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Although the United Front Work Department has attracted much media attention,
and the term "United Front" has become a euphemistic one for many analysts writing
about China's influence activities abroad, the scope of the UFWD's activities in
China's external influence operations is actually limited. Its primary target audience
is the Chinese diaspora in general, and its elite members in particular. The mission
of engaging and influencing nonethnic Chinese audiences, individuals, and foreign
institutions is assigned to other specialized Chinese entities—such as the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education,
the Ministry of State Security (e.g., China Institutes of Contemporary International
Relations), and other institutions that have well-trained professionals and long-standing
ties with their counterparts overseas.

International [Liaison] Department

The CCP's International [Liaison] Department (中央联络部) is in charge of "party-to-
party relations" (党际关系) and has the primary mission of cultivating foreign political
parties and politicians around the world. This Party organ has existed since before
1949 and was formerly charged with maintaining China's fraternal ties with other
communist and socialist parties around the world, but in the wake of the Cold War,
the CCP/ID drastically broadened its mandate to interact with virtually all political
parties abroad (except fascist and racist parties). Today it claims to maintain ties
with over 400 political parties in 140 countries, receives about 200 delegations,
and dispatches about 100 abroad every year. CCP/ID exchanges have provided an
important prism through which the CCP and other organizations in China monitor
the outside world and absorb lessons for China's own modernization. This kind of
information gathering goes well beyond traditional intelligence collection (although,
to be sure, the ID also engages in this activity).

Through its interactions with political parties all over the world, the CCP/ID serves
an important function as a kind of "radar" for identifying up-and-coming foreign
politicians before they attain national prominence and office. Having identified
such rising stars, the CCP/ID brings them to China (usually on all-expenses-paid
visits)—often offering them their first exposure to China and trying to make the
best possible impression on them. Another key dimension of this function has been to
expose CCP leaders at the provincial and sub-provincial levels to the outside world—
often for the first time. Many provincial Party secretaries, governors, mayors and other
leading local cadres are taken abroad on ID delegations every year. The CCP/ID has

Appendix 1
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