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Judged by its scope and scale, and the sheer number of active participants, China’s 2008 measures amounted to arguably the largest covert global influence campaign in history, and a preview of how China—now a behemoth seen in Washington more as a threat than a partner—would approach power and influence as its international status grew. Yet at the time, Western observers, who were preoccupied with domestic Chinese human-rights violations and what appeared to be a surge in organic Chinese nationalism in cities such as London and Paris, missed it almost entirely.

Beijing was almost certainly emboldened by the anemic international response to its squashing of protests over the torch run in 2008, and Western democracies are only beginning to grapple with the implications. In the decade since, China has undertaken an expansive policy of surveilling, cultivating, and pressuring its diaspora; stolen trade secrets and intellectual property from Western businesses to catalyze China’s development; and carried out a coordinated international campaign of intimidation, even kidnapping dissidents and Chinese ethnic minorities abroad, forcing many to return to China to face imprisonment or worse.

Its actions during the torch run offered a hint of Beijing’s capabilities and the long arm of its security apparatus. Whereas Vietnam detained or expelled anti-China protesters prior to the torch arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, leaders in democratic countries could not simply ensure positive media coverage for China or clamp down on criticism. China responded by directly interfering with the rights and freedoms guaranteed in free societies to polish its own image.

In San Francisco, this meant organizing crowds to drown out protesters. After Newsom declined to ban rallies during the torch relay, Chinese consular officers in California mobilized somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 Chinese students to attend the protests, according to the same former senior U.S. intelligence official, and confirmed by another former counterintelligence official who asked not to be named discussing Chinese efforts on U.S. soil. These students were asked to take part in counterdemonstrations, and given free transport, boxed lunches, and T-shirts. Those on Chinese government scholarships faced threats that their funding would be revoked if they did not participate.

According to the former senior U.S. intelligence official, Beijing also flew in intelligence officers to direct the pro-China demonstrators in real time. These officials, wearing earpieces connected to radios, directed groups of counter-protesters, who ripped down banners and occupied spaces so that anti-China demonstrators could not gather.

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These operations weren’t unique to San Francisco. Chinese embassies and consulates elsewhere are known to have bused in thousands of students from surrounding areas to participate in counterdemonstrations in London, Canberra, Paris, Nagano, and elsewhere, often providing signs and flags, helping them drown out pro-Tibetan or other groups. The South Korean government launched an investigation after well-equipped crowds of Chinese students appeared in Seoul, where they pelted anti-China activists with rocks in videos that went viral on YouTube—violence that a Chinese foreign-ministry spokesperson refused to condemn. Zhang Rongan, the head of a Chinese student organization in Australia known for close ties to Beijing, initially claimed that the Chinese embassy had provided support to help bring students from all over Australia to the relay. (Zhang later denied that the students had received any outside support.) In his book, Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese, the researcher James Jiann Hua To writes that Chinese students were also warned not to participate in any anti-China activity.