heightened repression of some 6 million Tibetans — severely restricting freedom of speech, religion, movement, association, and assembly.15 It has also curtailed the freedom of more than 4 million ethnic Mongolians living in China’s Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region in an effort to sinicize them.16 And, as part of its crackdown on Christians in China, a population estimated to number as many as 70 million, the CCP has imprisoned pastors, shut down churches, banned online religious services, and contemplated a plan to rewrite the Bible to purge it of ideas that conflict with party dogma.17
The CCP also seeks to extend the reach of China’s sovereignty. In the months following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, China — in defiance of its promises to keep Hong Kong free and open and to maintain the territory’s high degree of autonomy under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kong’s Basic Law — imposed a national security law that destroys the territory’s autonomy and robs Hong Kong’s residents of their essential freedoms.18 Beijing also insists that Taiwan — today a free and prosperous democracy — has always been and must remain part of China and threatens reunification by military force.19 And, asserting maritime claims in the South China Sea far beyond those recognized by international law, China has shifted the balance of power in the sea by building on and militarizing disputed islands.20
The communism that the CCP professes is more than a mode of authoritarian domestic governance. It is also a theory of a globe-spanning universal society, the ultimate goal of which is to bring about a socialist international order. At the same time, the CCP proclaims hyper-nationalist aspirations with roots in Chinese cultural and political traditions — however much twisted and deformed by the party — that require the PRC to occupy the commanding position in world affairs. The party’s synthesis of 20th-century communist dogma and extreme Chinese nationalism drives the PRC’s conduct within and beyond its borders.
Economic Co-optation and Coercion
Economic power is a leading element of the CCP’s quest for preeminence in world affairs. Before modernization, China often acquired leverage over its neighbors, whom it more or less viewed as comprising the known world, through the creation of dependence in commerce.21
