Diploweb.com China, the great predator. A challenge for the planet. For what ? Interview with Pierre-Antoine Donnet

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Pierre Verluise (P. V. ): Your book, “China, the great predator. A challenge for the planet” (L’Aube editions, 2021) offers a broad overview of China today. With numerous, very up-to-date reference sources, you successively tour the tragedy of the Uyghurs and the Tibetans; the environmental impact of Chinese growth; China's technological rise; the democratic shortcomings of the PRC; and China in the world. It is not possible to address all these topics here, but which one would you absolutely want to share with our readers?

Pierre-Antoine Donnet (P.-A. D.): Today, more than ever, Xi Jinping's China has become a matter of conscience. Is it still a partner with whom it is possible to dialogue, to talk? Hasn't it closed like an oyster on the outside world? China, under the instigation of its president for life and absolute master, is today resuming disturbing Maoist accents. Surrounded by a frenzied cult of personality reminiscent of that of Mao, Xi Jinping now imposes that his “thought” be taught to primary school children. Xi Jinping is everywhere. On state television screens, on giant posters at major intersections, on social networks, everywhere. Big Brother is watching you, Big Brother is watching you. 400 million cameras equipped with facial recognition software watch your every move in the street. One false step, you do not cross the street in the nails, you throw your cigarette butt on the sidewalk, you dare to spit, you are caught in the act of a breach of the rules of life and immediately sanctioned. No more question for you to buy a train ticket. This is the famous system known as “social credit”. A citizen must now conform to the codes of conduct of the country, be a good citizen.

Why is China posing a conscience case to the world? The tragedy of the Uyghurs, that of the Tibetans before them, recently that of the inhabitants of Hong Kong challenge us. Xi Jinping's China does not adhere to universal values, those of individual freedoms, multiparty politics, elections by universal suffrage, independent justice and a free press. The Chinese government has its own definition of human rights: eat your fill before thinking about freedom.

Let's go back to the Uyghurs. More than a million of them are interned in camps in the so-called “autonomous” region of Xinjiang, in northwestern China. Appalling conditions of detention, gang rapes, forced sterilizations: the testimonies of Uyghurs, most often women, are too numerous and too specific to doubt their veracity. Knowing whether there is genocide or not is a very serious question. There are definitions in international law, enshrined in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. However, it is clear that China ticks all the boxes, whether through the practice of forced sterilizations, or violent assimilation, with the desire to destroy Uighur identity. What has been forgotten is that China has always done the same, before with the Tibetans and, before that, with the Manchus. There is thus today no longer any speaker of the Manchurian language. It is not liking China to be in denial. As a teenager, I had a poster of Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong's prime minister, in my room. However, I have never been seduced by Maoism. But, like many young people of my generation, I thought I saw in Chinese communism the promise of a new man who would enlighten the world. It was all wrong. We found out later. China was then ravaged by famine which caused the death of millions of millions of women and men as well as hundreds of thousands of intellectuals lynched during the infamous “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. However, in the West, the pseudo-sinologists of the time praised Mao and preferred to attack Simon Leys, alias Pierre Ryckmans, when he was the first to dare to denounce, in his first book "The New Habits of Chairman Mao", the of a perverse system whose result we know today for China plunged into poverty, ignorance and darkness. Simon Leys loved China much more than those who idolized Mao at the time.

What could China do to change? The current situation can only change with the departure of Xin Jinping. I am firmly convinced that China will one day experience multiparty politics, independent justice, a free press and freedom of speech. All this would allow the Chinese genius to express itself and bring us all a lot. More than ever, we need this Chinese genius that China demonstrated for several millennia, when Europe was experiencing famine and epidemics at the time. This Chinese genius is indispensable to us in the face of the serious questions facing the world today.

