Episode
Over 1,000 CCP-Linked Groups in America: Exposing United Front Operations | Peter Mattis
- Podcast
- American Thought Leaders
- Published
- Apr 25, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4239
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.theepochtimes.com/podcasts
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Summary
A recent landmark Jamestown Foundation report maps Chinese United Front operations, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) effort to co-opt and weaponize civil society against the CCP’s enemies. The report, titled “ Harnessing the People ” and authored by researcher Cheryl Yu, identifies more than 2,000 such organizations operating in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany. More than 1,000 are operating in the United States. They span a wide range, including student, business, professional, cultural, and “friendship” groups as well as media outlets. In this episode, I sit down with Peter Mattis, president of The Jamestown Foundation. Few understand this complex web of Chinese influence and espionage operations as well as he does. His storied career includes roles such as senior fellow with the U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP, staff director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), and counterintelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. The United Front has two distinct areas of operation: inside China and outside China. Basically, every Party committee in China has a United Front department, Mattis said. But, he said, “the big part of the work that really matters to us happens outside. ... This is a system that involves hundreds of thousands of people.” “Mao Zedong described United Front work as a tool to storm and shatter the enemy’s position,” Mattis said. One key task of United Front operations overseas is to find people, in particular scientists and engineers, who “are susceptible to recruitment,” Mattis said. Many seemingly innocuous civic groups in Western countries—for example, the China Overseas Friendship Association—are used to observe, identify, and then target people who could be useful for technology…