Hegemon rising – China’s aggressive intrusion in world affairs

A Short History of China

To fully understand China’s motivations and intentions in today’s world, it is useful to study some Chinese history.

Since Mao Zedong defeated the Nationalists in 1949, the Communist Party of China has grown from a rag-tag army of rebels to the largest – and arguably the most disciplined – political organization on the planet, with some ninety million members.

The word hegemony is a useful word in describing Chines politics and ambitions. Hegemony means the domination or predominant influence of one state over state or region. An autocratic ruler can also be described as a hegemon, because, effectively, he is the state.

As Sinologist and author, Stephen Mosher says, “The PRC is bent on becoming the Hegemon, the Ba in Chinese, defined by longstanding Chinese usage as a single, all-dominant power. A Hegemon, it should be understood, is more dominant than a mere superpower, more dominant even than a ‘sole superpower,’ the international role that the U.S. currently occupies”.

The role of the hegemon is firmly embedded in China’s national history, intrinsic to its national identity, and profoundly implicated in its sense of national destiny.

China’s long imperial history as the dominant power of East and Southeast Asia has left no doubt in the minds of the Chinese elite that they are the cultural and intellectual superiors of all other people on the planet.

The political order of the hegemon that commenced twenty-eight hundred years ago is based exclusively on naked power. Total control of a state’s population and resources was to be concentrated in the hands of the state’s hegemon, who would employ this power to establish his hegemony, over all the states in the known world.

What Chines strategists of old had invented, then, is an early form of totalitarianism,

In the old, and enduring, Chinese view of the world, chaos, and disorder can only be avoided by organizing vassal and tributary states around a single dominant axis of power.

Even today, China still seems to classify her “neighbors” into one of two categories: tributary states that acknowledge her hegemony, or potential enemies. Present-day Beijing does not desire equality in external affairs, but deference, for it governs as an all-encompassing civilization.

China’s absolutist traditions go back to the very founding of the Chinese state, the Shang dynasty (c. 1766-1027 BC).

The Shang dynasty was succeeded by the Zhou dynasty which carried on its autocratic traditions. The authority of the king of Zhou over his land and people was absolute, as is suggested by a famous passage from the Book of Odes, “All land under heaven belongs to the King, and all people on the shores are subjects of the King.”

The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history. The military control of China by the royal house, surnamed Ji, lasted initially from 1046 until 771 BC for a period known as the Western Zhou and the political sphere of influence it created continued well into Eastern Zhou for another 500 years.

During the Zhou dynasty, the origins of native Chinese philosophy developed, its initial stages beginning in the 6th century BC. The most significant Chinese philosophers, those who made the greatest impact on later generations of Chinese, were Confucius, founder of Confucianism, and Laozi, founder of Taoism.

The Zhou kings maintained control by some dispersal of power to feudal lords, bestowing on them limited sovereignty over portions of the domain.

The concept of hegemony arose out of the weakness of the Eastern Zhou dynasty. Whilst its predecessor, the Western Zhou dynasty, was also feudal in nature, the center was strong enough to command the obedience of most of its vassals, as well as to maintain a central authority.

Over time, the ties that bound the nobility to the king began to fray, and the king’s authority diminished. This led to a series of wars. Within a span of two and a half centuries, dozens of wars were fought among the scores of feudal states in existence.

The death of King You of Zhou and the sack of the Zhou capital in 771 BC rendered the position of the central court untenable and eventually dependent on the protection of neighboring states.

The concept of the Hegemon was important to the internal relations during the Spring and Autumn period since the Hegemon was nominally charged with underwriting the stability of the whole system, often heading a league of smaller states whose security was to some extent guaranteed by the state, in exchange for tribute.

Finally, a strong leader, Duke Huan (685-643 BC) arose and brought peace by uniting the warring states. He became China’s first hegemon. Duke Huan’s success owed much to do with a series of political reforms initiated by his prime minister, Guan Zhong.

Guan Zhong was one of the first “Legalists,” as the school of statecraft dedicated to exalting the ruler and maximizing his power came to be called. The essence of Legalist doctrines was the supremacy of the ruler. Power could only be concentrated in the hands of the ruler by weakening the nobility and further subjugating commoners. 

