and garner popular support for the military. Internationally, Beijing aims to create an information environment favorable to the PRC and its strategic foreign policy objectives. The PRC conducts influence operations that target media organizations, businesses, academic and cultural institutions, and policy communities of the United States, other countries, and international organizations to achieve outcomes favorable to its strategic and military objectives.
PRC INFLUENCE ACTORS
PRC influence operations are coordinated and executed by a range of affiliated actors, such as the United Front Work Department (UFWD), the MSS, and the SSF. The CCP likely seeks to condition multilateral political establishments and public opinion to accept the PRC’s narrative surrounding its priorities such as the PRC’s “one China principle” on Taiwan unification, BRI, political control over Hong Kong, and territorial and maritime claims in the SCS and ECS. In mid-2022, official messaging from diplomatic personnel, state media outlets, and diplomatic social media accounts surrounding the U.S. Speaker of the House’s visit to Taiwan highlighted how the PRC uses influence operations to shape the information environment surrounding Taiwan policy. In an August 2022 PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs Communique, Beijing advanced its official narrative that the PRC is a responsible, law-abiding member of the international community and that the U.S. Speaker’s visit unlawfully violated the PRC’s sovereignty and needlessly provoked potential U.S.-China confrontation.
PRC INFLUENCE OPERATIONS
PRC influence operations can range from lobbying and cultivating foreign politicians, injecting Chinese cultural narratives or values into foreign education systems, bringing academic or thank tank researchers’ access to China, and flooding Chinese language media abroad, all of which can be accomplished via diplomacy or coercive means. For example, a hallmark of the PRC’s influence strategy includes appealing to overseas PRC citizens or ethnic Chinese of other countries as indirect proxies to assert the CCP’s objectives through soft power engagements. The PRC often targets Uyghurs and overseas dissidents with harassment or threats to imprison their family members in China. Furthermore, the UFWD collaborated with overseas Chinese communities in the Global South, including Latin America and Caribbean countries in order to shape positive views of China that would better facilitate economic ties. Additionally, the PRC’s “Thousand Talents Program” targets overseas Chinese emigrants to support its foreign technology acquisition strategy, which is critical to China’s scientific and technical modernization.
The PRC has demonstrated its intent to use multilateral forums and organizations to expand its defense influence and security cooperation, while establishing a leadership role in those organizations. The PRC promotes strategic messaging by portraying China as a responsible global actor through international organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and through PRC created multilateral regional forums like the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), China-Arab States Cooperation, the China
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Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China
