China

In recent years, Russia has mimicked China's model of cyber sovereignty. This will likely harm Russian domestic security and influence in its near-abroad.

The disastrous stalemate between the United States and China is preventing the UN Security Council from issuing a powerful resolution, or even a declaration, to mobilize the international system against the pandemic.

World Health Organization targeted by hackers; EU Parliament will temporarily allow members to vote by email; Chinese information operations copying some Russian tactics, expert says; Hackers exploit coronavirus pandemic to conduct DNS hijacking attacks; and New report details massive Chinese hacking campaign.

A new coronavirus that originated in China has spread worldwide, sickening hundreds of thousands and halting economic activity. Many countries have imposed unprecedented measures to stop local outbreaks.

The rapid spread of the coronavirus in the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a new reality for most—if not all—Americans, as a growing number of U.S. states have imposed a variety of stay-at-home directives. This grand experiment provides an opportunity for comparative analysis.

China needs its own version of Rutger Bregman …  

China's innovation ecosystem has long suffered from misguided incentives. Recently, the Chinese government has been taking steps to address this. If it succeeds, China will be closer to becoming a global leader in emerging technologies, posing a significant challenge to the United States.

As the United States, the United Kingdom, and European nations face rising tolls from the coronavirus pandemic, their slow, often confused initial responses have come under widespread criticism. China, meanwhile, suppressed information about the virus at first, allowing it to spread out of Wuhan. After initially silencing medical workers, and covering up the extent of the danger, Beijing pivoted. It enforced essentially a nationwide quarantine, which seems to have stemmed the spread, at least for now. However, China’s draconian approach stifled nearly all economic and social life, and may be hard to implement elsewhere The United States and other countries could learn from Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which have adopted highly effective measures to battle the virus. For more on how to learn from these places, see my new CFR In Brief.

Strengthening South Korea’s alliance with the United States begins with a return to strong shared values and principles based on the common systems of liberal democracy and market economy.

