Late last month, the Halifax International Security Forum released a handbook titled China vs. Democracy: The Greatest Game, in English and Chinese.
For the handbook, it consulted a total of 255 global elites, outlining the Beijing regime’s essence, ambition, actions and threat to global democracy, and how the democratic world should respond to it.
The forum included seven “China principles” as guidelines for the conference’s 50 participating democracies:
First, they should ignore China’s attempts to interfere in democratic societies.
Second, they should not submit to, collaborate with or participate in any censorship or self-censorship of ideas, writings, artistic endeavors or statements related to China.
Third, they should not participate in any business, or technology-related practices or exchanges that aid and abet the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) oppression within China.
Fourth, they should oppose China’s attempts to bring global governance of the Internet and technological standards into alignment with its own authoritarian values and ambitions.
Fifth, they should not support or engage in any kind of punishment of or sanction on anyone for criticizing China.
Sixth, they should support democratically minded people and governments around the world who face pressure or intimidation by China.
Seventh, they should not knowingly buy or trade Chinese goods or services made with forced labor, or products that are the result of criminal activities like counterfeiting or intellectual property theft.
Compared with the views of US Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Pompeo’s principal China policy adviser, Miles Yu (余茂春), who has said that “the CCP does not represent China,” the forum’s view goes deeper, directly exposing the totalitarian nature of a communist regime that wants to control all power internally and invade others.
The handbook shows that Beijing’s ever-changing nature, switching randomly from communism to “consultative Leninism,” capitalism and nationalism, is nothing but a tool devoid of any idealism to facilitate totalitarian rule.
It also shows that Beijing is employing a variety of means — direct investment, economic punishment, its “grand external propaganda,” its Thousand Talents Plan, technology espionage, military-civil fusion, counterfeiting, debt-trap diplomacy, cybertotalitarianism, Confucius Institutes, fake news and global intimidation — to gradually increase its control.
Its comprehensive, global and unshakable invasive ambition is part of the regime’s nature — it will never change, and the world must stay alert at all times.
The peaceful smile Beijing has put on over the past few decades is just part of its response to the the pro-China “Kissinger game.”
The US Democrats’ strategy proposal of “coexistence with the CCP” is no strategy at all: Either the Democrats are too naive, or they are weaklings who surrender before the war starts.
China has been infiltrating international organizations to increase its power and build a parallel universe that includes the establishment of a China-Russia alliance.
The forum suggested that, in addition to supply chains, the democratic world also needs to reorganize its “demand chain.”
In Asia, the forum can make use of small, flexible, low-key three-party alliances to accomplish a mission that would be difficult to achieve through traditional collective security mechanisms.
The handbook concludes that to tackle Beijing when it incites division or poses threats, democratic countries should reject short-term business interests.
“Democracies need to reimagine a democratic alliance and partnership system that works for its natural leader, which will remain the US,” the handbook said.
“To be clear: Vladimir Putin’s Russia cannot be trusted, even for alliances of convenience. A Faustian bargain with the Kremlin would cause more problems than it solved,” it added.
In other words, democracies should not make the mistake of entering into an alliance with Russia to restrain China.
Former US president Barack Obama used to keep the UK at a distance, and he did not wake up to China’s ambitions until the last days of his second term.
The rest of the world did not sense the Chinese threat until the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and Beijing started strategically using medical materials to intimidate the world.
The establishment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a result of Obama’s alertness, while US President Donald Trump withdrew from many international organizations, perhaps in an attempt to start building a new global order, although we will never know if it would have worked.
The Washington-based forum is not just any other agency.
Before transforming into a non-governmental organization in 2011, it was funded by the Canadian government, and for a while it was operated under the US German Marshall Fund.
It has for many years served as a transnational platform for high-level strategic cooperation, working with professional publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and Politico.
Kiron Skinner, director of policy planning at the US Department of State, has said that the essence of the Chinese threat is “a fight with a really different civilization and a different ideology.”
The title of the handbook echoes that view, showing that Western countries have finally realized that the global democratic system has reached a critical life or death moment.
HoonTing is a political commentator.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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