The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) envisions itself atop a new hierarchical global order in which the world acquiesces to China’s worldview while supplying it with markets, capital, resources, and talent, as per the 2020 report to Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
In 2000, the US Congress established this Commission to monitor and report on the national security implications of the US-China economic relationship.
“Over the years, we have tracked the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) accountability to its global commitments, including those made in its accession to the World Trade Organization,” the report said.
Two decades later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) selectively adheres to its global economic, trade, and political obligations and has abandoned any concern for international opinion, it said.
Now the CCP envisions itself atop a new hierarchical global order in which the world acquiesces to China’s worldview while supplying it with markets, capital, resources, and talent.
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has focused public attention on China, but the PRC’s ambitions are neither new nor secret. For decades, the CCP has made its ambitions clear through industrial policy and planning documents, leadership speeches, and military directives.
Under General Secretary Xi Jinping, however, the CCP is aggressively asserting its interests both domestically and globally.
In the past, the CCP focused its attempts at economic dominance on legacy sectors of steel, aluminum, and transportation, among others. “Its current goals are to dominate the world’s newest and most cutting-edge industries, including biotechnology, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and clean energy.
Though the focus of China’s industrial policies is changing, the government’s strategy and objectives retain the same mercantilist and coercive tools: compelling foreign entrants to transfer technology to their domestic competitors for limited market access, lavishing generous subsidies on state-owned enterprises and domestic national champions, and leveraging illicit methods, including cyber-enabled theft, to obtain valuable intellectual property and mountains of data,” the report said.
China’s security laws threaten the arrest of anyone who criticizes China, its leaders, or its policies. This threat now extends to Americans inside China as well as those who live in or travel to countries that have an extradition treaty with China. Foreign journalists live in fear of detention or expulsion.
From its mismanagement of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan to its imposition of full and direct authoritarian rule in Hong Kong and continued militarization of the South China Sea, the PRC has repeatedly violated its own pledges and international obligations.
“Enabled by its economic strength, China’s disregard for international rules and norms or censure from the international community raises grave concerns over future CCP policy choices and actions. The prospect is growing that the CCP will use military or other coercive means to forcibly absorb Taiwan. Taiwan’s thriving democracy and civil society stand as the ultimate rebuke to the CCP’s claim that Chinese people are not suited for democracy”, the report said.
This year, we examined how the CCP advances its interests in new domains of competition. “In international organizations, both those falling under the UN umbrella and those bringing together regional partners, China is positioning trusted officials, whether nationals of the PRC or others vulnerable to Chinese influence, in key leadership posts”, the report said.
Long dependent on foreign technology, China is working to influence international technical standards for emerging technologies to promote Chinese companies and technologies as the basis for new global standards.
“The cumulative effect of China’s influence in these organizations was on full display this year when the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) publicly praised Beijing’s transparency and early response to the COVID-19 outbreak, despite the extreme measures Beijing took to lock down information while allowing infected persons to travel domestically and internationally, seeding a global pandemic.
“At the same time, the WHO, at Beijing’s behest, blocked Taiwan from meaningful participation in the global pandemic response despite Taiwan’s early and open communication and model epidemic control and prevention efforts,” the report said.
China’s activities in Africa serve as the template for projecting power and influence far from China’s shores. Such activities include the establishment of a military base it calls a “logistics facility” in Djibouti, the use of Chinese troops involved in peacekeeping operations that violate the spirit if not the letter of China’s UN obligations, and political opportunism and interference enabled by predatory economic practices. Chinese companies’ construction of potentially dual-use ports and telecommunications networks along China’s ever-expanding Belt and Road Initiative are representative of the mutually reinforcing nature of its military-civil fusion strategy and expansionist goals
