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are two types of bureaucracies: (1) general-purpose bureaucracies, and (2) specialized
bureaucracies. The following institutional profiles include many of the principal bodies
involved in China’s overseas influence activities.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a typical general-purpose bureaucracy that serves
as China’s main interlocutor with foreign governments. But since most of its time is
consumed by routine diplomatic activities, the Foreign Ministry itself does not play a
significant role in influence operations overseas. The one area where it does is via its
Department of Public Diplomacy (外交部公共外交司), which primarily oversees the MFA
Spokesman’s Office in Beijing, international media outreach, and China’s embassy
spokesmen abroad; international visitor programs; and “exchange” organizations, such
as the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (which bring a range of former
officials and international affairs experts to China). Also, the MFA is important
insofar as Chinese embassies abroad have representatives of the Ministry of Culture,
the Xinhua News Agency, the CCP International Liaison Department, the Ministry
of Education, and other bureaucratic bodies, each of which are involved in foreign
influence activities.

United Front Work Department

The CCP United Front Work Department is a specialized CCP organization, one of
four Central Committee departments.³ Its principal mission is to build support for
the CCP and its policies among domestic ethnic groups, religious groups, the eight
so-called democratic parties (民主党派), the Chinese diaspora worldwide, and political,
economic, and social elites in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. These United Front
activities have a long history dating to the CCP’s pre-1949 rise to power. The main
tasks and objectives of the CCP’s United Front activities outside of Greater China are
laid out in Article 31 of the CCP Guidelines on United Front Work (中国共产党统一战线
工作条例) issued in 2015—they target almost exclusively the Chinese diaspora, who
are supposed to be encouraged to “contribute to the modernization and reunification
of the motherland, advance the cause of opposing (Taiwanese) independence and
promoting reunification, inherit and propagate China’s outstanding culture, and
promote the friendship between the Chinese people and the peoples of the other
countries in the world.”

Appendix 1
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