Authoritarian Advance: Responding to China’s
Growing Political Influence in Europe
by Thorsten
Benner, Jan Gaspers, Mareike Ohlberg, Lucrezia Poggetti, Kristin
Shi-Kupfer
GPPi & MERICS
China’s rapidly
increasing political influencing efforts in Europe and the
self-confident promotion of its authoritarian ideals pose a significant
challenge to liberal democracy as well as Europe’s values and interests. While Beijing’s efforts have received much
less scrutiny than the efforts of Putin’s Russia, Europe neglects China’s
increasing influence at its own peril. Drawing
on its economic strength and a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) apparatus that is
geared towards strategically building stocks of influence
across the globe, Beijing’s political influencing efforts in Europe are
bound to be much more consequential in the medium- to long-term future than
those of the Kremlin.
China commands a
comprehensive and flexible influencing toolset, ranging
from the overt to the covert, primarily deployed across three arenas:
political and economic elites, media and public opinion, and civil society and
academia. In expanding its political
influence, China takes advantage of the one-sided
openness of Europe. Europe’s gates are wide open whereas China seeks to
tightly restrict access of foreign ideas, actors and capital.
The effects of this
asymmetric political relationship are beginning to show within Europe. European states increasingly tend to adjust
their policies in fits of “preemptive obedience” to curry favor with the
Chinese side. Political elites within
the European Union (EU) and in the European neighborhood have started to
embrace Chinese rhetoric and interests, including where they contradict
national and/or European interests. EU unity has suffered from Chinese divide and rule
tactics, especially where the protection and projection of liberal values and
human rights are concerned. Beijing
also benefits from the ‘services’ of willing enablers among European political
and professional classes who are happy to promote Chinese values and interests.
Rather than only China trying to
actively build up political capital, there is also much influence courting on
the part of those political elites in EU member states who seek to attract
Chinese money or to attain greater recognition on the global plane.
The Chinese
leadership’s political influence-seeking in Europe is driven by two
interlocking motivations. First and
foremost, it seeks to secure regime stability at
home. Second, Beijing aims to present its political concepts as a
competitive, and ultimately superior, political and economic model. Driven by these motivations, Beijing pursues
three related goals. First, it aims to build global support on specific issues and
policy agendas. This includes
fostering solid networks among European politicians, businesses, media, think
tanks, and universities, thereby creating layers of active support for Chinese
interests. Second, China seeks to weaken Western unity, both within
Europe, and across the Atlantic. Third,
Beijing pushes hard to create a more positive
global perception of China’s political and economic system as a viable
alternative to liberal democracies.
In the debate on
Beijing’s influencing, Chinese officials have complained about Western actors
questioning “normal economic co-operation and cultural exchanges with other
countries.” This negates the fact that,
from the perspective of liberal democracies, all
areas of interaction with China are potentially problematic and deserve
scrutiny. After all, China’s
political model is based on an authoritarian regime intent on strengthening a
deeply illiberal surveillance state at home while also exporting – or at least
trying to popularize – its political and economic development model abroad. Thus, today, all areas of Europe’s interaction
with China have strong political undertones.
If Europe intends to
stop the momentum of Chinese influencing efforts, it needs to act swiftly and
decisively. In responding to China’s
advance, European governments need to make sure
that the liberal DNA of their countries’ political and economic systems stay
intact. Some restrictions will be
necessary, but Europe should not copy China’s
illiberalism. While staying
as open as possible, Europe needs to address critical vulnerabilities to
Chinese authoritarian influencing through a multi-pronged strategy that
integrates different branches of government, businesses, media, civil society,
culture/arts as well as academia:
- Europe needs to better leverage the collective weight of EU member
states. Larger member
states like Germany and France need to take serious steps towards putting
their privileged bilateral relations with China in the service of common
European interests. Complaining
about the 16+1 format China uses to interact
with smaller EU members in Central and Eastern Europe while
engaging in 1+1 formats with Beijing will not help to come up with a
collective EU response on issues where Chinese action fails to resonate
with shared European interests.
- European governments need to invest in high-caliber, independent
China expertise. Raising awareness about and responding to China’s
political influencing efforts in Europe can only succeed if there
is sufficient impartial expertise on China in think
tanks, universities, NGOs, and media across Europe. This will also help to keep out ‘unwanted’ Chinese money in
those institutions.
- The EU needs to continue providing alternatives to (the promises
of) Chinese investments in European countries. Brussels
can point to the fact that by far the most investment within the EU and
its periphery still comes from within Europe. In the vast majority of instances, EU funding still is much more attractive for EU
member states than Chinese money. However, the EU also needs to implement
measures to align BRI investments in its neighborhood with European
interests. This includes enabling
third countries to properly evaluate, monitor, and prepare large-scale
infrastructure projects, including those financed by China.
- The EU and its members need to bolster a
flexible set of investment screening tools. Europe must be able to stop state-driven
takeovers of companies that are of significant public interest. In addition to high-tech sectors as well
as key parts of public infrastructure, this notably
includes the media as an institution of critical importance to liberal
democracies. In addition,
foreign funding of political parties from outside Europe, including from
China, should be banned across the EU.
- The EU needs to invest in
strengthening national and European security regimes, including cybersecurity and counterintelligence
efforts. European
intelligence services urgently need to enhance cooperation on Chinese
activities, both to arrive at a common understanding of
the threat and to deliver joint responses. EU members should put (additional)
awareness-building measures in place to sensitize potential targets of
Chinese intelligence activities. In
particular, decision-makers
and scholars should be briefed more systematically about common patterns
of contact-building and approaches by Chinese intelligence agencies or
related actors.
- For civil society actors and the wider public to get a full picture
of authoritarian influencing, liberal democracies need to leverage one of the key assets of open societies: the power of
critical public debate. Implementing
transparency requirements concerning collaboration with Chinese actors for
media agencies, universities, and think tanks, among others, would also
help raise awareness of the existence and often problematic purposes of
the various influencing mechanisms Chinese
state actors employ.
- Europe needs to make sure that efforts to
curtail the CCP influencing agenda do not degenerate into a
campaign targeting Chinese citizens and culture. EU members should also provide support
to those in the Chinese communities in Europe who find themselves pressured
to support the CCP influencing agenda.
...
The full joint report
by GPPi and MERICS is available for download
.
Research for this
publication was partly funded by Stiftung Mercator.
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