APPENDIX 2
Chinese Influence Activities in Select Countries
This report has focused on the range of challenges the United States faces in an era
of accelerating Chinese influence activities on multiple fronts. But this issue is hardly unique to the United States—indeed, China’s influence activities now occur all around the world. In some instances, notably Australia, these activities appear to have proceeded much further than they have so far in the United States. In general, they seem more advanced in Asia and Europe, but there is also evidence of such activities in Africa and Latin America as well.
In order to explore some of the wider patterns that have emerged, this appendix offers brief summaries of the effects of such activities in eight countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. In each of these settings, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has refined its efforts through trial and error in order to exploit a critical asymmetry: China’s Communist party-state has established barriers to external political influence at home while, at the same time, seizing upon the openness of democratic systems overseas.
China seeks to make itself more palatable to democratic societies by using many of the customary vehicles of soft power—such as state-funded research centers, media outlets, university ties, and people-to-people exchange programs. These programs mimic the work of independent civil society institutions in a democracy, cloaking
the extent to which the party-state controls these activities and genuine civil society is tightly repressed inside China. In conjunction with the dramatic expansion of Chinese economic interests abroad, the Chinese government has focused its influence initiatives on obscuring its policies and suppressing, to the extent possible, voices beyond China’s borders that are critical of the CCP.' Targeting the media, academia, and the policy community, Beijing seeks to penetrate institutions in democratic states that might draw attention or raise obstacles to CCP interests, creating disincentives for any such resistance. Chinese economic activity is another important tool in this effort. Beijing is particularly skilled at using economic leverage to advance political goals in the realm of ideas, working through indirect channels that are not always apparent unless one examines Chinese business activities in conjunction with Beijing’s other influence efforts.
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