A look at CCP's termite-styled infiltration

***The copyright of this translation belongs to the author/publishing organization.***

By Ching Cheong, first published in UP Media under the title "認識中共的「白蟻式」滲透" on Oct 5, 2023.

Preventing the infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party into Western societies has become an issue that all countries are now beginning to pay serious attention to. Hong Kong, over the past 25 years, has provided the world with an almost "perfect" case study of how easily such infiltration can turn an otherwise free society into an authoritarian one. As eyewitnesses to Hong Kong's worsening situation, it is our duty to document and publicize this process, so that the world is warned not to re-experience Hong Kong's fate.

I. What is the "Termite Spirit"?

Soon after the CCP seized power across the country, it rushed to plan to "take over the whole world." In 1966, the CCP's underground party organization in Hong Kong organized a delegation to Beijing to demand the early "liberation of Hong Kong." In order to ensure that these underground parties could work in Hong Kong for a long time with peace of mind, Premier Zhou Enlai sent his assistant Wu Dizhou, deputy head of the Hong Kong and Macao Group of the Foreign Affairs Office of the State Council, to meet the group and explain to them why the CCP was not in a hurry to liberate Hong Kong. According to a "top secret" document of the Chinese Communist Party, "Transcript of the Conversation between Wu Dizhou, Deputy Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Section of the Foreign Affairs Office of the State Council, and Hong Kong and Macao Workers (1966)", Wu Dizhou said: "The British want to be in Hong Kong for a long time... They have interests in Hong Kong. We too have interests in Hong Kong, so we and the British have a common language on maintaining the status quo." Their purpose is to take a little more money from Hong Kong, hundreds of thousands a year. And We? We want to take the whole world."

How to take the whole world through Hong Kong? Wu Dizhou asked the underground party in Hong Kong to learn the "termite spirit". The so-called "termite spirit" was invented by Zhou Enlai. According to Hong Kong Cable News "The Future Declassified 30 Years after the Joint Declaration 1984(前途解密30後)" Episode 1 (August 11, 2014): In 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, the issue of Hong Kong had never left the leader's mind, even though the new founded republic had its hands full dealing with the complexity of external affairs and the need for improvement in the internal affairs. Zhou Enlai then proposed the "termite policy". A veteran CCP member explained (off-the screen recording) that, "The termite policy was the result of Premier Zhou visiting Xishuangbanna to inspect the work in an unknown year. A staffer from the Institute of Botany took him to see a big tree, which fell after being pushed. Premier Zhou found it very strange, and was told that the tree had been hollowed out by termites, though it still appeared normal. That is to say, in order to infiltrate the house, the Communist Party should also be the termites in Hong Kong. Later Zhou Enlai called this policy the "termite policy" and asked the CCP underground organizations to learn the "termite spirit".

According to Wu Dizhou's above-mentioned top-secret documents, he told to underground party members to learn the "termite spirit." He asked the underground party: "We must work like termites, chewing up the whole house without making a sound. We must learn the spirit of termites. If you can do that, you have done your best. If you want to do that, you must learn and use the thoughts of Chairman Mao flexibly." The saying "learn to be like termites" was not from me. It was what comrades of the Central Committee said... Your life should not be special, you must connect with the masses, and live a simple life. Life would be more difficult. But for the sake of world revolution, be prepared to endure that hardship for ten or twenty years, even for a lifetime.”
 
II. What are the advantages of termites?

The CCP proposes to use the "termite spirit" to "take the entire world." So what are the advantages of the "termite policy"? The author's personal understanding is that Zhou Enlai used "termites" to describe the CCP's policy of infiltrating the world because "termites" operate with the following characteristics:

1. Hidden: Termites work in a relatively hidden way, so it is difficult for people to tell from the surface whether a house has been infested or not.
2. Large number: The characteristic of ants is that they are numerous. As the Cantonese proverb goes, “An elephant will get killed if there are too many ants.” Even a behemoth will eventually be defeated by opponents in a large number.
3. Long period: Ants cannot destroy the enemy in one day. Likewise, the actions of underground party must also be based on long-term plans.
4. Silent: Ants work silently and soundlessly, so they are not easily noticed.
5. Erosion: Termites eat away at the building they live in bit by bit until they destroy it. They will not cause sudden collapse of the building they live in (so as not to attract people's attention), but will make it weak (no damage on the surface at all). , which can be easily destroyed if necessary).

