Tag: Cui Tiankai

Peter Mattis: The most likely agency is the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s civilian intelligence and security service. We do not know how well or how routinely intelligence is shared across agencies—rather than forwarded to the top leaders—but if the MSS is the culprit, then it would be bureaucratically and operationally smoother to use the intelligence to support cultivating channels of influence. FP: The Times report stated that China was targeting individuals close to Trump in order to influence his actions. How sophisticated an understanding does China have of U.S. politics and of the networks of influence around the president? PM: I am not sure the PRC government necessarily understands the politics within and between the political parties, the relationship between branches, or the differences between the federal government and the states. I think the PRC government understands American process better than politics. The foundation for influence is “social affairs work,” which is a Communist Party idea dating back to the 1920s or 1930s. Ostensibly, united front work is the work of the whole party—every party cadre at every level all the time—but that is not really true in practice. Even if the party did not have a 90-year history of social affairs work, thinking about influencing the U.S. system in this way probably would have occurred to them after the Clinton campaign finance scandal in 1996. PM: I would not be surprised if it was tossed around at the working level as something that could be done.