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic spreads worldwide, the public health crisis and response will lay bare China’s leadership aspirations as a great power. It is too soon to say precisely how the pandemic will change the broad contours of Chinese foreign policy, but it has already highlighted some of the frailties of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy agenda to build traditional and digital infrastructure around the world. China has constructed its loosely-governed, $1 trillion infrastructure initiative to ensure that Beijing reaps many of the benefits, but this structure of governance has also created significant foreign dependencies upon China. Most BRI infrastructure contracts are given to Chinese companies, most projects rely overwhelmingly on Chinese labor and supplies, and BRI depends on the availability of massive amounts of cheap credit from Chinese banks. In becoming the epicenter of a global public health crisis with far-reaching economic consequences, China has also revealed the inherent vulnerabilities of an international initiative that is governed through its reliance on Beijing. After attempting to bury early news of the virus for the sake of regime legitimacy, by February the Chinese Communist Party turned to a series of severe measures to control the virus’ spread. It halted international travel, quarantined cities, and imposed lockdowns across the country. The effects sent shockwaves both through the Chinese economy and internationally, with many countries facing ramifications from a Chinese slowdown. By restricting personal movements, public events, and business activities, hundreds of millions of people were unable to complete their daily routines. Today, as transmission of the virus begins to slow in China, Chinese people are beginning to return to work. Quarantines, lockdowns, and a ban on international travel for Chinese citizens may have been effective in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. But China’s COVID-19 response all but halted the Belt and Road Initiative in its tracks. Work ceased along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Cambodia’s Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone came to standstill, and projects across Indonesia, Myanmar, and Malaysia became stuck in holding patterns. A freeze on the flow of Chinese labor is a significant factor in these disruptions, with thousands of Chinese workers unable to return to their country of work. China has repatriated citizens working in Iran, for example, due to the spread of COVID-19 there—a measure it could apply to any BRI host country badly afflicted with the spread of the coronavirus, and one which will grind other BRI projects to a halt. At the recipient country level, more than 130 countries around the world have placed entry restrictions on Chinese citizens of individuals traveling from China. The Chinese government has lobbied BRI countries, including the Solomon Islands and Pakistan, to ease these travel restrictions. The longer that Chinese workers are unable to return to projects overseas, the longer the projects will languish incomplete, and some may be abandoned altogether (a phenomenon not unheard of, even within BRI’s short track record). The COVID-19 crisis has also hampered China’s manufacturing supply chains, and BRI projects are predominantly reliant on Chinese, rather than local, materials and supplies. The pandemic has compromised the global supply chains that keep BRI projects moving forward, limiting the goods flowing  out of China to the point that China actually ran a trade deficit during the first two months of the year. China’s shuttered factories not only need workers to be released from quarantines to resume normal output, but also need restored supplies of raw materials, adequate stores of protective gear for workers, and active truckers and shipping ports to deliver their goods abroad. The global shipping industry was slowed to the point that more tonnage of container ships was idled around the world in February than during the worst points of the 2008 financial crisis. Today, about 60 percent of China’s small and medium-size companies have resumed operations. The pace at which BRI projects and their supply chains come back online will depend on the effectiveness of China’s containment of the virus and as well as the speed its broader economic recovery. Moreover, China is facing down the COVID-19 public health challenge with its economy slowing to the lowest rates in three decades. Due to contractions in both industrial production and services production, it is estimated that China’s GDP shrunk by 13 percent during January and February. To help mitigate these effects, China’s State Council last week announced it will set up a coordinating mechanism for ministries to help businesses overcome supply chain bottlenecks, alongside other government support. Rumors recently surfaced that the Chinese government may be planning a massive stimulus package to revive the economy (though as others have noted there is some reason to be skeptical). Additionally, the China Development Bank has pledged to support coronavirus-hit BRI-related companies, although it is not clear if this support will be made available to Chinese companies only, or foreign firms as well. China will likely continue to face significant tradeoffs between public spending on domestic health and economic recovery and its financial subsidies for BRI in its response to the crisis. While it will take months to learn the full effects of COVID-19 for China’s economy, and the Chinese government is clearly working to offset them, COVID-19’s broader economic reverberations may themselves constrain BRI. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is clearly trying to bolster its own global governance role by establishing itself as a counter-COVID leader in word and deed. CCP officials are working to shift the global narrative surrounding their delayed and often-harsh response to the outbreak by championing its eventual (and tenuous) success. China is even beginning to provide material aid to BRI countries afflicted by the pandemic, including to Italy where in a recent call between foreign ministers China announced plans to sell Italy ventilators, masks, protective gear, and test kits. This week China made a similar pledge of medical support to Spain. If Beijing is remembered not primarily for its initial cover-up and harsh containment tactics, but as a source of eventual pandemic support, this will surely change the way that BRI countries see the wisdom of working closely with and relying on China. It is far too soon to know, however, the extent to which many BRI countries themselves will be affected by the pandemic. Some BRI-participating developing countries are currently reporting relatively few COVID-19 cases, but this is likely due to a lack of testing and other forms of detection. Those with weaker healthcare systems—such Myanmar or Nigeria—may come under enormous strain, and may be far less able to put in place the types of virus-containment measures that China did, (much less replicate the successes of democratic South Korea or Taiwan) including widespread testing, quarantining, and extensive social distancing. Less-developed countries may also experience grievous economic effects of their own, which may in turn constrain their ability to service BRI-related debt later. If BRI were based on a different model of governance, however—centered on locally sourcing workers, suppliers, and manufacturers, engaging international infrastructure-building experts, and focusing on building local capacity—these shocks would almost certainly be differently felt. It may take months to see the ramifications of COVID-19 unfold in BRI countries, and as a result it is too soon to tell how perceptions of China and its global governance leadership will be reshaped. The answer will no doubt vary across cases, but it is highly unlikely that BRI will be the same initiative by this time next year.

