For us Europeans, Russia is a whirlwind and China is climate change, as Germany’s counterintelligence chief once said: the former is exciting in the short term but passes, while the latter is inexorable and will change everything forever. However, recently there has been a whole debate around the theory of peak China, that is, the idea that the period of rapid growth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is almost over, and it has now reached a plateau – demographic, economic, investment – for this, the resources for extensive growth through industrialization exhausted and a slow decline is observed in relation to other countries of the world.

But even if Beijing is at its peak and entering a period of stagnation, the regime will still continue to exert great pressure on Europe with the leverage it already possesses, primarily through Western multinationals operating in the PRC and dependent on the Chinese market. . But one cannot neglect the economic, diplomatic, media, scientific presence or through groups of citizens in Europe (Chinese diaspora) in some member states or in the European Union as a whole.

For example, there are the controversial investments in critical infrastructure (ports of Hamburg, Piraeus), computer networks and cyber security networks installed by Huawei (Berlin is full) or the equally controversial Comprehensive Investment Agreement (CAI) with the EU, promoted by Angela Merkel in the last century meters from the office, now suspended for death. Despite the fact that Europe’s relations with China have cooled significantly in recent years, especially after the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022, the regime in Beijing still has many supporters on the continent, out of conviction or money: influential people (activators). All of this is based on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) five-point strategy to shape the domestic policies of democracies in their own interests, which has become evident under Xi Jinping:

1. Transformation of trade and economic relations into weapons (armament): CCP leaders influence national decisions by explaining the benefits of cooperating with them, but emphasizing the costs they can create for states, companies, or individuals who oppose CCP interests.

2. Discursive advantage (dominance narratives): The CCP crudely manipulates information and fills the global conversation with protests, insults, or massive trolling of leaders it perceives as hostile (red-gray-black labels work, ie friendly-neutral-hostile, with different approaches for each category).

3. Mediation through local elites: The CCP relies on local influencers to shape perceptions of the regime in Beijing, which should be positive; The methods of co-opting political, media and academic elites in Europe are much the same as at home, based more on uncertainty and the encouragement of self-censorship than on visible and measurable benefits for the pocketbook.

4. Instrumentalization of the Chinese diaspora, more often through repression, general fear and self-censorship than through material reward.

5. Promotion of an authoritarian model of development as a viable and more effective alternative to liberal democracy; the rhetoric of development through dictatorship has an obvious appeal for many leaders in the Global South, even when development is slow.

But if large investment projects (“Belt and Road”) or trade relations (with their ever-increasing deficit for the host country) were discussed, then the illegal influence of the PRC abroad through some paralegal structures, such as the organization of special and extraterritorial police stations, as a rule, in the form of cooperation agreements with regional administrations in China, rather than with government institutions in Beijing. The purpose of these organizations is coordinated by the United Front – an entity coordinated by the PCC Central Committee with over 40,000 employees and a secret budget that directs the work of organizing and influencing non-PCC members at home or abroad (in business, local politics, universities, friendship associations, Confucius Institutes, etc.) is the penetration and intimidation of the Chinese diaspora from these states and even more aggressive actions against dissidents, especially from Hong Kong.

All are done under the guise of legitimate operations to ease bureaucratic procedures for Chinese citizens living abroad who need to renew documents (passports, driver’s licenses, translation services), or cooperate with local police in areas with large Chinese communities. Over the past few years, there have been many scandals about “illegal Chinese police units” operating undercover in Italy, Spain, Great Britain or the United States, collecting data and threatening members of the diaspora.

At a certain point, a similar approach was used in Romania as well, according to the typical standard: a delegation from Nantong Province (never from the central ministries) came to visit and signed a memorandum with the Dobroest City Hall on the supply of surveillance equipment. . Of course, it is not a coincidence, but part of the strategy of the United Front, that Dobroesti is the suburb of Bucharest where the majority of the Chinese diaspora in Romania live and where the famous Red Dragon shopping center operates. Most likely, the local administration in Romania – perhaps the central one too – has no idea about this method used by the PCC in the West.

It is even more difficult to document the penetration of the new Chinese mafia: organized crime groups that have inherited the structure of the old Triads, present for a long time in some European countries, but which have recently aligned themselves with officials of the Beijing regime. , thus obtaining a high level of protection at home and partially serving the state goals of the PRC. In this way, the model of actions that we know from the examples of cooperation between Russian organized crime and the power structures of the Kremlin is organically reproduced. Very often, organized crime in Chinese communities in the diaspora is commissioned by the CCP specifically to intimidate these communities, threaten political dissidents in places beyond the reach of the Chinese state authorities, and thus participate in the newly christened Cross-Border Repression, led by the PRC .

Sometimes the naivety of the West in dealing with such situations is striking: until 2018, the president of Interpol was a Chinese police officer. The penetration of Chinese officials into international institutions thus helps the regime access databases of cross-border prosecutions, cover what it is supposed to cover, and, conversely, prosecute dissidents through ostensibly legal procedures. (Since 2021, the president of Interpol is a general from Saudi Arabia, the second country after China in the world top of cross-border repression). A media investigation published the other day in Italy uses the case of the vast Chinese diaspora in Prato to illustrate how the Chinese mafia infiltrates the local community to control it, generates black money sent home to China, and how it supports the regime in Beijing , with whom he has direct and confidential meetings. – Read the whole article and comment on Contribuotrs.ro