A reason for the American people, and the politicians who represent us in government, to overcome our partisan divisions is that democratic institutions are under threat around the world, and we are barely aware of it.
In a presentation earlier this year to the House Select Committee on Intelligence, scholar Christopher Walker laid out in sober terms how China uses centralized state power and money to influence the world.
The guiding principle of American foreign policy has long been to engage with authoritarian regimes in global trade and culture with the hope of nudging them to have more transparent and participatory government.
That has not worked so far.
Many believed that China’s relaxation of rigid communism to permit private markets to flourish would have to open the door to democracy at home.
It didn’t.
To quote Mr. Walker, vice president for studies and analysis, National Endowment for Democracy: “Rather than reforming, China and any number of other leading repressive regimes have deepened their authoritarianism. And in an era of hyperglobalization, they are turning it outward.”
There is a limit to how much the Peoples Republic of China can export its authoritarianism, but China is using its powerful control of communications, traditional media, and social media to project the image it wants the world to share.
In sub-Saharan Africa, Chinese state-media outlets have bureaus with two sets of editors: African editors on the local payroll, and then Chinese editors in Beijing, ensuring that China constantly appears in a “positive” or “constructive” light. China educates African journalists on Chinese achievements and how to report from the Chinese government’s perspective. In Latin America, China President Xi Jinping has said that he wants to bring ten thousand Latin American politicians, academics, journalists, officials, and former diplomats to China by 2020.
China analyst David Bandurski has described how the Discovery Channel coproduced a film that was seen by millions across 37 countries in Asia. Though billed as an independent television production, its coproducer was a company effectively operated out of the PRC propaganda office.
President Trump’s economic challenge to China is helpful in restraining China’s unbridled economic imperialism. A sustained confrontation with China will serve globally as a model of standing up for the rights of democratic countries to not be bulldozed by concentrated authoritarian power.
First Published August 17, 2019, 4:00 a.m.