Is the Chinese population able to resist this leaden screed that is suffocating China? A final fashionable form of protest in China is this: going to bed “tang ping” in Mandarin. We lie down on a bench in a park. It is a question of refusing this society of work, of mental alienation, the one where the only choice left is to consume, the one where you no longer have the ability to think because people think for you. The Party is responsible for thinking for you. So it's about lying down to say no. The great tragedy today is that one billion 402 million Chinese are taken hostage by the policy of the Party, which poses as the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese people. It has become impossible to speak freely and, we foreigners, we can no longer discuss with them. But Xi Jinping is losing the information war. Because, more than ever, information circulates. It knows no borders. Even in China, despite the ubiquitous censorship, the Chinese are getting to know. Naturally, all Earthlings want to know. This thirst for information, Xi Jinping can do nothing about it. China is spreading fake news, but no one believes it anymore.

Pierre Antoine Donnet
Pierre Antoine Donnet has just published “China, the great predator. A challenge for the planet” (L’Aube editions). Photo Alsace, Darek Szuster

P. V.: China's rise to power is also happening in the field of technology. Could you explain to us why the PRC is on the receiving end of industrial espionage? To what extent did the Westerners, who accepted leonine technological transfer conditions in the 1980s purely out of the desire to profit from the exploitation of cheap labor at the time, offer a plateau of technological catch-up on a tray ? What is the challenge for French and more widely Western intelligence services?

P.-A. D.: China has been engaged in massive industrial espionage for decades. This in all areas, civil and especially military. This espionage is exercised in different ways. Especially through the Chinese diplomatic network around the world. PRC embassies each have high-level experts whose job it is to collect sensitive information on cutting-edge technologies. It was thus the technology of the European group Airbus. This has allowed China to make gigantic progress in a short time to develop its own civil aircraft, the most successful example of which is the COMAC C919, a medium-haul aircraft whose first copies will soon be delivered to airlines. Chinese airlines and which will come to compete head-on with the A-320, A-321, A-350 planes as well as the Boeing 737. Another example is the plundering of technologies in the civil nuclear field.

Chinese engineers have accumulated all the French know-how, so much so that they are now able to master the entire design, implementation and maintenance of nuclear power plants. The last most striking example was the connection to the network of the latest generation EPR power plants in December 2018 and 2019, thanks to the technology transfers granted by Framatome and EDF. This connection to the network was a unique feat in the world since these EPR plants have no equivalent in the world since the inauguration of the first French EPR plant in Flamanville is experiencing repeated delays which generate a phenomenal additional cost. Last example: that of high-speed trains. There, again thanks to technology transfers, China has built more than 30,000 km of LGV in barely ten years, while it took France several decades to install only twenty times less LGV than China. .

P. V.: In many ways, China implements high-level disinformation, sometimes with some clumsiness. What are its objectives, supports, forms, relays, effects? What are our weaknesses from which the Chinese make their strength? Are the responses of the countries and institutions of the European Union up to the threat?

P.-A. D.: Disinformation from the Chinese government is constant, massive and daily. It is exercised through official Chinese media, RPC ambassadors around the world, internet, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, to name but a few. This disinformation naturally applies to offering a narrative whose purpose is to deceive and lie on subjects such as the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, Taiwan, the origin of the Covid-19 virus. The countries targeted are primarily the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, but also the European Union. But telling lies only lasts for a while. Gradually, public opinion in these countries discovers the extent of this misinformation and no longer believes it.

P. V.: The New Silk Roads are being talked about a lot – even in high school Geopolitical History-Geography programs – what are their geopolitical dimensions? How does China build its relations with partner countries? Part of the terrestrial Silk Roads passes through Russia, what impact could this have on the balance of power between China and Russia? Why and how is China becoming predatory as far as Africa?

P.-A. D.: The New Silk Roads, launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, represent the greatest operation of political and economic conquest of all time. More than 153 countries have signed agreements with China for this pharaonic program. These routes irrigate Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and even Western Europe with the assignment of concessional loans without considerations for related issues to human rights, unlike Western lenders who take this into consideration and make it a sine qua non. Hundreds of billions of dollars have thus been granted to many countries, whether in Southeast Asia, especially in Africa, but also in Europe. One day, some of these countries find themselves unable to repay these loans and then fall into the famous “debt trap”. This repayment default then turns against them since the Chinese lenders then ask them to agree to 99-year emphyteutic leases on infrastructures such as ports, airports and railways. These are the surrenders of sovereignty that today arouse the revolt of some of these countries.

