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Here’s his interview with Kevin Sheives, associate director of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Forum for International Democracy Studies and a Chinese specialist who has worked with the US Department of State, the USTR, the Department of Defense, and Congress. .
– Explain the scope of China’s challenge to global democracy.
– Without going into the Cold War analogies, we can say that today the world is fighting to protect ideas, values and sovereign democracies from external influences and interference.
The concept of acute power, in which one country uses manipulative diplomatic policies to influence and undermine the political system of another, shows how authoritarian governments restrict freedom of expression, neutralize independent institutions, and distort the political environment.
We see examples of this type in Russia, Iran, Venezuela and some Gulf countries. But only China can link economic and diplomatic power with global ambitions and disastrous goals.
China is damaging the lives of democracies
China’s actions, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are more subtle than Russia’s attempts to interfere in the policies of other countries. Their goal is to create an environment conducive to CCPs in democracies and they are geared more towards cooptation than confusion. In recent years, China has shown that it wants to shape the way democracies think, use information, conduct business, and develop a political culture.
This is not public diplomacy or soft power: China is damaging the lives of democracies. Unfortunately, Chinese campaigns like the one Australia has carried out against, for example, Australia (where we have seen the effects of violence, misinformation, censorship and abuse) are very common, even in supposedly democratic countries, far away or near China.
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