Despite an initially horrendous response to the coronavirus, covering up initial warning signs, suppressing information about it, and allowing some five million people to leave Wuhan in a rush before the scale of the problem was understood, Beijing has apparently gotten a hold on the epidemically domestically. (It remains to be seen whether the epidemic will come back, in serious numbers, in China as Beijing relaxes the medieval quarantine conditions it imposed in much of the country.) And now, with many European and North American states struggling to contain their outbreaks, amidst a sea of their own misinformation and initial fumbles, China is touting its coronavirus approach and using its approach to build global soft power. For more on how Beijing is utilizing its coronavirus response to boost its global soft power, see my new article in the Globalist.

Beijing’s initial response to the outbreak of the coronavirus in China earlier this year was atrocious. First, China botches… The government first stymied the initial efforts of doctors in Wuhan to foster transparency about the virus. It then suppressed accurate information about the coronavirus within Wuhan, nationally and globally. The confusion and lack of information led to some five million people fleeing Wuhan and spreading the virus. Then it cracks down very hard However, after eventually admitting the scale of the crisis, Beijing cracked down hard. Essentially, it imposed a medieval quarantine on much of the country, despite enormous economic and social ramifications. As China took these measures, many leading democracies blasted Beijing’s initially opaque response and closed their borders to Chinese travelers. And now, it’s making the most of it Now, as China seems to have gotten a handle on the outbreak through extremely strict quarantine measures, the shoe is on the other foot. Although it remains unclear whether the virus will spread again as Beijing lifts its national quarantine, which is already being relaxed, there is no doubt that China has drastically slowed the rate of new infections. China now apparently is getting more new coronavirus cases from people coming into the country from abroad than cases that emerged domestically. Xi Jinping: From domestic crisis manager… President Xi Jinping traveled to Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, earlier this month to trumpet China’s success at supposedly containing the spread of the coronavirus. Xi praised the country’s response, and media posted an exultant video entitled, “The People’s Leader commanding the decisive battle.” Meanwhile, the same Western countries that initially (and rightly) condemned China’s bungling of the outbreak are struggling with their own responses. China, in turn, is boasting of how it slowed the virus at home and bought the world time to address the threat – and is offering advice and aid to now-beleaguered Western states. … to responsible global actor Indeed, China’s drastic, tough, but seemingly effective response has made Xi Jinping look strong and forceful in some respects. This is especially evident in comparison to the bungling, slow initial measures taken by Italy, the United States and several other Western democracies. The comparative effectiveness of the response is not limited to China, though. Unlike Italy or the United States, some Asian democracies also have responded very effectively to the coronavirus, including South Korea, Japan, and Singapore). Beijing has begun sending medical supplies to hard-hit Spain and Italy. It has also offered guidance to Spain, Iraq, Iran and other states about how to address the virus – even as Italy initially got little aid from the European Union. Stealing the soft power mantle from the U.S. Ultimately, Beijing seems ready to use the outbreak to more broadly signal that China’s model of governance is effective, particularly in a crisis, and especially when compared to that of most democracies. International bodies like the World Health Organization have praised Beijing’s response. Chinese officials have eagerly touted China’s coronavirus record to state media and to foreign outlets as well — though they do not mention that Beijing’s authoritarianism and secrecy fostered the initial spread of the virus. Besides Xi’s trip to Wuhan and Chinese state media’s outpouring of coverage of China’s success at flattening the curve of the pandemic, the Chinese government has published a book on the China model for containing the disease. China’s claim to global leadership Combined with the new aid disbursements and advice the other countries, Chinese leaders appear to be hoping that their heavily-promoted success in fighting the virus helps Beijing appear like a global leader on public health – and thus ready to take on other types of global leadership. “The Chinese method is the only method that has proved successful” [in fighting the virus], is a message spread online in China by influencers, including many essentially promoting propaganda. This is not necessarily true. After all, other wealthy Asian states have shown different, effective models. But it is certainly a message that seems to be resonating with opinion leaders around the world. Conclusion The contrast with the failings of many leading democracies could not be sharper, and these states’ soft power could be hit hard.