Abstract
Intelligence acquisition has played a
decisive role in the emergence of China as the second most powerful nation in
the world after the United States. The rich cultural heritage coupled with the
largest population and influential diasporas has phenomenally contributed
towards providing launchpads for Chinese innocuous human intelligence
operations through their unique ‘policy of thousand grains of sand or mosaic
approach or human wave or citizen spying’. A phenomenal expansion in terms of
overseas centres/offices was observed for uniting Chinese diasporas and
citizens/students studying abroad. Several cultural institutes were also closed
in advanced countries due to their involvement in spreading propaganda,
limiting academic freedom and stealing vital academic research. Like China,
India too has equivalent cultural diplomacy resources in terms of cultural
heritage and human resources, both within the country and abroad which can be
tapped for augmenting its intelligence capabilities.
Introduction
Human Intelligence
(HUMINT) is a process of gathering intelligence by specially trained
personnel through interpersonal contact and engagement. Public diplomacy or
people’s diplomacy, in its new avatar, has incredibly augmented the number of
stakeholders from a few government officials to individuals/groups ranging from
civil society, pressure groups, political parties, media, academics, diasporas,
policymaking elites, think tanks, etc. Cultural diplomacy is a type
of public diplomacy that entails the ‘exchange of ideas, information,
art, language and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples to
foster mutual understanding’.1
Former Chinese President Hu Jintao,
while emphasising the relevance of Chinese culture said that “Cultural
dominance was critical not only to maintain strong domestic cohesion but also
to expand China’s soft power influence abroad and win against the competition”.2 China has tried to project its image globally
by increasing its visibility and familiarity through cultural diplomacy.
Initially, these activities were directed towards its largest and most
influential 60 mn global diasporas (2014 estimates) settled in more than 150
countries. Subsequently, it was expanded to include a foreign audience. Post
Deng Xiaoping reforms; a paradigm shift in China’s attitude towards overseas
Chinese was observed wherein the prism of suspicion was replaced by the
contributor of China’s growth/development. The tech revolution coupled with the
free global movement of people for study, research, business, and tourism has
further facilitated China in establishing communication with diasporas and
increasing their global human footprints.
While relating the mind-set of Indian
and Chinese leaders with respective strategy games i.e., chess and go, Raghu Raman (founder of National Intelligence Grid) said
“Strategists learn about adversaries by observing their actions and statements,
interpreting their behaviour, and studying their leaders. But the more astute
understand the enemy’s mindset by studying their culture. Leaders and tactics
may change, but strategies and doctrines are embedded in the culture and
mindset of a nation and are, therefore, far better predictors of their
actions”.3
Chinese
Global HUMINT Operations through Cultural Diplomacy
Post-1979,
the Chinese intelligence focus shifted from inward to outward. Despite
accessibility to economical and less risky means of technological intelligence,
China has subtly achieved phenomenal success in HUMINT collection through
cultural diplomacy.
Contrary to traditional HUMINT
collection by a few specialised agents, the Chinese intelligence agencies use a
policy of thousand grains of sand or mosaic approach or human wave or citizen
spying4,
wherein they employ several amateur ethnic Han people/diasporas settled abroad.
Chinese HUMINT operations are the first in modern times to use the whole of
society as a foundation. The Chinese approach does not require a bad person
with negative vulnerabilities for espionage but requires a good person or an immature
intelligencer, and subject experts. This
unique Chinese method has also been able to convince the world regarding the
non-involvement of the state. Paul Moore, while explaining the difference said
that if a beach were a target, the Russians would discreetly send in a
submarine and frogmen to collect several buckets of sand during the night. The
United States (US) would use satellites to produce reams of data. The Chinese
would send in a thousand tourists to the beach on holiday and in return they would
be asked to shake out their towels.5
The Chinese intelligence operations
prefer ethnic Chinese over others wherein a nationalistic/personal sentiment of
helping China become the country they would want to be is leveraged to
cultivate potential agents. The Chinese HUMINT operations are
relationship-centric, wherein obligations, roles, and relationships are central
issues used by Chinese intelligence agencies. While interacting with the Han
people three important concepts are observable in essentially every Chinese
human collection operation targeting Han. They are guanxi (social
network), face, and shame.6 The Chinese spying and attempts to steal
American technology are growing so fast that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case
roughly every 10 hours.7 The
Chinese are also using overseas students in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
for spying purposes through student associations. The association allegedly has
42 local organisations and 2,20,000 members.8
Chinese
HUMINT Operations and Cultural Diplomacy
Cultural
diplomacy has facilitated China in the settlement of sizable Chinese citizens
abroad and re-establishing connections with its diaspora. The Ministry of State
Security, Ministry of Public Security, and the Intelligence Bureau are
primarily responsible for Chinese HUMINT operations. However, the HUMINT
operations through cultural diplomacy are carried out under the cloak of
Chinese cultural organisations.
