H illary Clinton met the head of a Chinese Communist Party political “friendship” organization that the U.S. intelligence community warns is advancing Beijing’s interests through political-influence operations in America.
This comes as Chinese political-influence actors are developing ties to top Democrats in California and New York as a counterweight to bipartisan China hawkishness in Washington.
The former secretary of state’s meeting with a delegation led by Yang Wanming, the president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), took place last week in New York City at some point between May 30 and June 1, according to a summary the Beijing-based group posted to its website.
The webpage indicated that Yang spoke with Clinton and, separately, Ford Foundation president Darren Walker about fostering youth and art exchanges between the U.S. and China.
The CPAFFC website didn’t provide additional details about the meeting between Yang and Clinton, though it did post a picture of them with John Thornton, the chairman of Barrick Gold, a mining company, and a self-styled freelance diplomat who encourages a more cooperative U.S. policy toward China. He meets frequently with top Chinese government officials and reportedly has extensive business ties in China.
Thornton is also the co-chair of the Asia Society and attended a second meeting with Yang last week at that New York City–based nonprofit. In a post to X, the Asia Society’s president, Kyung-wha Kang, called it a “lively roundtable discussion” focused on boosting people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.
The CPAFFC website also said that Yang met with New York state legislators, though it did not name any of them.
The federal government warns that CPAFFC — which claims to be a “people’s organization” — advances the party’s interests through underhanded means.
Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo ended America’s involvement in the U.S.-China Governors Forum in 2020, alleging that CPAFFC had tried to use it to “directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda.” He characterized CPAFFC as an affiliate of the United Front Work Department, the party bureau that oversees significant parts of the united-front system of political influence — a unique Leninist strategy through which the Party uses political ties as a springboard for espionage and repression in China and abroad.
In 2011, during her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton had signed the memorandum of understanding with China that established the governors’ forum. “The Obama administration has made it a priority to strengthen the bonds between the United States and China,” she said in a press release at the time, adding that sister-city arrangements between the two countries “bring significant benefits to people on both sides.”
“That is why we support the National Governors Association and the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries in creating the Governor’s Forum,” Clinton said.
Washington now views the CPAFFC as a counterintelligence and foreign-political-influence threat.
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center echoed Pompeo’s statement in a 2022 bulletin issued to state and local officials about Chinese political-influence campaigns. It added that the CPAFFC has leveraged sister-city agreements to pressure American municipalities against engaging with Taiwan.
National Review has asked the State Department why it presumably issued a visa for Yang and whether it stands by the Pompeo-era warning about the CPAFFC.
CPAFFC’s efforts have grown under Xi Jinping “as China seeks to groom local business, political, and media leaders in countries all around the world,” scholars Larry Diamond and Orville Schell wrote in a 2019 report issued by the Hoover Institution.
Following last year’s meeting between Xi and President Biden in San Francisco, the CPAFFC has drastically increased its outreach to Americans. Those efforts had undergone a significant slowdown while international travel was restricted during the pandemic and amid Beijing’s draconian zero-Covid policy.
While CPAFFC has worked with Republican state legislators who hold pro-Beijing views, it has found its biggest successes with top California Democrats.
Yang last week also traveled to San Francisco, where he participated in the U.S.-China Bay Area Dialogue, a conference encouraging cooperation between California’s Bay Area and the area that comprises Hong Kong, Guangdong, and Macau. Yang said in January that he hopes to develop closer Chinese ties to the New York City “bay area” as well.
Governor Gavin Newsom spoke at the conference and met with Yang, Guangdong governor Wang Weizhong, and other Chinese delegates.
Yang also attended a dinner hosted by former California governor Jerry Brown, who now serves as chairman of the California-China Climate Institute — an initiative aimed at encouraging cooperation on climate between the state and Chinese provinces — and met San Francisco mayor London Breed at City Hall.
In recent months, Newsom and Breed have traveled separately to China, where they each met with Yang.
“San Francisco is willing to make positive efforts to realize the ‘San Francisco Vision’ and play a bridging role in the development of U.S.-China relations,” Breed said at the City Hall meeting, according to the CPAFFC website. “San Francisco Vision” is a catchphrase that Chinese government officials have used to refer to efforts following the Biden-Xi meeting last November to repair ties between the two countries.
The City Hall celebration also featured a signing ceremony for a “friendly exchange and cooperation agreement” between San Francisco and Shenzhen.