Diploweb.com China, the great predator A challenge for the planet. Why? Interview with Pierre-Antoine Donnet

Added to this is the fact that China is very heavily indebted and can no longer finance these Silk Roads as it used to, which is causing a serious slowdown in the start-up of new programs. China's public debt is indeed a ticking time bomb. It currently weighs more than 15% of global debt, according to the Institute of International Finance. In 2018, it represented nearly 235% of the national GDP. It quadrupled between 2008 and 2016, reaching $28.4 trillion on that date. So the question arises: is China a colossus with feet of clay?

The IMF had, years ago, sounded the alarm, explaining in a report published in 2019 that Chinese debt would exceed 290% of the country's GDP by 2022. For the Institution, such progress is dangerous. Such a debt burden will not leave much room for the Chinese authorities to react to a potential economic shock and, in particular, to a new interbank crisis that is hovering over the world today. Or a crisis of confidence in the wealth management products that have ensured the strong growth of the notoriously opaque Chinese banking sector. While defaults on bonds issued by Chinese companies had already soared, 2021 and even more so 2022 could well be horrible years. Between 2007 and 2017, Chinese companies defaulted on 39.2 billion yuan worth of bonds ($5.8 billion), 3.4 times more than in the same period of 2018. Between 2007 and 2017 , the ratio of Chinese corporate debt to Chinese growth rose from 101% to 160%. Since then, the also worrying phenomenon of capital flight has been added, tangible since 2012. However, it has accelerated since 2015, reflecting a lack of confidence among Chinese investors in their economy. Some $1 trillion flew out of China in 2015 and these massive leaks have continued ever since. Despite strict exchange controls introduced by the authorities, capital flight reached an estimated level of $87.8 billion during the first quarter of 2019. Since 2012, when Xi Jinping came to power, the Chinese are no longer authorized to leave their territory for more than 50,000 dollars per year and per person, while companies can no longer do so except within the framework of duly approved investment projects. But many solutions exist to transit the money illegally, in particular via parallel banking establishments which send it to Hong Kong, a hub of Chinese financial circles.

China has also generated a monstrous real estate bubble for the past twenty years which, today, constitutes a threat to its economic balance. From the 1990s, it embarked on a construction frenzy that changed the face of all its cities. Billions of cubic meters of concrete have been poured to raise millions of graceless buildings that disfigure urbanized areas. Speculation drove prices artificially high. With the result that today tens of millions of apartments and apartment buildings are empty. Some 22% of the housing stock is unoccupied, i.e. more than 50 million dwellings. Homebuyers have taken on deep debt, encouraged by easy mortgage lending which increased sevenfold between 2008 and 2017, from 3 trillion yuan ($430 billion) to a whopping 22.9 trillion yuan ($66 trillion). Real estate and construction currently account for around 15% of China's GDP. Already in 2016, Wang Jianlin, boss of the Wanda conglomerate which had started in commercial real estate, did not hide his concern about a market that had become "uncontrollable" in the face of savers' appetite for real estate, which is more profitable than the stock market and bank deposits. "I don't see a good solution," he explained. "The government has put in place all kinds of measures, limiting purchases and credit, but nothing has worked," he warned. The cocktail of real estate fever and a swerve of easy credit is reminiscent of the American subprime crisis (2007, 2008). In the special economic zone of Shenzhen, in the south of the country, up to 30% of real estate purchases are speculative investments, according to the New China Agency.

