Communist China is wielding a “magic weapon” to consolidate power at home and exert malign influence abroad, a memo by the House select committee on China declares.

The weapon is united front work, “a unique blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations” run by President Xi as he seeks to pioneer a new global order shaped by Chinese interests. That’s the urgent message of the chairman of the committee, Mike Gallagher, and a ranking member, Raja Krishnamoorthi, in a letter they sent to Congress last week. 

“Through its united front work strategy, which Xi Jinping has called a ‘magic weapon,’ the Chinese Communist Party uses every tool at its disposal, whether legal or illicit, to influence the American people and interfere in democratic societies,” Mr. Gallagher tells the Sun. “Our bipartisan memo on united front work will help the American people recognize and resist the CCP’s malign influence.”

The Central United Front Work Department coordinates operations between a network of organizations that work in tandem with the Chinese foreign ministry and intelligence services. Its targets, the committee says, are college campuses, think tanks, civic groups, influential individuals and institutions, and public opinion at large. 

“What United Front Work shows is that the CCP believes we are in an existential struggle over what life will look like for the rest of the 21st century,” Mr. Gallagher asserts in a video shared on X. Faced with this reality, “Americans need to understand that the CCP’s united front work is not just a distant-over-there threat,” he says. “It’s a right-here-at-home threat.”

Under Mr. Xi’s grip, the work of shaping international attitudes toward the People’s Republic, especially in America, has expanded. In April, the Department of Justice charged two Chinese nationals with running an illegal police station at New York City to censor criticism of the Chinese government. Dozens of other Chinese officials were arrested for being part of what the Washington Post called “a vast influence operation.”

UFWD was also linked to protests against the president of Free China, Tsai Ing-wen, during her visit to New York and California in the spring. The anti-Taiwan rallies were organized by a group that operates in America, the Alliance for China’s Peaceful Reunification, USA, which a former secretary of state, Michael Pompeo, designated as a UFWD-controlled organization in 2020. 

“Elite capture” is the strategy employed by the People’s Republic to forge favorable relations with leaders in American business, higher education, and politics, the memo says. It appears to be working: American executives paid $40,000 to dine with Mr. Xi during his visit to San Francisco last month. 

Meanwhile, Chinese promotional programs called Confucius Institutes have sprouted at American universities. These “are part of the UF Work system and have helped support China’s military-industrial complex,” the committee says. 

At Harvard, a former professor was sentenced on federal charges for informing the Chinese government on emerging technologies on campus. He was connected to the UFWD’s Thousand Talents Program, which the committee calls “a CCP recruitment scheme,” and the FBI said enables the theft of trade secrets. 

While pursuing this campaign of propaganda and manipulation abroad, the abuses of united front work are expanding within China. “The department has played a central role in formulating, implementing, and defending policies to ‘Sinicize’ China’s ethnic minorities,” Mr. Gallagher says in his video. “This includes the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the religious persecution in Tibet, and the repression of Hong Kong under CCP rule.”

To defend American interests, Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Krishnamoorthi are proposing a new federal law that would increase requirements on foreign agent registrations. “But this is just the beginning,” Mr. Gallagher says. “If we do not curtail malign CCP influence on American soil,” he warns, “future generations will look back and ask why we allowed, and even invited, a ‘magic weapon’ to be used against us.”