Freedom House Other forms of transnational repression that involve working through the legal and political systems of foreign countries—including detentions and extraditions—or that involve diplomatic staff at embassies and consulates, run through agencies like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. China has proven particularly adept at using its geopolitical and economic clout to provoke foreign governments in countries as diverse as India,62 Thailand, Serbia,63 Malaysia,64 Egypt,65 Kazakhstan,66 the United Arab Emirates,67 Turkey,68 and Nepal69 to use their own security forces to detain—and in some cases deport to China—CCP critics, members of targeted ethnic or religious minorities, and refugees. “Anticorruption” activities that target CCP members are coordinated by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Beyond the direct agencies of the party-state, a network of proxy entities—like “anti-cult” associations in the United States, Chinese student groups in Canada,70 and pro-Beijing activists with organized crime links in Taiwan71—have been involved in harassment and even physical attacks against party critics and religious or ethnic minority members. The greater distance from official Chinese government agencies offers the regime plausible deniability on the one hand, while accomplishing the goal of sowing fear and encouraging self-censorship far from China’s shores, on the other. These actors taken as a whole are best understood as part of the united front system, “a network of [Chinese Communist] party and state agencies responsible for influencing groups outside the party, particularly those claiming to represent civil society,” as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) describes it.72 United front work is an important part of how the party rules China, “cultivating, co-opting, and coercing nonparty elites” using economic carrots and sticks, according to China analyst Matt Schrader.73 United front work outside of China—partly coordinated by the CCP United Front Work Department (UFWD)—includes regional diaspora associations, student groups, and scholarly bodies that officially represent specific regions of China abroad. This work has been growing in importance for the CCP, as shown in the restructuring of the UFWD, including its work on the Chinese diaspora, in the last three years.74 While some of these activities may be legal public diplomacy, united front work binds them with espionage and transnational repression. When US authorities arrested a Tibetan New York Police Department officer for spying on the Tibetan community in September 2020, one of his handlers was identified as a Chinese consular employee working for the UFWD.75 An escalating campaign China’s use of transnational repression is not new. Uighurs, Tibetans, and Falun Gong practitioners, as well as political dissidents, have long faced systematic reprisals outside the country.76 The campaign has escalated considerably since 2014, however, and new target groups have been added in an international extension of emergent repressive campaigns within the PRC. The concentration of power under CCP general secretary Xi Jinping and his emphasis on an assertive foreign policy has led to an ever-more aggressive stance in Chinese foreign policy, which includes transnational repression. A series of new PRC laws passed under Xi have codified the extraterritorial reach of CCP controls, such as the National Intelligence Law, the Hong Kong National Security Law, and the draft Data Security Law.77 The harshest forms of direct transnational repression from Chinese agents—espionage, cyberattacks, threats, and physical assaults—emerge primarily from the CCP’s domestic security and military apparatus. A significant step in this process was the CCP’s increasing effort to control the Uighur community, including by claiming broad jurisdiction over Uighurs abroad. In 2014, Xi Jinping ordered the CCP to escalate its efforts against alleged “terrorism, infiltration, and separatism” in the Uighurplurality region of Xinjiang. In 2016, Chinese authorities began to round up Uighurs and other Muslims in the region for “re-education” camps. At the same time, the authorities also clamped down upon mobility, collecting the passports of Uighurs across the region and preventing their exit. In early 2017, Uighurs around the world with Chinese citizenship began to be told to return to China; those who did often joined the over a million Uighurs housed in the camps.78 Those who did not return, or those who fled the escalating repression inside China, were detained and in many cases rendered or unlawfully deported to China. At least 109 Uighurs were deported unlawfully from Thailand in 2015, and 13 were rendered from Egypt without due process;79 Egypt may have unlawfully deported another 86 during this time.80 The global persecution of Uighurs continues to this day. As freedomhouse.org 17