The China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC) is a

front organization A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, terrorist organizations, secret societies, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy gro ...

of the 12th Bureau of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the principal civilian intelligence agency of the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. CICEC was founded in 1984 and is active in operations to influence foreign think tanks, academics, and other high-profile foreigners. In addition to the

China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations The 11th Bureau of the Ministry of State Security, outwardly known as the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR; ; ) under an arrangement called " one institution with two names", is a set of research institutes operate ...

, CICEC is considered one of the main front organizations utilized for foreign

influence operations Political warfare is the use of political means to compel an opponent to do one's will, based on hostile intent. The term political describes the calculated interaction between a government and a target audience, including another state's govern ...

by the MSS. China scholar

Miwa Hirono is a Japanese political scientist and scholar of China who has published widely on China's involvement in peacekeeping operations. She is currently RCUK Research Fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of ...

stated that the idea for the CICEC began when then-

paramount leader Paramount leader () is an informal term for the most important political figure in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The paramount leader typically controls the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Liberation Army (PLA), often hol ...

Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. After CC ...

wanted to advance

Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...

(CCP)'s interests through more so-called "people's diplomacy" in addition to official diplomatic channels. According to Australian analyst Alex Joske, " om its very earliest days, CICEC's activities exemplified the Leninist

united front A united front is an alliance of groups against their common enemies, figuratively evoking unification of previously separate geographic fronts and/or unification of previously separate armies into a front. The name often refers to a political a ...

strategy of forming alliances of convenience with outside groups, only to discard or marginalise them when they are no longer needed." CICEC was a key platform for propagating the narrative of "

China's peaceful rise "China's peaceful rise", sometimes referred to as "China's peaceful development", was an official policy and political slogan in China under former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Hu Jintao which sought to assure the internatio ...

" with foreign elites throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. CICEC has been a long-time working partner with the

China Association for Science and Technology The China Association for Science and Technology (CAST; ) is a mass organization of Chinese scientists and engineers, which is composed of multiple national professional societies and hundreds of branches at various local and international level ...

for its

technology transfer Technology transfer (TT), also called transfer of technology (TOT), is the process of transferring (disseminating) technology from the person or organization that owns or holds it to another person or organization, in an attempt to transform invent ...

programs.

References

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* {{Authority control Ministry of State Security (China) Foreign policy and strategy think tanks in China Chinese propaganda organisations 1984 establishments in China Technology transfer United front (China)

See also

References

External links