The man who shot several people at a Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in California, killing one, has ties to the United Front Work Department, the Chinese Communist Party’s political-influence bureau, according to Radio Free Asia:
California church killer David Chou has close ties to a Taiwan ‘peaceful reunification’ group linked to the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, a body that has been designated a representative of a foreign government by the U.S. government, according to a report on its founding ceremony.
Chou, who opened fire on a Taiwanese lunch banquet at the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Irvine, CA on May 15, killing one person and injuring five others before being restrained, was pictured at the setting up of the Las Vegas Association for China’s Peaceful Unification on April 2, 2019, holding up a banner calling for the “eradication of pro-independence demons,” according to an April 3, 2019 report on the Chinese LVNews website.
The group — whose president Gu Yawen warned the people of Taiwan that ‘peaceful unification is the only way to avoid war’ in his inaugural speech — is a local branch of the National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification (NACPU) under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s United Front Work Department.
As the RFA report also noted, the State Department in 2020 designated the NACPU as a foreign mission “to make clear that their messages come from Beijing.”
The UFWD is a tremendously important party bureau that plays a central role in exerting the party’s will over non-party members across China and abroad. It carries out acts of repression targeting minorities in the country, as well as political interference and disinformation efforts in Western democracies.
The issue of Chou’s identity is a complicated one — he’s reportedly from Taiwan but holds pro-Beijing views on China’s efforts to engulf the country. Whatever the circumstances of his background, his ties to a United Front group are significant and warrant more attention. The RFA report establishes a noteworthy link between the party’s foreign influence apparatus and a mass shooting on U.S. soil.
That scrutiny ought to be very discerning, however, as SpyTalk’s Matthew Brazil, an expert on Chinese espionage, cautioned yesterday: “It’s doubtful that the NACPU instigated Chou to perpetrate such a blatant, self-incriminating act. The CCP would likely see such an act as antithetical to its interests.”
In any case, this link, and not the progressive anti-AAPI hate narrative, ought to be the main focus of any discussion surrounding the incident, which has already fallen out of the national headlines.