Zhou Enlai was the originator of the CCP's secret service. Before the CCP seized power, he had already invented the infiltration strategy of "deploying idle chess pieces and cold pawns". The "termite policy" is another model of his infiltration policy of "idle pieces and cold pawns". Therefore, an understanding of the strategy of "staking idle pieces and deploying cold pawns" will help people understand the termite policy.

According to the recollections of Xiong Xianghui (an underground party member personally associated with Zhou Enlai), Dong Biwu said to him, "Enlai is experienced and advocates saving for a rainy day, striking at the back and taking a step ahead, and now he is planning to play idle chess and laying down cold pieces. You are the idle chess piece that Enlai is planning. If you are idle and cold, it will not harm the overall situation; if you are not idle and not cold, it will be beneficial to the overall situation. This is a special task, and the specific requirements must be determined according to the development of the situation... Related to this, Enlai was very specific that you must pay special attention to three points:

First, don’t rush to contact the Party. Now only Enlai, Nanxiang and I know that you have a special mission. We will find out where Hu Zongnan lives and try to contact you. It will take some time, no matter how long it takes, but you must wait patiently and don't be anxious. Before contact is made, you must not leave Hu's troops, but should decide independently around this special mission. After contact is made with you, you may not be needed or may not be able to play a special role. You should not be anxious, instead, be willing to act as an idle chess piece.

Second, conceal your identity as a party member, do not develop new party members, do not participate in the leadership work of the service corps, maintain a patriotic and progressive political outlook that appears neither left nor right, be prepared to join the Kuomintang, and understand the Central Committee's Declaration that identifies "Mr. Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles" as essential today's China, and use that to propel Hu Zongnan to continue his resistance against the Japanese and make progress, but you have to do it naturally, and you should not be hasty in your efforts to achieve results. If Hu Zongnan is anti-communist, you should play along with him on the surface, be white on the outside and red on the inside, like a Tianjin radish. Even if you are misunderstood and cursed by progressive friends, don't feel shame, don't rush to clear your name. Endure it and be resilient.

Third, inside the Kuomintang, you can be a little assertive towards others. It is better to be assertive than humble. If you are humble, you will be looked down upon by others and it will be difficult to make a difference, but you should not be too assertive. The Kuomintang's situation is complicated, so you have to adapt to the environment, go with the flow but don't get corrupt, and rise out of the filth without being implicated. No matter when or where you are, you must never be arrogant when doing things. Arrogance will lead to carelessness and cause problems. You must be cautious. Caution is not timidity. Revolutionaries should have courage but not be reckless. This requires you to develop your strengths of being willing to use your brain and be more careful, and be brave and good at adapting to changes... In the summer of 1941, as a piece placed by Zhou Enlai two and a half years earlier, I was neither idle nor cold, because Hu Zongnan had already been following Chiang Kai-shek in his anti-communist campaign, my "special mission" became clear: to engage in intelligence, and Zhou Enlai was the pioneer and founder of our party's intelligence work. (See Xiong Xianghui: "The Charm of Zhou Enlai", in "Zhou Enlai's Career as Prime Minister" Series 2 of the Secret History of Contemporary China, Hong Kong Wenhui Publishing House, 1992, page 35).

It can be seen from Xiong Xianghui's words that Zhou Enlai successfully seized power across the country before 1949 with "idle chess and cold moves". After 1949, he had deployed a "termite policy" to "take the whole world." This reflects the ambition and the plot of the CCP has always been one the same.

III Where do “termites” come from?

