China’s obsessive attempts to subvert the West

Most people who think themselves well informed know little or nothing about China. They – or I should say ‘we’ for I am just as ignorant – understand what the CIA and FSB are, and what they want. But what is the CPAFFC, and, if it arrives in your neighbourhood, should you worry? How about the United Front, the ‘magic weapon for strengthening the party’s ruling position,’ in the words of Xi Jinping? What does it do and why does China’s dictator praise it so?

I am back from the last place I expected to learn about the Chinese Communist Party: the Budapest Forum, a conference of progressive European mayors in Hungary. I was there to see if the country’s opposition could unite to take on Viktor Orban’s dictatorial and corrupt regime, but took a break from the defence of democracy against its European enemies to attend a debate entitled ‘Responding to the Chinese Communist Party’s Strategies of Subnational Influence,’ which threw the net a little wider.