CHINA WATCHIs China Exporting Its Political Model To The World? A New Report Says Yes.
Debate has raged for decades over whether Beijing is actively exporting its authoritarian system abroad, but a new report based on a trove of previously unexamined government documents shows how China is experimenting with spreading its model to other countries.
Debate has raged for decades over whether Beijing is actively exporting its authoritarian system abroad, but a new report based on a trove of previously unexamined government documents shows how China is experimenting with spreading its model to other countries.
The new report released on June 13 by the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, is based on 1,691 files from China’s Commerce Ministry that were logged online in 2021 and 2022. The dataset describes 795 governmental programs made up of trainings and exchanges with foreign officials that the documents state are designed to promote ideas and practices from China’s economic and political model among countries in Eastern Europe and the Latin American, African, and Asian countries that make up the so-called Global South.
“This is real evidence to support what has been becoming a growing belief among the expert community,” Niva Yau, the report’s author and fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, told RFE/RL. “We can now demonstrate in China’s own words from its internal planning documents what it is trying to do.”
Chinese officials have repeatedly said Beijing isn’t exporting its authoritarian system for governing, but the collection of government files add to an emerging body of evidence showing that China is trying to sell the merits of its model to officials across the Global South while also developing new initiatives and practical programs to speed up their adoption.
The China Model
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has held an exclusive grip on power for more than 70 years and seen its economy boom in recent decades using a model based on single-party authoritarian political rule married with a state capitalist economic system.
Promoting this system to other countries around the world is seen by analysts as a way to cultivate an authoritarian-friendly political bloc that could help Beijing reshape global institutions and counterbalance Western attempts to isolate China with economic sanctions or criticism of its commercial practices, territorial claims, or human rights record.
Many of the documents in the report describe training programs on trade-related areas like port management guidelines, adopting BeiDou — China’s answer to the U.S.-created Global Positioning System (GPS) — and sectors like blockchain and other new technologies.