If the "termite policy" is to be successful, these "termites" must be large enough in number to be effective. Are there enough "termites" in China to infiltrate and eat away at others? have. Don’t forget that the CCP has a tradition of “fighting people’s war.” Even in hot battlefields with live bullets flying, the CCP can mobilize the masses to participate, in cold battlefields of intelligence war that do not directly threaten lives, the CCP's ability to mobilize is surely beyond doubt. Therefore, as I understand it, the CCP’s intelligence work has a tradition of what can be referred to as “the combination of specialists and lay persons.” “Specialists” refers to professional and trained intelligence personnel; “lay persons”, or the masses, refers to intelligence personnel without professional training.

That intelligence work implements the principle of “the combination of specialists and lay persons" was something I heard about when I was working at "Hong Kong Wen Wei Po". When I joined the company (in 1974), the editor-in-chief of Wen Wei Po, Liao Aiwen, was a division chief of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, responsible for collecting intelligence about Hong Kong. For work convenience, he was transferred to Hong Kong and took up the position of editor-in-chief of Wen Wei Po. In order to protect his true identity, he also took care of editorial duties and was responsible for "reading the big copy" (the so-called "blue copy" before the newspaper went to print). Mr. Liao told me that our (referring to the CCP) intelligence work follows the line of "the combination of specialists and lay persons". "Specialists" refers to professionally trained intelligence officers, and "lay persons" refers to "mass" intelligence personnel. This is "the manifestation of the Party's mass line in intelligence work."

The intelligence work principle of "the combination of specialists and lay persons" allows the CCP's intelligence network to be spread out on a large scale without being restricted by funds and manpower, so that the CCP's intelligence network can be "broad in coverage, with multiple reaches, deeply embedded in the community, and without blind spot" It mobilizes the masses to collect intelligence for the CCP and fights a "people's war" in intelligence work. This approach gives the CCP intelligence network an advantage that Western intelligence agencies cannot match, and this also makes impossible the elimination of the network by Western counterintelligence work.

This tradition of "the combination of specialists and lay persons" and fighting "people's war" has been further developed and emphasized recently. On August 1, 2023, the Ministry of National Security’s WeChat public account published an article “Counterintelligence and anti-espionage requires the mobilization of the whole society! ", which mentioned that counterintelligence work "not only requires national security agencies to play the role of specialized counterintelligence agencies, but also requires the broad participation of the oriinary people. To ensure national security, a joint effort to build a solid people's defense line against espionage." It emphasized: "In terms of working principles, it is clear that counterintelligence work must adhere to the "combination of open work and secret work" and "the combination of specialists and lay persons"; that article states that it is clear that "all state agencies and armed forces, all Political parties and various civilian organizations, private enterprises, institutions and other social organizations are legally obliged to prevent and suppress espionage and safeguard national security." At the same time, it stressed that "national security agencies must rely on the support of the people in counter-espionage work, mobilize and organize the people Prevent and suppress espionage." Although what was mentioned here was only counterintelligence work, espionage work obviously also follows the same principle and approach of "“the combination of specialists and lay persons". This shows that the CCP’s external infiltration work also relies, to a large extent, on non-professional “mass” intelligence personnel.

With an understanding that the CCP's intelligence work being "the combination of specialists and lay persons", we can answer the question of where the huge number of "termites" come from. Based on my first hand observation, the sources of "termites", that is, "mass intelligence personnel", are roughly as follows:

1. Businessmen (from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, other countries)
2. People who go abroad for various reasons
3. Mainland Chinese students studying abroad
4. Media workers sent by the CCP
5. Pro-communist media in the target countries
6. The upper class in the target countries
7. Shop owners and shop assistants of various trades in the target countries
8. Clerical workers in the target countries
9. All categories of social activists in the target countries
10. Hooligans and gangsters in the target countries

This list, and the ten categories included, is a generalization based on the people I have actually come into contact with. To be sure, there are more categories of "termites" than I listed, but since I haven't yet met people other than the aforementioned categories, I can't point them out.

