China’s Sharp Power

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 10, No. 8, August 2022

A series of paintings of communist leaders, including Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx and Mao Zedong, lined up along a Hong Kong road.

A series of paintings of communist leaders lined up along a Hong Kong road, 2016. Source: Flickr.

Roman Štěpař
Charles University

If we understand geopolitics as a “representation of space”, then the Indo-Pacific region can be seen as an emerging geopolitical hotbed in which major powers struggle not only for control but also for discourse of values and worldviews. In this particular geopolitical competition of values and mindsets, a sharp power is gradually gaining prominence, and in the Indo-Pacific region, China is at the center of the action.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lessons of Gorbachev’s “failure” were passed on to Chinese citizens. They denounced Moscow’s ideological neglect for this catastrophe and warned that it was possible that it would happen in China as well. Chinese foreign policy has as a result been transformed. After 40 years of remarkable rise, China has now clearly demonstrated its desire to lead the world by reasserting itself in a position that its leaders consider “historically correct.”

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Nixon and Kissinger Talk China: Satire

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 10, No. 5, May 2022

A black and white image depicting Former President Nixon and Henry Kissinger engrossed in conversations the White House.

Former President Nixon and Henry Kissinger engrossed in conversation, 1972. Source: Wikimedia.

Tony Zielinski
Attorney at Law

Editor’s note: This satire is meant for purposes of humor and should not be interpreted as historically accurate. 

Henry Kissinger: Mr. President, I suggest we open up formal relations with Communist China and they will be our allies against the Soviet Union.

President Nixon: Do you feel we can trust their leader, Mao Tse Tung?

Henry Kissinger: Mao Tse Tung is the greatest mass murderer in history. He is responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.  He is a ruthless unscrupulous tyrant. So my answer is a most resounding yes.

President Nixon: Yes…I think I understand and can work with someone like that.

Henry Kissinger: A big challenge will be how we deal with Democratic and free Taiwan. They have been great friends and allies.  Communist China regards them as a renegade state and China will not rest until they conquer Taiwan and take away their freedoms. China will subjugate them to unspeakable brutality because they dared to have freedom of speech, freedom of press, and the right to vote for their elected representatives. Mao will never forgive them.

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Politics in the De-politicised: TikTok as a Source of China’s Soft Power

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 11, November 2021

A person's hands are depicted holding a smartphone featuring the TikTik logo on its screen.

TikTok logo. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Zuza Nazaruk

Last year’s “TikTok war” revealed unprecedented hostility of the US government towards the Chinese tech newcomer. The seemingly innocuous software was developed by ByteDance, a Chinese unicorn companyTikTok is a sister app of Douyin, created for the Chinese market. Both apps allow users to share and watch short videos. In July 2020, then-President Donald Trump accused TikTok of a series of breaches, the most serious of which was sharing user data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Levine, 2020). Yet, some experts, including Adam Segal from the Council of Foreign Relations, considered the near-ban a smokescreen to hinder the growth of the most globally successful Chinese app to date (Campbell, 2020). In 2020, TikTok was the most downloaded app globally, with 89 million new users just in the US (Geyser, 2021). To date, 23% of Americans use or have watched TikTok, with an average American user having spent 14.3 hours monthly on the app in 2020 (Tankovska, 2021).

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Is The Persecution Of Falun Gong In China Tantamount To Genocide?

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 9, September 2021

A yellow destruction vehicle is depicted destroying personal possessions. A small crowd watches from the side.

Destruction of Falun Gong books during the 1999 China crackdown. Wikimedia/ClearWisdom

Helen Hintjens, Ph.D.
International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague

“Genocide is a crime for which there has to be proof of a particular hostile state of mind in an individual or in a government body towards a group that qualifies under the Genocide Convention’s or the ICC Statute’s limited set of groups against whom genocide can be committed”.[1]

Since at least 2000, at the behest of Jiang Zemin, President of the PRC from 1993 to 2003, Falun Gong have been labelled a ‘heretical (or deviated) religion’, and its members systematically persecuted through a covert ‘6-10 Office’ group of Chinese government security officers.

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Defeating China: Five Strategies

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 4, April 2020

Fighter jets of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels demonstration squadron fly over the Lincoln Memorial during the Fourth of July Celebration 'Salute to America' event in Washington, D.C.

Fighter jets of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels demonstration squadron fly over the Lincoln Memorial during the Fourth of July Celebration ‘Salute to America’ event in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, July 4, 2019. Source: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

By Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

Since 1989, when China massacred thousands of its own people in Tiananmen Square to stop a pro-democracy protest, the country has arguably grown into the world’s most powerful and centralized state. China’s GDP by purchasing power parity (PPP) is approximately $25.4 trillion, while the U.S. GDP PPP is only about $20.5 trillion.[1] One man, Chinese President Xi Jinping, has almost total control of China’s economy and a leadership position for life. China’s authoritarian system, most recently, allowed the COVID-19 virus to become a pandemic. By the time it is controlled, it may have killed up to millions of people.

Compared to Xi Jinping, political leaders in democracies have comparatively little economic power. U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, has only partial control of the smaller (by purchasing power parity when compared to China) U.S. economy, and must be reelected in 2020 to continue his tenure for a maximum of an additional four years.

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