The United Front Works Department (UFWD)
acts as the nerve centre for contacting its citizens/diasporas abroad. After
Xi’s ascension, the role of UFWD was expanded to strengthen his leadership,
spread ideology, and ensure China’s national rejuvenation.9 UFWD regarded its overseas population as a
fertile ground for its operations. Xi referred to “UFWD as an important magic
weapon for the party’s victory, to co-opt Chinese diaspora communities, build
relationships with Western enablers, and make the foreign serve the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) and its goals”.10 China has also established an Overseas Chinese
Affairs Office, which is an Overseas Expert Advisory Committee and contributes
to China’s modernisation by giving policy recommendations/feedback on its
policies towards overseas Chinese.
Chinese Students and Scholars
Association (CSSA) under UFWD is the largest official organisation for overseas
Chinese students/scholars. CSSA is primarily responsible for helping
students/scholars abroad and bringing them together. CSSA under the cloak of
spreading Chinese culture plays a crucial role in monitoring the thoughts and
behaviours of Chinese students in foreign universities, limiting academic
freedom, prescribing correct speech and harassing anti-Chinese speakers. CSSA’s
task also entails ensuring Chinese students remain patriotic and supportive of
CCP rule. A demonstration welcoming Chinese PM Li Keqiang in Australia (Apr
2017), protests against a Dalai Lama speech at California University (Jun
2017), and denouncing Chinese student speech at Maryland University (May 2017),
are some examples of aggressive CSSA activities.
Confucius Institutes (CIs)/Confucius
Classrooms (CCs), opened in 2004 are flagship non-profit global educational
programs to teach Chinese language, culture, and history in partnership with a
foreign university for the projection of soft power. The CIs/CCs were set up as
partner organisations in foreign universities/schools abroad, but the Chinese
government retains complete control over them.11 The CI are the velvet glove around the iron
fist of their campaigns on their campuses responsible for spreading China’s
political agenda, suppressing academic debate and stealing vital academic
research.12 Michel-Juneau Katsuya (retired senior Canadian
intelligence officer) has gone to the extent of describing the CI as a Trojan
horse, operating as a satellite spy offices in Canada.13 Within 15 years (2004 to 2018), their global
footprint has exponentially expanded to approximately 540 CI and approximately
1200 CC. Several CIs/CCs were closed in the recent past due to a lack of
transparency and disregard for key tenets of academic freedom, censorship,
propaganda, and espionage activities.
To regain control of the narrative, the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced two developments in Jun 2020:
n It shifted oversight for the global
network of Confucius centres to a new non-governmental organisation (Chinese
International Education Foundation); and
n It renamed the former Confucius Institute
Headquarters (Hanban) to the Centre for Education and Cooperation, ending its
involvement in Confucius Institute funding.14
China Association for International
Friendly Contact (CAIFC), established in 1984, is a national social
organisation devoted to fostering international and regional people-to-people
friendly exchanges and enhancing world peace and development. It is
administered by both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Civil Affairs to
respond to the requirements of reform and opening up of the economy. CAIFC
performs the dual roles of intelligence collection and conducting propaganda
and perception management campaigns.15 CAIFC with tentacles in more than 70 countries
has established extensive ties with foreign organisations and individuals
related to culture, education, think tanks, media, arts, and religion. It has
also sponsored a wide variety of cultural centres abroad to establish the image
of China as a friendly country, tell stories about China, make Chinese voices
heard, bring traditional Chinese culture and contemporary values to the world,
and build a bridge for mutual learning between world civilisations.
