(Radio Free Asia) - The ruling Chinese Communist Party is expanding its operations far beyond China's borders, setting up branches to control the thinking of students and state employees overseas, to defend its citizens against "bad ideas," and to recruit new members, RFA has learned.
Party branches, or cells, have long been a feature of political life in mainland China, but are increasingly being used as a vehicle for the expansion of the party's United Front ideological campaign, which seeks to bring specific groups of people into the party's fold, as well as keeping tabs on what they are doing, saying and even thinking.
Last year, the University of Science and Technology in the northeastern city of Dalian reported on its website that seven of its overseas students at the University of California, Davis had set up a Communist Party branch at the school, which held its inaugural meeting on Nov. 4 with the theme "combating various kinds of negative influences on our thinking while overseas."
The party branch was formed by Chinese students from several different universities, and plans to attract new members and provide "care and warmth" to patriotic Chinese studying at the college.
The group will meet twice a month, and study the "latest ideological thinking" from the administration of President Xi Jinping, Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper reported.
Similar reports have emerged of party branches being set up by Chinese students last year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as campuses in Ohio, New York, Connecticut, North Dakota, and West Virginia, according to a recent report from the U.S.-based journal Foreign Policy.
Party branches, or cells, have long been a feature of political life in mainland China, but are increasingly being used as a vehicle for the expansion of the party's United Front ideological campaign, which seeks to bring specific groups of people into the party's fold, as well as keeping tabs on what they are doing, saying and even thinking.
Last year, the University of Science and Technology in the northeastern city of Dalian reported on its website that seven of its overseas students at the University of California, Davis had set up a Communist Party branch at the school, which held its inaugural meeting on Nov. 4 with the theme "combating various kinds of negative influences on our thinking while overseas."
The party branch was formed by Chinese students from several different universities, and plans to attract new members and provide "care and warmth" to patriotic Chinese studying at the college.
The group will meet twice a month, and study the "latest ideological thinking" from the administration of President Xi Jinping, Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper reported.
Similar reports have emerged of party branches being set up by Chinese students last year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as campuses in Ohio, New York, Connecticut, North Dakota, and West Virginia, according to a recent report from the U.S.-based journal Foreign Policy.
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| There are Communists under every bed. Always vet your girlfriend. |
Much of the information about the party's overseas activities is in the public domain.
Last October, the Zhejiang Daily News reported that the Zhejiang-based Yiwu Industrial & Commercial College had "established a number of temporary party branches overseas," to serve its students studying abroad.
The school has established three "temporary party branches" in Canada, Singapore, and New Zealand, in the hope of achieving "full coverage" for the party’s education and management of foreign students, it said.
One of the branches was set up at the Canadore College of Applied Arts and Science & Technology in Ontario, Canada, where several Yiwu students are expected to study annually, the report said.
"The party members are in a foreign country and their feeling for the motherland is strong," the report said.
'All manner of bad ideas'
Meanwhile, Yiwu business school lecturer Shao Shunling said he is currently the secretary of the college's temporary party branch in New Zealand.
"When you leave [China], the environment is different, and one will inevitably come into contact with all manner of bad ideas," Shao is quoted as saying in the report, which appears on the Yiwu college's official website.
Regular party activities act as an ideological line of defense against such bad ideas, Shao said.
Many of those who run the party cells are teachers sent to overseas universities as part of academic exchange programs. Yiwu alone has 35 teachers working overseas, 23 of whom are party members.
Last summer, the Beijing Institute of Technology set up a temporary party cell in order to boost the ideological education of 36 students on a research trip to the U.S., Germany and Japan, the university reported on its website. During the trip, one of the research students lodged an application to join the party with the branch, it said.
The practice also extends to groups of employees of the Chinese state working overseas, according to online statements on the websites of state-owned enterprises.
Read More . . . . "When you leave [China], the environment is different, and one will inevitably come into contact with all manner of bad ideas," Shao is quoted as saying in the report, which appears on the Yiwu college's official website.
Regular party activities act as an ideological line of defense against such bad ideas, Shao said.
Many of those who run the party cells are teachers sent to overseas universities as part of academic exchange programs. Yiwu alone has 35 teachers working overseas, 23 of whom are party members.
Last summer, the Beijing Institute of Technology set up a temporary party cell in order to boost the ideological education of 36 students on a research trip to the U.S., Germany and Japan, the university reported on its website. During the trip, one of the research students lodged an application to join the party with the branch, it said.
The practice also extends to groups of employees of the Chinese state working overseas, according to online statements on the websites of state-owned enterprises.
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