The latest illustration of this phenomenon is the number two Chinese real estate conglomerate Evergrande, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. Small investors demonstrated their anger in front of the company's headquarters in Shenzhen on September 14, 2021. Thus Mrs. Hu, from Beijing, who did not hesitate to travel more than 2000 kilometers to make heard on September 15 the voice of her parents who invested in Evergrande thinking of improving their old age. "My father was counting on the yields to pay for the medical care of my seriously ill mother," she told AFP without wanting to give her full name. Today, they find themselves penniless when Evergrande "promised a high return on investment", she gets carried away. “For my mother, I have to get the money back,” explains, combative, Ms. Hu. Like her, around sixty demonstrators were again gathered on September 15 in front of the group's headquarters. When a man presented as an Evergrande official arrives, protesters chant: “Evergrande, give the money back!” The day before, the protesters had invaded the premises of the group in a country where demonstrations are prohibited, according to images broadcast on Chinese social networks. But since then, a large police force has prevented any demonstrators from entering the company's offices and has tried in vain to disperse the demonstrators. On September 15, the security forces formed a human chain and asked the journalists to leave the scene. “They offered us shops, kindergartens and parking spaces, but we can't do anything about it. Nobody agrees with that,” said Ms. Wang, an employee of a financial company with a business relationship with Evergrande. “They are trying to cram their rotten assets,” denounces another investor. "These are goods that they can't sell," she said, according to the AFP report. Other protests were reported in the provinces of Anhui and Jiangsu (east) and Hubei (center), according to the agency.

Given the size of the company with 200,000 employees and given the weight of its debt (260 billion euros), hundreds of thousands of people in China today fear losing their feathers. Small holders fear losing all their savings in this turmoil. Chinese households awaiting the delivery of an Evergrande house or apartment that they have already paid for, as required by Chinese law, are also on the alert. Ditto for builders unpaid for several months. The construction sites of 1.4 million housing units are at a standstill due to the group's insolvency. The developer started 25 years ago to build housing for the Chinese middle class. He had also diversified into health, football; livestock or amusement parks. This berezina is not entirely a surprise. In the language of financial analysts, Evergrande belongs to the category of gray rhinoceros, that is to say, large companies visibly in danger: a danger that we prefer to ignore until the crisis breaks out. In short, Evergrande now poses a systemic risk to the Chinese economy. His downfall could be China's instant Lehmann Brothers, the bank that collapsed in the United States in 2008, triggering a global financial crisis. The question is posed: will the Chinese authorities take the risk of dropping such a big company? In Kunming, capital of southwestern China's Yunnan province, fifteen high-rise apartment buildings were demolished in August 2021 after being unfinished for eight years, as revealed by Channel NewsAsia, a news network of English language based in Singapore and owned by MediaCorp which on September 14, 2021 released a video of this event. What will happen when the bubble bursts? How far will this financial waste go?

Here is thus heavily compromised the adventure of the New Silk Roads by which China hoped to extend its sphere of influence of which it dreamed to compete with that of the United States but also of the European Union.

P. V.: What are the basic parameters of relations between the People's Republic of China and the island of Taiwan? What are the prospects for a crisis whose echoes could be planetary?

P.-A. D.: There is already an example of democracy in the Chinese world: Taiwan. The island of 26 million inhabitants has become a model of democracy, the only one in the Chinese world. A living democracy. Taiwanese people vote by universal suffrage. They choose their president, today Mrs. Tsai Ing-wen, re-elected in January 2021 for a second term of five years. Taiwan has remained a living museum of Chinese culture. This is obviously not tolerable for the communist regime on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, which is barely 150 kilometers wide. This is why Beijing proclaims the fact that this island is an integral part of the continent, and has always been. Xi Jinping has multiplied threats against Taiwan in recent years: either you accept reunification with the Chinese motherland under the banner of the Communist Party, or we will use force against you. Hence the nagging question: will Xi Jinping ever come to order the People's Liberation Army to invade Taiwan? But Taiwan is not alone. The United States, recently Japan, South Korea, Australia and even India have made it known that in the event of an invasion of the island, they will not stand idly by. SO ? Will a Third World War start in Taiwan? On May 19, 2021, a Hong Kong-based think tank affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party released a disturbing study. It shows that tensions in the Taiwan Strait have become so high that they indicate a risk of war "which has never been higher" between mainland China and Taiwan. Bluff, warning or caveat?

