Apoorva Launch Year: 2020
Publisher: Hardie Grant
Authors: Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg
INTRODUCTION
“Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World” is efficacious in increasing our insight into the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence operations being secretive but pervading and subverting Western democratic institutions, and the risks involved. The book primarily points to China’s influence operations in North America and Western Europe through political nobilities, the corporate sector, the Chinese exodus, institutes, media, cultural organisations, think tanks, and global governance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clive Hamilton, an Australian author and public intellectual, has an arts degree from the Australian National University, an economics degree from the University of Sydney, and a doctorate in the economics of development from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. The Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra since 2008 after being the Executive Director of The Australia Institute for 14 years has also held visiting academic positions at Yale University, the University of Oxford, University College London and Sciences Po in Paris.
His books such as “Growth Fetish” (2003), “Affluenza” (with Richard Denniss, 2005), “Silencing Dissent” (edited with Sarah Maddison, 2007), “Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change” (2010), and “What Do We Want? The story of protest in Australia” (2016) have been bestsellers. In the year 2018, his book “Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia” also became a best-seller and was followed by “Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World”, co-authored with German Sinologist Mareike Ohlberg, in the year 2020.
Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow in the Asia Program, leads the Stockholm China Forum and is currently based at GMF’s Berlin Office. Mareike earlier worked as an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies and focused on China’s media and digital policies and the Chinese Communist Party’s influence campaigns in Europe. Also, an An Wang postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a postdoctoral fellow at Shih-Hsin University in Taipei, Mareike has a doctoral degree in Chinese studies from the University of Heidelberg and a master’s degree in East Asian regional studies from Columbia University.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
“Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World” enhances our insight into the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence operations, which are secretive, and Western democratic institutions, which are pervading and subverting, and the risks involved.
Most rising nations aim to mould the world order in their favour. After World War II, the United States did exactly that when it dominated the creation of new rules-based world order, particularly through the creation of international organisations such as the UN, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. It also developed strategic partnerships through NATO and with several countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia. However, US actions were impelled by the honourable beliefs of pluralist democracy, respect for human rights, rule of law, and a market economy, although its actions could, sometimes, depart from these beliefs.
From the 1970s, the US opened up political and economic ties with the People’s Republic of China. As the two economies became entwined, the US speculated that China’s economic opening would enable political openness and liberation and that China would come to be a “responsible stakeholder” in the world order from which its economy was profiting immensely.
Yet, as per Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg, there was a serious expectation that miscalculated the real nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Certainly, while the West was celebrating the end of the Cold War in Europe and the end of the USSR, the CCP was meticulously studying the future of the USSR to make sure that the CCP would not go the same direction. The writers assert that, for the CCP, the Cold War never ceased. Their book explains carefully how the CCP is reshaping the world order to conform to its concerns.
The book points mainly to China’s influence operations in North America and Western Europe through political nobilities, the corporate sector, the Chinese exodus, institutes, media, cultural organisations, think tanks, and global governance.
Hamilton and Ohlberg insist that most of the CCP’s influence movement is secretive instead of open and is often not perceived for what it is. While various tactics are used, preparing and co-opting Western nobilities as “friends of China” is a vital one. The writers explain how this tactic gives China “discourse power,” since these nobilities quote CCP descriptions and strengthen international assistance for the regime. This can be instantiated by the bold quote by the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, who sits on the international advisory council of the China Development Bank, “The CCP government was “the best government in the world in the last thirty years. Full stop.”
Moreover, as China has become a prominent trading partner and financial power, it can utilize this as an influence to force partners into compliance. Corporate and university leaders, organisations that profit from Chinese business, most of the time actively defend the CCP regime. But if you come on the wrong side of China, like Australia, which called for an autonomous global enquiry into COVID-19, the economic sanctions can be drastic. And as several countries have learned, China’s displeasure can make it imprison their citizens.
The CCP is extremely eager to break the system of US-centric partnerships and to realign those nations against the US. One of the main goals of China’s Belt and Road Initiative is to propose an alternative system of partnerships, which improves nations’ commitment to China, according to the writers. The CCP also puts forth influence over ethnic Chinese people residing abroad.
While it might be obvious for new great powers to wield their influence on the world order, in China’s case, it is manipulating the openness of democracies to weaken democracy itself and impose its autocratic will. Put differently, China’s actions exemplify a peril to human rights and democracy itself.
According to the writers, one of the reasons for China’s endeavour to reshape the world order in such a way is that its actions reflect its intrinsic deficiencies, instead of its potencies. For its rightfulness, the CCP has depended on robust economic growth and nationalism. But, President Xi Jinping believes that the CCP must make more efforts to secure its survival, especially by confirming that the world order favours the CCP and by remaking the way that foreign nobilities perceive China. If foreigners start thinking that the CCP provides the best governance for China, such international recognition will develop a constructive feedback loop to China. For instance, if Tiananmen Square, Tibet, and the Uyghurs evolve as global taboos, then the invasion of foreign beliefs into China will stop and domestic support for the CCP will strengthen.
As the writers write, another reason is Donald Trump’s contempt for the current world order and US allies, which has extended China a strategic opportunity. Brexit and conflicts within the EU have had the same impact. Remarkably, China has occupied much strategic topography through several leadership positions in UN organisations. Certainly, if Trump’s US functioned more seriously in the UN, the World Health Organisation’s actions during the initial phases of COVID-19 would have been considerably different.
While the book delivers a huge range of examples of Chinese influence operations, it has much less to recommend in terms of how best to respond. This may be because responding to China’s influence operations is hard. Some beliefs of Western nobilities formed in the 1980s and 90s when there was positiveness and credulity about political opening in China may be difficult to change.
Furthermore, the business and university communities that benefit from their relationship with China can be very effective in forging the public debate and encouraging a pushback, such as through laws on lobbying, campaign financing, and foreign interference. One of the learnings of Australia from its call for an autonomous global enquiry regarding the origin of COVID-19 is that middle powers are improbable to combat China alone – they must form partnerships with other nations.
Probably, the biggest learning about the CCP’s behaviour has been acquired from China’s initial cover-up, disinformation campaign, cynical mask diplomacy, and wolf-warrior diplomacy during the pandemic. The behaviour of Western countries towards China’s influence operations may presently be strengthened by losing trust in China’s governance.
RECOMMENDATION
“Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World” is an incredibly outstanding compendium of Chinese influence operations in North America and Western Europe and augments our awareness of this crucial issue. Mainly focusing on China’s influence operations in North America and Western Europe, needless to say, this well-corroborated account will expand the evolving sense of every officer that China, in trying to explain its story, has gone to extremes in using methods undesirable to the West.
CONCLUSION
“Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World” pertains to a take-no-prisoners strategy and moves beyond Australia to uncover Chinese influence operations in the United States and Europe. The Chinese might give an argument that the book disregards their need to protect themselves against an invasion of disruptive Western culture and anti-China oratory. As Hamilton and Ohlberg show, Chinese influence uses force or threats, whereas Western cultural influence works by attraction and is mostly open. Wall Street firms, American and European university deans, British banks, Hollywood movie producers, and other Westerners maintain associations with Chinese partners in an uncoordinated manner, based on their immediate concerns. However, Chinese institutions work in a coordinated manner under the directions of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work and Propaganda Departments, with long-term impact in mind. The book provides several examples of Chinese influence operations, but it has quite limited recommendations in terms of the best ways to respond, probably because responding to China’s influence operations is challenging.