by Philip Lenczycki
Thousands of American kids are being sent to camps run by a Chinese influence and intelligence agency that promote Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda and even train some children to act like “Little Overseas Chinese Police,” a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.
The Chinese government advertises the “Root-Seeking Summer Camp In China” as an opportunity for ethnically Chinese children living in the U.S. and other countries to immerse themselves in Chinese language and culture. However, a DCNF review of Chinese government announcements and the program’s website discovered the camps are overseen by a Chinese influence and intelligence service.
The program not only exposes participants as young as 10 years old to CCP propaganda, but some even operate like boot camps run by officers from the People’s Liberation Army and Ministry of Public Security, Chinese government social media posts reveal.
“The long arm of the CCP’s malign influence extends into the United States and seeks to assert an illegitimate claim on all those of Chinese ancestry — regardless of their nationality,” Michigan Republican Rep. John Moolenaar told the DCNF.
“We need to protect all those on American soil from the CCP’s authoritarian agenda, particularly by educating the American public on the true nature of the Party and its dystopian vision,” said Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP.
‘Little Overseas Chinese Police’
The DCNF found multiple examples of Chinese-American children attending “root-seeking” camps run by Chinese security and military personnel.
In August 2016, over 50 children from the U.S., Canada, Portugal and other countries participated in an 8-day camp in and around the city of Suqian in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, according to a social media post from that city’s Foreign Affairs Office.
Among other activities, the social media post states that the children trained at the Jiangsu National Defense Education and Training Center in Suzhou, which is a roughly 62-acre military base featuring obstacle courses and field combat training areas, according to a local government website. Photos from the camp show two Chinese soldiers wearing fatigues alongside a group of several dozen participants standing in front of a “Jacob’s Ladder” obstacle course.
The following year, campers from the U.S. and the United Kingdom donned matching green shirts and camouflage shorts during two days of military training in Beijing, according to a social media post made by the training center. Photos from the July 2017 camp show the children marching, saluting, doing pushups and standing at parade rest under the watchful eye of People’s Liberation Army soldiers. Other photos show participants smiling and hugging the soldiers.
The DCNF previously reported that the Chinese military has been conducting “National Defense Education” within Chinese kindergartens for years. Along with learning drill commands, the week-long boot camps also familiarize kindergarteners with a wide-variety of toy weapons, including knives, rifles, grenades, mortars and shoulder-fired missiles.
This summer Chinese kindergarteners are practicing “rifle tactics” and running around playing squad-based skirmish games shooting each other at National Defense Education boot camps that @Dailycaller reported on
Watch this video: pic.twitter.com/FkubmCC9O4
— Philip Lenczycki 蔡岳 (@LenczyckiPhilip) July 10, 2023
The DCNF discovered another “root-seeking” camp overseen by China’s national police authority, the Ministry of Public Security.
In July 2019, over 1,000 overseas Chinese children from the U.S. and other countries took part in a series of camps spread throughout the city of Wenzhou in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, Chinese-language media outlet Sohu reported.
Participants in at least one of the camps trained alongside Ministry of Public Security officers at a police station in the city’s Li’Ao subdistrict, according to an announcement from the provincial All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), which the Department of Justice identifies as an “agency” of a Chinese influence and intelligence service called the United Front Work Department (UFWD).
Camp participants wore matching black t-shirts featuring the English word “POLICE” as well as matching hats bearing a Ministry of Public Security badge, photos show.
During the program’s convocation ceremony, Ministry of Public Security and ACFROC officials inducted the children into a squad of “Little Overseas Chinese Police,” saying they hoped the new cadets would “guide more overseas Chinese youth to join the ranks of the Little Overseas Chinese Police,” ACFROC’s report states.
Afterwards, Ministry of Public Security officials showed the children the police station’s “intelligence room” as well as a room dedicated to recruiting and training CCP members, ACFROC reported.
Brandon Weichert, a national security analyst at the National Interest, told the DCNF that the “Little Overseas Chinese Police” camp may aim to threaten participants into operating as informants, Weichert said.
“We’re always watching you,” Weichert said, “why don’t you help us keep tabs on mom and dad or grandma and grandpa or brother and sister?”
‘Get Them While They’re Young’
The Chinese government’s “root-seeking” camp program was jointly launched by the State Council’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO) and its China Overseas Exchange Association in 1999, according to an announcement on the New York Chinese Consulate website. OCAO officially became a UFWD bureau in 2018, Chinese government records show.
In 2001, the “root-seeking” program welcomed 3,000 participants from over 40 countries and grew to over 6,000 participants from 51 countries by 2010, according to Chinese state-run media.
The number of participants nearly doubled by 2018, according to a New York Chinese Consulate announcement from that year.
“Every year, over 10,000 overseas Chinese teenagers from around the globe are invited to come to China to visit, inspect, study and communicate, seeking their roots from their ancestors,” the consulate announcement reads.
Chinese government social media posts show the camps are held in megacities, like Shanghai, as well as in remote provinces, including Xinjiang, where the U.S. government says the CCP is committing genocide against Uyghur and other ethnic minorities.
Salih Hudayar, the East Turkistan Government-In-Exile’s minister for foreign affairs and security, described the CCP’s program as a “calculated attempt to whitewash its brutal policies.”
“By inviting overseas Chinese youth to participate in these state-orchestrated tours, Beijing seeks to mask its ongoing Uyghur Genocide, reshaping global perceptions to reinforce a false narrative over our homeland,” Hudayar told the DCNF. “This program is not a genuine cultural exchange, but a means of manufacturing support for China’s occupation and colonization.”
