When KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made a high-profile visit to the United States, the Democratic Progressive Party responded with barely concealed fury.
What set it off was a photograph: Cheng appearing alongside Gary Yu (俞國梁), a Chinese-American community figure whom DPP lawmakers and party officials promptly branded a "Chinese Communist united-front operative."
From the party's central headquarters to its Legislative Yuan caucus, the verdict was unanimous — the Republic of China's survival was somehow imperiled by a single dinner photograph.
The "Dangerous" Man Who Raised $300,000 for Boston's Taiwanese-American Mayor
So who exactly is Gary Yu? His public profile is extensive.
According to his Baidu encyclopedia entry and LinkedIn profile, he serves as president of the Boston chapter of the Asian Pacific American Public Affairs Association (APAPA), president of the North American Hangzhou Hometown Association, and founder and chairman of a Boston-based international media consultancy.
In Massachusetts, he holds positions as vice chair of the Commonwealth's Asian American and Pacific Islander Commission, director of Asian community liaison at the State Auditor's office, and a seat on the Suffolk County District Attorney's community engagement and reinvestment grant committee. He previously led the New England Chinese American Association and the UCA Massachusetts chapter. In 2023, U.S. Senator Ed Markey presented him with a Diversity and Inclusion Award.
None of that is the most telling detail.
What matters most is this: Gary Yu raised $300,000 in campaign contributions for Michelle Wu (吳弭), the current mayor of Boston — one of her most significant financial backers. Wu won re-election last year by a landslide.
She is Boston's first female mayor in two centuries, the first not born in the city, and — most relevant to the DPP's alarm — her parents are from Taiwan, and she still has family in Taichung. She is, in other words, Taiwanese-American.
That a Chinese-American community figure with mainland roots would fundraise for a mayor of Taiwanese heritage is not evidence of a united-front operation. It reflects the straightforward reality that both Wu and Yu are Democrats.
Yu's documented political donations to the Democratic Party date to at least 2018. Their civic engagement is grounded in American citizenship — not in any cross-strait loyalty or agenda.
This is not to deny that Beijing maintains an active overseas influence infrastructure. China's State Council Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and the United Front Work Department's overseas Chinese associations have deep roots in diaspora communities worldwide — just as the Republic of China government operates its Overseas Community Affairs Council, the KMT maintains an overseas affairs department, and the DPP runs its own overseas party branches to stay connected with Taiwanese diaspora communities.
The overseas Chinese world has never been monolithic. It is fractured between those who identify with the Republic of China and those who identify with the People's Republic, between unification and independence, between mainland Chinese democratic dissidents and enthusiastic supporters of Beijing's rise. No single ethnic community in the United States is more internally complex.
Beijing Plays Offense on Overseas Outreach. Why Is Taipei Playing Defense?
Washington has grown significantly more alert to Chinese influence operations. Last year, law enforcement arrested three individuals across New York and Boston on charges of acting as unregistered agents of the Chinese government.
Their activities included reporting on anti-China dissidents, organizing counter-protests against democratic activists, and supplying the Chinese Ministry of Public Security with lists of potential recruitment targets. They operated through so-called "clan associations."
Gary Yu, despite heading the North American Hangzhou Hometown Association, does not appear on any such list.
Taiwan is alert to Beijing's overseas influence activities — and rightly so. Xi Jinping (習近平) first articulated his concept of "grand overseas Chinese affairs" during his time in Fujian province.
The logic was straightforward: the overseas Chinese community is disproportionately Fujianese and Cantonese in origin, and any credible vision of national rejuvenation had to include the diaspora. Xi's approach emphasizes service and economic engagement, but it has generated genuine controversy — the global network of Confucius Institutes being the most prominent example.
Yet the appropriate response to Beijing's assertiveness is not for Taiwan to retreat.
Researchers at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research have argued precisely this: Taiwan's overseas affairs work should actively engage even Chinese-born emigrants abroad. Taiwan's comparative advantage is democracy and freedom — values with real appeal for overseas Chinese communities, many of whom left China precisely to escape the system Beijing represents.
The evidence supports this. When former President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) transited through the United States, among those who came to welcome her were immigrants from mainland China.
When ROC Flags Fill the Frame, Who Is Influencing Whom?
Against this backdrop, the DPP's claim to be "shocked" — the word used by DPP legislator Wu Hsin-tai (吳欣岱) — that Gary Yu appeared at a banquet also attended by Cheng Li-wun says more about the DPP's own anxieties than about any real security threat.
If a single Chinese-American community figure is enough to send the DPP into institutional panic, one might note by contrast that Mayor Michelle Wu — whose parents are from Taiwan — had no apparent difficulty incorporating the same Hangzhou hometown network into her political coalition.
The KMT has stated that it does not know Gary Yu, that he was not on the guest list, and that he did not share a table with Cheng — the photograph was simply taken at a public restaurant venue. This account is credible.
Overseas Chinese community events are open and fluid; it would be neither surprising nor sinister for an attendee to approach a visiting politician for a photograph. Cheng Li-wun, unlike the DPP, was not afraid to be photographed with a Chinese-American community figure. That is not selling out Taiwan. It is basic civic confidence.
Most strikingly: the photograph in question is filled with Republic of China flags.
If Gary Yu genuinely has the united-front background the DPP claims, this image presents a rather inconvenient problem — for Beijing. A supposed united-front operative posing in a frame dominated by the ROC flag is not a propaganda victory for China. It is, if anything, the opposite.
Either Gary Yu is not particularly troubled by appearing beside ROC flags — which suggests the DPP's characterization is overwrought — or he has some explaining to do back in Beijing.
Whichever way that turns out, Cheng Li-wun placed the Republic of China flag right next to the man the DPP insists is a threat to the Republic of China. On those terms, she may have done the ROC a quiet favor. （Related： Taiwan's 'Resilience' Doctrine Is Starting to Look Like a Campaign Slogan ｜ Latest ）
