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The United Front Work Department (UFWD) is one of the most important “working organs” of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee. Officially the UFWD’s duty is merely to handle the relations with all Chinese non-Communist Party social groups, individuals and organisations holding social, commercial, or academic influence, or who represent important interests, seeking to ensure that these groups are supportive of and useful to Communist Party rule.

But in fact, its field of activities is much wider. According to a leaked internal “United Front Guide Book" consulted by journalists from the Financial Times, the CCP nicknames the UFWD as its “Magic Weapon". In practice, it is responsible for splitting up its enemies and uniting such non-Communist social groups, wherever they are located, even abroad. The internal manual exhorts UFWD cadres “to be gracious and inclusive” as they try to “unite all forces that can be united” around the world. But it also instructs them to be ruthless by building an “iron Great Wall" against “enemy forces abroad" who are intent on splitting China’s territory or hobbling its development. The UFWD also controls a wide-ranging network of intelligence assets.

The UFWD was created during the Chinese civil war, and was re-established in 1979 under Deng Xiaoping. It expanded the scope of its work internationally during the reform era, and again following the 1989 Tienanmen Square protests. The department includes a bureau tasked with handling Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas affairs, and articulates the importance of using overseas Chinese populations to promote reunification. It is specifically through the UFWD that China is working to absorb Taiwan without having to fire a shot, and similar tactics are used to split Tibetans in exile.

The UFWD is responsible for making alliances with organisations not known to be affiliated with the CCP and working with them to attack the CCP’s enemies. The organisation's structure exhibits the extraordinary breadth of its remit. Its nine bureaux cover almost all of the areas in which the Communist party perceives threats to its power.

Through the UFWD, the CCP provides ideological guidance and exercises authority over the five state-sanctioned “patriotic” religious organisations representing the officially permitted religions in China: Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, and especially Buddhism, China’s largest religion. Of most significance in Himalayan issues is the Buddhist Association of China.

Up until March 2018, the UFWD worked in tandem with the administrative guidance of the Chinese government through the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), the former religious administrative wing of the State Council, which plays an active role in managing ethnic and religious minorities, particularly in Tibet. Since March 2018, SARA has been incorporated directly into the UFWD, meaning that it is no longer a "State agency" but now a Communist one, part of the UFWD Second Bureau. SARA thus continues to exercise control over religious appointments, but in the name of the Party instead of the Government.

The UFWD manages important dossiers concerning foreign countries. These include propaganda, the management of Chinese overseas, the recruiting of agents among the Chinese diaspora (and among sympathetic foreigners), and long-term clandestine operations. Since 2007, the CCP has steadily increased the UFWD budget to further bolster China’s soft power abroad.

Addressing a meeting of senior officials of the UFWD organs in Beijing, in December 2010, Jia Qinglin, then chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and No.4 in the Politburo Standing Committee, stated that “Religious affairs are key to the unity of Chinese society and public governance”, urging more efforts in investigating the new problems and perennial difficulties of the management of religious affairs, to lay the foundation for improved policy and legislation.

Chinese leaders have lauded the United Front but none more so than Xi Jinping, who made several moves in 2014 and 2015 to upgrade the status and power of the organisation. He expanded the scope of United Front work, and established a Leading Small Group dedicated to United Front activity, signifying a direct line of command from the politburo to United Front. In designating the United Front as a movement for the “whole party”, Xi has overseen a sharp increase since 2015 in the number of United Front assignees to posts at the top levels of party and state.

It is a known fact that the UFWD definitely operates like an intelligence service, both inside the country and abroad. Almost all Chinese embassies now include staff formally tasked with United Front work. The UFWD dedicates itself to compromising the elites within foreign nations, i.e. targeting for subversion those who steer countries or groups culturally, ideologically and politically. 

According remarks made by U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger in October 2020, the CCP’s victory in the Chinese civil war owed less to its military strength against the Kuomintang than to its ability to infiltrate and manipulate its adversaries’ language, thinking, and actions. The UFWD system, he said, “is a gigantic government function with no analogue in democracies.” The CCP’s 90 million members are all required to support its activities. The UFWD has quadruple the number of cadres as the U.S. State Department has foreign-service officers. But rather than practicing diplomacy with foreign governments, the UFWD gathers intelligence about, and works to influence, overseas private citizens. The focus is on foreign elites and the organizations they run. “Think of a United Front worker as a cross between an intelligence collector, a propagandist, and a psychologist.”

One bureau of the UFWD is responsible for work in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and among about 60 million overseas Chinese in more than 180 countries. Another bureau has Tibet in its remit, it looks after Tibetan day-to-day domestic policy as well as watching out for any aspects of the Tibetan issue abroad, including the fate of Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje.

The UFWD and its delegates carry out on-site inspections with institutions and persons concerned, even located abroad, to ensure that they correctly support and comply with the policy priorities of the CCP. For instance with people related to the Karmapa. For instance, the Toronto-based Han cleric Dayi Shi (达义法师) was inspected on 7 July 2017 in his huge Cham Shan temple, by a delegation of 25 people, including BAC VP Jing Hui (净慧长老), and SARA Deputy Director Jiang Jian-yong (蒋坚永). It happened just a few weeks after Dayi Shi welcomed Ogyen Trinley Dorje to the construction site of his $80 million temple complex and jointly hosted a “Three-Traditions” annual conference.

The UFWD plays an important role in the “normalisation” of Tibet through offshoot GONGOs (Government-organised Non-Governmental Organisations) such as the Tibet Development Fund (TDF) and the China Association for the Protection and Development of Tibetan Culture (CAPDTC), and has even directly recruited prominent “Patriotic overseas Tibetans” such as Akong Tulku (who, having served the United Front for decades was murdered in China in 2013).

Notable Officials

• You Quan (Head 2017-)
• Sun Chunlan (Head 2014-17)
• Ling Jihua (Head 2012-14)
• Du Qinglin (Head 2007-12)
• Liu Yandong (Head 2002-07)
• Wang Zhaoguo (Head 1992-2002)
• Ding Guangen (Head 1990-92)
• Yan Mingfu (Head 1985-90)
• Yang Jingren (Head 1982-85)
• Zhang Yijiong (Exec. Deputy Head 2012-)
• Zhu Weiqun (Exec. Deputy Head 2006-12)
• Qi Zhala (TAR UFWD Minister 2010-11)

Overseas UFWD figures for Himalayan issues

• Akong Tulku (Overseas Tibetan affairs; deceased)
• Gangchen Tulku (Overseas Tibetan affairs; Shugden issue; deceased)

Last updated: October 2020