Chinese leader Xi Jinping is applauded by members of his government as he arrives for the closing session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People on March 11, 2022 in Beijing, China. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Invoking Sun Tzu’s maxim “to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill,” Hudson Senior Fellow Dr. John Lee and Dr. Lavina Lee write in their new report, 'Win Without Fighting': The Chinese Communist Party's Political and Institutional Warfare Against the West, that Beijing is already at war with the United States and its allies to manipulate public opinion and erode confidence in western democracy.

See key excerpts below and join us next week for a discussion with NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana on the impact of Russia's war on Ukraine and a preview of NATO's upcoming summit.

Key Insights

1. China’s Shift from Defending to Promoting Authoritarianism

In the recent past, China sought merely to deflect criticism of its authoritarian system. Although it still does so, it now also promotes its approach as a superior one for developing economies around the region and world. According to Xi, as China becomes a leading global power from 2035 onward, the Chinese people will enjoy the “common property” of the international system. Beijing’s promotion of its political values and standards goes far deeper than official pronouncements and mere declaratory policy. The CCP leadership has augmented support for authoritarian regimes—for example, that of Cambodia’s Hun Sen, and autocratic regimes are significantly overrepresented as recipients of Chinese financing.

China is not just promoting authoritarian values but teaching tactics for repression and exporting apparatuses used for domestic coercion to willing authoritarian clients. It has gone beyond forcing foreign firms to agree to its restrictive internet and social media standards to championing its standard of “internet sovereignty,” which gives every government the right to regulate online information and rejects a universal freedom-of-information standard.

2. International Norms Are the New Battlefield

China now tirelessly and creatively attempts to set ‘discourse, prices, and policy’ in ways that lock in privileges, advantages, and agency for itself with respect to institutions and work through these (e.g., membership of groupings that determine norms, policies and/or actions) to normalize certain forms of economic activity and influence technological, technical, and legal standards in Asia. In this context, initiatives primarily conceived to reduce domestic vulnerabilities, create new avenues for economic growth, and export opportunities without further reforms to the Chinese political economy (such as the Belt and Road Initiative [BRI] and Made in China 2025) have been transformed into a grand strategy designed to rewrite rules for how regional nations compete and interact.

Achieving the objective of setting ‘discourse, prices, and policy’ offers Beijing far more leverage over regional states than would otherwise be the case, as it places China in a unique position to predetermine or decide the current and future winners and losers of various interactions. From this point of view, the objective is to institutionalize and entrench the Communist Party’s Leninist approach to political economy (i.e., a system where all economic activity serves the interests of the Communist Party and the Chinese state) beyond China’s borders and throughout Southeast Asia.

3. The CCP's 'Three Warfares' Doctrine

Increasingly serious attention is being paid to the PLA’s ‘Three Warfares’ doctrine, which was formulated in 2003 and covers psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare. Its objective is to influence an adversary’s decision-making, shape public opinion, and produce a normative and discursive environment favorable to the CCP.

The Three Warfares is only one overarching framework developed by the CCP to wage political warfare. Other concepts include ‘cognitive domain operations,’ which is closely related to psychological warfare and involves using information to influence an enemy’s way of thinking in contexts ranging from peacetime decision-making to actual physical warfighting. Under this approach, the four tactics used to gain ‘mental’ or ‘mind’ superiority consist of the following:

• Manipulating perception through propaganda narratives.
• Restricting an enemy’s ‘historical memory’ so that its citizens will be open to new (CCP) values.
• Modifying the paradigms and ideologies of elites in enemy countries.
• Deconstructing symbols to challenge national identity.

Quotes may be edited for clarity and length. 

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