作者：陀先润
1989年，柏林墙倒塌的那个冬天，北京的中南海里有一批人在认真地思考一个问题：下一步怎么办。
苏联解体了，东欧的共产党政权一个接一个垮掉，全球共产主义运动跌入了历史最低谷。中共自己在那年六月刚刚经历了天安门事件，国际社会的制裁和孤立让北京喘不过气来。与此同时，经营了几十年的海外武装革命布局，也在那几年里陆续走到了尽头：马共1989年解散，缅共1989年分裂，泰共早在八十年代初就已经瓦解。
那一批人得出了一个结论：武装革命这条路走不通了，不是因为理想错了，而是因为工具过时了。要继续扩展影响力，需要换一套工具。
这套新工具在1994年开始成型，内部有一个代号，后来被称为大外宣工程。它的核心思路是：不再用枪，改用钱；不再扶持游击队，改为影响媒体、收买政客、渗透学术界；不再在丛林里打游击，改为在议会大厅里布局。
换句话说，棋盘没有变，棋子的种类变了。
2003年到2004年，大外宣工程进入第二阶段，规模大幅扩展。中联部在这一轮重建里正式转型，从一个支持海外共产党武装斗争的机构，变成了一个系统性影响各国政党、议会和媒体的机构。与此同时，统一战线工作部的海外业务也大幅扩张，开始在全球华人华侨社区里建立更密集的网络。这两个机构分工合作，一个负责影响外国政党和政客，一个负责管控海外华人，共同构成了新时代中共对外渗透的两条主线。
德国是最早意识到这件事的西方国家之一，但即便如此，德国也用了二十年才认识到这一问题。2024年德国宪法保卫局发出警告的时候，中联部已经在德国议会里经营了将近二十年，有议员、有顾问、有各种以学术交流和商业合作为名建立起来的关系网络。那些和中联部有关联的德国政界人士，大多数并不知道自己在和一个情报组织打交道，他们以为自己只是在参加一个正常的国际交流项目，只是在接受一笔合理的演讲费或者咨询费。
这正是新工具和旧工具最大的区别。旧工具，也就是武装革命那套，棋子是知道自己在做什么的，他们有明确的政治信仰，知道自己在为谁战斗，哪怕最后被抛弃，至少曾经清醒过。使用新工具时，许多棋子甚至不知道自己是棋子。他们以为自己在做生意，在做学术，在增进国际理解，实际上已经被编进了一张他们看不见的网里。
澳大利亚是另一个典型案例。2017年，澳大利亚媒体曝光了一系列和中共有关联的政治献金案，多名澳大利亚议员和政党接受了来自有中共背景的华人商人的巨额捐款，其中有人在接受捐款后，在涉及中国的议题上改变了立场。这件事引发了轩然大波，澳大利亚随后修改了外国干预法，把接受外国政府资金并为其利益游说定为刑事犯罪。澳大利亚和中国的关系随之急剧恶化，贸易战打了好几年。
加拿大的情况更复杂。加拿大情报安全局在2023年发布报告，确认中共通过统战部网络干预了加拿大的联邦选举，支持亲北京的候选人，打压对中共持批评态度的政治人物。干预的手段包括向特定选区的华裔选民散布定向信息，组织华人社区团体为特定候选人拉票，以及通过微信群传播针对特定政客的负面内容。这些操作在技术上和五十年代美国唐人街的华人帮会组织动员选民的做法如出一辙，只是平台从街头换成了手机屏幕。
孔子学院是这套新工具里最广为人知的一个，也是最容易被误解的一个。很多人把孔子学院理解为单纯的文化推广机构，或者单纯的情报搜集机构，这两种理解都不完整。孔子学院的核心功能，是在各国高校里建立一个长期存在的关系节点，通过这个节点影响学术讨论的边界，让某些话题变得敏感，让某些研究方向变得困难，同时培养一批对中国持正面态度的学者和学生，让他们成为未来各国政界、学界、媒体界的友好力量。这是一个以十年、二十年为周期的长期投资，不是短期的情报行动。
美国在2019年之后开始大规模关闭孔子学院，目前大部分已经关闭。但孔子学院关掉了，统战部在美国高校里的其他渠道并没有关掉，只是换了名字，换了组织形式，继续存在。
海外华人社区是这套新工具里最容易被忽视的一个维度，也是最深入的一个。统战部在全球华人聚居地区建立了密集的组织网络，以同乡会、商会、学生会、文化协会的名义出现，覆盖了从纽约到悉尼、从多伦多到伦敦的几乎所有主要华人社区。这些组织的功能是多重的：监控海外华人的政治立场，向北京汇报持异见者的活动，在选举期间动员华裔选民支持特定候选人，以及在关键时刻组织华人社区表达对北京政策的支持。
对于住在海外的普通华人来说，这张网是无处不在又几乎看不见的。你参加同乡会的年夜饭，你在微信群里转发春节祝福，你参加商会组织的商务论坛，你不知道这些活动中，有多少与统战部的网络存在关联。你更不知道，如果你在公开场合批评了北京的某项政策，你的名字可能已经被记录在某个地方，等到你的父母或者兄弟姐妹需要在国内办什么事的时候，那个记录会以某种方式发挥作用。
这是一种比枪更有效的控制，因为它不需要任何明显的强制，它靠的是人们对可能后果的模糊恐惧。
