It’s time to end China’s ‘United Front’ operations inside the United States | Hacker News Reader

It’s time to end China’s ‘United Front’ operations inside the United States

washingtonpost.com

63 pointsdrocer8860 comments

While it seems reasonable to try to stop the Chinese government from unduly influencing US institutions, I am sincerely worried this is just going to turn into a witch hunt against Chinese nationals in the US on student and work visas.

It's a reasonable worry, but even the strongest anti-China voices seem to agree that Chinese nationals are wonderful people who are being oppressed by an evil government. And I'm optimistic that in the worst case support for Taiwan will prevent it from devolving into race-based targeting.

Undoubtedly, though, we will find some witches among them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but given that we as an American institution have some witch hunts in our past, we ought to be able to carry those lessons forward and integrate them into a framework which minimizes chances of becoming a witch hunt.

Additionally, given the parameters listed in the article: The sanctions approach won't touch Chinese students or workers who are in the US on visas. Even the moves against Confucius Institutes don't touch individual students. It seems like a good start if the idea is to avoid individual false-positives and also blunt the Magic Weapons philosophy.

The policies proposed in this editorial seem pretty tame, but they aren’t all the policies being put forward on this issue.

A recent executive order does target individual students who come from universities with military ties, even though many of these schools have mostly civilian students.

The recent prosecutions of scientists who failed to disclose Chinese funding on grant applications did uncover some real malfeasance but could easily turn into a witch hunt as well.

Have you not learned that we haven't learned anything?

As a non-american it's weird/funny/interesting/infuriating/typical to watch Americans get very upset and paranoid about Russians or Chinese actors doing the things that American actors do, and have done for decades now, in my country, and many others, all the time.

I know the spin is for an American audience, but it does occur to y'all how funny it sounds outside your country right?

Sure, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

The reason we're upset is that we think the Russian and Chinese governments are very bad and don't want them to have any influence. Nobody gets worked up about foreign influence operations from, like, France or Japan.

You might be surprised that some people consider the US gov pretty bad as well. Just watch the news.

France and Japan don't try to influence in the same way that Russia and China do. The difference in the kind of operations matters.

Yeah, here either, we're mostly concerned with Russia, China and the US.

I never though about how you folks have one less election tampering aggressive state to worry about actually, and it's the one that spends the most too.

Must be nice.

I prefer to have my cake and eat it too. Is that too much to ask?

It doesn't sound funny at all given how much Chinese and Russian influence have murdered scores of innocent people, disappearing journalists, undermining elections, rolled over basic human rights, engaged in abhorrent labor practices, etc. What part of that do you find funny?

"As a non-American", it would be helpful to know where you are, because I don't think there's anyone in Europe is thrilled about Russian influence/oppression over the past, oh, 70 years. Nor China's human rights abuses and sphere of Influence in Asia, Africa, or even Latin America's equally despotic regimes such as Pinochet.

So forgive us if it sounds funny, we've only been fighting these oppressive forces on your behalf for a very, very long time.

Disliking the politics of the US doesn't mean you become pro-China or pro-Russia obviously, that's absurd.

"we've only been fighting these oppressive forces on your behalf for a very, very long time."

Gross. That's as polite as I can be there and it's difficult.

"Pinochet" Are you trolling or do you not know which nearby superpower is responsible for installing him. Perfect example though, of the kind of fighting being done on "my behalf"

Lets not equate what the Russians and the Chinese are doing with what the US does. Yes, the CIA did horrible things, but that is now a long time ago. Russians are still poisoning their defectors, the Chinese are running concentration camps today. That's all of a very different order, not to say for a very different purpose, however misguided.

The US has concentration camps today. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/border-fac...

The CIA still drone strikes weddings. Source: https://www.newsweek.com/wedding-became-funeral-us-still-sil...

These things are still happening.

Let me get this straight, you’re saying that the US holding foreigners in detention centers, who are asking for asylum, is the same as rounding up all Muslims and putting them in camps because they are Muslim?

While awful in their own right, it's important to understand the difference in both scale and reason between such border camps and e.g. Uyghur camps.

CIA did horrible things, but that is now a long time ago.

The CIA is very much alive today. They are still very active in Latin America, in Europe and in Asia. If you believe they are no longer doing 'horrible things', we have lots and lots of bridges for you to buy.

No, I'm equating it. As do most people around the world. You should read more varied news sources.

"did" ... peak american move there.