In its report, the China Cross-Strait Academy cites unidentified researchers who have looked into various factors. Among them, the military power accumulated in recent years on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, as well as that of the allies of former Formosa. Their conclusion: Beijing and Taipei are now “on the brink of war”. This think tank, reported by the South China Morning Post, was recently created and is chaired by Lei Xiying, a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party.

The conclusions of this report are based on an index of the risk of armed conflict between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. The researchers measured it at 7.2 on a scale of -10 to +10. The evolution of this index has hardly changed since the 1950s, when the nationalist armed forces of the Kuomintang took refuge in Taiwan, after their rout against the People's Liberation Army and the coming to power of the Communists and of Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949 in Beijing. This index was then located at 6.7.

The index then hovered above 6.5 for most of the 1970s, only to plummet to 4.55 in 1978 when the United States recognized the People's Republic of China and severed diplomatic relations with it. the Republic of China, the official name of Taiwan. Then, in the 1980s, the index remained very low, while Beijing had embarked on deep economic reforms which led to considerable flows of investments on Chinese soil.

But this same report shows a constant increase in this index since the beginning of the 2000s. This was the time when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of Taiwan, which advocated the independence of the rebel island” seized power, putting an abrupt end to the relatively relaxed relations that the Kuomintang had maintained with Beijing during the 55 years of its reign over former Formosa.

The President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, has always refrained from proclaiming the formal independence of the island, knowing full well that this would be a casus belli. This is why she only said that there is no need to do so since Taiwan is already de facto independent. But at the same time it vigorously rejects offers from Beijing proposing reunification with mainland China on the basis of the “one country, two systems” concept imagined by Deng Xiaoping. A concept that has become obsolete since 2019 with the seizure of Hong Kong by the Chinese authorities, to whom Beijing had nevertheless promised to respect this principle for 50 years.

“The most dangerous place on the planet. This is how The Economist, in its May issue, described Taiwan on its cover page. An allusion to the threats of armed conflict between China and the United States. The Americans have repeatedly promised that they will not sit idly by if Beijing ever launches an assault on Taiwan.

Lei Xiying, without being very loquacious, nevertheless explained that the political evolution under way in Taiwan and the increasingly close ties between Taipei and Washington represented "two destructive factors" which contribute to a serious risk of armed conflict. "If the current trend were to continue, the unification of Taiwan by force will only be a matter of time," he wrote.

For Lim John Chuan-tiong, a former researcher at Academia Sinica, a prestigious institution in Taiwan, the current situation is no worse than in the 1950s, when armed incidents occurred between Beijing and Taipei. “However, he acknowledges, considering the explosive situation, the immense uncertainties as well as the stakes, if anyone makes errors of judgment or makes bad decisions, it would not be wrong to say that the level of risk in the Strait of Taiwan is at an all-time high. "Beijing has long believed that as long as China-US relations can be kept under control, Taiwan won't be a problem," Lim continued. But China-US relations have plunged under the Trump administration and there is no sign of improvement now with the Joe Biden administration now relying on Taiwan and other allies to contain China.”

So what about these statements? Are Chinese threats just another bluff? Or do they on the contrary translate the sign of a warning and a caution towards both Taiwan and Washington? Hard to say.

It could just as well be an operation aimed at scaring the people of Taiwan in order to nip in the bud any will to resist if an invasion were to be decided in Beijing. But another worrying sign: the Chinese navy released a video on May 17, 2021 where we see its soldiers training to land quickly on “enemy beaches”. A clear message to Taiwan as diplomatic relations between Xi Jinping's government and the island are extremely tense.

During this combat simulation, the Chinese navy tested the capabilities of one of its landing ships: the Type 071-class Yimengshan. This ship can embark and deploy more than 500 soldiers on enemy shores. It also has a large flight deck and can simultaneously deploy two Z-18 heavy helicopters. Inspired by the design of the French Super Frelon aircraft, this aircraft can quickly transport 27 soldiers to the front, especially on the beaches, for an amphibious assault. It is also capable of carrying out rescue missions or fighting fires within a radius of 900 kilometers.