To strengthen the state at the expense of the nobility, the Legalists advised their sovereign that they should no longer share power with a class of hereditary feudal lords. Within the court, aristocratic officials serving in inherited posts found themselves replaced by appointed bureaucrats. In the countryside, feudal lords were displaced by appointed magistrates who served at the pleasure of the ruler. By selecting officials who were mere extensions of themselves, Chinese rulers crushed the nobility and gathered yet more power into their hands.

Duke Huan of Qi was one of five rulers in this period who were known as hegemons.

The institution of the hegemon languished after Duke Huan’s death, but his system of government spread to other states.

The struggle for control intensified during the period known as the Warring States.

But it was the kingdom of Qin, under the direction of the great Legalist Shang Yang that took the most drastic measures to eliminate feudalism, centralize political power and militarize society.

The Qin monarch, Qin Shihuang (sometimes spelled Shi Huang), annexed the territory of the last other Zhou king in 256 B.C. and then absorbed the last remaining states during a ten-year campaign beginning in 231 B.C.

It was through the ensuing Qin dynasty that the absolutism embodied in the Legalist reforms became encoded into the Chinese political culture, to be practiced down to the present day.

The emperor of the Qin sought to make the entire population of China, at the time some forty million people, directly accountable to him. Acting through an enormous cadre of bureaucrats, a complex network of laws, and a highly elaborated ideology, he largely succeeded. In so doing, the emperor Qin Shihuang became the archetype of a political monster that has become all too common in our modern age.

The military might of the Qin was matched only by its brutality. One famous general, Bai Qi, is reputed to have killed more than a million soldiers and seized more than 70 cities. In 278BC, he led the Qin army to victory against its biggest rival from the Yangtze south, the Chu. He then went on to defeat the Zhou, the nominal kings of China, at the Battle of Changping in 260BC. After this battle, he had more than 400,000 prisoners of war slaughtered by burying them alive.[i]

In 231 B.C. Qin Shihuang launched a series of campaigns that within ten years would bring much of what constitutes modern China into his domain, creating one of the largest empires the world had known up to that time. For the next twelve years, until his death in 210 B.C., he ruled the empire with an iron fist.

A special cadre of commissars was established to keep watch over officialdom. At the provincial level, there was a civil governor, a military commander, and a political commissar. Every area of life was regulated. The people were not permitted to bear arms, and all weapons were confiscated and sent to the capital. Fierce punishments calculated to squelch any murmur of resistance were meted out to violators.

In a forerunner to today’s political correctness, Qin Shihuang even sought to establish orthodox thought.

In 213BC, Qin Shihuang ordered what is called the Great Burning of Books, suppressing freedom of speech in an attempt to unify all thought and political opinion. Hundreds of thousands of books were burned, many of them originating from the philosophies of the Hundred Schools of Thought.[ii] All books were banned, except for the legal works that promoted supreme control of the state. Anyone found discussing illegal books was sentenced to death, along with his family. Anyone found with proscribed books within 30 days of the imperial decree was sent north to work as a convict on the construction of the first Great Wall of China.

And thus took place history’s first public book burning.

Nothing much has changed over the centuries.

In today’s China, correct thought is controlled through constant propaganda from state-controlled media, together with a corrupted education system and strict control of the internet.

In the West, orthodox thought has been established by and for the persons on the cover of this book and their successors, together with a host of left-wing activist groups, a corrupted media and a corrupted entertainment industry centered on Hollywood. Deviant thought is punished in the courts by application of so-called “hate-speech” laws, in cyberspace by swarms of social justice warriors, and in public places by gangs of masked Antifa thugs.

Qin Shihuang and his Legalist advisor had designed – with its absolute monarch, centralized bureaucracy, state domination over society, law as a penal tool of the ruler, mutual surveillance and informer network, persecution of dissidents, and political practices of coercion and intimidation – the world’s first totalitarian state.

The system entered China’s cultural DNA and continued to replicate itself down through the centuries and dynasties. It is little surprise that China remains a centralized, autocratic bureaucratic government even today.

So why is a study of Chinese history important in understanding modern China?

