Cheryl Yu’s Harnessing the People: Mapping Overseas United Front Work in Democratic States presents a systematic examination of how the Chinese Communist Party operationalizes its united front system across four major democracies. By drawing on open-source research, the report identifies more than 2,000 organizations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany that maintain direct or indirect connections to the CCP’s united front apparatus. These organizations constitute a distributed political infrastructure that can be mobilized in support of Party objectives, including national rejuvenation, global influence expansion, and unification with Taiwan.
The report traces the evolution of overseas united front work from Deng Xiaoping’s post–Cultural Revolution reopening to Xi Jinping’s consolidation of a globally oriented influence architecture. Party doctrine defines united front work as a strategic instrument for consolidating allies, neutralizing opposition, and shaping the external environment. Over time, target groups expanded from overseas Chinese elites and business figures to include students, professionals, religious leaders, private-sector actors, and broad categories of diaspora communities. Xi has reinforced the imperative of “uniting Chinese descendants at home and abroad,” integrating diaspora mobilization into China’s broader global governance ambitions.
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