In its hybrid war against the United States, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been pursuing a number of intertwined goals aimed at world economic dominance in all spheres: trade, policy, legal, technology, etc. It’s economic dominance that undergirds geopolitical and military dominance, as well as its penultimate goal: world leadership in all human endeavors.
In one of the many successful campaigns of that ongoing multi-front hybrid war against its main adversary, the CCP has corrupted some members of the U.S. political class. The corruption began immediately after Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger “opened China” in 1972 (Kissinger continues to speak of appeasing China nearly 50 years later).
The rampant corruption is intertwined with bought-and-paid-for Chinese sycophancy, outright admiration of the communist regime in Beijing, and the mirroring of some of its authoritarian policies by the Biden administration.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Vice Premier Liu He (L) attend a group photo session with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (R), and members of a delegation from the 2019 New Economy Forum before a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on Nov. 22, 2019. (Jason Lee/Pool/Getty Images)
Here are some policies pursued by Democrats that essentially implement “Chinese-style authoritarianism with American characteristics.”
Great Firewall Versus Big Tech
The Great Firewall (also known as the “Golden Shield”) is the Beijing regime’s internet censorship and surveillance system. Its goal is to maintain ideological control of Chinese citizens by restricting their access to “corrupting foreign influences.” Moreover, the system facilitates the monitoring of individual communications to crush political dissent.
The Democratic Party has increasingly—through persuasion, corruption, and coercion—exploited Big Tech to convey Democratic narratives and suppress the messages of the Democrats’ political enemies. Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and many others are more than just Democratic-friendly; they are important elements of the party’s ongoing campaign to suppress dissent and demonize their political opponents.
Social Credit Systems
The ostensible goal of China’s evolving social credit system is to enable reporting on the “trustworthiness” of individuals, corporations, and government entities across China—with trustworthiness, of course, being arbitrarily defined by the CCP.
China’s State Council announced in 2014 that a social credit system “is an important method to perfect the Socialist market economy system, accelerating and innovating social governance, and it has an important significance for strengthening the sincerity consciousness of the members of society.”
Left unsaid is the punishment for those deemed by the state to have exhibited “insincere consciousness.” Examples of infractions punished by Chinese authorities include “bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games, and posting fake news online, specifically about terrorist attacks or airport security,” according to Insider.
Also left unsaid is that the social credit system can be extended in multiple dimensions, including monitoring and suppressing “prohibited” political speech or implementing travel controls through vaccine passports.
People check on travel packages offered by travel agencies during the Guangzhou International Travel Fair in Guangzhou in China's Guangdong Province on March 3, 2018. Travelers in China were blocked from buying plane tickets 17.5 million times in 2018 as a penalty for failing to pay fines or other offenses. The Chinese regime reported on penalties imposed under a controversial "social credit" system. (Chinatopix via AP)
It’s no secret that Democrats are enamored of the CCP’s social credit system, as they envision it as a powerful political control mechanism that could be wielded in America to monitor and control behavior based on Democratic priorities and objectives.
As reported here, congressional Democrats are considering an overhaul of the U.S. credit reporting system by implementing the Comprehensive CREDIT Act and the Protecting Your Credit Score Act of 2021, which would result in “a new system—similar to that of China.”
The CCP would doubtless be more than willing to sell the Democrats the social credit system information technology components that underpin the Chinese system.
Masks, Social Distancing, and Lockdowns
These COVID-19 response measures, which were previously foreign to most Americans, originated in China and are components of China’s draconian and unscientific “zero-COVID” policy. Democratic governors (and others) have been happy to force these on Americans while ignoring the lack of any proof whatsoever that masks are effective (150 comparative studies reported here) and also the economic and personal damage wrought by the lockdowns.
However, constitutional freedoms are the bane of authoritarians—at least in the United States. It took nearly two years for the New York Supreme Court to determine that the statewide mask mandate was unconstitutional. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden just extended the COVID emergency.
Vaccination Certificates
A key feature of Beijing’s “zero-COVID” policy is the use of “vaccination certificates,” which are used in the social credit system to control the access and travel of all Chinese citizens.
Rasmussen polling in January showed that “a majority of Democrats embrace restrictive policies, including punitive measures against those who haven’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine.” This has manifested in congressional Democrats and the Biden administration continuing to “discuss” the use of vaccine passports and the implementation of vaccine standards.
Doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and vaccination record cards for children under 5 at UW Medical Center - Roosevelt in Seattle, on June 21, 2022. (David Ryder/Getty Images)
Media Narratives and Control
Chinese state-run media parrot the prevailing CCP narratives pronounced by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The messages are uniform and relentless, especially the repetition of Chinese communist euphemisms such as democracy with Chinese characteristics, market communism, closed-off management (in referring to COVID lockdowns, believe it or not), the indivisibility of security (what in the world does that mean?), and content moderation (censorship).
However, while carefully watching China’s media operations, the Democrat-media complex does not take a backseat to the Chinese communists in terms of controlling media narratives in the United States. Here are some examples: calling claims of 2020 election fraud “baseless” despite numerous reports exposing new information, characterizing unarmed Jan. 6 protesters as “insurrectionists,” pushing Marxist critical race theory and diversity-equity-inclusion policies on Americans, and advocating LGBTQI lifestyles.
The minions at China Daily and Xinhua must be smiling.
Concluding Thoughts
The above parallels didn’t happen by accident. The CCP got what it paid for, including through the actions of the “united front,” which is one of Mao Zedong’s “three magic weapons” (the other two being party-building and armed struggle).
Initially, the United Front Work Department (UFWD) was focused domestically on establishing and strengthening CCP control over all Chinese citizens. Its original responsibility, as noted here, was “to rally social groups and individuals to support the Chinese Communist Party and its objectives [f]rom the party’s Politburo Standing Committee down to its grassroots committees, united front work involves thousands of members, social organizations, and fronts.”
This was the CCP’s de facto social credit enforcement system before the internet.
The UFWD’s mission was expanded by Xi Jinping in 2015, as described here, to include foreign objectives such as “the co-optation of elites, information management, persuasion, and accessing strategic information and resources” with the express purpose of “influenc[ing] the decision-making of foreign governments and societies in China’s favor.”
What could be more favorable to the CCP than to have its main adversary, the United States, adopt policies that are identical to those implemented by the Beijing regime itself? What better way to psychologically condition Americans to the CCP’s authoritarian methods than have their own government do it?
Mission accomplished—and continuing—by the CCP its continuing hybrid warfare against the United States.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.
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