Debate has raged for decades about whether Beijing is actively exporting its authoritarian system, but a new report based on a trove of previously unexamined government documents suggests China is experimenting with spreading its model abroad.
of New reports The report, published June 13 by the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, was based on 1,691 files from China’s Ministry of Commerce recorded online in 2021 and 2022. The dataset describes 795 government programs of training and exchanges with foreign officials that the documents say are designed to spread the ideas and practices of China’s economic and political model to countries in Eastern Europe as well as the Latin American, African and Asian countries that make up the so-called Global South.
“This is real evidence that supports a growing belief among experts,” Niva Yau, the report’s author and a research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, told RFE/RL. “We now have proof, in China’s own words, from internal planning documents, of what China is up to.”
Chinese authorities I said repeatedly Beijing is not exporting its authoritarian system of governance, but the collection of government files evidence This suggests that while China is trying to sell the benefits of its model to government officials in the Global South, it is also developing new initiatives and practical programs to speed up its adoption.
Chinese Model
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has held monopoly power for more than 70 years and has used a model that combines one-party politics with a state capitalist economic system to drive economic growth in recent decades.
Analysts see promoting the system around the world as a way to foster a political bloc friendly to authoritarianism and could help Beijing reshape global institutions to counter Western attempts to isolate China with economic sanctions and criticism of its commercial practices, territorial claims and human rights record.
Many of the documents in the report describe training programs in trade-related areas, such as port management guidelines, the implementation of Beidou, China’s answer to the U.S.-developed GPS, and new technologies such as blockchain.
But the documents also delve into other areas traditionally outside the Commerce Department’s purview, including promoting exchanges around how local think tanks can contribute to China’s multi-billion-dollar infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, and promoting Chinese government policy through programs focused on issues such as ethnic minority integration, management of new forms of media and training foreign governments’ presidential advisers in Chinese governance practices.
The programs themselves are established through bilateral agreements or through Chinese-led multilateral regional organizations and focus on specific geographic regions or groups of countries that share similar languages.
For example, several documents describe training courses for local government leaders, university rectors, and political advisers from “Russian-speaking countries,” while other programs are specifically designed for government officials from Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states, including China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
An excerpt from a 2021 Chinese Ministry of Commerce document outlining exchange and training programs for government leaders of “Russian-speaking countries.”
Yau said these programs are designed to sell a narrative to countries in the global south that the rapid economic development China has experienced over the past three decades is a direct result of the country’s authoritarian approach to governance.
“These files show that China is not only exporting practical know-how for economic success, but also promoting the idea that this success is directly attributable to the way governments are governed. [Chinese Communist] “A party,” she said.
The dimension of “information gathering” and beyond
While many governments around the world promote practical exchanges and training with foreign officials, Yau’s files stand out for their explicit endorsement, in dry government language, of an undemocratic approach to issues such as regulating the country’s media, managing legal matters and controlling the flow of information online.
Another aspect documented in Yau’s report is that many of the programs, especially those aimed at government officials, appear to be used for “intelligence gathering purposes” as they require “each participant to submit a report detailing their country’s previous interactions and engagement with other countries in specific areas of cooperation related to the subject matter of the training.”
Yau said the requests from the program serve multiple purposes, first by providing a critical data collection stream on foreign government officials. But she said they also serve as a way to gauge each party’s openness to the views and policies being advocated during the interaction.
“it is [the Chinese side] “To determine whether this person can be groomed as an intermediary to foster further cooperation between China and their country,” she said.
For decades, China’s exchange and training programs with foreign governments have been carried out under the purview of the International Liaison Department (ILD), an agency under the Communist Party of China Central Committee whose core function is party-to-party diplomacy.
However, while the ILD has traditionally been tasked with engaging with one-party and similar communist regimes, in recent years it has expanded to conduct programs and interactions regardless of party orientation, and has recently held meetings with top-level government officials from countries such as: Kazakhstan and Serbia.
The report highlights that other parts of the Chinese government have also initiated similar exchanges: In addition to the Ministry of Commerce, at least 10 Chinese ministries and departments have hosted training programs for foreign government officials in the past three years, according to Yau’s research.
Yau said that given the newly examined files and other evidence, it’s becoming clear that Beijing is trying to export parts of its political model overseas. But he said what’s less clear is the impact such efforts are having around the world.
“These files provide insight into what Beijing hopes to achieve,” Yau said. “While it may be too early to tell, these programs have increased significantly since the late 2010s and involve thousands of government officials from countries across the Global South.”
From RFE/RL
Other popular articles from Oilprice.com:
