Commentary
With great fanfare, Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched two strategic initiatives in 2013 aimed at building a worldwide colonial empire and restoring China to world leadership: the Belt and Road Initiative (also known as “One Belt, One Road”) and Made in China 2025.
These have been showcased and explained since then as being primarily economic in nature, but they camouflage key secondary efforts launched by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) apparatchiks aimed at achieving the stated economic objectives, as well as much, much more.
These efforts form an ever-expanding spider web that is aimed at entangling the rest of the world through bribery, influence-peddling, subterfuge, debt traps, and coercion. The end state for all of this is CCP dominance and control in virtually all spheres of human endeavors.
This article is the second of three parts that briefly summarize many of the Spider Dragon’s secondary goals and objectives, all of which are synergistic and mutually supporting. Part 1 can be found here.
Leverage the Pandemic to Expand Chinese Influence, Economic Growth
This effort involves propagating the myth of Chinese Communist (ChiCom) “epidemic control” to convince other nations to use ChiCom methods, as well as purchasing controlling interests in distressed foreign businesses made vulnerable by the collapse of the world economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This also involves using “vaccine diplomacy” through provision of Chinese-manufactured vaccines to carefully targeted countries around the world—where Chinese “altruism” can be leveraged for geopolitical advantage, including support for CCP objectives at the United Nations. Never mind the questions about the effectiveness of those vaccines; it is the propaganda effect that matters most to the ChiComs.Make Major Chinese Cities ‘Smarter’
Xi announced this goal last year. He stated, “Major cities can become ’smarter' by using big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence technologies to modernize urban governance.” What he left unspoken was the definition of “modernizing urban governance,” which in the ChiCom vernacular involves extending the surveillance state into every nook and cranny of Chinese society, including the use of digital passports and a social credit system to monitor and manage “correct behavior”—approved by the CCP—of all Chinese citizens.
Security guards patrol below surveillance cameras on a corner of Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Sept. 6, 2019. Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images
Dominate the World’s Oceans
The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) definition of this goal is to “strive for ocean-oriented strength.” China already has the world’s largest fishing fleet, the world’s third largest container shipping fleet, and now the world’s largest navy. The Chinese regime is well on its way to establishing overseas bases from which to project maritime power and defend Chinese maritime interests associated with the Maritime Silk Road, as well as potentially homeporting PLAN assets for regional influence purposes.Lead the World in Next-Generation Advanced Tech
The CCP’s goal is to control the next-generation technology in order to dominate the future world economy. Here is a short list of key technologies that the ChiComs want to control: 5G, artificial intelligence, mobile payment systems, blockchain/digital currency for a “digital transformation of the world’s economy,” robotics, and sensitive technology to exploit the undersea domain.Control International Tech Standards
The ChiComs seek to gain control of the international standards certification process by replacing the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) with “China Standards 2035.” The CCP seeks to control the standards, control future technology development, integration, and deployment/usage.Implement the Double First-Class University Plan
The goal here is to evolve 100 of China’s best universities into world-class institutions by 2049 (the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China). This includes luring foreign academics to Chinese universities and funding joint research, as well as promoting academic and scientific exchanges with foreign universities.Promote Military-Civil Fusion to Enhance PLA Capabilities
The ChiComs have developed and implemented a strategy of “maximizing linkages between the military and the civilian sector to build China’s economic and military strength,” according to Australian Strategic Policy Institute. This is an interlocking policy aligned with the previous goal that involves leveraging those 100 “world-class universities” for the development of dual-use and military technologies for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA or Chinese military).Erase the Undersea Warfare Tech Deficit
This is one example of how the military-civil fusion initiative is being exploited to achieve another key objective, which is to erase a key and decisive military advantage enjoyed by the United States in submarine technology. This includes acoustic sensors and communications systems, torpedo guidance, and unmanned undersea vehicles.Exploit Access to China’s Economy to Achieve Geopolitical Goals
The primary goal is to use the U.S. system of treaties and alliances with a global network of “Chinese partnerships.” To achieve that goal, coercion through controlling access to China’s economy enables the ChiComs to pressure foreign governments, international institutions, foreign media, and overseas Chinese. The results include lucrative concessions to gain access to domestic Chinese markets, including direct investment requirements, technology transfer agreements, and lopsided joint ventures that favor Chinese partners.Implement a New ‘Health Silk Road’
The ChiComs are keenly interested in redesigning the post-World War Two liberal rules-based political and economic order to assert Chinese leadership, mercantilist methods, and ultimately control. This includes remaking global health standards, controls, and methods that benefit the long-term self-interests of Beijing. Thus, this has taken the form of Xi’s “health diplomacy” and the associated “Health Silk Road.”