Because after Mao Zedong came to power in China, he announced that not only would he model himself on Emperor Qin, but he saw himself as Emperor Qin’s superior in cunning and cruelty. At the Second Plenum of the Eighth Party Congress in May 1958, Mao scoffed, “Some have accused us of being Emperor Qin Shihuang. This is not true. We are a hundred time worse than Emperor Qin. To the charge of being like Emperor Qin, of being a dictator, we plead guilty. But you have not said nearly enough, for often we have to go further.”[iii]

This might help to explain why this modern Chinese psychopath was responsible for the death of some seventy million Chinese.[iv]

Mao Zedong became what he had long desired: the founder of a new dynasty, an emperor of the Legalist school, and the latest in a long line of hegemons.

Mao, like Stalin, built his power base through terror. In 1943, in the Communist-controlled province of Yenan, Mao launched a reign of terror designed to weed out supposed spies and tighten control over his followers. For month after month, life in Yenan centered on torture, interrogations and terrifying mass rallies at which some young volunteers were forced to confess to being spies and to name others in front of large crowds who had been whipped into a frenzy. People who were named were then hoisted onto the platform and forced to admit their guilt. Those who didn’t ‘confess’ were trussed up and dragged away to prison or sent to labor camps, or were executed. The fear generated by these rallies was unbearable.

Two years of this type of indoctrination and terror turned the lively young volunteers from passionate exponents of justice and equality into robots. The number who perished was in the thousands. For many, suicide was the only way to end their ordeal.[v]

Throughout his rule, Mao maintained his reign of terror. Some 3 million people perished either by execution, mob violence, or suicide. Mao wanted the killings performed with maximum impact, and this meant having them carried out in public. In Peking alone, hundreds of sentencing and execution rallies were held, attended by over 3 million people.[vi]

Mao intended most of the population to witness violence and killing. His aim was to scare and brutalize the entire population.

Mao Zedong outdid his idol, Emperor Qin, in brutality and terror to become, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, mass murderer in history.

Like Mao and Deng before him, Jiang Zemin (General Secretary of the CPA 1989 to 2002) remained fundamentally hostile to the “imperialist-dominated” world and believed that armed conflict – sooner or later – was inevitable. “We must prepare well for a military struggle” against the “neo-imperialists,” Jiang said in 1997. He was seconded by the high command, including General Chi Haotian, whom Jiang later made the vice chairman of the General Military Commission and the highest-ranking military officer in China. General Chi is known for such bellicose utterances as this one, made in December 1991: “Viewed from the changes in the world situation and hegemonic strategy of the United States to create monopolarity, war is inevitable.” [vii]

China’s incessant cyber attacks, its growing arsenal of offensive weapons, its worsening human rights record, and its increasingly assertive territorial claims clearly reveal a growing threat to regional, and even global, stability.

After the excesses of the late Chairman Mao, whose bloody career costs the lives of some seventy million Chinese, the survivors were determined to prevent a reprise. Led by Den Xiapong, they attempted to forestall the rise of another evil tyrant like Mao by dispersing power among those at the very top of the pyramid. They declared that the responsibility for making decisions would no longer be in the hands of one man but would henceforth be shared among the nine members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo. They let it be known that their successors would practice collective leadership.

All that changed with the succession of Xi Jinping.

The new hegemon

Elected general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party on November 15, 2012, Xi Jinping moved with startling swiftness to consolidate his power in his own hands. He purged Jiang Zemin’s highest-ranking supporters under the guise of an anti-corruption campaign and drove his predecessor, Hu Jintao, into obscurity. He seized control of the Central Military Commission, arresting its two senior members, and placed his supporters in charge.[viii]

He set up a reform commission with himself in charge, which effectively gives the Communist Party effective control over China’s government, which would normally be the domain of the Premier.

He has even taken over the domestic security portfolio – the State Security Commission. He has positioned himself, through his command of the military and the security forces, to be able to threaten those who oppose him with arrest and prosecution. The police, the secret police, and the courts all report to him.

A new Chinese hegemon has arisen. Xi is self-consciously modeling himself on the first emperor of the PRC dynasty, Mao Zedong. But like all Chinese hegemons, he ultimately harkens back to China’s “ancestral dragon,” the brutal Qin Shihuang.