Most of the intelligence obtained by these people is non-confidential. For instance:

• General information about politics, society, the public sentiments and the business environment;
• Personnel movements of key organizations and companies;
• The movements, family, social network and professional backgrounds of prominent members of a given community;
• The network, history, and details of leaders of major social movements;
• Significant scientific and technological inventions and progress in various countries.

The advantages of this kind of "mass intelligence personnel" are: large in numbers, able to reach far and wide, easy to stay off the radar (not easy to be discovered), and relatively safe (difficult to convict if anything goes wrong).

IV. Where are the "termite" burrows?

The huge number of "termites" have to have their burrows, so where are the "nests" of these "termites"? I attempt to analyze and pinpoint the location of these "nests" based on the concrete experience of Hong Kong.

1. Hidden underground Party organizations

After the Chinese Communist Party seized power across the country in 1949, it deployed "four lines" in Hong Kong, which was still under British rule back then. According to the deployment of Ye Jianying, the governor of Guangdong at the time, the specific contents of these "four lines" were as follows:

• The first line: open (also known as "red line"), refers to left-wing organizations that publicly displayed pro-Communist banners. These included labor unions, schools, newspapers agencies, bookstores, film production companies, national merchandise companies, banks, trading companies, shipping and transportation companies, among others;
• The second line: semi-open (also called the "grey line"), which does not claim to be pro-communist, but was actually a peripheral organization formed by the Communist Party;
• The third line: Hidden, scattered in all walks of life and government departments, they do not have any political color on the surface. The relevant personnel are the so-called "white-skinned and red-hearted", and those in this line might have been party members or nominally "non-party members";
• The fourth line: extremely covert, hidden in the heart of the enemy, with one-line contact with the organization, and very few in number (i.e., the "idle chess pieces and cold pawns" in Zhou Enlai's eyes).

 (According to Lu Di, "Ye Jianying's Affection for Hong Kong and Macao", Guangdong Ye Jianying Research Association, 2017-6-23, and cited in p.11 of "The Beginning and End of Hong Kong's 1967 Riots", this article can no longer be found on the Internet).

I find it imperative to make clear that when this article was published, I only mentioned the "four lines" and did not explain the content of each line in detail. The author annotated the specific contents of the four lines as above based on actual contacts. I did not speculate out of thin air, what I wrote are backed by evidences: the "four lines" in Hong Kong, deployed since 1949, was urgently called off by Zhou Enlai after nearly all CCP agents of those lines were exposed following the riots instigated by the Leftists under the influence of "ultra-left" ideological trends.

According to a document "Hong Kong 1967 Supplementary Information One" compiled by Wu Hui, Wu Dizhou's daughter, on June 7, 1967, Wu Dizhou conveyed three instructions from Zhou Enlai:

1. In this struggle, we must also pay attention to long-term work, do not expose all our mights, do not use them all, and do not expose or use the power of the third line.
2. The forces that have already penetrated the key departments of the British in Hong Kong should make no movement. For example, those that have been planted in the airport or those around the Governor of Hong Kong should stay still.
3. Don’t move those pieces deployed in American institutions or on US ships...[Quotation clipped].

(Source: Quoted from page 335 of my book "The Beginning and End of the 1967 Riots in Hong Kong")

I took the first instruction, "do not expose or use the power of the third line", as a warning against exposing the white-skinned and red-hearted moles deployed in all sectors in Hong Kong. And the second and third instructions, as I analyzed them, meant that the people of the fourth line, deployed in key departments of the "enemy", should not make even the slightest move.

Based on the historical experience of the CCP's infiltration of Hong Kong through the establishment of a "four-line" intelligence structure, it is not surprising that the CCP has established a multi-level infiltration mechanism in the United States or other western countries today.