People wait to receive COVID-19 vaccine in Linquan county, Fuyang city, in eastern China's Anhui Province on May 13, 2021. STR/AFP via Getty Images
Be Opportunistic in Advancing ChiCom Interests
The goal is to mold current events such as crises, natural disasters, and foreign wars to China’s collective benefit. The ChiComs use a “whole of government” approach in exploiting opportunities, with messaging lockstep across all of their governmental agencies, controlled media, diplomatic corps, scientific exchanges, international institutions, and CCP leadership.Pursue the Three Prongs
According to H.R. McMaster, a former White House national security adviser, the ChiComs are using a three-pronged strategy of co-option, coercion, and concealment to achieve their primary and secondary geopolitical goals and objectives. Every ChiCom diplomatic, economic, scientific, educational, and military initiative must be examined under the microscope of detailed analysis to ascertain how these three prongs are being exploited by the CCP to achieve their ends.Turn Chinese Diplomats Into ‘Wolf Warriors’
The goal is to aggressively use the Chinese diplomatic corps to extend Chinese influence in foreign capitals and international organizations in order to “fill the vacuum” as America “retreats” from the world stage, as envisioned and orchestrated by the CCP. Rather than the placid and passive ChiCom diplomacy of the past few decades, Xi Jinping has energized his diplomatic corps to be more forceful and demanding in exerting Chinese leadership on the world scene.Establish Regional Hegemony Along China’s Periphery
In order to lead the world and have a firm base from which to project military and economic power, China must become the regional hegemon in East and Southeast Asia, in particular. This involves intimidation, coercion, and bribery—whatever works to achieve the CCP’s economic and military objectives in neighboring countries, including dominating the regional seas and controlling economic markets and trade relations on Chinese terms.Control All Overseas Chinese
The objective is to extend the new national security law to all Chinese regardless of where they live. With control comes the ability to influence political events and policies in countries that have a significant minority population of Chinese. A key ChiCom objective is using the law to force other countries to comply with ChiCom controls of overseas Chinese—an insidious means to begin extending compliance with the ChiCom legal framework over the rest of the world. Since June 30, 2020, the national security law is being employed for the first time in Hong Kong to curtail and align individual and economic freedoms with those permitted by the CCP.Take the Chinese Civil Code Worldwide
The “Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China“ was adopted at the third session of the 13th National People’s Congress on May 28, 2020. It micromanages Chinese society—economic, social, travel, education, etc.—and mandates compliance by all citizens. Article 1 includes the key phrase, “Developing socialism with Chinese characteristics, and carrying forward the core socialist values.” That phrase telegraphs the CCP’s intention to carry forward core socialist values with Chinese characteristics to other countries!Conclusion
The secondary efforts being pursued under the auspices of the BRI and “Made in China 2025” initiatives are far-reaching in purpose and effect. Each effort ultimately involves extending CCP control over decision-making processes in order to achieve the “shared future” about which Xi Jinping and his underlings have been propagandizing over the past several years: the future of mankind under complete CCP control.Part 3 of this series will complete the survey of the Spider Dragon’s secondary goals and objectives.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
