New York is a microcosm of these potential dangers.
New York is a microcosm of these potential dangers.
I n the aftermath of Eric Adams’s recently aborted campaign for reelection as New York City’s mayor, one thing remains clear: corruption not only weakens our democracy but also facilitates foreign authoritarian influence in America.
Adams had been indicted for bribery and fraud (the charges were subsequently dropped by the second Trump administration’s Department of Justice), including for allegedly accepting luxury travel benefits from Turkish officials and businessmen in return for pressuring the city to approve the opening of the Turkish consulate building. The seemingly paltry sum and minor policy outcome belie the slippery slope of patronage politics.
China has been another player in this game. Two of Adams’s most prominent fundraisers, Winnie Greco and Lian Wu Shao, had their homes searched by prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn. Both frequently rub shoulders with Chinese Communist Party officials as well as groups known to be linked to Beijing’s foreign influence apparatus (often referred to as the united front, after China’s United Front Work Department). Journalists have reported on donation irregularities from their fundraising events, including the use of straw donors to generate significant matching funds from the city.
Such questionable figures have held sway over the mayor’s office and shaped thinking about issues of strategic interest to the Chinese government. As mayor, Adams appointed Greco as his Asian affairs adviser and had previously named her honorary ambassador to Brooklyn’s Chinese community when he was borough president. Greco facilitated Adams’s multiple trips to China and arranged several meetings with Chinese government officials and businesspeople. Adams has praised Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, lauded a hometown association later found to be behind a secret police station in New York, and skipped a New York reception with the Taiwanese president.
Sometimes, tactics can verge on comically clumsy: in August, Greco handed a red envelope of cash stuffed in a chips bag to a local journalist. But the fact that Greco was still a fixture in Adams’s reelection campaign, despite being the subject of multiple investigations, points to the mayor’s continued reliance on — or at least reluctance to dissociate from — potential agents of influence.
Adams is far from being the only political figure susceptible to foreign influence. There remain broader challenges of electoral influence by the PRC in New York and elsewhere. Such entrenchment in the American political landscape is an arguably even more complex problem than China’s already alarming overt interference tactics of transnational repression and espionage. Accumulating influence at the local levels can pay off in the longer term. Having state and municipal elected officials who are beholden to CCP actors or aligned with China’s interests can provide a chorus of voices legitimating CCP policies and narrow the space for overseas dissent, in line with Beijing’s goal of reclaiming “global discourse power”; these politicians may also go on to shape policy decisions in higher office.
Often, influence actors capitalize on patronage politics and serve as political fixers. Especially in areas with large ethnic Chinese populations, office seekers are eager to tap into Chinatown networks to secure votes, while knowing relatively little — or exercising willful ignorance — about the role of the united front in local politics. It becomes convenient for them to rely on community liaisons — such as Greco or another former aide to two New York governors who was charged last year for being a Chinese government agent — who claim to speak for the Chinese-American community and mobilize voters. In the Los Angeles area, an individual recently sentenced as a PRC agent had been jockeying for community leader status almost two decades ago. Such political brokers can become quite powerful in shaping what American candidates think about China, what they say and don’t say on key issues, and whom they meet with.
Unfortunately, this becomes risky when Beijing-affiliated individuals and groups dominate the community landscape, as has often become the case. It seems almost difficult for New York politicians not to run — wittingly or unwittingly — into Chinese government proxies. By design, the united front blurs the lines between malign and legitimate activities. Grassroots organizations can wear dual hats by providing social services to ethnic Chinese communities while also participating in CCP-endorsed activities, ranging from, say, an anti-Taiwan protest to the surveillance and harassment of regime critics.
Hometown associations, many of which have close ties to the Chinese Consulate in New York, have been mobilizing to defeat or promote certain candidates, even though their nonprofit status precludes them from political fundraising and endorsements. Several of these groups had also endorsed Adams. United-front-linked networks have also been active in fielding candidates for state- and city-level offices in New York and even participating in structural electoral reforms such as the city’s latest round of redistricting in 2023, which pitted these networks against established Asian-American community groups.
While it is legitimate — and imperative — for Chinese-American communities to exercise their political voice and rights, it is undemocratic to allow the united front political machine to actively suppress certain viewpoints — especially those critical of the Chinese government. And the CCP takes an exclusionary view of Chinese identity, equating ethnicity with national and party loyalty. This leaves Chinese Americans simultaneously facing pressure from Beijing and facing suspicion in the country they have chosen to live in.
Nor should the Chinese government have a say in who gets elected in America. Beijing explicitly encourages Chinese individuals overseas to participate in politics in their host countries while exhorting them also to promote China’s foreign policy interests.
The united front has developed a sophisticated strategy of influence that taps into rising Asian-American political consciousness around local bread-and-butter issues. The Chinese government does not hesitate to play identity politics and exploit issues such as anti-Asian hate, public safety, homeless shelters, and affirmative action to gain currency among overseas Chinese populations and legitimize CCP-linked individuals and groups as grassroots leaders defending the interests of ethnic Chinese communities. It uses sweeping charges of racism to shut down criticism of its activities. Such weaponization is unfair to the true challenges of racial discrimination and political representation that Chinese Americans and Asian Americans continue to face, and it undermines those who are genuinely fighting for the rights of these communities.
The modes and methods of China’s foreign influence efforts threaten not just U.S. national security but also the healthy functioning of U.S. democracy, along with the freedoms of ethnic Chinese communities. New York is a microcosm of these potential dangers.