Unsurprisingly, the author lauds China as a force for cooperation and social good and blames Washington for strained ties.
A senior figure in the Chinese Communist Party’s political influence networks penned a column for the Economist in which he urged greater U.S.–China cooperation. The article’s author, Wang Huiyao (Henry Huiyao Wang), is the founder and president of a think tank overseen by Beijing’s political-influence bureau.
While the influential British weekly’s biographical note for Wang states that he is a former Chinese government adviser and the founder of the Center for China and Globalization, it describes that organization merely as “a think tank in Beijing,” without specifying its ties to a key CCP influence bureau. That’s a significant detail, in light of the argument that Wang advances in the piece.
The Center for China and Globalization (CCG) is a purportedly independent think tank that in fact reports to a critical Chinese Communist Party organ, the United Front Work Department (UFWD), that general secretary Xi Jinping has described as a “magic weapon.” That bureau, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, facilitates “an exportation of the CCP’s political system” via its foreign activities, which in turn “undermines social cohesion, exacerbates racial tension, influences politics, harms media integrity, facilitates espionage, and increases unsupervised technology transfer.”
In other words, Wang and others involved in United Front Work activities are tasked with convincing foreign elites of the CCP’s perspective, while remaining a purportedly independent voice.
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Previously, Wang’s work in this regard has stirred controversy and been the target of some highly visible criticism. In 2018, Wang quietly withdrew from a panel at the Wilson Center following reporting on his UFWD ties and criticism by Senator Marco Rubio that the event failed to disclose that relationship. All the while, Wang has made some powerful friends, such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Around the time of the Wilson panel, CCG’s website was scrubbed of Wang’s affiliation with another association under the Ministry of United Front.
Wang’s latest piece for the Economist, which has otherwise produced some hard-hitting reporting on China while at times publishing ads from entities linked to the Chinese government, is consistent with the general thrust of his writings. Lamenting the breakdown in U.S.–China academic engagement, he argues that a decline in academic and research exchange is detrimental to addressing global challenges like climate change and global public health. “In a world where collaborative research holds the key to overcoming our greatest challenges, we cannot afford the two science superpowers to be divided,” he writes, blaming “Covid-19 and its attendant mobility restrictions” and U.S. investigations of researchers’ China ties for a chill in student exchanges and academic cooperation between the two countries.
“There is hope that as the pandemic recedes, China will open its borders and America will move on from the Trump administration’s ill-conceived policies, so that academic exchange can begin to recover and fulfil its vast potential,” Wang continues.
While the column primarily blames Washington for this, it leaves out other pertinent factors, such as Beijing’s draconian zero-Covid policy, as well as the drop-off in trust that followed Chinese efforts to spread misinformation about Covid’s origins — and to punish Australia with trade tariffs for requesting an independent investigation into the matter. Obscuring these things is the point.
The timing of the piece is significant. The Economist published Wang’s column on the cusp of a key meeting where Xi Jinping is expected to solidify his grip on power. Wang refers to this event briefly, noting that “China is lifting barriers to foreign students, and more are expected after this weekend’s 20th Communist Party Congress.” Wang’s column lauds Beijing as a force for cooperation and social good seemingly to distract from a news cycle focused on Chinese authoritarianism.