If we follow the idea of the "four lines", we may be able to deduce the CCP's infiltration structure in the United States:

• The first line: various pro-Communist associations (red-banner-carrying organizations, media, etc. directly established by the CCP);
• The second line: "China-US friendship" organizations, with the "US" facade of the organization to dilute the pro-Communist overtones (equivalent to the "grey line" organizations in Hong Kong);
• The third line: U.S. "communist-friendly" politicians (federal and state senators and representatives) who have entered U.S. power structures, pro-communist think tanks, heads of universities and colleges, and "communist-friendly" businessmen and business associations in Wall Street, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Boeing;
• The fourth line: People who have penetrated into the very core of the top echelons of power in the United States and have single-line contact with the CCP.

In this regard, note the gleeful "confession" of a CCP professor:

According to Zhai Dongsheng, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Relations at Renmin University of China, in a public speech on November 28, 2020, the Chinese authorities have used "old friends in the inner circle of U.S. power" over the past few decades to influence U.S. politics and policy toward China. Zhai Dongsheng's statement proves that the Chinese Communist Party has deployed a "fourth line" in the U.S. that is capable of influencing the high-powered structure (see Appendix for the full text of Zhai Dongsheng's speech).

2. Various public communities and academic organizations

The four lines mentioned above may all become termite nests, but after all, there are still only a few people who have the independent ability to do the work of foreigners. A large number of termites hide in public communities. According to the Hong Kong experience, community work is a powerful tool for the CCP to infiltrate Hong Kong society. It is also the ant nest that allows the largest possible number of termites to hide and bring their corrosive potentials into full play.

2.1 Huge quantity

According to the statistics of the Hong Kong government, on the eve of the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, the number of societies registered with the Societies Registration Department (SRD) in Hong Kong was more than 8,695. In 2017, the number soared to over 52,386, representing a six-fold increase. This comparison shows that while there were less than 9,000 societies in Hong Kong during the 150 years of British rule, the number has soared several times in just 20 years after the handover under the Hong Kong Communist Party (HKCP). The vast majority of these societies are pro-communist organizations, and they have become the grassroots force in Hong Kong cultivated by the CCP.

How do we tell that all the newly emerged social organizations are affiliated with the CCP? This can be seen from the speed of development of social organizations in Hong Kong before and after 1997. The real development of social organizations in Hong Kong started after the war in 1945. During the 50 years from 1945 to 1995, 8695 social organizations were formed, with an average of 174 each year. In other words, this is the natural trend of local growth. However, during the 20-year period from 1997 to 2017, the number of societies grew by an average of 2,200 per year, which far exceeded the natural trend of local growth before 1997, so it is obvious that the new growth was "assisted" by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

2.2 Wide variety

This umbrella of associations comes with a wide variety. I try to categorize them using the "six sames": same village, same family name, same alma mater, same profession, same hobby, and same district. Those which can't be categorized are labelled as "others". See the table below:

Categories
Same village	Subcategories include associations of provincial, municipal, town and village levels
Same family name	Associations (〇氏宗親會) named after various family names found across China, one family name per association.
Same alma mater	Groups created in Hong Kong by people who attended the same college in China
Same profession	Associations formed by people in the same industry
Same hobby	Groups and clubs and the like, whose members have the same hobby or field of interest: art, photography, singing, calligraphy, sports, chess,
Others	all kinds of academic groups, research groups, debate clubs, and uniformed groups

V. The CCP's Highest Demands on the work of community organizations

Why is it that the CCP wants community ogranizations to be like "military and civilian" hybrids that exist outside the system and expects these organizations to be able to 1) show up when called upon; 2) fight when they show up; and 3) win when they fight?

As the "peripheral" struggle force of the CCP, the struggle methods of these groups are diverse:

• In normal times, they "compete for the masses" against the opposition using free giveaways, such as snake dishes, vegan dishes, mooncakes and zongs;
• When it comes to voting on policies, they will either support or veto the government's policies according to the CCP's attitude towards a certain policy;
• In district elections, they mobilize their forces to support the candidates favored by the CCP;
• In times of political turmoil, they will unequivocally support the CCP's viewpoints and positions;
• In times of intense struggles, they will take action on behalf of the CCP to intimidate with violence or directly beat up the opponents.