Although the camps’ itineraries vary depending on location, a DCNF review found they regularly include cultural activities such as practicing calligraphy or kung fu as well as stops at local attractions like the Great Wall of China or Giant Panda Sanctuaries.
Yet, regardless of where in China the camps are held, the sightseeing always involves “Red Tourism,” which state-run media outlet China Daily has described as visiting locations “related to the nation’s revolutionary history.” In recent years, participants have “experienced Red culture” by studying revolutionary martyrs, delivering flowers to Chairman Mao’s statue or by dressing in military uniforms at the “birthplace of the Red Army,” Chinese government social media posts show.
Opening and closing ceremonies overseen by high-level UFWD personnel are another commonality between the camps, with many even featuring special stops in Beijing to attend functions at the Chinese government’s Great Hall of the People.
During the program’s 2010 opening ceremony in Beijing, China’s vice president at the time, Xi Jinping, delivered a speech broadly outlining the program’s purpose, Chinese government records show.
“Uniting together as one Chinese people is the shared ‘root,’” Xi said at the event, according to a government report, “the wide-ranging and profound Chinese culture is the shared ‘soul,’ and realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is the shared ‘dream’ of Chinese sons and daughters at home and abroad.”
Xi urged participants to become “enthusiastic disseminators” of Chinese culture, “active promoters” of cultural exchange as well as “emissaries” for friendly contact between China and other nations, according to the government report.
The “root-seeking” program now closely follows Xi’s theoretical framework, and the DCNF found multiple government announcements from the summer of 2024 reporting camps had trained participants to become “Chinese culture ambassadors” and “tell China’s story well” — which is CCP terminology for conducting “external propaganda work,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
“The legitimate rights for overseas Chinese to learn and inherit their own language and culture should be respected and protected,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the U.S., told the DCNF by email. “The Root-Seeking Summer Camp in China provides a platform to help overseas Chinese learn their native language, understand their culture, and go to their ancestral country, China, to seek their roots and to study and exchange in China.”
“The Root-Seeking Summer Camp has always been conducted in accordance with international laws and the laws and customs of the country where the overseas Chinese live,” Liu Pengyu added. “The Root-Seeking Summer Camp not only satisfies the needs of overseas Chinese to learn their own language and culture, but also effectively promotes exchanges and integration between different cultures around the world, and provides convenience for the world to understand China and for China to understand the world.”
However, the Embassy refused to address questions concerning whether or not the program was connected to the UFWD.
National security analyst Weichert told the DCNF that the program aims to “get them while they’re young.”
“What this is all about is forming cadres of sympathizers for the CCP, so that they’ll then come back to the U.S. and they’ll serve the interests of the CCP, whether wittingly or unwittingly,” Weichert said. “No country is going to put resources into a program like that unless there was some kind of ulterior motive.”
‘Unrestricted Warfare’
The Chinese Embassy and consulates in the U.S. rely on a network of Chinese-American organizations to recruit children for the “root-seeking” camps, according to Chinese government and civic association records.
The so-called Overseas Chinese Service Centers (OCSCs) in the U.S. are among those involved in recruiting for the “root-seeking” program, according to their websites, Chinese state-run media reports and government announcements. The UFWD oversees a global network of approximately 60 OCSCs, which include seven U.S. branches located in California, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas, Utah and Missouri, the DCNF previously reported.
One year before campers trained to become “Little Overseas Chinese Police” in Wenzhou, leaders of OCSCs from the U.S. and other countries met with Ministry of Public Security officials at the very same Li’Ao subdistrict police station in January 2018, the DCNF previously reported.
During that 2018 meeting, Ministry of Public Security officials showed the OCSC leaders how the Wenzhou police station’s “Extraterritorial Video Trial Court” works with “Overseas Chinese Police Contact Points” housed in some OCSCs to conduct “cross-border remote justice services,” the DCNF reported. OCSC emissaries also posed with Ministry of Public Security officers outside the Wenzhou police station in the same spot where the “Little Overseas Chinese Police” cadets would later be photographed alongside Ministry of Public Security officers in 2019, Chinese government photos show.
However, OCSCs are not the only Chinese-American organizations recruiting participants for the “root-seeking” camps.
A 2018 announcement from the New York Chinese Consulate identifies over a dozen Chinese-American organizations recruiting for the program on the East Coast alone.
One New York-based group, Xungen Association Of Chinese-Americans, Inc., claims to have recruited nearly 2,000 children for the program since 2013. In July 2024, ACFROC appointed that association’s chairwoman as an advisor while she was leading a group of campers through Quanzhou, Fujian.
Another large U.S. recruiter is an Ann Arbor, Michigan nonprofit called the Chinese School Association In The US (CSAUS), which describes itself as “the largest grass-root organization for Chinese Americans.”
“Every year, the association hosts and organizes China’s ‘Roots-Seeking Tour’ summer camp,” CSAUS’s website states.
CSAUS’s board includes the head of the St. Louis, Missouri OCSC, who in 2018 was among the U.S. OCSC leaders that met with Ministry of Public Security officials in Wenzhou. In light of its Chinese government-ties, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey recently subpoenaed the St. Louis OCSC.
“The CCP embeds itself in our universities, critical infrastructure, and government through elite capture operations and establishes so-called ‘service centers’ that are linked to the CCP’s intel arm to extend its influence,” Missouri Republican Rep. Eric Burlison told the DCNF.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is waging an all-out war against the United States — not with missiles or bombs, but with a sophisticated and insidious strategy of unrestricted warfare to infiltrate, weaken, and ultimately destroy our nation from within,” said Burlison, a member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
Xungen and CSAUS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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Philip Lenczycki is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