For its part, the Taiwanese army has put in place a new plan to stop a possible invasion of the People's Republic on its soil. This strategy was detailed in the Quadrennial Defense Report, an important document that charts the Taiwanese military's next goals for the coming years. The observation of the Taiwanese senior officers is simple: the island state will not be able to face the Chinese troops, far too numerous, in an open conflict on its territory. The priority of the island is therefore to destroy all enemy ships and planes before they can land soldiers. A tactic that would still have little chance of working, according to Pentagon war simulations.

Xi Jinping has repeatedly declared that Taiwan will be irretrievably attached to China, by force if necessary. The Chinese president was careful to specify that this reunification could not be postponed to another generation. In January 2019, Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China and head of the Central Military Commission, stressed that a formal declaration of independence for Taiwan "would constitute a current against the march of history and a dead end ". But, Xi Jinping probably does not want to invade this island. The risks of a major conflict with the United States and its allies are too high. But by dint of saying and repeating that Taiwan must be "reunified" with the mainland, Xi Jinping can hardly afford to do nothing, at the risk of appearing weak in the eyes of his compatriots the day he leaves the power. Abandoning this goal could even hasten his departure. Because reunification is perceived by the Party as a sacred mission, a legitimacy for it that it must therefore conquer at all costs.

P. V.: You detail the attacks by the Chinese Embassy in Paris against Antoine Bondaz, a researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research. This specialist in China was called a "small strike" and a "mad hyena", which generated broad support from the French scientific community and a summons from the Chinese Ambassador to Paris from the Quai d'Orsay. You yourself have been working for a long time on issues that bother Beijing, including Tibet. You have worked on it for a long time and continue with this book to offer a broad, documented but critical vision. You are active on the Asialyst site. How does the People's Republic of China behave towards you and towards this publication?

P.-A. D.: For the moment, neither the Chinese embassy in Paris nor the Chinese authorities have exerted any pressure on me, let alone any threats whatsoever. But it seems obvious to me that I am no longer welcome on the territory of the PRC. To tell the truth, I no longer have the slightest desire to set foot in China, for multiple reasons that I do not wish to specify. A few months ago, I was the target of insults from Chinese trolls but also, and this is surprising, from French trolls. Since then I regularly clean up my Facebook and other contacts and I am now at peace. I was a correspondent in Beijing between 1984 and 1989 and surveillance was already total, day and night. They opened my mail, they listened to my telephone conversations. Care had to be taken not to endanger my contacts, who risked imprisonment if they were identified. At the time, I had a Chinese motorcycle, a copy of the old BMWs. With my full-face helmet, I could go everywhere without being noticed. Indeed, at that time, motorcycles belonging to foreigners carried a Chinese blue license plate which made it possible to escape surveillance, unlike the black plates of foreigners' cars which made it possible to recognize them immediately. A year later the rules had changed. Maybe because of me. However, the rule was that foreigners' motorcycles also had to bear a black license plate. Freedom is over. Today, the situation for foreign correspondents accredited to Beijing is even harsher. They are tracked everywhere through electronic surveillance. The Information Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sometimes only grants short-term visas, renewable if the correspondent does not write articles deemed to be harmful to China's image. This blackmail is appalling because it forces journalists to practice self-censorship.

P. V.: In September 2021, Paul Charon and Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, researcher and director of IRSEM (Institut de Recherches Stratégique de l'Ecole Militaire), published a report of more than 600 pages entitled "Les operations d'influence Chinese, a Machiavellian moment", available for free download on the IRSEM website. What did you take away from it?

P.-A. D.: This report [1], impressive for its wealth of details and documents, will be a milestone in French research on contemporary China. There is now a "before" and an "after" because this file sets the record straight and helps us to get out of a naivety with regard to this China of Xi Jinping, president for life, secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party and head of the Central Military Commission, which holds all the powers of a country which is closing like an oyster on the outside world.

