in the case of Linda Sun, a New York gubernatorial aide accused of exploiting her position to promote PRC interests. Lee writes that the consulate has been vigorously organizing to win favor and loyalty from local diaspora communities, and coordinating politicized activities by purportedly independent organizations and media outlets. “Through these pop-up events,” Lee argues, “PRC diplomats are leveraging an asymmetric advantage, exploiting open societies and vulnerabilities inherent in liberal democratic systems. Such tactics lie at the heart of the PRC’s hybrid warfare strategy. Beijing’s gray zone operations challenge existing international norms and rules-based order, yet under the threshold of a major diplomatic scandal.” From the report’s executive summary:

• The Consulates General of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago have been conducting gray zone “pop-up” consular service events across the United States under the initiative “Bringing Consular Services into the Community,” often at non-diplomatic facilities. These events provide consular services such as passport renewals and document processing, but their legality remains questionable due to possible violations of international law.
• These events likely serve as platforms for the PRC’s broader political influence operations, potentially gathering intelligence on Chinese diaspora communities and mobilizing them for future operations, including political activities. The events have been co-hosted by community organizations with links to the CCP’s united front system, raising concerns about data handling and surveillance.
• The events may also align with the PRC’s broader strategy of influence and electoral interference in the United States, targeting districts with substantial Chinese American populations and potentially mobilizing community support for specific candidates and political agendas.
• Online propaganda campaigns, coordinated across Chinese and Western social media platforms, accompany the events as part of a gray zone approach to cognitive warfare. [Source]

Later in the report, Lee describes how these activities fit into the broader ideological framework of the PRC’s overseas influence operations:

The motivations for the initiative can be traced back to Party documents and high-level speeches. This includes directives found in the work reports CCP Chairman Xi Jinping delivered to the 19th and 20th Party Congresses that have sought to enhance the well-being of and strengthen ties with overseas Chinese communities (Xinhua, October 27, 2017; Gov.cn, October 25, 2022). The initiative is also a manifestation of the concept of “people-centered diplomacy (外交为民)” (PRC Consulate-General in Chicago, March 3, 2017; Xinhua, December 9, 2023). As articulated by Xi, people-centered diplomacy entails “actively expanding the work of overseas Chinese affairs,” “safeguarding the security, legitimate rights, and interests of overseas Chinese,” and making Chinese citizens “feel the strength and the warmth of their motherland, as well the dignity and honor of being Chinese (让中国公民在世界各地都能感受到祖国的力量与温暖，感受到中国人的尊严与荣耀)” no matter where they are (People’s Daily, December 30, 2023; China’s Diplomacy in the New Era, accessed July 9).

In addition to PRC consulates, the main bodies tasked with executing the initiative are associations and “volunteers” affiliated with the United Front Work Department (UFWD) and the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC)—organizations that are central to CCP strategies targeting the Chinese diaspora. [4] According to Party literature, united front strategies include “using the legal to mask the illegal (利用合法掩护非法，合法与非法巧妙结合)” and other principles such as building networks for “nestling intelligence within the united front (寓情报于统战中)” and “using the united front to drive intelligence (以统战带动情报)” (People’s Daily, November 18, 2020). [Source]

Also last week at The Wall Street Journal, James T. Areddy reported on the PRC’s efforts to co-opt community groups such as hometown associations:

Called “hometown” associations because their members often hail from the same place in China, groups like the Henan association are best known across the U.S. for promoting Lunar New Year parades and dragon dances. Over the past decade, Beijing has turned some of them into partners to help influence U.S. political discourse.

[… U]nder Xi, United Front has cultivated hometown associations to help surveil and harass Chinese activists in the U.S. “The Chinese Communist Party is carrying out a global campaign to silence its critics,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which advises Congress and has documented how Beijing’s “transnational repression tool kit” also includes suppressing campus free speech and controlling communication across the ubiquitous messaging app WeChat.

[…] When Xi visited San Francisco last November, Chinese associations from around the U.S. descended on the city. A senior representative of groups affiliated with Fujian province ripped down an anti-Xi banner and the head of a Henan province association from Seattle punched a dissident wearing a sticker that said “Free China,” according to rights groups. In all, the Hong Kong Democracy Council and Students for a Free Tibet documented 34 instances of harassment, intimidation and assault during the visit, including the use of Chinese flags as weapons.

[…] “What we’re seeing a lot, but especially in New York City, is there are lots of Chinese associations that have been infiltrated by the Chinese government,” said a U.S. law-enforcement official. [Source]

The German Marshall Fund’s Mareike Ohlberg told the AP in September that PRC influence activities at state and lower levels have “increased in importance as relations at the federal level have soured,” on the basis that “[s]omething is better than nothing.” Numerous commentators on the issue have noted the growing danger to ethnic Chinese communities of being caught in the crossfire between PRC influence operations and other governments’ variable efforts to combat such operations. The University of Southern California’s Audrye Wong, for example, told The New York Times that the “freedoms of Chinese diaspora communities and the health of multicultural democracies are at stake. Beijing likes to claim to speak on behalf of all ethnic Chinese overseas, intentionally blurring the lines between Chinese nationals and those of ethnic Chinese descent who are citizens of other countries.” For more on these risks and more details about PRC influence operations and their context, see a trio of earlier reports highlighted by CDT.