What is the UFWD, and what is it doing that concerns us? Most people have never heard of it. That’s unsurprising because China would be happy if no one knew anything about it. Its innocuous name hides the threat it represents internally within China and internationally.

“Xi Jinping calls it the Chinese Communist Party’s ‘magic weapon,’” noted former Representative Mike Gallagher. “Mao called it one of the two weapons the ‘heroic warrior’ wields to shatter the enemy’s positions.”

They are not talking about advanced weapons or military power. It is something much more sinister and dangerous, and it remains hidden from almost everyone. China’s leaders were talking about the UFWD and the work it does to advance China’s goal to rule the world. The UFWD specializes in clandestine activities, staying in the shadows, working behind the scenes, and pulling all the subtle levers of power to advance China’s global ambitions. It is not constrained by obeying Chinese law or international law. It is laser-focused on doing anything and everything that it can do to make China stronger both at home and abroad.

Examples of the things the UFWD does include the following:

• Illegal Chinese police station discovered in Manhattan working under the direction of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, the CCP police.
• Hired thugs assaulting overseas Chinese students at American universities.
• Billions of dollars of Intellectual Property vanishing from U.S. laboratories and universities. Economic espionage, i.e. stealing industrial secrets, property, and inventions, with a major emphasis on the U.S. According to the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission, this activity amounts to up to $600 billion in theft each year.
• Silencing criticism of the Chinese regime both at home and internationally. It paints a favorable image of China internationally.
• Chinese propaganda about China’s intentions being benign.
• Manipulating foreign institutions to favor China’s preferences.
• Clandestine and often illegal operations around the world to exert influence on other nations and their institutions.
• Spying on Chinese ex-patriots around the world and influencing their impact on telling the truth about the real China. Kidnapping them and returning them to China. Coercing people to behave the way China wants them to through threatening children and family members. Its largely successful goal is to silence criticism of China from anyone worldwide, including here in the U.S.
• Religious persecution of Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Christians.
• Embedding operatives into Western civic and media operations to influence what they do and to create favorable press about China.
• Control of overseas media operations to make sure the message is positive about China and to suppress information about their misdeeds and abuses.
• Deploying an army of Internet trolls to flood American social media with pro-China content unbeknownst to the consumers of those channels.
• Smuggling thousands of Chinese operatives into the U.S. to work against U.S. interests and to gather intelligence or even potentially commit terrorist acts.

Collectively, these activities are carried out by thousands of people in China and scattered around the world. According to Gallagher, who chaired the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, “Through its united front work strategy, which Xi Jinping has called a ‘magic weapon,’ the Chinese Communist Party uses every tool at its disposal, whether legal or illicit, to influence the American people and interfere in democratic societies. Our bipartisan memo on united front work will help the American people recognize and resist the CCP’s malign influence.”

Ranking Member Raja Krisnamoorthi added, “An important, but little understood, aspect of the Chinese Communist Party’s misinformation, propaganda, and influence efforts both in the PRC and abroad is the CCP’s united front system. This background memo provides information about united front activities and can be a potentially helpful guide in addressing and countering them.”

Through this committee’s work, Congress is trying to get the American people’s attention on China’s interference and influence around the world and here in the U.S. so that those efforts may be thwarted.

Their report goes on to say that the UFWD is one of the ways the CCP is helping the party achieve the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation, which includes unifying with Taiwan and establishing a new global order that revolves around CCP values and interests.” The UFWD “damages U.S. interests through legal and illegal technology transfer, surveillance of Chinese diaspora communities, promotion of favorable narratives about the PRC through ostensibly independent voices, and the neutralization or harassment of critics of the CCP.” Additionally, “The UFWD is responsible for shoring up domestic and international support for the integration of Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan under CCP rule.” Finally, “The UFWD collects intelligence, exerts control over overseas Chinese-language media outlets, seeks to influence Chinese diaspora groups, facilitates illicit technology transfer, and interferes in politics in other countries, including by co-opting and influencing foreign academic, political, and business elites.”

While trying to obfuscate the truth and present a benign image to the world, China is evil to the core, with no principles, no morality, and no compunctions whatsoever. The Chinese Communists do whatever it takes, including lying, stealing, cheating, misdirecting, and obfuscating, to gain their goals and to move toward their goal of world domination.

American citizens should be alert to this reality and take appropriate action. If you see something that doesn’t quite look right, report it to the authorities. Citizens can act on their own, too, with the power of the purse to weaken them. Buy American and leave the cheap Chinese junk to rot on the shelves. Write Congress and demand that we have a policy to thwart China by all means, through trade restrictions, reduced access to America from Chinese visitors or students, and deportation of any who break our laws.

U.S. policy must oppose China in any conceivable way we can, diplomatically, economically, culturally, and politically. China is an implacable enemy of freedom and justice and should be opposed at every turn.