New Zealand and the CCP'S "Magic Weapons"

New Zealand is the target of a concerted foreign-influence campaign by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The campaign aims to further the political and economic agendas of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by coopting local elites, securing access to strategic information and resources, and manipulating public discourse. These CCP political-influence activities, which in China fall under the rubric of “united front work,” have also frequently been a means of facilitating espionage. China’s efforts not only threaten New Zealand’s sovereignty, but also are undermining the integrity of the New Zealand political system and the rights of ethnic-Chinese New Zealanders to the freedoms of speech, association, and religion.¹

The PRC is seeking change in the international order. During the 1960s, Mao Zedong’s China promoted itself as the center of world revolution. By contrast, Beijing under current CCP general secretary Xi Jinping aims to lead “Globalization 2.0” by building a China-centered economic order based upon a new economic and strategic bloc known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, sometimes also called One Belt, One Road). Xi Jinping’s assertive foreign policy includes the expansion of united front work, on which the Party is now placing greater importance than at any time since its seizure of power in 1949.² In September 2014, Xi borrowed a term from Mao to describe this work as one of the CCP’s “magic weapons”-a designation also applied to the high-profile domains of Party-building and military activities.³ In May 2015, he presided over the first national conference on united front work in nine years.⁴

One of the key goals of this work is to influence the decision making of foreign governments and societies in China’s favor. Today’s influence activities draw heavily on the policies formulated by Xi’s predecessors, from Mao through Hu Jintao (2002-12), but their aims are more expansive than ever before. This reflects the growing confidence of Xi’s government, as well as its high-stakes strategy for holding on to power by boosting economic growth and tightening control over information. The main categories of influence activities under Xi include, first, increased efforts to exert control over overseas-Chinese communities; second, a renewed emphasis on people-to-people, party-to-party, and enterprise-to-enterprise relations geared toward coopting foreigners into promoting the CCP’s goals; third, a...