The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long sought to expand its influence and discourse globally. Using its growing national power, economic development and military capabilities, the CCP has adopted a tit-for-tat, aggressive approach toward Western democracies on the one hand, and a strategy of solicitation and enticement toward other countries and political parties, mainly in the developing world, on the other, to expand and strengthen its international position by sparing no effort to export Xi Jinping‘s ideas and cultivate and foster proxies overseas.
Since Xi Jinping took power at the end of 2012, the Communist Party’s assertive diplomatic tactics have become increasingly evident.
“Spirit of Struggle” and “War Wolf Diplomacy”
Reuters recently reported that two Chinese diplomats confirmed that Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping personally asked Chinese diplomats last year to adopt a hard-line “spirit of struggle” to deal with international challenges such as the deterioration of U.S.-China relations.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has implemented Xi’s “spirit of struggle” by adopting a tough, tit-for-tat strategy in international relations matters. This aggressive approach has been labeled as “wolf diplomacy” by Western countries.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying quoted the late Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong as saying at a regular press conference on Dec. 10 that “in the face of hegemony and bullying, ‘if people do not offend me, I will not offend them, but if they offend me, I will offend them’. Hua also said that in order to safeguard China’s sovereignty, security and development interests, national honor and dignity, and international fairness and justice, “what’s the harm in being a ‘war wolf’?” Hua Chunying’s words reveal China’s aggressive “war wolf” attitude toward Western democracies.
While responding to criticism and pressure from Western countries with a tough and aggressive “war wolf” attitude, China has also taken advantage of various occasions to invite political parties around the world to attend its meetings to vigorously promote and advocate Xi Jinping’s ideas to them, seeking to cultivate and nurture officials from these countries and political parties to become possible agents of the CCP overseas in the future.
According to the CCP’s own words, the Foreign Liaison Department of the CCP Central Committee (FLC) is the main department that cooperates with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to implement Xi Jinping’s “important ideas on the Party’s foreign work, seek truth and pragmatism, and actively develop a new situation in the Party’s foreign work.
Waiting for an opportunity to export the “Chinese model”
The website of the Liaison Department of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China (CPC) says that the department serves China’s overall diplomatic layout, “grasps political parties”, “grasps research”, “grasps contacts” and “grasps image”, and has established different forms of relations with more than 600 political parties and political organizations in more than 160 countries and regions, carrying out in-depth inter-party exchanges and cooperation through high-level exchanges, forums, dialogues and working visits, comprehensively introducing the ruling philosophy and policy ideas of the CPC, “telling the Chinese story and conveying the Chinese voice”.
On Oct. 12 this year, at an international theoretical seminar on “Poverty Eradication and the Responsibility of Political Parties” in Fuzhou, Song Tao, head of the China Federation of Trade Unions, strongly advocated Xi Jinping’s concept of “strengthening (Party) leadership is fundamental in poverty eradication” and presented Xi’s “successful political model” for “winning the battle against poverty” to the delegates.
According to a report by Xinhua News Agency, about 400 political parties, envoys to China, representatives of international institutions in China, media representatives from developing countries in China, and think tank scholars from more than 100 countries participated in the conference through online and offline means.
The British magazine The Economist recently published an article saying that in organizing foreign political party personnel to study and attend training courses in China, the Liaison Ministry, while not directly preaching the benefits of the CCP’s authoritarian system, emphasizes the merits of centralized leadership and hopes they will learn from the CCP.
Despite the CCP’s claim that it will not “export” the Chinese model to other countries or ask them to “copy” China’s practices, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, back on December 1, 2017, at the High-Level Dialogue between the CCP and World Political Parties in Beijing He told the participants that his idea of “building a community of human destiny” was a good idea, saying that China’s development model offers “new options” for other countries and that the Chinese model can help solve human problems. Xi also pledged to offer 15,000 political parties from around the world the opportunity to come to China for exchanges over the next five years.
At the concluding conference on December 3, China proposed a “Beijing Initiative” to highlight the important contribution of the CPC, with Xi Jinping at its core, to promote the building of a community of human destiny, calling on political parties to lead the building of a community of human destiny and to be promoters of the CPC partnership.
Penetration of the Two Power Plates
Xia Ming, a professor of political science at the City University of New York, said the CPC has long been expanding its influence in two power blocks. Faced with pressure from Western democracies on China on human rights, democracy and market economy, China has taken a tough and confrontational stance from its ideology of totalitarian rule, he said. At the same time, the Communist Party has used its position in Asia and Europe, the BRICS and the “One Belt, One Road” initiative to expand its influence, especially in developing countries, and to resist Western pressure.
Xia Ming said that the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has cooperated with the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s “war wolf diplomacy,” using its financial and media strengths to train political parties in ideology and propaganda.
So, at the national level, China, as an emerging country and a rising power, has adopted a war-wolf diplomacy in the face of the hegemonic position of the old superpowers,” he said. With Third World countries, China is already penetrating a lot there. But if China wants to cultivate its preferred regimes in these countries, of course it has to do so by infiltrating elections, infiltrating public opinion, and cultivating its preferred political parties.”