华为、中兴这些企业是新工具箱里的另一个重要组成部分。西方国家对华为的担忧不只是技术层面的，不只是担心通讯设备里有后门，更深层的担忧是：当一个国家的关键基础设施大量依赖来自中国的技术和设备，这个国家在面对来自北京的压力时，还有多少独立行动的空间？这种风险并非纯粹的假设，而是现实中的地缘政治问题。
把这些新工具和本系列前面讲的那些旧故事放在一起看，会发现一件令人不安的事：逻辑完全一样。
五十年代，中联部向马共的领导人承诺支持，让他们继续打仗，然后在需要改善和马来西亚关系的时候，一个电话停掉所有援助。今天，统战部向海外华人社区的领袖们提供各种资源和荣誉，让他们在当地社区里为北京发声，然后在他们不再有用或者开始表达独立立场的时候，通过各种渠道施压，让他们知道不合作的代价。
五十年代，中共向法塔赫派遣军事顾问和政治顾问，帮助阿拉法特建立组织架构，但同时保留着随时切割关系的选项。今天，中共通过“一带一路”向发展中国家提供大量贷款，并参与基础设施建设，帮助这些国家的领导人建立政治遗产，但同时在贷款协议里埋下各种条款，确保北京在需要的时候可以把这些关系转化为政治筹码。
棋子的形态变了，棋手的逻辑没有变。
习近平上台之后，这套新工具的使用力度大幅加强，相关行动也变得更加急迫和冒进。原本那些需要以十年、二十年为单位慢慢经营的布局，开始被要求在更短的时间内产生可见的效果。这种急迫性带来了一个意想不到的后果：暴露。
澳大利亚的政治献金案是暴露，加拿大的选举干预报告是暴露，德国的议员被策反是暴露，黑命贵运动背后的中共资金链被追溯是暴露。这些暴露接连发生，不是因为西方情报机构突然变得更聪明，而是因为操作变得太急、太粗，留下了太多可以被追溯的痕迹。
邓小平当年用了几十年的时间，把中共在东南亚的武装革命布局悄悄收掉，没有引发大规模的国际反应。习近平用了不到十年，把几代人辛苦建立的新型渗透网络大规模暴露在西方民主国家的视野之下，触发了一场全球范围内针对中共影响力行动的系统性反制。
这个代价有多大，目前尚难看清其全貌，但可以确定的是，那张花了几十年才织成的网，正在被一个网眼一个网眼地拆开。
但网被拆开之后，那些被编进网里的人怎么办？那些在海外华人社区里参与了统战活动的人，那些接受过中共关联资金的外国政客，那些在孔子学院里工作过的学者，那些在不知情的情况下成为棋子的人。他们的处境，和当年在缅北丛林里的知青、在马来西亚丛林里的马共游击队员在本质上是一样的：他们被编进了一个自己看不清楚的游戏里，等到游戏结束，没有人会替他们收拾残局。
马共的普通战士老死在泰国边境的旅游景点里；缅北的知青回到中国之后两手空空，一无所有。那些今天被卷入统战部网络的棋子，将来会有什么样的结局，历史已经给出了足够清晰的参考答案。
这个系列从缅北丛林里哭着冲锋的年轻人开始，到这里结束。不同的时代，不同的棋子，同一只手，同一个逻辑。
那只手从来没有停过。
编辑：胡景 校对：熊辩 翻译：周敏
Section 8: Changing Faces to Continue — Old Tricks in the New Era
Author: Tuo Xianrun
Abstract: After the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) overseas armed revolutions suffered setbacks, it shifted its external influence strategy from supporting armed struggle to using funds, political relations, media, academia, and overseas Chinese community networks as its primary tools for influence operations. The whole text takes “the forms of the chess pieces have changed, but the logic of the chess player remains unchanged” as its main thread: whether they were the overseas guerrillas of the past, or people participating in relevant political, commercial, academic, and overseas Chinese community activities today, all may be incorporated into a strategy they cannot fully see clearly, and will bear the consequences alone once they lose their utility value.
