NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE L ast year, it hosted an alleged Chinese government-run police station on U.S. soil. But earlier this week, the America ChangLe Association made a conspicuous pivot, reopening its doors to the public for the first time in months to host a July 4 celebration.
Leaders of the community group — which comprises immigrants from China’s Fujian province — gathered at its headquarters in Manhattan’s Chinatown on America’s birthday for a press conference, according to reports in Chinese-language media and a YouTube video of the gathering.
“While we love our country of origin, we also love the country of residence; we live in the United States, take root, and must abide by local laws,” the group’s president, Lu Jianshun, said in comments quoted by a media outlet that caters to overseas Chinese communities. Grandees from the group and other community associations sat at a table at the front of the room, flanked by American flags, while a banner overhead read, “Celebrate 247th Anniversary of U.S. Independence Day.”
The glaring shift — from the illicit operation of a foreign regime’s American outpost to an embrace of the American flag — indicates how other Beijing-aligned groups on U.S. soil could deal with the increased scrutiny that they’ve faced.
America ChangLe was thrust to the center of the U.S.–China relationship less than a year ago, when the watchdog group SafeGuard Defenders revealed that it had set up a Chinese police service station on behalf of law enforcement in Fuzhou, China. That set off months of scrutiny from lawmakers and the media.
Then, in April, the Justice Department arrested two of the association’s leaders, Cheng Jinping and Lu’s brother, Jianwang, who also goes by Harry. According to court documents, they acted as unregistered agents of the Chinese government, by conspiring with China’s Ministry of Public Security to set up the police station and then to attempt to locate a Chinese dissident on U.S. soil.
National Review called a number associated with the group today, but the call went unanswered. A lawyer representing Lu declined to comment, and Chen’s lawyer did not respond to an email.
America ChangLe is not alone in facing allegations of criminal activity on behalf of Chinese Communist Party entities. Last April’s Chinese police-station case was only the most recent prosecution in an onslaught of cases brought in recent years by the federal government targeting Chinese interference and transnational repression plots.
In the weeks after the April 2021 indictments, federal prosecutors in Boston announced a case against Litang Liang, a Massachusetts man involved in several pro-Beijing community groups throughout New England. Liang had allegedly acted on behalf of the Chinese diplomatic corps in the U.S. to harass Beijing’s opponents on U.S. soil. Like Chen and Lu, Liang is alleged to have been in contact with officials from the United Front Work Department, which coordinates the Party’s subtle influence operations.
The Party uses United Front groups to influence non-party members within China, in addition to Chinese diaspora members and foreign elites. All of this has put pressure on individuals and groups that have extensive links to the Chinese consulate and to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front networks.
America ChangLe’s activities this week, after the shuttering of the station months ago, might be emblematic of an approach taken by other pro-CCP groups in New York. The Chinese-language edition of the Epoch Times reported that participants in a July 4 parade held by pro-Beijing community groups in Manhattan’s Chinatown last weekend had conspicuously declined to display the People’s Republic of China flag.
United Front activities are “not a cloak-and-dagger type of undertaking, even though there are certainly some elements of that in some cases,” Russell Hsiao, the executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute, told National Review. United Front entities often operate in the open to build coalitions, recruit members, and mobilize, even as their political motives remain unknown to most outsiders, he added.
Hsiao said that he believes that the increased scrutiny by the U.S. authorities in recent years has helped to raise awareness of those hidden motives, deterring unlawful behavior and stigmatizing United Front activities. “These developments alone do not mean that these organizations are realigning away from Beijing,” he said. “But they seem to suggest to me that there is an attempt by these organizations to reshape their image in the public eye.”