CHINESE PO­LIT­I­CAL WAR­FARE

The Washington Times Weekly - - Geopolitic­s -

China un­der Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping is en­gaged in po­lit­i­cal war­fare against the United States, ac­cord­ing to a think tank study.Un­der Mr. Xi, who is also gen­eral sec­re­tary of the Com­mu­nist Party of China and chair­man of the Cen­tral Mil­i­tary Com­mis­sion, power has been cen­tral­ized and new struc­tures for con­duct­ing po­lit­i­cal war­fare op­er­a­tions have been set up, ac­cord­ing to a report on po­lit­i­cal co­er­cion by the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Bud­getary As­sess­ments.

The report quotes one of Mr. Xi’s clos­est po­lit­i­cal al­lies, Vice Pres­i­dent Wang Qis­han, as say­ing the Chinese leader has one mes­sage: “En­sur­ing the lead­ing role of the Com­mu­nist Party in all as­pects of life … the party, gov­ern­ment, mil­i­tary, so­ci­ety, ed­u­ca­tion, north, south, east, west — the party leads ev­ery­thing.”

As a re­sult, China to­day is ruled by a com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor with ex­tra­or­di­nary per­sonal power whose po­lit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy has been en­shrined in the con­sti­tu­tion, the report said. Any no­tion that China could evolve into a more demo­cratic sys­tem is now viewed as “ex­ceed­ingly remote.”

“A key con­clu­sion is that, as Xi Jin­ping di­rects po­lit­i­cal war­fare op­er­a­tions against the United States and its al­lies and part­ners, there is lit­tle re­sis­tance from the party or from any other quar­ter in China,” the report said.

Chinese po­lit­i­cal war­fare against the United States aims to in­flu­ence over­seas Chinese to ac­cept Bei­jing’s poli­cies and to in­su­late them from what Bei­jing re­gards as the cor­rupt­ing in­flu­ence of Western democ­ra­cies.

Se­nior U.S. lead­ers in politics, gov­ern­ment, me­dia, busi­ness, ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions, law en­force­ment and de­fense forces also are ma­jor tar­gets of China’s po­lit­i­cal war­fare ef­forts.

The Chinese are en­gaged in op­er­a­tions that seek to shape U.S. poli­cies through in­flu­enc­ing the gov­ern­ment, me­dia, academia and other or­ga­ni­za­tions to ac­cept and sup­port Bei­jing’s world­view.

“A typ­i­cal theme is the in­ex­orable rise of China to dom­i­nate the Indo-Pa­cific and sur­pass the United States, im­ply­ing it is fu­tile for lo­cals to re­sist,” the report said. “In all of these po­lit­i­cal war­fare op­er­a­tions, Chinese agen­cies strive to com­mu­ni­cate a con­sis­tent Marx­ist-Lenin­ist ide­o­log­i­cal nar­ra­tive.”

Key po­lit­i­cal war­fare op­er­a­tions have in­cluded the mo­bi­liza­tion of over­seas Chinese to op­pose anti-Bei­jing views, fund­ing pro-Chinese groups and in­sti­tu­tions with hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, and pro­vid­ing funds to key for­mer for­eign of­fi­cials and other in­flu­en­tial peo­ple who can back Bei­jing poli­cies.

An­other ma­jor ef­fort has been “large-scale in­for­ma­tion op­er­a­tions to build in­flu­ence within and co­erce Western me­dia or­ga­ni­za­tions,” the report said.

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