In 1989, in the winter when the Berlin Wall collapsed, a group of people inside Beijing’s Zhongnanhai was seriously contemplating one question: what to do next.
The Soviet Union had collapsed, Communist regimes in Eastern Europe fell one after another, and the global Communist movement plunged into its lowest historical trough. The CCP itself had just experienced the Tiananmen Square incident in June of that year, and the sanctions and isolation from the international community left Beijing breathless. At the same time, the overseas armed revolution layout operated for decades also reached its end one after another during those years: the Malayan Communist Party dissolved in 1989, the Communist Party of Burma split in 1989, and the Communist Party of Thailand had already collapsed in the early 1980s.
That group of people reached a conclusion: the path of armed revolution was no longer viable—not because the ideal was wrong, but because the tools were outdated. To continue expanding influence, a new set of tools was needed.
This new set of tools began to take shape in 1994, known internally under a code name that was later referred to as the Grand External Propaganda Project (Da Waixuan Project). Its core line of thinking was: no longer use guns, but switch to money; no longer support guerrilla forces, but switch to influencing media, buying off politicians, and penetrating academia; no longer wage guerrilla warfare in the jungles, but switch to laying out operations in parliamentary halls.
In other words, the chessboard did not change; the types of chess pieces changed.
From 2003 to 2004, the Grand External Propaganda Project entered its second phase, expanding significantly in scale. The International Department of the CCP Central Committee officially transformed in this round of reconstruction, changing from an agency supporting overseas Communist armed struggles into an agency systematically influencing political parties, parliaments, and media of various countries. At the same time, the overseas operations of the United Front Work Department also expanded drastically, beginning to establish denser networks within overseas Chinese communities across the globe. These two agencies divided labor and cooperated—one responsible for influencing foreign political parties and politicians, and the other responsible for controlling and managing overseas Chinese—together constituting the two main threads of the CCP’s external penetration in the new era.
Germany was one of the earliest Western countries to realize this, but even so, it took them twenty years. When the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution issued a warning in 2024, the International Department had already been operating in the German parliament for nearly twenty years, possessing members of parliament, advisors, and various networks of relationships established in the name of academic exchanges and commercial cooperation. Most of those German political figures associated with the International Department did not know they were dealing with an intelligence organization; they thought they were merely participating in a normal international exchange project, merely accepting a reasonable lecture fee or consulting fee.
This is precisely the biggest difference between the new tools and the old tools. With the old tools—that is, the set of armed revolutions—the chess pieces knew what they were doing; they had clear political beliefs and knew for whom they were fighting; even if they were abandoned in the end, at least they had once been clear-minded. As for the chess pieces of the new tools, many do not even know they are chess pieces. They think they are doing business, conducting academic research, or enhancing international understanding, when in fact they have already been woven into a net they cannot see.
Australia is another typical case. In 2017, Australian media exposed a series of political donation cases associated with the CCP, in which multiple Australian MPs and political parties accepted huge donations from ethnic Chinese businessmen with CCP backgrounds, some of whom changed their stances on issues involving China after receiving the donations. This incident caused an uproar, and Australia subsequently amended its Foreign Interference Act, making it a criminal offense to accept foreign government funds and lobby for their interests. Relations between Australia and China rapidly deteriorated as a result, leading to a trade war that lasted for several years.
The situation in Canada is even more complex. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service issued a report in 2023 confirming that the CCP interfered in Canadian federal elections through the United Front Work Department network, supporting pro-Beijing candidates and suppressing political figures critical of the CCP. The methods of interference included disseminating targeted information to ethnic Chinese voters in specific ridings, organizing Chinese community groups to canvass for specific candidates, and spreading negative content targeting specific politicians through WeChat groups. Technically, these operations were identical to the practices of Chinese secret societies in American Chinatowns in the 1950s that organized and mobilized voters, except the platform shifted from street corners to mobile phone screens.
The Confucius Institute is one of the most widely known tools in this new set, as well as one of the most easily misunderstood. Many people understand Confucius Institutes merely as cultural promotion institutions or purely as intelligence gathering agencies; both understandings are incomplete. The core function of the Confucius Institute is to establish a long-term node of presence within higher education institutions in various countries, using this node to influence the boundaries of academic discussion, making certain topics sensitive, making certain research directions difficult, and simultaneously cultivating a group of scholars and students with positive attitudes toward China so that they become friendly forces in foreign political, academic, and media circles in the future. This is a long-term investment spanning ten- or twenty-year cycles, not a short-term intelligence operation.
The United States began closing Confucius Institutes on a large scale after 2019, and currently most have been shut down. However, even though Confucius Institutes were closed, the United Front Work Department’s other channels in American universities were not closed; they merely changed their names, changed their organizational forms, and continued to exist.
