Report on the PRC’s Transnational Repression and Malign Influence in 2025

Key Findings

• The PRC's transnational repression and malign influence operations pose significant threats to human rights and sovereignty, intimidating and censoring legal residents on U.S. soil and others around the world.
• The PRC targets Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, Tibetans, former Chinese government officials, and others through a global coercive toolkit that includes physical attacks, AI-enabled sexual harassment, threats to family members in China, pressure to return to China, censorship, and lawfare.
• PRC transnational repression aims to silence criticism, isolate victims, shape public narratives, and/or deter others from challenging the CCP's authority, even outside of China.
• PRC malign influence operations use covert and coercive tactics to skew public debate, and influence decision-making in the U.S. and allied democracies, undermining democratic governance, institutional integrity, and effective U.S. responses to autocratic interference.
• The PRC's malign influence and transnational repression operations violate rights protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and may contribute to violations by other governments when those governments assist, enable, tolerate, or fail to prevent PRC-linked coercion within their territory or return victims to places where they face a credible risk of persecution or abuse.

About This Report 

The government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has increasingly sought to make censorship and coercion felt far beyond China's borders. Critics, diaspora communities,  universities, cultural institutions, foreign officials, and international organizations have all faced pressure when their words, actions, or advocacy challenge the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s preferred narratives. These efforts are meant not only to silence individual voices, but also to warn others that criticism of the CCP can carry consequences outside of China. 

For more than a decade, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (Commission) has tracked this pattern through hearings, public reporting, victim testimony, and bipartisan legislative initiatives. In 2020, in response to this growing awareness of the PRC's extraterritorial human rights abuses, the Commission added a new chapter to its Annual Report titled "Human Rights Violations in the U.S. and Globally." That chapter documented a widening set of tactics and targets, including threats and intimidation directed at critics and diaspora communities; economic coercion against foreign companies; abuses linked to PRC-backed development projects abroad; malign influence efforts in democratic systems; forced repatriation of political dissidents and refugees; and efforts to undermine international human rights bodies. 

Since then, public reporting on the scope and tactics of these abuses has increased. What once appeared to be a series of scattered incidents is now understood as a growing global challenge to human rights, democratic freedoms, institutional independence, and the ability of people outside China to speak and act without fear of retaliation. 

To address these developments more comprehensively, the Commission will now publish an annual review focused on the PRC's human rights violations beyond China's borders, as well as regular updates in the China Monitor. This report marks that transition: from documenting these abuses as one part of a broader annual report to examining them as a distinct and expanding threat that requires sustained public attention and a coordinated policy response. 

Introduction

The cases documented in this report show how the PRC government seeks to extend control abroad through fear, censorship, and coercion. In 2025, PRC authorities and their proxies targeted critics of the CCP, members of diaspora communities, human rights advocates, elected officials, researchers, artists, and civil society organizations outside China. While tactics varied, all cases appeared to be attempts to silence criticism, isolate victims, shape public narratives, and/or deter others from challenging the CCP's authority. 

A central focus of this report is "transnational repression," which the U.S. Department of Justice defines as "tactics that foreign governments employ to reach beyond their borders to harm, intimidate, threaten, harass, or coerce individuals." In 2026, Freedom House characterized the PRC as the continued leading perpetrator of transnational repression among all countries, responsible for 23 percent of recorded cases since 2014. 

Besides targeting individuals through transnational repression, PRC authorities have also sought to target foreign politicians and governments and influence democratic processes abroad through "malign influence," defined by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence as "subversive, undeclared, coercive, or criminal activities by foreign governments . . . to affect another nation's popular or political attitudes, perceptions, or behaviors to advance their interests." Transnational repression and malign influence from the PRC often go hand in hand, linked by the CCP's goal of controlling global narratives about the PRC and its policies. The CCP seeks to control public narratives both at home and abroad, with the aim of ensuring the stability of the government and its own political survival. 

The CCP's model of social governance under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has deepened centralized control over various aspects of society, promoted political and ideological indoctrination, and increased resources to grow the Party's presence. Established in 1942, the United Front Work Department (UFWD) coordinates the PRC's domestic and overseas influence and propaganda work. On the domestic front, the UFWD targets "non-CCP social groups, key individuals, and non-state organizations, such as the eight democratic parties, ethnic minorities, religious groups, intellectuals, and private businesses." Xi stated in 2023 that the overseas Chinese community serve as the "primary agents" driving united front work abroad. The united front system seeks to "shape narratives about China in foreign media, target Chinese government critics abroad and co-opt influential overseas Chinese figures." The scope of these operations has moved beyond the Chinese diaspora to target any global voice critical of the PRC. 

Synthesizing open-source information with individual interviews, this report documents the reality of the CCP's transnational repression and malign influence operations. While not exhaustive, this report illustrates the PRC's attempts, reported during 2025, to exert control outside of China. The report is organized by the various tactics used by PRC authorities, though certain cases reveal the convergence of multiple tactics. Similarly, some cases blur the line between "transnational repression" and "malign influence"—but all cases reveal an infringement on the rights of individuals abroad, including violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.