{"id":47239,"date":"2015-05-22T22:46:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T22:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=47239 "},"modified":"2015-05-22T22:46:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T22:46:00","slug":"47239-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=47239","title":{"rendered":"The Hard And Soft Faces of China\\&#8217;s \\&#8217;United Front\\&#8217; Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>2015-05-22<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>President Xi Jinping&#8217;s plea for a &#8220;united front&#8221; from the ruling Chinese Communist Party in a high-profile speech this week shows that the president is combining the hostile politics of the Mao era with an ever-expanding deployment of &#8220;soft power&#8221; in the form of influence that goes well beyond the business of government, political analysts said on Friday.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>At a &#8220;united front&#8221; conference in Beijing on Wednesday, Xi said China needs to maintain the Communist Party&#8217;s hold on power through national unity, including absolute party loyalty from the security services, and to limit outside influences, especially religious ones.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>The &#8220;united front&#8221; concept has been described as one of the three &#8220;magic weapons&#8221; of the revolution, and it is one that Xi appears now to be adapting for his own purposes, commentators said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;China wants to target overseas intellectuals, the privileged children of rich businesspeople, as a new focus for united front work, along with influential people in the new media,&#8221; political writer Hu Shaojiang said in a commentary on RFA&#8217;s Cantonese Service.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;This shows that they are really worried about the reality that they can&#8217;t entirely control education, technology, finance and industry, and online media,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;They need people from these fields, because they are the ones that the party can&#8217;t train itself.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8216;Soft power&#8217; at home, abroad<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Overseas-based writer Zhang Yu, of the writers&#8217; group Independent Chinese PEN, said the united front is part of China&#8217;s projection of soft power at home and abroad, and could easily spread overseas or wherever Beijing seeks greater influence.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;For example, they are &#8216;unifying&#8217; overseas students, so I can&#8217;t go back [to China], even though I&#8217;m a Chinese citizen,&#8221; Zhang said. &#8220;They won&#8217;t renew my passport.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;They invited me over, and said a bunch of polite stuff &#8230; and it was the soft face [of government power], and I &#8230; thought they were doing united front work.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>He said a harder line is easy for dissidents and rights activists to oppose, whereas a softer-seeming united front approach is highly persuasive.<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/united-05222015124837.html\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;At a &quot;united front&quot; conference in Beijing on Wednesday, Xi said China needs to maintain the Communist Party&#39;s hold on power through national unity, including absolute party loyalty from the security services, and to limit outside influences, especially religious ones.&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}