ELITE-CAPTURE PROVING INEFFECTIVE IN MEETING XI’S OBJECTIVES

For Xi, co-opting the population of a country is proving to be an insurmountable challenge, in contrast to the success with which elites have been bought over to Beijing’s side.

Wooing and winning over of elites has been central to the success of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its efforts at China replacing the United States as the fulcrum of the global order. In countries where those elites who are in power refuse to fall in line with

CCP dictates, such leaders are subjected to (mostly covert) efforts geared towards their overthrow. Brazil has long been a leader of the Global South, and it had been expected in several capitals that the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2019 to the Presidency of Brazil would herald a change in stance towards China. The incoming President of Brazil had long been considered a critic of the PRC, and was a voluble backer of the cause of Taiwanese freedom. In less than six months of Bolsonaro’s election, it became clear that such hopes were premature. As President, Bolsonaro opened up Brazil to unrestricted mineral extraction by Chinese companies, and in other ways as well facilitated their activities in Brazil. His successor, Luiz Inácio Lula is finding it a difficult task to rescue the rain forests and other natural wealth of Brazil from the rapacious appetites of the Chinese companies, especially those that began operating there since the Bolsonaro period. In the case of Germany, France and the UK, irrespective of which party has been elected to office, PRC interests have overall been protected and have in many instances been allowed to expand. Political

leaders in significant countries who were critical of CCP policies while in opposition softened their tone once in power. Once in office, they went by the wishes of domestic corporate interests eager to make money for themselves by allowing Chinese companies to make even more money. As a byproduct, vulnerability of such countries to hostile covert action by the PRC grew.

While the CCP succeeded over the years in inserting its agents into a multitude of organisations, many such groups have avoided any direct advocacy of PRC interests, confining themselves to weakening through character assassination and other means local influentials whom the CCP leadership considers to be present or potential foes of the primacy of PRC interests. For example, since the Doklam standoff in 2017, there has been a mushrooming of advocacy groups across the world that are engaged in targeting the Narendra Modi government. In the case of the US, an individual steeped in the atmosphere of Los Angeles politics, a city that has endured a significant degree of infusion of CCP networks, seems to have been unconcerned