One official touted Xi Jinping’s vision for a new global order during a speech to the U.N.
A Chinese friendship association flagged by the intelligence community for links to Beijing’s influence operations sent officials to visit the U.S. amid the ongoing trade war, with one of its officials touting General Secretary Xi Jinping’s vision for a new global order during a speech to the U.N. in New York today.
President Trump has said he is waiting for Xi to request a call with him to discuss a deal regarding the heavy tariffs the U.S. and China levied upon each other this month. Chinese officials have indicated that they will not make the first move, but Beijing is nonetheless wasting no time in dispatching officials to spread Xi’s message directly to audiences in the U.S., bypassing Washington.
On Tuesday afternoon, one leader from that group, the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), appeared at the U.N. headquarters in New York to join the Chinese government’s annual Chinese Language Day celebration there. CPAFFC organized the event, which both promotes Chinese language learning and underscores what the CCP considers its claim to 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.
Qin Guoming, director general of CPAFFC’s department of cultural exchanges, spoke about the lyrical nature of Chinese language and promoted CCP propaganda concepts. “In 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the Global Civilization Initiative, seeking to promote exchanges and mutual learning among different civilizations, to enhance mutual understanding and affinity among people of all countries, and to forge consensus and cooperation in the international community,” Qin said.
He added that this would help promote a “community of a shared future” and advance U.N. goals—a Xi-era phrase that connotes a world order led by the Chinese regime.
The Xi-led civilization initiative is part of a group of other global initiatives with which Beijing hopes to reshape tenets of international governance to suit its strategic ends. In an essay published in 2023, U.S. Army War College Professor R. Evan Ellis described the civilization initiative as an amorphous program that China will use as a “tool of strategic discourse.”
Qin was not the only CPAFFC official to enter the United States this month. On April 3, CPAFFC Vice President Shen Xin began a trip to California and Florida to meet with “local people from all walks of life” and “promote local and cultural exchanges between China and the United States,” according to the association’s website.
Shen met with a group that honors the legacy of the Flying Tigers — a volunteer unit of American aviators who fought Japanese forces invading China during World War II. The Flying Tigers fought under the command of the Republic of China, not communist forces, but the Chinese regime has since asserted a historical claim over the unit and cultivated long-lasting ties with its members and their families.
While the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries asserts that it is a non-governmental organization, it is part of the China’s foreign affairs bureaucracy and the CCP’s united front political influence ecosystem. It mainly works to build ties with foreign governments and organizations to steer them into supporting Beijing’s diplomatic aims. In 2022, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that CPAFFC helps carry out the party’s influence operations in America via “sister city” programs it oversees with U.S. municipalities and states. ODNI listed CPAFFC as an entity “involved in united front work and foreign influence operations whose ties to the CCP or PRC government may be hidden or not readily apparent.”