A new report used facial-recognition tech to identify the alleged assailants in attacks on anti-CCP demonstrators.
A new report used facial-recognition tech to identify the alleged assailants in attacks on anti-CCP demonstrators.
W hen mobs of pro-Beijing demonstrators beat up activists who protested against Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit last year, there were indications that official Chinese state and Communist Party organs had coordinated their efforts.
On Tuesday afternoon, human-rights groups published the most comprehensive analysis of the street violence to date, identifying a few dozen U.S.-based community organizations that they said were at the sites of these incidents and are linked to Beijing’s “united front” political-influence operations.
“We all see the report as a testament to the strength of our cross-movement solidarity and as a significant step towards exposing the insidious specter of the CCP’s united front,” Pema Doma, the executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, told reporters today.
SFT and the Hong Kong Democracy Council produced the report together, running photographs and videos from the assaults through facial-recognition software and by cross-referencing the results with media reports and websites of united-front organizations.
The report identified 34 instances in which pro-Beijing demonstrators had harassed and assaulted members of groups that protested Xi, victims of which had said that they were beaten to the point of being severely bruised and, in one case, knocked out.
The advocacy groups said that they hope the report will tee up a federal investigation into the attacks in San Francisco and educate law enforcement about the tactics employed by CCP-tied organizations that appeared to work in coordination with one another.
As pro-Xi partisans chased the protesters across San Francisco for four days last year, the city’s law enforcement rarely intervened. While the FBI has, according to the report, conducted interviews with some of the individuals who were attacked, it’s not clear if a broader criminal probe is underway.
HKDC executive director Anna Kwok, who was at the protests, and on whose head the Hong Kong authorities placed a $138,000 bounty for information leading to her arrest, said that she sat for one of those interviews but that she believes the FBI has not interviewed more than ten people. The DOJ declined to comment. The FBI said: “In keeping with DOJ policy, the FBI can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”
“There have not really been any public statements from the State Department or from the DOJ even about the transnational repression, the assaults, intimidation, and harassment that took place last November,” Kwok said.
United-front work is a strategy that the Communist Party has long used to influence non-CCP members to advance Beijing’s interests. The House Select Committee on the CCP describes it as “a unique blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations” carried out by a range of actors. It is often difficult to conclusively describe specific activities as united-front work, given that the people who participate tend to carry out ostensibly legal activities and infrequently publicize their direct affiliation with party organs.
Brian Kern, the lead researcher on the report, said today that “there are quite a few types of groups in the U.S. that are commonly regarded as having links to the Chinese government or the CCP.” He said that some indications that a U.S.-based group might be conducting united-front work include its members’ having direct ties to the Chinese government or United Front Work Department, participating in official government or party events in China, and hosting CCP officials in the U.S.
Kern added that there was no evidence of participation by officials from the United Front Work Department but “we have evidence of ties between these united-front groups in the U.S. and these organs in China.”
Some of the U.S.-based groups had traveled to San Francisco from across the country, including from Southern California, Oregon, and New York. The report said that they had ties to united-front entities in China, such as the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and the China Overseas Friendship Association. Additionally, several chapters of the U.S.-based Association for the Peaceful Reunification of China took part in the demonstrations, according to the report.
These groups are understood by analysts to be subsidiaries of a United Front Work Department branch called the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo designated the Washington, D.C., chapter of the association as a foreign mission in 2020.
China’s diplomatic corps, meanwhile, is believed to have played a role in organizing and coordinating the travel of pro-Beijing demonstrators to San Francisco for the summit.
Hong Kong Democracy Council and Students for a Free Tibet published emails showing that the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles had notified a few chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association — a collegiate group that is believed to report to China’s embassy and its consulates across America — about Xi’s trip and informed them that they were invited to San Francisco.
“This message also said that all travel, accommodation, and food expenses would be covered, notified students that this ‘glorious mission’ was a significant duty, and advised addressees not to share the contents of the message with others,” the report stated. China’s embassy in Washington did not respond to an email seeking comment.