Chinese Institutes of Contemporary
International Relations and the Chinese Institute for International and
Strategic Studies are some of the Chinese intelligence think tanks which host
foreign visitors, regularly send scholars delegations abroad and even post
their analysts abroad on visiting fellowships. Such interaction facilitates
direct person-to-person interactions and offers another avenue for open-source
collection.
Fox Hunt is a covert operation started
by President Xi in 2014. The FBI Director said “China describes Fox Hunt as
some kind of international anti-corruption campaign. It is not. Instead, Fox
Hunt is a sweeping bid by Xi to target Chinese nationals who he sees as threats
and who live outside of China, across the world”.16 China has forced several thousand people back
to China and even in the countries like the US, the dissident Chinese are being
hunted down by Chinese agents. China has reportedly established 54 overseas police
stations on five continents to track and harass dissidents. Between Apr 2021 to
Jul 2022, Chinese authorities claimed that 2,30,000 Chinese nationals had been
successfully persuaded to return to China to face criminal proceedings for
their actions.17 Bangladesh is the only South Asian nation to
have hosted overseas Chinese police stations. China has reportedly closed its overseas police stations in the
Netherlands and Czechoslovakia in 2022. The Overseas Chinese Assistance
Centres established to assist the Chinese diaspora globally are also
indulging in activities of espionage, curbing dissent, and identifying overseas
pro-democracy Chinese supporters. Out of 14 Overseas Chinese Assistance
Centres in Asia, one is in Sri Lanka. China is also operating a so-called
black site or detention jail for dissidents, corruption suspects, or ethnic
minorities like the Tibetans or Uyghurs in Dubai. BBC’s Newsnight has also
identified multiple cases of targeting exiled Uyghurs by authorities in
Muslim-majority countries i.e., Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt, in collaboration
with Beijing. The Uyghur Human Rights
Project has counted 395 cases of Uyghurs sent to China since 1997. The
Vatican is also reportedly receiving USD 2 bn from China for maintaining its
silence on the Chinese repression of religious freedom.18
Consequent to the intensive drive to
attract its students back, a phenomenal surge in the return of students was
witnessed. As per the Chinese Education Ministry, in 2017, out of 6,08,000
Chinese students who went overseas, 79 per cent returned to China which is
comparably much more than the returnee figure of 5 per cent in 1987 and 30.6
per cent in 2007. However, a marginal effect has been noted towards its
diasporas or overseas Chinese.
A paradigm shift in China’s approach
towards diasporas is seen, wherein from key sources of capital and technology,
the overseas Chinese are now seen
as critical enablers of ambitious BRI projects. The officials have started to
see the diaspora not only as a key conduit for high-end technology through
involvement in Chinese-led multi-national technology development initiatives
but also as a way to realise broader geo-economic ambitions. In 2016,
authorities began to hold an annual business conference for overseas Chinese
involved in the BRI.19
The concept of sister cities or city
diplomacy was started by China in 1973 to promote and strengthen
people-to-people contact between cities in China and other countries. After the
ascension of Xi Jinping and the launch of the BRI project in 2013, a steep rise
in the new agreement particularly in BRI countries was witnessed. Today, out of
approximately 2,600 sister cities, more than 700 cities form part of BRI. Under
this agreement commercial, cultural, and social ties at a municipal level and
with business leaders are strengthened. The PRC also views sister cities as a
means to defuse tensions, reverse negative stereotypes and push more favourable
views of China. The focus of these agreements may vary, but they often entail a
commitment to increasing trade relations, sponsoring cultural festivals and
exhibitions, partnerships on issues of mutual interest, as well as knowledge
sharing and capacity building at the grassroots level.20
Chinese intelligence agencies have been
successful in cultivating several students for influence/espionage activities
through educational scholarships either by attracting international students to
China or by sending its citizens abroad for studies on scholarship. US
intelligence has already warned that China is using student spies to steal
secrets.22 To increase awareness, interest, and
opportunity amongst educationists, China is trying to establish a close
relationship with the educationists by either organising their China trip or
providing free teachers at the college/school level to teach Mandarin.
