China Wields Billion-Dollar Campaign to Influence Dissidents, Foreigners

A new report has found that each year, Beijing pours billions of dollars to fund its influence operations worldwide, which seeks to silence dissidents, suppress minority groups, and acquire foreign technology. Chinese diplomats have insisted that united front groups—state-affiliated organizations in charge of spreading Beijing’s agenda at home and abroad—are benign bureaucratic missions facilitating foreign exchange based on “openness, transparency, [and] equality.” These groups are overseen by either the United Front Work Department or Chinese government agencies that are ultimately controlled by the department. But the scale of such operations’ funding appears to contradict Chinese authorities’ claims.