1 Chinatown Subway: Name It After a Truly Great Hero, Not Rose Pak

1875 L Street NW, Suite 400, Washington DC, 20006 Office: (202) 697-3858 Email: [email protected] Chinatown Subway: Name it After a Truly Great Hero, not Rose Pak Dear SFMTA Board Members, Congratulations on the new subway stop in Chinatown. That is a huge accomplishment, for which Rose Pak may deserve some credit, though not the high honor of having her name immortalized on a San Francisco landmark. Naming a geographic feature after an individual deserves true greatness, and we can think of no better person than Liu Xiaobo, a philosopher, poet, and human rights activist who won a Nobel Peace prize. Alternatively, we would suggest naming the subway stop as simply Chinatown, which represents all the great diversity of the neighborhood over the many decades of its flourishing. Rose Pak, unfortunately, has a history that makes her inappropriate as a true hero of the Chinese people, or of San Francisco. China uses influence tactics, especially through its United Front Work Department, to compromise U.S. democracy, and democracies around the world. The most horrendous examples of this are in East Turkistan, where 1-3 million minorities have been locked up due to their beliefs, in Tibet, where Buddhist monasteries are torn down, against the Falun Gong, who are subject to forced organ transplants, and in Hong Kong, where the hopes of over a million people who have marched to demand freedom and democracy from the Chinese Communist Party are being suppressed through police brutality. As discussed below, this is not the right time to honor someone who has been closely associated with China's dictatorship. As many experts and members of the Chinese American community have observed, Rose Pak had very specific and demonstrable ties to China’s authoritarian regime. She has served as overseas Executive Director of the China Overseas Exchange Association (COEA), a foreign affairs organization that operates under the State Council’s Overseas China Affairs Office; she has twice attended the People’s Consultative Conference, reserved for Chinese Communist party loyalists and has demonstrable ties to the S.F., -area “peaceful reunification” organizations. To understand the breadth and depth of her association with China’s dictatorship and furthering of its anti-democratic policies on U.S. soil, it is helpful to understand how the Chinese Communist Party (the “Party”) seeks to encourage ethnic-Chinese communities and individuals overseas to support its interests, in democracies everywhere, including the United States. In his book “Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese,” 1 James Jiann Hua To discusses how Chinese overseas associations exist in a complex set of relationships with the Chinese authorities and their policies for managing overseas populations, new immigrants, and established immigrant communities. As he explains, overseas Chinese work allows the Party to broadly “unify 1 To, James Jiann Hua. “Qiaowu: extra-territorial policies for the overseas Chinese,” Brill 2014. 1 the thinking” of diaspora Chinese, to ensure their continued support for the ruling party and to ensure that political or ideological rivals in the overseas Chinese community are marginalized. They operate as part of the regime’s modernization of propaganda and thought work in an interconnected world. Id. As such, these Beijing-controlled associations define what is normal, what is abnormal, and set down the categories of acceptable thought and behavior for all ethnically Chinese people overseas, regardless of their citizenship. 2 The United Front Work Department. The Communist Party Central Committee’s United Front Work Department has played a major role in this work, 3 with key goals emphasizing the need to convince overseas Chinese communities that the Party is the sole representative of China, to isolate diverse views that the Party perceives as adversarial, including Uyghurs and Tibetan Buddhists,4 and to change how democracies speak and think about China.5 Methods and strategies include emphasizing the historical connection and responsibilities of “overseas compatriots” as ‘sons and daughters of the Yellow Emperor;’”6 appointing hundreds of Chinese Americans to positions in United Front organizations with free trips to China as part of the package, and the providing of other honors to persuade Chinese Americans to pursue United Front objectives on U.S. soil, often times to the detriment of Uyghurs, pro-democracy advocates and other groups the Party seeks to marginalize and/or suppress.7 The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. Organizations such as the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO) inside the Communist Party’s Central Committee’s United Front Department have furthered the United Front agenda, 8 through “people-to-people methods” and a “systematic approach of persuasion, influence, and manipulation” to guide and direct members of the overseas Chinese community. As James To writes, “No other government initiative can match qiaowu’s scale of operation or sophistication, nor profess to reach the level of success that China has enjoyed under a wide variety of specialist programs and activities.” 