"The strategies and influence operations presented in this report are those of the Chinese regime, and not of China or the Chinese people", underline in the preamble to their narrative the two authors. "Do not allow the amalgamation between power and people, we will preferably use 'the Party-state' or 'Beijing' rather than 'China'", they write. "By confusing the two, the regime is also appropriating the voice of the 'Chinese people' who, in China and abroad, although through different channels, are often the first to criticize the practices of the CCP", explain the authors of this file.

"This allows the Party-state to kill two birds with one stone: to present itself as the savior and protector of overseas Chinese, thus extending its influence over them, and to denounce any criticism of the regime as so much 'anti-Chinese ' and therefore 'racist'”, they add.

“The problem is not China, it is not an 'enemy' (on the contrary it is the Party which divides the world into 'friends' – those who defend its interests – and 'enemies' – those who dare to criticize it) and there is no 'clash of civilisations', explain the two authors.

Might as well set the record straight: "The real clash is between the CCP's repressive values ​​and practices, and the freedoms enshrined in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights: freedom of speech, meeting, religion and belief; that of not being persecuted; the right to privacy and equal protection before the law. The CCP rejects every one of these rights and freedoms, in word and deed.”

With these precautions in mind, here is the heart of their narrative: “For a long time, it could be said that China, unlike Russia, sought more to be loved than feared; that she wanted to seduce, project a positive image of herself in the world, arouse admiration. Beijing has not given up on its appeal, its attractiveness or its ambition to shape international norms and there are very important things for the CCP not to “lose face”. But at the same time, Beijing is assuming more and more of infiltrating and coercing: its influence operations have hardened considerably in recent years and its methods are more and more similar to those employed by Moscow", underline Paul Charton and Jean -Baptiste Jeangene Vilmer.

"It is a 'Machiavellian moment' in the sense that Beijing now seems to believe that, as Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, 'it is safer to be feared than to be loved'". This therefore corresponds to a ‘Russianization’ of Chinese influence operations”, explain the authors of this report.

This is followed by explanations of the tools available to the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate our societies to the heart of them to intimidate, coerce, silence and turn public opinion. A Machiavellian undertaking. It almost succeeded, except that in recent years Western opinion has begun to become aware of what is happening and to realize the extent of the disaster. So now the Chinese regime finds itself in the position of the watered sprinkler. The West has gradually abandoned this naivety, which has given way to awareness. [Everyone will benefit from reading the whole of this report available free of charge on the IRSEM website and soon available in English.

Today, more than ever, Xi Jinping's regime finds itself in the uncomfortable position of having become a besieged citadel. Never has China faced a coalition hostile to its underhanded maneuvers. We obviously find there first and foremost the United States, but also Japan, Australia, India, New Zealand, South Korea and even, gradually, Europe. At the heart of this unprecedented confrontation: Taiwan.

Taiwan, the only democracy in the Chinese world, is living proof that democracy is soluble in Chinese culture and civilization, thus inflicting a cruel denial on those who (some even daring to present themselves as enlightened sinologists) affirm against the winds and tides that democracy is not made for the Chinese.

Copyright September 2021-Donnet-Verluise/Diploweb.com


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. Pierre Antoine Donnet “China, the great predator. A challenge for the planet” (L’Aube editions, 2021) On Amazon

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Although severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic which appeared in the city of Wuhan, China was the only major economy in the world to post insolent growth in 2020. Soon to be the world's leading economic power, the empire of Milieu represents a major challenge for the next generations of Earthlings – whether in terms of global warming, ecological transition, economic hyperdevelopment, technological innovation and political upheavals caused by its unique development model. After the colonization carried out in the world by Europe in the 19th century, followed by American planetary domination in the 20th century, has China become the great environmental, political and economic predator of the 21st century?

See on Amazon Pierre Antoine Donnet “China, the great predator. A challenge for the planet”, L’Aube editions