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Origins and Structure

From the 1950s to the 1970s, when the United States maintained an alliance with the regime of Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan, pro-PRC organizations faced challenges gaining traction in the United States. During the 1950s, the FBI, aided by pro-Kuomintang security organizations, closely monitored their activities and participants. This antagonistic state of affairs began to change after President Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972.¹ On February 24, 1973, more than forty Chinese on the East Coast, most of them immigrants from Taiwan, established the Washington Association to Promote China Unification to help advocate for Beijing’s official positions. One of the founders was a professor at the University of Maryland who was actively involved in organizations that already supported China’s position on Taiwan and Tibet.² However, a more beneficial contribution came in the form of advancing US-China scientific, educational, and cultural exchanges that started to be promoted by a growing number of preeminent Chinese American scientists, engineers, and academics who were also advising the Chinese government to launch reforms in science and education. These Chinese Americans were also personally helping them establish various programs to bring thousands of talented Chinese students to American institutions of learning.

Recognizing the achievements, influence, and growth of the Chinese diaspora, Beijing undertook a systematic program designed to target and exploit overseas Chinese communities as a means of furthering its own political, economic, and security interests. The Beijing government used specialized bureaucracies to manage what it called “united front” activities abroad. Organizations such as the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office inside the Communist Party Central Committee’s United Front Work Department³ and the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office led the charge. Almost all of these agencies have established nongovernmental fronts overseas, including the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, the China Overseas Exchange Association, and the China Overseas Friendship Association.⁴ Other “united front” organizations, such as the Chinese Enterprise Association and other Chinese chambers of commerce, are almost always linked both to the United Front Work Department and to the Ministry of Commerce.

Following the violent crackdown on the prodemocracy movement in Beijing on June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party redoubled its efforts to reach out to overseas Chinese. Many members of these communities had supported the student democracy movement, providing funds and safe havens for fleeing dissidents. But senior Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was not dissuaded. In 1989 and again in 1993, he spoke of the “unique opportunity” overseas Chinese offered the PRC. Deng insisted that by drawing on their help, China could break out of international isolation and improve its international political standing. Gaining influence over overseas Chinese groups in order to “turn them into propaganda bases for China” became an important task of overseas Chinese united front work.⁵

The Chinese American Community

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