This is a remarkable book with a cool message. The Chinese Communist Party, for which rural China dominates to encircle its cities and win the civil war is part of its historic backstory, is now intent on doing the same internationally. With the help of whatever lever comes into play – financing a think tank in Washington, with part of the port of Rotterdam, fostering “friendship” clubs such as Britain’s 48 Group Club – it aims to create an international soft “discourse” and tough infrastructure that defines Western centers of power so that the party’s dominance at home and abroad becomes irresponsible .
China, we know, has very different definitions of terrorism, human rights, security and even multilateralism for those who accept it internationally. The book spells them out and shows how intense the party is in gaining international acceptance for them as vital supporters for its power. Acts of terrorism do not cover eat pork or speak out against “democracy” of one party, as the Uighurs and denizens of Hong Kong teach. Human rights should be understood as the collective right of the people for economic and social development of Chinese style. Multilateralism means that states act in harmony with China and its view that economic development is the alpha and omega of all international goals – the vision set out in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The BRI is known as President Xi’s signature policy, which enables China to work with governments to build and improve ports and the broader transportation infrastructure across Asia and Africa. I knew that the way the BRI is characterized as representing a “community of common destiny for mankind” is nothing more than a front for China’s geopolitical goals, but I did not realize its wonderful reach and reach. The BRI is at the heart of China’s efforts to reorient the world to the interest of the Chinese Communist Party. It is breathtaking in its courage.
Signatories to the BRI – mostly small states in Asia and Africa and even within the EU Italy and Greece – gain access to Chinese subsidies and loans for the development of their infrastructure. The quid pro quo to open is that Chinese civilian and military traffic is prioritized in ports and airports, or as the Liberation Army Navy Navy sources put it, within the BRI “they select locations, discreetly deploy, prioritize collaboration and gradually infiltrate “. But the BRI accreditation process also requires signatories to accept “China’s goodwill” – “harmonious” globalization that adopts China’s definitions of terrorism, security, human rights and multilateralism. Any signatory had better not recognize Taiwan – as an objection to events in Hong Kong. As party insiders affirm, the BRI is aimed at delivering the party’s geo-strategic dominance.
Integrated into the work of the BRI is the party’s now enormous and versatile United Department Work Department – Mao Zedong described it as one of the party’s three ‘magic weapons’. In essence, it coordinates the party’s ‘scientific’ efforts to win ‘friends’ – in ethnic groups, foreign political parties, Western tankers, overseas Chinese communities, private companies, non-Chinese nationals sitting on the advisory boards of Chinese companies like Huawei. The methods range from organizing sympathetic conferences and writing checks to sometimes organizing the clandestine seduction of foreign dignitaries to steal their secrets and the hacking of foreign computer systems.
Under President Xi, the BRI and United Front became the twin batrams to project Chinese power. As Hamilton and Ohlberg say, the pretense that party and state are two different areas has fallen under Xi. China and the Chinese Communist Party are coterminous – and every enterprise in China, state-owned and private, is investigated by a Communist Party committee.
All western states have until the last few months chosen to look the other way. After all, the Chinese economy is now the second largest in the world – and its enormous investment in tech is losing leadership in AI and 5G. The consensus has been that you should participate. Britain has not been a battle. Remember the visit of George Osborne and Boris Johnson to China in 2013, innocently opening the door to party control of part of our new nuclear industry – as David Cameron enjoying a beer with Xi in a pub in the Cotswolds that ‘ t a “new golden age” in Anglo calls Chinese relations. The party is particularly sympathetic to Britain’s 48 Group Club, set up in 1954 to promote Anglo-Chinese trade, whose members include entrepreneurs such as Tom Glocer, former Reuters chief executive, along with former politicians Tony Blair, Michael Heseltine and Peter Mandelson. But their efforts do not stop there. Academics, former ambassadors and even journalists such as Martin Jacques, author of As China rules the world, a proponent of China’s views on globalization and a critic of Hong Kong’s Protestants, are all cited as good examples of how the party enjoys privileged access to its friends. There are parallel efforts across the EU and in the US.
But Xi and the party’s ambitions have begun to rumble and challenge – a development that underpins this book. Breaking the Hong Kong treaties and breaking international law to suppress its millions of Protestants under an extension of Chinese law, the repression of the Uighurs and the growing trade aggression of the Trump administration, particularly on Huawei , have the party’s first major upheavals since Tiananmen Square in 1989. Boris Johnson may say he will not be driven to become a knee-jerk synophobic, but Huawei should be excluded from Britain’s 5G network until 2027. Still seven years ago, playing for the Europhobe Gallery, he set out to charm China as an alternative to the EU. How long will his determination to confront China, after Brexit, be? The compelling message of this book is simple. Do not be distracted by soft conversations of global harmony, as the prospect of access to the world’s second largest market. The Chinese Communist Party aims to construct a world in which the Enlightenment values are subordinate to their own. The BRI and United Front suppress criticism and reaction even as I write. Everyone needs to stay on guard.
• Hidden hand by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg is published by Oneworld (£ 20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p & p over £ 15
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