The State Department defended ‘careful’ engagement with the group.
The State Department defended ‘careful’ engagement with the group.
A senior staffer from the State Department office of special climate envoy John Kerry took part in a meeting on U.S.–China climate cooperation in December 2023 alongside a Chinese Communist Party front group flagged by U.S. intelligence, National Review has learned.
That group is the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), a nonprofit that the State Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have accused of working to “co-opt” U.S. government officials.
China analyst John Dotson told National Review that CPAFFC is part of China’s united-front ecosystem, through which the Communist Party uses nongovernmental organizations it controls to dupe foreign audiences into supporting Beijing’s ambitions and control non-Party members.
“The front organizations like this are very useful to the Chinese government in conducting engagement or co-optation or exploitation, often of genuine NGOs in other countries or governments in other countries,” Dotson, the deputy director of the Global Taiwan Institute, said. He said that CPAFFC most likely reports to the Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission, which is China’s top diplomatic arm, and the foreign ministry. “It’s useful for them as a sort of broader, more ongoing effort to continue the puppet show.”
Then–secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned in 2020 that CPAFFC is part of the CCP’s “united front” efforts to influence U.S. state and local officials to support Beijing’s aims.
In 2022, ODNI’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center echoed that warning and said that CPAFFC has used “sister city” agreements with unsuspecting municipalities in the U.S. to induce them to accept China’s claims to Taiwan.
Mary Kissel, Pompeo’s top State Department adviser, slammed the Biden administration’s willingness to interact with a United Front Work Department group. “No U.S. administration should engage with a representative of a United Front operation,” said Kissel, now executive vice president at Stephens Inc. “Doing so only gives credence to an organization whose mission is to undermine free societies and promote Communist China’s agenda.”
The climate meeting in question took place on December 8 on the sidelines of the annual U.N. climate conference in Dubai. CPAFFC official Shen Xin spoke at the meeting, according to a summary posted online by the meeting’s host, Energy Foundation China, a group with offices in Beijing and San Francisco. The summary refers to Shen as CPAFFC’s top official in its America and Oceania department.
The gathering was described as a “track two,” or backchannel, dialogue involving governmental and nongovernmental figures.
The Kerry staffer, Reed Schuler, also spoke at the meeting, per the summary. Schuler was filling in for deputy climate envoy Rick Duke. While Kerry’s team has resisted efforts by lawmakers and watchdog groups to reveal the names of staffers in the climate envoy’s office, Energy Foundation China described Schuler as executive director of management and implementation.
The EFC has itself attracted scrutiny in recent weeks. Several House committees launched an investigation into the organization, pointing out that a number of its staffers hold “significant ties to the Chinese government” and that EFC donates to U.S.-based climate advocacy groups.
Neither Energy Foundation China nor the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries responded to requests for comment.
Several of the other participants in the December meeting were local and state-level government officials from the U.S., in addition to representatives from academia and business in the U.S. and China.
Former deputy climate envoy Jonathan Pershing also attended the meeting in his capacity as the head of the climate division of the Hewlett Foundation, a philanthropic organization. In 2022, Pershing attended an event hosted by a different united-front organization.
Kissel questioned the premise of any engagement with Beijing on climate: “Communist China had never fulfilled its climate commitments. What objective does a track-two dialogue serve, other than allow Beijing more time to break its promises?”
Dotson also said that he’s skeptical that negotiating with China on climate change will be productive. “But I certainly hope that anyone from the State Department engaging in dialogues like this goes in with their eyes wide open and doesn’t really believe that they’re dealing with Chinese NGOs.”
Schuler’s participation in the December meeting comes amid what appears to be a general willingness by Foggy Bottom to engage directly with CCP front groups amid the Biden administration’s efforts to “stabilize” the U.S.–China relationship. U.S. ambassador to China Nick Burns met with CPAFFC president Yang Wanming last November after President Biden and general-secretary Xi held talks in San Francisco, according to a page on the association’s website.
A State Department spokesperson, in the Biden administration’s first public comments defending its contact with Chinese Communist Party front groups, said that the point of Schuler’s participation in the meeting alongside CPAFFC was to “share views with a range of US and PRC participants present, and not to engage in particular with any one of the many organizations represented.”
This spokesperson added that “the United States is realistic and careful about each interaction with Chinese Communist Party–affiliated organizations, including CPAFFC,” another CCP front group, and the Party’s International Liaison Department.
State maintains that it is vigilant in all of its interactions with CPAFFC.
“Conducting diplomacy in the PRC means we have to talk to the CCP in order to advance U.S. interests,” the spokesperson said. “We believe it is better to engage so we know what organizations like CPAFFC are doing and who in the United States they are talking to.”
During the Trump era, CPAFFC sought to urge state and local U.S. officials to pressure the federal government to drop Trump’s tariffs on China. More recently, amid the broader downturn in relations between the two countries, CPAFFC’s overtures to state and local officials have focused on climate-related issues.
In November, CPAFFC president Yang met with California governor Gavin Newsom during his trip to China that month, and CPAFFC hosted a climate meeting in tandem with a research institute at the University of California, Berkeley.
Kerry previously interacted with CPAFFC during his tenure in the Biden administration, according to the Daily Caller, by joining a webinar hosted by the group in 2021.