9 As a tool of social control, overseas Chinese work aims to “gain and secure the loyalty of the overseas Chinese community,” and then mobilize strategic diaspora groups for the Party’s political goals. Much of this work is not done overtly or using coercive or interventionist means. Instead it is carried out via incentives, disincentives, alliance building, marginalization, propaganda, psychological persuasion, and “win- win” benefits for all involved. Especially important to Overseas Chinese Affairs Office work is to “resolutely implement[] and execute[] the Party line, the Party's guiding principles, and the Party's 2 Id. See also, Mattis, Peter. “An American Lens on China’s Interference and Influence-Building Abroad.” The Asan Forum. April 30, 2018; Eades, Mark. “China’s United Front seeks to Undermine US Support for Taiwan.” International Policy Digest. September 11, 2017; “Florence Fang’s ‘100,000 Strong Foundation’: Education or Indoctrination?” Foreign Policy Association. May 27, 2016. 3 See the United Front Department of the CCP Central Committee. www.zytzb.gov.cn/html/index.html. 4 For example, as part of a massive campaign to monitor, control, and intimidate China’s ethnic minorities, the Party has created a global registrar of Uyghurs who live outside of China by threatening to detain Uyghur relatives still in China if they do not provide personal information of their relatives living abroad to the Chinese police. Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany. “Chinese Cops Now Spying on American Soil.” The Daily Beast. August 14, 2018. 5 Parello-Plesnur. Ibid., at 4. 6 In his 2014 speech to the Seventh Conference of Overseas Associations, Xi Jinping described the “rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” as a “dream” shared by “all Chinese.” Perello-Plesnur, “The Chinese Communist Party’s Foreign Influence Operations,” Hudson Institute. June 2018, at 32. 7 Perello-Plesner. Ibid., at 32. Since March 2018, the OCAO has operated as a part of the United Front Work Department directly and not as a part of the State Council. 8 See the United Front Work Department of the Party’s Central Committee. www.zytzb.gov.cn/html/index.html. 9 To. Ibid, at 4. 2 policies," and thus "aggressively expand the struggle” against Taiwanese pro-democracy advocates, Tibetan and Uyghur ethnic separatists, Falun Gong believers, and all other “enemy forces.”10 “Implicit in these goals is the elimination of potential threats and rival discourses that may challenge the CCP and its hold on power [not only in China but overseas].”11 The Chinese Overseas Exchange Association. The Chinese Overseas Exchange Association operates under the direction of the Chinese Government’s State Council Overseas Affairs Office (OCAO) and comprises Chinese Communist Party officials that are among other things engaged in aggressive propaganda campaigns in the United States aimed at furthering Chinese Communist Party objectives abroad.12 The Chinese Overseas Exchange Association (COEA), which shares high-level officers with its parent, poses as a nongovernmental organization while acting in fact as a propaganda agent of Beijing, that is, of the OCAO.13 To implement China policies in the United States, the COEA bureaucracy collaborates with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, local Chinese consulates and embassies, Party diplomats, attaches and cadres.14 The People’s Consultative Conferences. The People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which is part of the government apparatus, is run by the Standing Committee of the powerful Politburo. Its ties to the Party and its ideology are beyond question; it is controlled, managed, and dominated by the Party. Members are expected to adhere to the discipline and goals of the Party and work to strengthen China and Party rule of China by, inter alia, the aligning of their activities with China’s interests.15 Those invited to participate directly in this prominent national body are those influential overseas individuals who are the closest to the Chinese Communist Party.16 The Peaceful Reunification Councils. In 1988, the United Front Work Department founded the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Unification with a branch office in Washington D.C.17 The San Francisco branch was opened soon thereafter, in 2001.18 By 2018, the council had established thirty-three offices in the United States. Over the years, the branch in San Francisco has actively

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