The military modernization and technological ambitions of the People’s Republic of China dominate headlines in Washington. Hypersonic missiles, AI breakthroughs, and an expanding navy are the visible symbols of competition with the Chinese Communist Party. But if the United States is serious about long-term competition, it should prioritize — or at least pay equal attention to — the Chinese Communist Party’s other weapon: united front.

Understandably, military power and advanced technology feel urgent and concrete. The united front — a system of political influence, co-optation, and mobilization — sounds abstract.

Yet the Chinese Communist Party’s objective has always been political. Its military and technological advances serve a broader aim: shaping the political environment at home and abroad to achieve its ultimate ambition of replacing the United States as the dominant global power and annexing Taiwan.

America’s objective is to preserve democratic sovereignty, institutional integrity, and the rule of law. These outcomes depend on the resilience of the political environment as much as on military and technological strength. If this competition is ultimately about political power and influence, then the Chinese Communist Party’s primary political weapon deserves equal scrutiny.

The party itself has never treated the united front as secondary. As Mao Zedong put it: “The united front and armed struggle are the two basic weapons for defeating the enemy. … And the Party is the heroic warrior wielding the two weapons, the united front and the armed struggle, to storm and shatter the enemy’s positions.” This prioritization persists today. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized united front work as a central task of the party and warned against the mistaken belief that “doing united front work would not get you great success.”

Armed struggle was not designed to stand alone. It was to be enabled and amplified by political work: building coalitions, neutralizing opponents, and fracturing the enemy camp before the shooting even started.

Today, that political weapon is institutionalized in the party’s United Front Work Department, a powerful organ under the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Its mandate is to build relationships and mobilize groups outside the party, including business leaders, academics, diaspora communities, students, and political elites, and align them, when possible, with Beijing’s objectives.

In my recent report, I document how the Chinese Communist Party has built a network of more than 2,000 organizations across just four democracies: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany. These include hometown associations, chambers of commerce, cultural centers, student organizations, and media outlets.

Not every member is aware of the system’s logic. In fact, many overseas ethnic Chinese people are victims of the Chinese Communist Party’s united front work because the party intentionally targets this community with propaganda, emotional appeals, and sometimes coercion. But at the leadership level, all maintain ties to the united front system. Its day-to-day activities may look benign, but it remains a carefully cultivated network that the party can mobilize when needed. It is directly used as a tool by the party for military-linked cooperation and illicit technology transfer.

On military-linked transfer, for example, Huang Leping was involved in a conspiracy to illegally export high-performance integrated circuits to a subsidiary of the China Electronics Technology Group, a Chinese military-linked state-owned company. She held leadership roles in multiple united front-linked chambers of commerce. This overlap matters. The same chambers of commerce that function as community and business platforms can also provide access, credibility, and insulation for individuals engaged in sensitive technology transfer to the Chinese military.

On technology transfer, the Chinese Communist Party views overseas ethnic Chinese experts as a “treasure trove of talent” and enlists them to either return to the People’s Republic of China or acquire and transfer foreign technology. This is carried out by professional organizations like the Chinese Association for Science and Technology USA, which “facilitate the implementation of technological achievements” from the United States back to China.

One case highlighted in the report was that of Yan Wengui, a research geneticist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who was caught conspiring to steal rice seeds for a visiting Chinese delegation. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, a key united front body later folded into the United Front Work Department, appointed Yan to a consultant committee long before his crime. Not every appointee commits espionage, but it is a way of bringing people into the party’s network. The same infrastructure used for outreach and talent cultivation can, in some cases, intersect with illicit acquisition, blurring the line between influence work and hard-power objectives.

The network also shapes the political environment in which military and technological competition takes place. If lawmakers fear backlash from organized community groups, they may hesitate to take critical actions on military and technology policy. According to an article released by the National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification — a Washington D.C.-based entity controlled by the United Front Work Department — “opposing U.S. arms sales to Taiwan is an important part of overseas pro-reunification efforts.” In other words, influencing U.S. policy debates, including on core security issues, is treated as part of the broader political mission.

If universities internalize the narrative that collaboration is purely academic and apolitical, they may overlook dual-use risks. For example, U.S. researchers have co-authored work with academics affiliated with People’s Liberation Army-linked institutions, including several of the “Seven Sons of National Defense” universities — a group of Chinese universities with longstanding ties to the military and its research and development — on topics ranging from computer vision to autonomous systems. These are areas that have obvious civilian value, but also clear military application. The tendency to view these as purely academic, even when the military affiliations are clearly listed, creates opportunities for the party to access technology with direct military relevance.

If U.S. local officials treat Beijing-linked business associations as ordinary civic actors, scrutiny may be limited. At the state level, reporting in 2023 showed how party-linked intermediaries used civic and academic channels to cultivate relationships with U.S. lawmakers in Utah, organize delegations to China, and promote resolutions aligned with Beijing’s preferred narratives.

The Chinese Communist Party understands that wars are not won by hardware alone: They are won by shaping the terrain — political, social, and institutional — on which hardware is built and deployed. If Beijing sees the united front as fundamental to defeating its adversaries, Washington should treat it as fundamental to defending democracy.

Transparency matters, but transparency alone is not enough. Laws such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act are important tools. Yet enforcement is inconsistent: More than 900 organizations in the United States identified in my research with ties to the united front system are not currently registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Effective implementation should include systematic monitoring of activities, regular compliance audits, and meaningful penalties for violations. Without credible enforcement mechanisms, disclosure risks becoming a procedural formality rather than a deterrent. Disclosure without enforcement does little to change behavior.

More importantly, institutions need knowledge and capacity. State and local officials, university administrators, and corporate compliance teams should understand how united front networks operate and intersect with military-civil fusion, and how political influence can precede technological transfer. Building that capacity is not about stigmatizing communities. It is about safeguarding institutional integrity.

Building this capacity goes beyond country-agnostic rules and procedural safeguards. Institutions, including non-governmental actors like private companies, universities, and civil society organizations, need language capability and familiarity with China’s political and organizational systems to apply safeguards effectively. In practice, this requires professionals who can separate meaningful signals from the background noise of routine engagement.

Three concrete steps can move this effort forward. First, the Foreign Agents Registration Act enforcement should be strengthened and clarified. This includes issuing clearer guidance on when community, business, and cultural organizations engaged in political advocacy must register. A clearer definition of what constitutes “political advocacy” is also necessary, particularly given China’s use of ostensibly non-political engagements to build relationships with local officials and other actors.

Second, enforcement should move from reactive cases to systematic oversight. This means establishing routine audit mechanisms and dedicating investigative resources to influence networks rather than isolated violations. One approach would be to adopt an audit framework similar to tax compliance systems, incorporating third-party auditors to assess reporting accuracy and ensure adherence.

Third, capacity building should extend beyond federal agencies. State and local officials, university administrators, and corporate compliance teams should receive regular briefings, guidance, and training on united front structures, including how they intersect with military-civil fusion and technology transfer risks. This could be implemented through federal outreach programs, grant conditions, and partnerships with professional associations.

Ships and chips matter. But so does the political battlefield on which decisions about ships and chips are made. Ignoring the political terrain that Beijing has already spent decades preparing while focusing solely on visible capabilities ensures a U.S. disadvantage before technological or military competition even begins.

Cheryl Yu is a China studies fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. She is the author of Harnessing the People: Mapping Overseas United Front Work in Democratic States and co-author of Chinese Communist Party Covert Operations Against Taiwan.

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