Chairman Regan, vice-chairs and distinguished members of the special committee, it's an honour be here. Thank you for the generous invitation to testify before the committee today for a second time.
Given today's topic of foreign interference, I would like to start with some definitional issues.
What constitutes foreign interference, and how do we differentiate foreign influence from foreign interference?
A country can exert influence on another country through the use of carrots, such as financial aid and concessional loans; sticks, such as economic sanctions; and persuasion, such as propaganda or disinformation campaigns. Democracies have a more pluralistic and open society and are more tolerant of foreign influence. Conversely, autocracies are less tolerant, because policy contestation tends to take place between factions of the ruling elite rather than in the public realm.
When does foreign influence become foreign interference? Foreign interference refers to the grey zone of domestic security. The terms that have been used to describe it range from “covert” and “deceptive” to “malicious” and “manipulative”. I think the scope of what foreign interference laws cover also differs among countries. Therefore, the distinction between legitimate foreign influence, as every country aims to pursue with its public diplomacy, and foreign interference is not clear-cut. I think it should be recognized that they exist along a continuum rather than in binary terms.
I want to spend some time speaking about United Front work. The Chinese Communist Party's, the CCP's, United Front strategy is premised on the idea of uniting with lesser enemies to defeat greater ones. The strategy proved highly successful in the civil war that brought the CCP to power in 1949 by enabling it to recruit non-Communist power holders, business leaders and local communities to undermine the Kuomintang government. While much of the United Front work was inward-facing in the past, its prominence has been reinvigorated and its scope expanded since 2015. In the same year as the term limits for the Chinese president were abolished, the government departments in charge of ethnic affairs, religion and overseas Chinese affairs were subsumed within the party's United Front Work department. Since then, the United Front Work Department's foreign-facing operations have been carried out by overseas Chinese, with the party's co-optation of ethnic Chinese individuals and communities living outside China and of Chinese organizations based overseas.
The key United Front groups include peak organizations such as the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which brings together non-CCP social elites domestically. Overseas, it includes the China Overseas Friendship Association, the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, Chinese students and scholars associations, and numerous overseas Chinese friendship and hometown associations. By co-opting these organizations under the umbrella of the United Front work, the party seeks to shape the narrative and extend its influence overseas. This raises the question of whether activities of these organizations are instances of “foreign influence”, such as attempts to project China's soft power overseas, or they amount to “foreign interference”. The covert nature of some of these activities makes a fair and impartial assessment more challenging.
I think there's a lack of rigorous academic studies on the subject of the United Front work. Being part of the United Front networks does not automatically imply that individuals or organizations are the CCP's local agents to carry out foreign interference, even though they are part of the umbrella.
I think it is also important to recognize that the diasporas are not passive or apolitical agents of their home governments. In general, the diasporas have agencies and incentives of their own. In Canada's context, it is also crucial to recognize that the Chinese diaspora is far from being a homogeneous community, and their allegiance to the Chinese government, or the CCP, should not be automatically assumed.
In 2018—
I have two more pages to go. Can I go to my recommendations?
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