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Originally published by Gatestone Institute

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Promoting the great unity of the Chinese people is the historic responsibility of Chinas patriotic united front work in the new era,saidChinese ruler Xi Jinping at the end of last month to Communist Party cadres in Beijing. To do the job well, we must truly unite all Chinese people in different parties, nationalities, classes, groups, and with different beliefs, and those who are living under different social systems.

Different social systems is Party lingo for other countries.

Xis words sound benign, but the intent is not. In short, Xi, at the Partys United Front Work Conference, said he hoped to unitein other words, mobilizeethnic Chinese everywhere to support the CCP, to effectively make every Chinese individual a CCP agent.

The Chinese Communist Party just doesnt accept that people who adopt foreign citizenship are no longer beholden to the motherland as represented by the Chinese Communist Party,saidCharles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute to CBS Eye on the World on Aug. 17. There is no escape from this ethnic identification based on being descendants of the Yellow Emperor.

Xis predecessors also appealed to overseas Chinese, so in one sense there was nothing new in his words last month. Yet there is nonetheless cause for great concern. Mao Zedong in fact tried to use ethnic Chinese populations outside China to overthrow their governments. Xi reveres Mao, has adopted many of Maos tactics, and is surely as determined as Mao in using Chinese people to do his bidding. Xi is serious in seeing all the worlds Chinese as a single unified force.

Many of those different social systemsespecially the United Statesare squeamish when it comes to singling people out because of their race. Yet American policymakers cannot ignore the fact that the Communist Partys appeal to overseas Chinese is overtly race-based.

We all share the same ancestors, history, and culture, we all are sons and daughters of the Chinese nation and descendants of the dragon,saidYang Jiechi, now Chinas top diplomat, in 2013 to a group of overseas ethnic Chinese children attending a government-sponsored roots-tracing tour event.

The regime sponsors these tours to indoctrinate. Foreign children, in Taishan in Guangdong Province during a tour late last decade, were asked to sing the 1980s-era Descendants of the Dragon. The appeal to race is unmistakable, as this portion of the lyrics makes clear: With brown eyes, black hair, and yellow skin, we are forever descendants of the dragon.

In fact, Chinas regime asks, cajoles, threatens, and intimidates dragon descendants to commit crimes for the Motherland. As successful American prosecutions indicate, some ethnic Chinese are especially susceptible to those appeals.

In February, however, the Justice Department ended its Trump-era China Initiative, which concentrated law enforcement efforts on Chinese espionage. Yet given Xi Jinpings call on overseas Chinese to work for China, it is time to reinstitute that program and devote more resources to it.

Many have called the initiative racist, but any new program would be merely responding to the Communist Partys race-based appeals.

The overwhelming majority of Americans of Chinese descentespecially those who have fled China recentlyare loyal to America, but some Chinese in America flaunt their support for Chinese communism. The flying of flags of the Peoples Republic of China in Chinatowns across the United Statesespecially San Franciscos before the pandemicwas particularly disturbing and suggestive of disloyalty to the American republic.

Can Americans of Chinese descent be loyal to both America and China? No.

Chinas Communist Party has made itself an existential threat to America and every other society. The Chinese regime, especially in recent years under General Secretary Xi, has been pushing the notion that it holds the Mandate of Heaven to ruletianxia, All Under Heaven. The promotion oftianxiameans, among other things, that the Party views the U.S. government as illegitimate and America as nothing more than a tributary society or colony.

To make matters worse, the Chinese state has been open about its hostility to the United States. Among other things, in May 2019Peoples Daily, the Partys self-described mouthpiece and therefore most authoritative publication in China, declared a peoples war on America.

Let me end on a personal note, as dragon blood proudly flows in my veins. My dad, who arrived in this country in early 1945, came from a small farming village in Jiangsu Province, across the mighty Yangtze River from Shanghai. My mothers family traces its roots to Dundee, in Scotland, but I have not identified with that half of my heritage. I grew up in New Jersey, steeped in Dads stories of the Yellow Emperor and of course tales of dragons.

Nonetheless, my story-telling dad never missed an opportunity to vote or tell his four children how wonderful his adopted country was. He always said China is my birthplace but America is my home.

We Chinese-AmericansI abhor the termneed to remember where we now live. We cannot remain oblivious, as we so far have had the luxury of doing.

Although we technically do not have an obligation to prove our loyalty to America, we must, as a group, understand that a hostile power is trying to weaponize us. Xi Jinping has openly called on us to become a subversive force, to help him destroy the country we now call home.

It is time, therefore, for us to begin cleaning our own ranks. This means, among other things, not tolerating displays promoting Chinese communism in our country. Moreover, it means not shouting racism every time law enforcement arrests someone of Chinese descent. If we do not take the lead in these tasks, others will naturally do that for us.

We may think it unfair, but we now have to make a choice.

After all, our countrythe United States of Americais in peril because a foreign statethe Peoples Republic of Chinais attacking it and hoping to use us to take it down.

The Communist Party of China refers to us as overseas patriotic forces. People in our communities will want to know to which country we feel patriotic.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Gordon G. Chang is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a member of its Advisory Board, and the author of The Coming Collapse of China.

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China Is Weaponizing Chinese Worldwide to Support the CCP - The Epoch Times