These experiences in Hong Kong are also like de javu in the United States. The three characteristics of 1) a large number of associations, 2) a wide variety of organizations, and 3) a strong sense of fighting are apparent in the Chinese circles in the United States. "Termites" take up residence in these societies, where they are both protected and able to play a role in corroding mainstream society.

Speaking of termite infiltration techniques, we cannot fail to mention the underground party organization of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1949, the CCP deployed two "mutually independent" party organizations in Hong Kong. One was the semi-public "Hong Kong Working Committee of the Communist Party of China" (cloaked in the guise of the Hong Kong Branch of Xinhua News Agency), and the other was the covert "Hong Kong City Working Committee of the Communist Party of China". (Total confidentiality). The "Working Committee" is a semi-public organization that leads the CCP's various institutions in Hong Kong and is responsible for the CCP's "foreign affairs activities" in Hong Kong (mainly its relations with the British Hong Kong government and the consuls of various countries in Hong Kong), while the "City Working Committee" "The secret work of the CCP is to prepare to take over Hong Kong at any time (although the CCP had decided not to take back Hong Kong for the time being, as early as 1949, it was still quietly preparing for the possibility of taking over Hong Kong at any time in order to cope with emergencies). Due to the secrecy of the latter, the outside world generally only knew about the "Working Committee", and almost no one knew about the existence of the "City Working Committee". The author only became aware of the latter when he was interpreting Wu Dizhou's notes (see my book: "The Beginning and End of the 1967 Riots in Hong Kong", page 300, where the "work and city committees" were mentioned for the first time. For detailed analysis, see Chapter 4 of the book, "The Story of the 1967 Riots". Mechanisms of Command and Organization, pp. 65-94).

Per the memories of Martin Lee, leader of the Democratic Party, after the June 4 massacre in Beijing in 1989, Lee was worried that the British Hong Kong Government would withdraw from Hong Kong earlier than planned. Xu Jiatun, the former director of the Xinhua News Agency, told him that the CCP could take over Hong Kong at any time. Lee said,  "We had lunch together one day and he told me not to worry too much. Beijing has sent about 50,000 persons to Hong Kong to work in all walks of life, in administrative, and professional positions. If the British leaves before the handover, he said, these people will be on top.” From this, it can be confirmed that the existence of the "City Working Committee" should have continued until 1997. As for whether it still exists after the handover in 1997, I have no way of knowing.

So has the CCP established its underground organizations in the United States? I can definitely say with certainty that the answer is "yes", but I don’t know the details. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party has been exposed to have established "party organizations" on American campuses. So how many such "party organizations" are there on campuses across the United States? We might as well do some rough calculations.

Drawing reference from the ratio between the total number of CCP members (nearly 100 million) and the entire population of China (1.4 billion), we can see that party members account for 7% of the national population. In the US there are now 300,000 international students from China. If we apply that same ratio, then there should be 21,000 CCP members among those students. Per the CCP Constitution, every three party members can form a party group. So, in theory, 21,000 party members can generate 7,000 party groups. Assuming that normal size of a party group is about 10 persons, then up to 2000 party groups can be formed.

The number of party groups (between 2000 and 7000) is only what we can reasonably estimate to exist in the United States, and the scope is confined to American university campuses. There are many other areas where we have no way of estimating the true scope of the infilitration. Take the various state-owned enterprises and collective enterprises operating in the United States for example, each of these enterprises will form their own party organizations or groups. And all these organizations and groups serve as "termite nests".

Therefore, in order to prevent the CCP from infiltrating the United States or other Western societies, we must be vary of the ubiquitous termites.

Ching Cheong is a senior commentator, former deputy editor-in-chief of Wen Wei Po, and director of the Beijing Office of Wen Wei Po. He was also the chief correspondent of the Straits Times stationed in China.