As an integral part of a hub and spokes
policy, the BRI has emerged as a keel to its public diplomacy endeavour,
through which China aims to attain an enviable position wherein she can monitor
and control the world. After the colossal success of cultural diplomacy towards
advanced countries, China has shifted its cultural diplomacy focus towards BRI
countries through various cultural diplomacy instruments.
Recommendations
Comparatively,
India has far more cultural diplomacy resources than China for executing global
HUMINT operations. Unfortunately, India appears to be lagging behind China and
there is an inescapable requirement of understanding the innocuous means of
Chinese intelligence collection through cultural diplomacy for devising means
to counter China’s growing footprints and learning from their modus operandi. A
comprehensive integrated mechanism on the part of India is required to reap the
benefits of the inherent cultural diplomacy capabilities available to India.
The recommendations are as follows:
n Substitute CIs/CCs (or its substitute
organisation Chinese International Education Foundation), with Taiwan Education Centres to promote the Chinese
language and customs in India and abroad to
counter Chinese leadership without annoying Chinese people.
n Monitor and review the espionage and
propaganda activities of UFWD, CIs/CCs, CSSA, and CAIFC through cultural
centres, educational institutes, political parties, think tanks, tech giants,
and business communities in India and abroad.
n Monitor activities and expansion of
Chinese overseas police stations, Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, and Overseas
Chinese Assistance Centres.
n Improve the Global Diplomacy Index and use
Indian cultural centres along with tech giants to strengthen relationships with
Indian diasporas and project India’s image as Vishwaguru (world leader).
n Revival of our own education policy to
instil pride amongst citizens in our country and integrate development with
culture to promote transnational religious
circuits in India.
n Develop quality
educational infrastructure to promote emerging foreign leaders as students in
Indian universities.
n Monitor the footprints of Operation
Foxhunt against Tibetans and Uyghurs. Create capabilities to ensure the return
of Indian fugitives abroad.
Conclusion
Chinese
with the largest population and diasporas have undoubtedly proved conducive
cultural diplomacy can create an enabling environment for innocuous HUMINT
operations abroad. The HUMINT acquired through cultural diplomacy has
significantly contributed towards China’s emergence as the second-largest
economic power without raising suspicion of state involvement. Post-2013, BRI
has emerged as the veil for global Chinese HUMINT operations and directly
affects Indian strategic interest in its backyard.
India despite having inherent potential
for cultural diplomacy has not been able to reap the benefits. Fortunately,
China is witnessing negative indicators in various instruments of cultural
diplomacy i.e., negative population growth, decreasing global popularity,
closure of cultural institutions, and rising attacks on the Chinese population.
Contrarily, Indian cultural diplomacy instruments are witnessing an upward
trend. The present environment creates an ideal window of opportunity for
countering Chinese cultural expansion in India’s area of interest.
Endnotes
1 “Cultural Diplomacy,
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2 Falk Hartig, “How China Understands Public
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3 Raghu Raman, “China Has Been Playing Go, Not
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4 Peter Mattis, “China’s Misunderstood
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5 David Wise, “America’s Other
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https://www.uscc.gov/research/chinas-overseas-united-front-work-background-and-implications-united-states.
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21 Ken
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intelligence officials,” NBC News, February 3, 2020, accessed
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@Col (Dr) DCS Mayal
was
commissioned in 3 Mahar in 1991 and transferred to Intelligence Corps in 1997.
As an Intelligence Corps Officer, he served in various field and staff
intelligence appointments. He is a graduate of Defence Service Staff College
and commanded the Intelligence unit in high altitude area. The Officer has done
his MPhil and Ph.D from Panjab University, Chandigarh on Chinese human
intelligence operations through Public Diplomacy and has also qualified the
University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test for eligibility for
Assistant Professor in Defence and Strategic Studies.
Journal of the United Service Institution
of India, Vol. CLIII, No.
634, October-December 2023.