The overseas Chinese community is one of the most easily overlooked dimensions in this set of new tools, as well as the most deeply ingrained. The United Front Work Department has established dense organizational networks in areas worldwide where ethnic Chinese reside, appearing under the names of hometown associations, chambers of commerce, student associations, and cultural associations, covering almost all major Chinese communities from New York to Sydney, and from Toronto to London. The functions of these organizations are multiple: monitoring the political stances of overseas Chinese, reporting the activities of dissidents to Beijing, mobilizing ethnic Chinese voters during elections to support specific candidates, and organizing Chinese communities at critical moments to express support for Beijing’s policies.
For ordinary ethnic Chinese living overseas, this net is omnipresent yet almost invisible. You attend a hometown association’s New Year’s Eve dinner, you forward Spring Festival wishes in WeChat groups, you attend business forums organized by chambers of commerce—you do not know how much behind these activities is connected to the United Front Work Department’s network. You know even less that if you publicly criticize a policy of Beijing, your name might already be recorded somewhere, and when your parents or siblings need to get something done domestically in China, that record will come into play in some way.
This is a control more effective than guns, because it requires no explicit coercion; it relies on people’s vague fear of potential consequences.
Companies like Huawei and ZTE are another important component in the new toolbox. Western countries’ concerns regarding Huawei are not merely at the technical level—not just worrying about backdoors in communication equipment—the deeper concern is: when a country’s critical infrastructure relies heavily on technology and equipment from China, how much space for independent action does that country still have when facing pressure from Beijing? This question is not a hypothesis; it is a living geopolitical reality.
Looking at these new tools alongside the old stories told earlier in this series, one discovers a disturbing fact: the logic is completely identical.
In the 1950s, the International Department promised support to the leaders of the Malayan Communist Party to keep them fighting, and then, when relations with Malaysia needed improvement, stopped all aid with a single phone call. Today, the United Front Work Department offers various resources and honors to leaders in overseas Chinese communities to make them speak up for Beijing in their local communities, and then, when they are no longer useful or begin to express independent stances, exerts pressure through various channels to let them know the cost of non-cooperation.
In the 1950s, the CCP dispatched military advisors and political advisors to Fatah to help Arafat build an organizational structure, while retaining the option to sever ties at any time. Today, through the “Belt and Road Initiative,” the CCP exports vast amounts of loans and infrastructure to developing countries, helping leaders of these countries build political legacies, while embedding various clauses in loan agreements to ensure Beijing can convert these relationships into political bargaining chips when needed.
The forms of the chess pieces have changed, but the logic of the chess player remains unchanged.
After Xi Jinping came to power, the intensity of using this set of new tools was greatly enhanced, while simultaneously becoming more urgent and aggressive. Operations that originally needed to be cultivated slowly in units of ten or twenty years began to be required to produce visible results in a shorter timeframe. This sense of urgency brought an unexpected consequence: exposure.
Australia’s political donation case was an exposure, Canada’s election interference report was an exposure, the subversion of German MPs was an exposure, and the tracing of CCP funding lines behind the Black Lives Matter movement was an exposure. These exposures occurred one after another, not because Western intelligence agencies suddenly became smarter, but because the operations became too rushed, too crude, leaving behind too many traceable marks.
Deng Xiaoping spent decades back then quietly winding down the CCP’s armed revolution layout in Southeast Asia without triggering a large-scale international reaction. Xi Jinping used less than a decade to expose on a massive scale the new-style penetration network—painstakingly built over several generations—to the view of Western democratic nations, triggering a global, systematic countermeasure against CCP influence operations.
How great this price is cannot yet be seen in its entirety, but what is certain is that the net that took decades to weave is being unraveled mesh by mesh.
But after the net is unraveled, what happens to those who were woven into it? Those who participated in United Front activities in overseas Chinese communities, those foreign politicians who accepted CCP-related funds, those scholars who worked in Confucius Institutes, and those who became chess pieces without knowing it. Their situation is essentially identical to that of the educated youth in the jungles of northern Myanmar and the Malayan Communist Party guerrillas in the jungles of Malaysia back then: they were woven into a game they could not see clearly, and when the game ends, no one will clean up the mess for them.
Ordinary fighters of the Malayan Communist Party died of old age in tourist attractions on the Thai border; the educated youth in northern Myanmar returned to China empty-handed with nothing. What kind of ending will await the chess pieces woven into the United Front Work Department’s network today? History has already provided a sufficiently clear reference answer.
This series began with the young people charging and crying in the jungles of northern Myanmar, and ends here. Different eras, different chess pieces, the same hand, the same logic.
That hand has never stopped.
Editor: Hu Jing Proofreader: Xiong Bian Translator: Zhou Min