Implementing United Front and Cultivating Proxies
The CCP’s cultivation of its proxies in countries around the world has never ceased. As early as the 1950s, the CCP supported local guerrillas and left-wing political parties in some countries such as Southeast Asia, threatening and subverting the regimes in those countries, and thus inviting anti-Chinese and anti-Chinese exclusion in those countries as well.
Professor Xia Ming said that the CCP has been engaged in united-war diplomacy under the party system, which follows the diplomatic strategy of former CCP leader Mao Zedong of “relying on Asia, Africa and Latin America to confront the Soviet and American hegemonies”.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the CCP paid for foreign students from the Third World, especially African countries, to study in Chinese higher education institutions. Many of these students, who had backgrounds and power in the local countries, became senior officials or diplomats in those countries after their studies.
Professor Xia Ming said that over the years, the CCP has not only continued to train foreign students from Third World countries as a “long-term investment,” but has also allowed trainees from foreign political parties to enter the CCP’s party schools and receive short-term training through so-called political party exchanges, hoping to achieve immediate results.
Xia Ming said, “As the Chinese government, of course they have these ‘unused’ resources in party schools at all levels, and the CCP has to find their proxies in order to open up diplomatic space around the world. There are so many ways for China to find proxies, and this is just one of them. So there are many people trained in China who, although they may not necessarily become agents of the Communist Party, are at least not anti-China for the Chinese government and may become ‘panda huggers’, better able to understand China, give China face, or better understand Chinese national conditions. I’m afraid that’s the minimum bottom-line requirement for China.”
The more aggressive you are, the more you are resisted
Professor Xia Ming pointed out that the CCP’s practice of exporting Xi Jinping’s ideas and cultivating and fostering foreign politicians who may become CCP agents or pro-China in the future, while possibly recruiting more agents, may also make more people feel the CCP’s offensive behavior and malice.
So I’m afraid this situation is a double-edged sword for the CCP’s diplomacy as a whole,” he said. The more China goes on the offensive, the stronger the resistance to the CCP from the outside world will be.”
The Trump administration has firmly resisted the CCP’s “war wolf diplomacy” and its use of united front and media to export Xi Jinping’s ideas and sell the “China model.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Dec. 4 that the United States will end five U.S.-China exchange programs disguised as “cultural exchanges. Pompeo said the programs were used by the Beijing authorities as a tool for grand foreign propaganda and that most of the participants were Chinese officials, not ordinary people. He said the programs, which are fully funded and coordinated by Chinese authorities, have become a propaganda tool for Beijing’s soft power.
Same as in Mao’s era
U.S. columnist and commentator Zhang Jiadun said the Chinese Communist Party has set the tone by mobilizing vast amounts of manpower and resources in a concerted effort to promote and advance Beijing’s model, which is designed to attack democracies such as the United States.
What they have managed to do is to promote their narrative that their system of government is superior to ours,” he said. Recently, they tried to use the new coronavirus outbreak to talk about it. Every day in the state-run and Communist media, they tout China’s response to the new coronavirus, pointing out how badly the U.S. and other countries have done in responding to the outbreak. They went on endlessly and serially with all kinds of propaganda.”
Zhang also noted that the CCP’s approach to propagating and exporting Xi Jinping’s thoughts and ideas is the same as when the CCP exported Mao Zedong’s ideas during the Mao era, but in the 21st century Internet era, China’s national power is stronger than it was during the Mao era, and its approach to foreign propaganda has become more sophisticated.
China’s current propaganda is more complex and varied, and China has more means to promote its narrative, but essentially they have the same goal, which is to promote the idea of Chinese rule in the world,” he said. They just use different words to express it. Now they have more resources to do so. Mao didn’t have as many connections in the West back then, but Xi Jinping does now. So they’re using every occasion to promote their narrative.”
Expert: U.S. Must Counter Communist Challenge
Zhang Jiadun acknowledged that the CCP has used every occasion and every means to export Xi Jinping’s ideas and promote China’s philosophy of governance, which has been relatively effective in bringing in some Third World countries and political parties, and has also consolidated the CCP’s influence and position internationally.
In light of this, he said, the United States should “do unto others as they would have done unto them” and spare no effort to promote the U.S. narrative on a daily basis to weaken the CCP’s influence.
He said, “I think one way to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda is to cut ties with Beijing so that Beijing doesn’t have those resources to expand its propaganda or to develop its military, or to develop technology, or to do other things.”
Zhang Jiadun said China is breaking international conventions and routines to cultivate CCP proxies by exporting Xi Jinping’s thoughts and ideas, and trying to overthrow the existing international order and system while expanding and consolidating the CCP’s influence internationally. Therefore, the U.S. must counteract the challenge posed by the CCP to the U.S. in response to the real threat and challenge posed by the CCP.
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