BACKSTORY - Uncovering Beijing's Worldwide Influence Operations

The year I left Beijing, 2017, was the year China passed a National Intelligence Law requiring every citizen and organization at every level to assist with state intelligence work.

In the years that followed, China's all-encompassing approach to intelligence and influence operations was becoming more evident not only in China, but also in the rest of the world. I witnessed that change during five years working for thinktanks in Germany and co-wrote a book about aspects of the phenomenon before becoming a Newsweek journalist.

A desire to shed light on something that was happening around the world but usually going unperceived locally helped to inspire me to report Newsweek's Covert China Series, working on three continents for four stories.

The pieces uncover what China under the Communist Party is doing overseas to achieve its stated goal of superpower status and global dominance by 2049—and how it is doing it.

Every state has intelligence agencies. But intelligence in China isn't like elsewhere. In addition to defending national sovereignty as most countries do, the new intelligence law protects "state power." Since the Communist Party of China leads a "people's democratic dictatorship" in a party-state system, that means the power of the CCP.

In stark contrast to democracies that aim to separate powers, the law aims to fuse things—for example to "combine open work with secret work" and to involve specialist agencies as well as the masses. In China today state security is a sweeping concept, encompassing traditional issues such as defence but also economic development and even "cultural security."

But what does this mean for the people of China? And what does this politicized approach to secrecy and action mean for the rest of the world? How can it be reported in a fair and neutral way that does not pander to stereotypes or panic-mongering?

In the first story of the series, we looked at technology transfer to China, focusing on the example of Israel as a close U.S. ally with rapid deepening ties to Beijing over recent years. China prizes the country's start-ups and AI technologies.

Through extensive research and analysis of Chinese-language government, research and company documents and many interviews – some of them conducted in Israel itself – I was able to piece together a granular picture of a suite of methods used by China's vast technology spotting and transfer system in one country.

The second story was on global trade, specifically, how a Chinese state-owned enterprise, COSCO, showed Beijing's determined efforts to increase not just its exports, but to manage large parts of world shipping to Beijing's political and strategic advantage.

On the ground and in interviews, in the ports of Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven in Germany, it was impossible to miss how sea transportation, trans-shipment, rail, road, logistics, storage, security and military interests interconnected and how China was seeking to merge its systems overseas to create control.

But it was also hard to penetrate the secrecy, and China wasn't the only challenge. German officials and companies declined to answer important questions or share the content of concession agreements with two of China's biggest SOEs, COSCO and China Logistics, even though the deals were struck by publicly owned companies in Germany.

The third story focused on the long arm of China's massive security systems on overseas individuals, specifically in the U.S.

Making a surprise visit, I found officials less than forthcoming at the premises of an association in Manhattan that Newsweek identified as part of China's sprawling United Front system and a proxy for Public Security Bureau work.

Where Chinese officials were reticent, however, official sources in China often spoke of the activities in the United States with pride.

Working with a specialist researcher, we identified 627 civil society organisations in the U.S. that have formal or very close ties to the Communist Party's United Front and therefore can be called on to assist it.

But there was also a very human aspect to this story—growing attempts by the Chinese security state to harass individuals living legally in the U.S. They told me of their fears of harassment and violence—potentially deadly violence. Contacts and friendships built up over decades in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan helped me find people willing to speak, if not always to give their names in fear of retribution.

For the last story in the series, we focused on China's global plans to build relationships that could allow it to secure overseas footholds for its military through formal bases or looser security agreements—with a focus on the South Pacific, where China is evidently working hard to upstage the U.S. and its allies.

This also fit with the publication at the end of 2022 of two major research reports in the US—one by a think tank and one by the government—that themselves identified likely bases. There was also invaluable assistance from other seasoned analysts, including in India.

Again, a deep dive into Chinese-language documents and reports enabled a granular take on the situation via extensive interviews, published opinions and research, maps and more.

All the stories are heavily interlinked—technology transfer is systemic and assisted by influence efforts that feed China's economy and state and commercial connections to global research. Due to the existence of giant and powerful state-owned enterprises and a military-civil fusion system, China's commercial trade and military activities are broadly two sides of the same coin. And its overseas reach shows how it tries to influence the way Chinese abroad act and think to support its national—and intelligence—goals.

A thread that ran through all the reporting was the near impossibility in getting any comment from China despite repeated requests to China's foreign ministry and to embassies around the world. The ministry answers select questions at briefings in Beijing, but the situation has become even harder for those who are not in China or not permitted to go—whether because of COVID restrictions or because of deliberately limited access for journalists.

As China expands its efforts abroad, there will undoubtedly be more angles to follow to reveal to the world what is really going on.