Xi sits unchallenged at the very top of China’s power pyramid. He controls not only the Party (as General Secretary), but also government (as president), and the PLA (as chairman of the Central Military Commission).

It would not be incorrect to call him an emperor.

Liu Xiaobo, China’s most famous dissident, died a prisoner of the Chinese state-party in 2017, after languishing in a Manchurian prison for eight years. Liu had spent decades calling for respect for human rights and far-reaching political reform, efforts that in 2010 won him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Liu scorned the “bellicose nationalism” preached by the Chinese party-state and exposed the underlying national narcissism of the Chinese mind that it played upon. It was for this that he was repeatedly attacked, jailed and ultimately murdered. By denying him medical care when he became ill, the regime effectively sentenced him to death.

In an essay entitled Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese ‘Patriotism’ at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century, he argued that the Chinese party-state had consciously and self-servingly channeled the collective narcissism of the Chinese people into a kind of hyper-nationalist insanity. This xenophobic, jingoistic patriotism, he believed, had led to a general loss of reason among the population, obliterated universal values of human rights, and rendered the Chinese blind to the faults of their leaders. 

He also believed that the Party’s Orwellian control over society had meant the death of critical thought. [ix]

It is interesting to note that theme of this book, The Assault on the Western Mind, details how the various forces ranged against the West, has similarly resulted in a significant percentage of Western minds, particularly the more gullible ones also being driven into a loss of reason, a kind of mass psychosis – a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.

Whereas for the Chinese it has led to a deeply held conviction that their nation, culture, and race is superior to all others, for Western “progressives”, liberals, Marxists, Greens and their ilk, it has resulted in a deeply held conviction that their policies on immigration, multiculturalism, conservation, global warming, and feminism are superior to all others and those that oppose them, must be, by definition, racist, xenophobic, homophobic and misogynistic.

The Communist Party encourages the Chinese people to believe they are culturally and genetically superior to every other race on the planet. The ironclad belief of China’s leaders that their nation and their people are superior to all other nations and peoples is central to the self-image of the hegemon.

To bolster this belief, the Party resurrected the ancient cult of the “Yellow Emperor.” According to this myth, all Han Chinese can trace their bloodline back to a common ancestor, the legendary Yellow Emperor. This figure, who was said to have reigned over parts of China from 2698 to 2598 B.C. was the “First Ancestor” of all living Han Chinese. This meant that all people of Chinese descent, regardless of where they lived, were related.

The mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, located in Shaanxi province has been carefully restored, and in 1993 a huge Xuanyuan Temple complex where regular sacrifices are offered was added.

All of the propaganda and mind-bending has had its effect.

 “The most pervasive underlying Chinese emotion is a profound, unquestioned, generally unshakeable identification with historical greatness. Merely to be Chinese is to be part of the greatest phenomenon in history”.[x]

China’s aggressive militarization of disputed islands in the South China Sea

The hegemon simply does not feel bound by the normal rules that govern international relations. [xi]

China has spent years building military outposts on a group of contested islands in the South China Sea — a project that has left the country at odds with many of its neighbors and the United States.

In an unrestrained show of power, China has transformed seven reefs in the Spratly islands into military island fortresses featuring runways, radar systems, communication arrays and observation towers. 

First, there was the dredging, in which dredges sucked sand and sediment from the seabed and pumped it atop formerly undeveloped reefs. China completed the dredging and landfilling operations to create its seven new islands in the Spratlys by early 2016.

More recently, the Chinese have turned their attention from dredging and reclaiming land to building airstrips, radar and communications facilities and hangars.

A recent assessment from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of satellite imagery revealed that China had developed 72 acres (294,000 square meters), both above and below ground, in the South China Sea in 2017 alone. Since the construction first began in 2013, China has developed more than 3,200 acres across the area.

On Mischief Reef, which was once largely underwater, 1,379 acres have been developed by China. The latest images from the island show a nearly two-mile runway and concrete buildings.

The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said in its most recent assessment of the island that construction was carried out on buildings covering 17 acres of Mischief Reef.

