What is the issue?
China’s rising geo-political influence and its potential for both overt & covert operations is largely been underestimated currently.
What are some aspects of the growing Chinese power?
- The eagerness of China to safeguard globalisation and its ambitious designs for connectivity and economic integration has just started get noticed.
- A policy paper that expressed the future possibility of Beijing influencing policies & election in US was discussed in the US Congress recently.
- Another recent article stressed the growing influence of the Hong Kong based “China-U.S. Exchange Foundation” which conducts exchange programmes.
- By partnering with many American think tanks, it organises joint conferences for Chinese & American journalists, scholars and political & military leaders.
- Adding to these is the willingness of American tech companies to abide by China’s stringent rules to get business there.
- It is also noteworthy that more than 100 American Universities/colleges host Confucius Institutes, an initiative started by Beijing in 2004.
What are the implications?
- National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has termed these Chinese efforts ‘sharp power’ as opposed to ‘soft power’ that is advanced by the west through its cultural dominance.
- It further stated that American institutions are being seduced into these designs due to the financial might of China.
- As China continues to set standards based on its restrictive understanding of democratic values, these efforts are a direct threat to American liberalism.
- But neither the lawmakers nor the witnesses could frame the illegality or even impropriety of these sophisticated Chinese advances.
How is it different from the geo-political approach of the US?
- By such expensive outreaches, China is promoting a model of global cooperation in which national sovereignty is inviolable.
- This is radically different from the traditional US approach of promoting free people to people contact without much government intervention.
- But even within the US Senate, some don’t think the Chinese exchange programmes are any different from America’s own.
- Notably, the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ approach sees resonance with the Chinese on upholding the primacy of national sovereignty.
- But contrasting China, Mr. Trump doesn’t seem interested in expanding American global influence and considers such efforts a waste of money.
Source: The Hindu
