(TibetanReview.net, Jun15’24) — Touting the supposed superiority of its model of governance, China has been organizing seminars and holding trainings for officials of Africa, Latin America and others to promote its single-party system and President Xi Jinping’s worldview, reported the AFP Jun 14, citing a report released Jun 13 by a Washington-based think tank.
The countries targeted are China’s partners in President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a massive infrastructure project that Beijing uses to expand its clout overseas by handing out onerous loans to developing countries and which many now find hard to repay.
The think tank, the Atlantic Council, details efforts to promote single-party rule and Xi’s thinking to BRI partners in parts of Africa, Latin America and beyond, drawing on hundreds of publicly available documents from China’s commerce ministry, the report said.
The report, A Global South with Chinese characteristics, says the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has sponsored training programmes overseas on trade, information security technologies, and more. Beijing uses these training programmes to make a case for its authoritarian capitalism. But is it working? The report asks.
The documents “clearly highlight aspects of (China’s) authoritarian model as central to the blueprint of successful development that others can emulate”, the author of the report, non-resident fellow Niva Yau, has said.
Among the initiatives the report has listed is a seminar held online for presidential advisers and cabinet-level officials in developing countries, aimed at expanding “the international influence of the … governance system of China”. Held in Jun 2021, the seminar sought “to introduce President Xi Jinping’s thought on national governance, China’s current political system, political life and the features of decision-making process for fundamental policies”.
It was also stated to have sought to promote China’s efforts at “social mobilisation and management” during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw millions placed under strict, prolonged lockdowns.
Another training programme was stated to have aimed at African officials involved in city planning, with focus on China’s pervasive surveillance system. The programme was stated to have sought to educate on managing “public safety through information technology” in cities.
China is criticized as one of the world’s most surveilled societies, with facial recognition technology being widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression. By promoting this practice in the developing world, it may be hoping to lessen the criticisms targeting it.
The report also details a course for officials from BRI nations that promoted China’s media and propaganda operations.
“Through a multi-angle and all-round presentation of China’s experience in new media development, the seminar analyses China’s media integration and innovation theories under the backdrop of COVID-19,” a document cited in the report was quoted as saying.
The course was also stated to have looked at the “practice of news writing, programme creation, and material collection applicable to new media platforms”.
The programmes were all stated to have been delivered by academics from top Chinese institutions as well as civil servants.
China is “engaged in a concerted effort to promote authoritarian governance across the developing world”, the report’s author has concluded.