“This included underground storage for ammunition and other material, the completion of hangars and missile shelters, and new radar and communications arrays,” the organization wrote.[xii]

The United States has criticized China’s build-up of military facilities on the artificial islands and is concerned they could be used to restrict free movement through the South China Sea, an important trade route.

China prepares for war                                  

China continues to prepare for war. A Chinese Government film made in late 2013 for consumption within the party and the military, Silent Contest, began with these words:

The process of China’s achieving a national renaissance will definitely involve engagement and a fight against the U.S.’s hegemonic system. This is the contest of the century, regardless of people’s wishes.[xiii]

On July 8, 2013, an article appeared in a government-approved Chinese newspaper, Wen Wei Po, entitled, “Six Wars to be fought by China in the coming 50 years”.

The proposed war with Russia to reclaim Russian-occupied Chinese territory is chillingly revealing:

There must be a war with Russia. Though at that time, China has become an advanced power in navy, army, air and space forces, it is nevertheless the first war against a nuclear power. Therefore, China should be well prepared in nuclear weapons, such as the nuclear power to strike Russia from the front stage to the end. When the Chinese army deprives the Russians’ ability to counter strike, they will come to realize that they can no longer match China in the battlefield. They can do nothing but to hand over their occupied lands and to pay a hefty price to their invasions….[xiv]

The Chinese leadership sees America as the greatest threat to its hegemonic ambitions, so it has quietly created anti-American feelings among its population. For the past twenty-five years, anti-American propaganda of the most vicious kind has been taught to Chinese children in an effort to inoculate then against American democratic ideals. One example is the recent reprinting of a Mao-inspired 1951 history textbook, A History of the U.S. Aggression in China, which is a gross distortion of history, blaming America for every Chinese setback over the past century.[xv] Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung Notes p349

Author Stephen Mosher has this to say:

Wei Jinsheng, one of China’s long incarcerated and now exiled dissidents, notes that even today the CCP is organized and run as if it and the country it controls were at war. And in one way or another, it is. China’s military-industrial complex, which operates under the rubric of civil-military integration (CMI) is second to none. And China is at war with the world (whether the world knows it or not) through its destabilizing proxies such as North Korea, and even more directly through its theft of technology, its currency manipulations, and its highly sophisticated and incessant cyber attacks. [xvi]

Lieutenant General Mi Zhenyu, Vice-Commandant of the Academy of Military Sciences in Beijing and one of the authors of the book Megatrends China declared: “as for the United States, for a relatively long time it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance… We must conceal our abilities and bide our time”.[xvii]

The senior leaders of the Chinese Communist Party are united in their desire to enhance the reach and might of China’s military. Xi Jinping has embarked on what the Pentagon calls a “long-term comprehensive modernization of the armed forces [including] sweeping organizational reforms to overhaul the entire military structure [and] strengthen the Chinese Communist Party’s control over the military, enhance the PLA’s ability to conduct joint operations, and improve its ability to fight short-duration, high-intensity regional conflicts at greater distances from the Chinese mainland”.[xviii]

China’s defense budget, which is now the second largest in the world, is a testament not only to the Country’s regional ambitions, but to its global ones as well. According to the Pentagon’s 2016 annual report to Congress on Chinese military and security developments, China’s total military-related spending in 2015 came to over $180 billion. A more recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute puts China’s military spending at $215 billion. China’s successful cyberespionage efforts have enabled it to dramatically shrink America’s lead in military technology over the past fifteen years.

Cyberwarfare

China has long been engaged in cyber warfare against the West. Its attacks on U.S. websites were already of sufficient scale that former President Obama warned, in his 2013 State of the Union address:

America must also face the rapidly growing threat from cyber-attacks. We know foreign countries swipe our corporate secrets. Now our enemies are also seeking to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems.[xix]

China has rapidly caught up with Western technology by utilizing thousands of government and semi-government hackers to break into industrial and government websites of Western nations, stealing hundreds of billions of dollars of intellectual property, technology, formulae and trade secrets in the process.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post all disclosed in 2013 that their corporate computer networks had been penetrated by Chinese hackers, who were apparently trying to monitor U.S. coverage of Chinese issues.

The attacks on the New York Times coincided with its investigation into the personal wealth of Wen Jiabao, the outgoing Chinese premier.