The answer is that, by and large, it doesn't occur to them. I'm a Canadian who spent my college years in America, and was honestly completely aghast at the whole society and most especially how it is reflected in their media and public "discourse" (culture≠media, yes, but it's disingenuous to say that the constant diet of vitriol, propaganda, and pure unreason would have no effect on the national character). It genuinely doesn't occur to them (generally): the country is myopic, and hypocrisy means nothing when you're ignorant of any inconsistency.

(Queue the whataboutism, or deflection, or whichever fallacy of the day)

As a Canadian who has lived in the US is it all that different?

What I’ve observed is the US is very upfront and unapologetic about it. While countries like Canada and those in the EU are much more discrete.

Take Omar Khadr for example. Canada was more than happy to help the US with that “terrorist”, no questions asked. While at the same time “tsk tsk-ing” about how the US is handling the situation.

The hypocrisy is something else.

That's definitely true, America is leading the charge in the "mask off" era.

That is a good point. Canada and Europe have the same problems mostly, not as bad (sometimes not nearly as bad), but hide it much more carefully. And there is a lot of misplaced pride in being "better than the US" for things where that is the lowest bar.

Expanding on that, I think the “mask off” thing is why Trump got elected.

Rather than a smooth talker politician who lies to you with a smile on their face, Trump drops the pretense. He’s an asshole and doesn’t try and hide it.

Oh yeah, absolutely. The whole world order is broken, and I'm not at all happy with Canada's milquetoast responses to myriad issues (Omar Khadr, yes, but also not more strongly responding to the Uighur's treatment, or dealing with our own racism, or our own policing issues, etc etc etc). Re public discourse specifically it's a matter of degree though, and my real experience is that I've been able to have more reasonable conversations with those I disagree with here (and in Europe) than would've been conceivable there, even though all mentioned societies harbour evils. I certainly don't mean to discount the numerous problems that Canada and other countries have, and I have no pleasure in bashing America (rather, I'm deeply, deeply sad to feel this way about a country that I was taught as a child represented ideals of justice and opportunity). I more meant that I'm not at all hopeful for nonviolent progress in America, given the impossibility of discourse and cultural disdain for self-reflection or external perspective, whereas I still hold hope for other societies that (maybe too optimistically) are broken but not irreparably

Sorry if that's too depressed, but it's my genuine impression :( for context, I left the States to do my grad studies elsewhere, having been seriously depressed by my inability to effect any meaningful change (volunteering to teach low-income children only does so much good in a system that keeps them low income; peaceful protest is ignored; organizing philanthropy has benefits but ignores root issues; I ran into institutional barriers at every step). I'm in Canada now, and while I'm still fighting against the same injustices and remain supremely disappointed in the national and world state of affairs, I feel much less hopeless here, and that I have been able to do more (although not nearly enough) good without being stymied in a system that quashes discourse by default

Every country does this, this being industrial espionage. And yes, like spying, people bitch about others doing it when they do it themselves.

You have to remember it’s all politics. It’s not like the US govt is really shocked this is happening, it’s just that they’ve decided to do something about it. And like all diplomacy, you need a good cover, so the US cover is “can you believe what China did?”.

Meddling in elections was the reference i was making mostly.

I'm not talking about industrial espionage, I mean culture war propaganda shit and American dollars ending up used for lobbying and political campaigns mostly.

Back in 2015, Harper's warned of the insidious influence of the CCP, via the American corporations that do business in China.

https://archive.harpers.org/2015/11/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2015...

For anyone else that couldn't read it:

http://archive.is/zboZv

The title calls for an end to China's United Front operations; the article doesn't say how it will achieve this other than requiring Confucius institutes to register as foreign agents. I guess one benefit of fighting against a covert operations is that you don't have to be specific. Or is the idea to inoculate Americans against Chinese influence by equating all such influences with the United Front?

Might I suggest we look at the lesson of history and issue another execute order like the one made by Truman[1]?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9835

It's worrying that it's hard to tell if this comment is even sarcastic or not.

The idea is to identify which messages have been paid for by the Chinese government. Most Americans recognize that the CCP is not a reliable source, but they don't always realize that listening to e.g. their campus's Confucius Institute means listening to the CCP.

half a dozen paragraphs and I still can't tell what this "United Front" does. The closest thing to a concrete example is:

> oversee United Front work by throwing money at foreign institutions that are willing to toe Beijing’s political line, including U.S. think tanks and even media organizations.

So a lobbyist group but with less influence?

