China's "magic weapon"

Here is our first collusion story of the day. Guess who is funding DC think tanks? Bill Gertz reports at The Washington Free Beacon,

China’s Communist Party is intensifying covert influence operations in the United States that include funding Washington think tanks and coercing Chinese Americans, according to a congressional commission report.

The influence operations are conducted by the United Front Work Department, a Central Committee organ that employs tens of thousands of operatives who seek to use both overt and covert operations to promote Communist Party policies.

…The report said the Johns Hopkins School of Advance International Studies, a major foreign policy education and analysis institute, has received funding from Tung Chee-hwa, a vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the party group that directs the United Front Work Department and includes a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the collective dictatorship that rules China.

…In addition to Johns Hopkins, other think tanks linked to China and influential in American policy circles include the Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, Center for American Progress, EastWest Institute, Carter Center, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

…According to the report, Chinese President Xi Jinping has elevated the role of the communist influence organs to promote Chinese communism worldwide.

Xi regards United Front work as a “magic weapon” for use in what he has called the rejuvenation of China.

Since becoming Party general secretary in 2012, Xi has added 40,000 more people to the ranks of the United Front Work Department, and added new departments.

…Former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin, who defected to Australia in 2005, said China uses both coercion and incentives to recruit Chinese students as informants.

Read more here.