In February 2013 an anonymous-looking tower block in Shanghai was named as the alleged headquarters of hackers working for the Chinese military.

A series of large-scale cyber-attacks were traced back to the building, in the Pudong district of the city, by a U.S. cybersecurity firm.[xx]

The then U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel promised to prioritize cybersecurity at the Pentagon, telling a Senate hearing: “It’s insidious, a quiet kind of threat we haven’t quite seen before. It can paralyze a nation in a second.”[xxi]

On May 19, 2014 the U.S. Department of Justice issued indictments against five Chinese military hackers, who were officers in Unit 61398 of the Third Department of the Chines People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for cyber espionage relating to computer hacking, economic espionage and other offenses directed at six American victims in the U.S. nuclear power, metals and solar products. [xxii]

“For too long, the Chinese government has blatantly sought to use cyber espionage to obtain economic advantage for its state-owned industries,” said FBI Director James B. Comey, commenting on the indictments.

And on November 27, 2017, The U.S. Department of Justice issued indictments against Wu Yingzhuo, Do Hao, and Xia lei, all of whom are Chinese nationals and residents of China, for computer hacking, theft of trade secrets, conspiracy and identity theft.[xxiii]

A February 2017 report by The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property claimed that cyber espionage (principally from China) is costing the U.S. economy $400 billion per year. This massive transfer of wealth represents more than 2 percent of the U.S. GDP. (other estimates put the cost as high as $600 billion, or 3 percent of U.S. GDP).[xxiv]

China has also stepped up its hacking of utilities and other public infrastructure in the United States, laying the groundwork for a potential “cyber-Pearl-Harbor”.

A cyber-attack on electricity grids could potentially have the same impact as an EMP attack (Chapter 2). Where a simple shutdown of an electricity grid system could be overcome in hours or perhaps days, a sophisticated piece of malware may be able to pulse the grid system on and off, with resulting electricity surges destroying critical transformers and switching gear. Such an attack would require the secret pre-positioning of offensive sleeper software inside our systems. A belligerent state would do this as a matter of course, as insurance against some future conflict with the target country. It would be prudent for each of the key Western countries to assume that their infrastructure systems have been penetrated.

The Stuxnet computer worm is a prime example, and a warning, of the damage wrought by malicious software. Stuxnet was believed to be a jointly built American-Israeli cyber weapon, designed to damage Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity. It found its way into Iran’s infrastructure systems, and, when activated, it reportedly caused the fast-spinning centrifuges, used to produce enriched uranium, to speed up and tear themselves apart. It is estimated that Stuxnet destroyed around 1,000 centrifuges, causing a major setback in Iran’s nuclear program.[xxv]

China buying up foreign assets

All over the world, China is buying up agricultural land, mines, and oil fields at a frenetic pace, often paying more than the going rate, just to get its hands on the resources. According to the American Enterprise Institute’s China Global Investment Tracker, the value of China’s overseas investment and construction is approaching $1.8 trillion, including $172 billion just in the United States.

The interested reader can download a full list of China’s foreign asset purchases from the website: http://www.aei.org/china-global-investment-tracker/

The assets range across hydro, aviation, energy, real estate, utilities, oil, railways, coal, shipping, banks, agriculture, hotel chains, radio stations and many others.

China greater threat to the US than terrorism

A 2018 US Department of Defense strategy report claims China’s fast-growing technological and military capabilities make it a more significant threat to America than terrorism.

“Great-power competition – not terrorism – is now the primary focus of US national security,” Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis said in a speech outlining the plan at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on January 26, 2018.

The report singles out China’s military modernization and expansion in the South China Sea as key threats to US power. It also highlights Russian actions to undermine democratic processes in Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine, as well as Moscow’s efforts to “shatter” the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“China and Russia are now undermining the international order from within the system by exploiting its benefits while simultaneously undercutting its principles and ‘rules of the road,” according to the report.

In addition to flexing its military muscle, and launching cyber espionage, China spends billions of dollars annually on massive propaganda campaigns (euphemistically called ‘soft power’) to influence and shape public opinion around the world. China’s ‘soft power’ is dealt with in Chapter 1.