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has taken increasingly tough measures against Chinese state media outlets operating in the United States. The White House has forced state broadcasters like Xinhua and CGTN to reduce the number of Chinese nationals they have working in the United States, and has designated several state media outlets as operatives of the Chinese government rather than news organizations. There is no doubt that China’s biggest state media outlets, like Xinhua and CGTN, are controlled by Beijing, and also have expanded massively around the globe. The White House’s actions are reasonable. But it is also worth asking whether China’s state media expansion has actually delivered real results for Beijing. China is pouring money into state media outlets to make them appear more professional, and help them have a bigger international impact. As part of China’s expansion of its international state media in the past decade, CGTN, China Radio International, and Xinhua have opened and expanded bureaus in the United States, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Overall, CGTN now says that it is broadcasting to 1.2 billion people globally, in Chinese as well as English and other languages. But the numbers tell us nothing about how many of those people who get the broadcast are actually watching CGTN. The figures for how many people are actually watching CGTN are much lower—far lower than the viewership figures for giants like the BBC and CNN. With a boost in funding for the newswire itself and for advertising its coverage, Xinhua meanwhile roughly doubled its number of overseas bureaus in the 2010s, hiring six thousand to ten thousand new journalists to fill those bureaus. China Radio International (CRI) is growing as well. Sarah Cook of Freedom House has found that CRI was carried on fifty-eight stations in thirty-five countries in 2018, up from thirty-three stations in fourteen countries in 2015. But this expansion has had a limited effect at best at winning over actual viewers, readers and listeners in other states, most of whom still see Chinese outlets as propaganda. Studies done by academics and by contractors for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and obtained by me through the Freedom of Information Act, show that CRI and CGTN have a negligible audience in most places studied in Africa and Asia. In Ivory Coast, for instance, CRI has tried to reach a broader audience, but a Gallup survey of the country that I obtained shows CRI is listened to by less than 1 percent of Ivorians weekly, the second worst figure of any of the twenty-three radio networks analyzed. By contrast, the BBC reached 13.7 percent of Ivorians weekly, and VOA reached about 5 percent of Ivorians weekly. In Nigeria, both CGTN and CRI performed miserably in another Gallup study done for the U.S. Agency for Global Media. CGTN had 3.7 percent of the total audience reach of international TV networks in the country, about one-quarter the audience of the BBC; CRI was listened to by less than 1 percent of Nigerians tuning into international broadcast. Studies by Herman Wasserman of the University of Cape Town and Dani Madrid-Morales of University of Houston support this Gallup research; their studies also show that China’s state media outlets are far from approaching the reach, in Africa, of channels like the BBC and CNN. These figures are consistent with the still-low audience share of CGTN and CRI in other regions of the world where Beijing has invested in expanding the reach of its state media. A Gallup study of the weekly reach of select television stations in Vietnam found that CGTN was only watched by 0.7 percent of Vietnamese adults, far less than the BBC, CNN, TV5 Monde Asia (a niche francophone international channel broadcasting in Vietnam and other Asian states) and Arirang TV. Two-thirds of Vietnamese who watched the BBC said they trusted that outlet a great deal, but only about 7 percent of Vietnamese who watched CGTN said they trust it a great deal. In Cambodia, another such study found CRI lagged nearly every other international and local radio broadcaster in the country, in terms of weekly listeners. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, which has a sizable audience of people fluent in Chinese, a study of CGTN’s penetration found it was being watched by a minimal number of Britons. And throughout Latin America, CGTN’s Spanish language channel, while over the past decade significantly expanding the number of households in which it is available, has not proven widely popular. Indeed, simply because Chinese state media have poured resources into expanding in other regions does not mean Chinese media are received in these places as quality, valuable sources of information. In a survey of young African students, while some respondents remarked on the increased quality of Chinese broadcasting in Africa, or connected to Chinese media telling a different type of story, others clearly associated Chinese media with propaganda and censorship. “Chinese media are really controlled, they don’t have much freedom,” one young Kenyan student told her interviewers in the study. Similarly, another study of Chinese media in Kenya found that, despite all the investment, “the awareness and influence of the Chinese media in Kenya are [still] limited compared to the dominance of Western media.”

Despite South Korea’s high capacity for response, COVID-19's spread may incite human, economic, and political disasters