It's a bunch of smaller efforts all working towards a single goal. (think lots of little foundations and lobbyist groups)

This report goes into a lot more detail https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/dia...

>the CCP’s United Front effort is unique because it is more organized, more expansive and more insidious than our government or nation has realized.

If it’s so expansive, give us some real examples! Saying something like this while giving nothing but unspecific references to a wide-ranging communist plot (a claim Americans are right to be suspicious of, given the history of such claims about the soviets) and a reference to the Confucius Institutes that anyone reading an article like this will be familiar with just makes the author sound like a political hack with nothing useful to say on the topic of Chinese propaganda. Maybe that’s not true of the author, but it is true of this particular article.

Republican worries about repression in China. Perfectly ok with repression in Russia and the ties between this administration and Russian political operative? Wow. Mind blown.

Why is the article flagged? I've seen this happen to a few posts about China lately. Its starting to hurt the discourse on HN, its unhealthy for the forum.

Do they give a reason for flagging? Seems like there's a bias in play.

A post becomes [flagged] when enough users flag it, moderators can only unflag.

Yeah but it seems like a lot of "users" flag everything about china lately.

It is flagged as criticism of China is not permitted on the internet.

I think it is unquestionable that China is the United State's primary competition, and national security adversary. As such, if that is the case, then we must take steps to protect America from influence and infiltration from China. If we as a democracy are willing to engage in foreign influence, I believe firmly a communist government will do it ten times more.

Just an observation, it seems HN is more interested in topics semi-related to China than BLM or policing reform. I wonder if this reflects something about HN readers.

I think HN readers are smart enough to discern the relative difference in threat between redneck cops and a nuclear-armed, fascist state.

Also if you think tech isn't concered about "BLM" then you haven't visited a single tech website in the past two weeks. There are banners and calls for change everywhere...

I'm certainly concerned about both the out of control nuclear-armed fascist state and about China.

Many of us live in the SF Bay Area, where the Chinese population is much larger than the black population.

That is a red herring in at least four ways:

At most 10% of the HN community is in the Bay Area, last I ran the numbers.

People in the Bay Area are extremely aware of BLM, police reform, and related issues.

There's no reason to believe that interest in China-related topics is coming more from the Bay Area than elsewhere.

Interest in these topics is not about local demographics.

Interesting. I would have guessed more like a third of the community, but you'd know better than me.

HN tries to avoid topics that turn into flamewars. True, topics around China often turn into flamewars. But BLM and policing reform are even more likely to do so.

I'd be cautious about drawing conclusions from what you happen to notice. People's general conceptions of HN are mostly drawn from things they saw that they disagreed with. There have been plenty of BLM-related threads also, and I'm sure there will be more.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Ok, I guess it is my bias.

Now even the left are turning against china. Theres hope

Which version of "the left" was ever not against China? There aren't that many actual Tankies outside of twitter/reddit.

Um, would you care to define "Tankies", for those of us not in the know?

And the left, such as we have in the US, may not have been pro-China, but who on the left was against China?

Oh, tankie is a pejorative term for authoritarian "communists". The vast majority of leftists, at this point in time, are very anti-authoritarian.

Everyone on the left hates China except the tiny percentage of tankies. And I'm using "left" in the political science meaning, so your Democrats are centrists in that model.

How on earth did you get the idea that any leftists weren't against a very authoritarian state-capitalist form of government?

Is Bernie still a centrist in your model? I would regard him as rather left, at least in the US context.

Is Antifa centrist?

And yet I don't hear either Bernie or Antifa railing against China. (Maybe Bernie does - I didn't follow him that closely - but he was getting a fair amount of press, and I didn't notice much on China one way or the other. He was more focused on domestic policy than international. And Antifa also is primarily focused on domestic issues. So maybe it's not surprising. Still, they seem to be ignoring China rather than opposing it.)

Just a clarification, antifa is just anti-fascist, and aren't organized at a national or regional level.

This isn't "my model", it's the standard, and rather flawed, political compass.

Bernie was as social democrat basically, so that's left of center, you can look up exactly where people would put him pretty easily.

Antifa is anti-fascist, so they are (from the name) at the bottom and (in practice) mostly fairly far left, although there are antifa centrists (bottom middle) too.

If you didn't hear anti-authoritarian leftists who are socialists/communists/anarchists and anti-capitalists critiquing China, the state capitalist country claiming to be communist ... you have either been under a rock or in a filter bubble.

It was the republicans that first that made the CCP problem popular. The left wasn't really focusing on China at all.

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