In July, Chinese leader Xi Jinping made a speech to senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials declaring they must do more to share the “story” of the party’s success with the rest of the world. Chinese officials were told to extol the virtues of China’s model of authoritarian governance abroad, in order to enhance the international influence of both the country and the party.

Although analysts argue that the CCP does not export its ideology, it is clear that illiberal actors around the world are being influenced by CCP's style of authoritarianism, which poses an ideological threat to prevailing democratic norms. The goal is to achieve economic and political preeminence and not to undermine individual democracies or spread Marxism.

China has been taking efforts to this effect-meddling in foreign political systems, consolidating economic influence, expanding information operations and spreading propaganda. The aim is to erode democratic principles and institutions between countries and from within.

To counter Beijing’s promotion of authoritarian governance, advocates of democracy must have a better understanding of how China's actions are weakening democracy globally and what it aims to achieve by exporting its political model.

Reinvigorating democracy at home and abroad will require effectively designed policies to respond to Beijing’s ideological challenge. Global influence, security and power for China and for itself are the aims CCP wants to achieve through promotion of its own authoritarian system rather than imposition of Marxist-Leninist ideology on foreign societies.

Numerous declarations of confidence in the country’s antidemocratic political path and CCP's own ideology have been issued by the party to this end. Xi Jinping seeks to popularize “Chinese wisdom” throughout the world as a “contribution to mankind” and has made clear he regards China’s illiberal model of governance as superior to so-called Western political systems.'

China’s economic success is frequently portrayed as proof that the road to prosperity no longer runs through liberal democracy by Xi and other Chinese leaders. Xi describes China’s model as being ideal for nations who want to speed up their development while ignoring external pressure to democratize.

This message resonates with corrupt leaders who seek to achieve economic prosperity without responding to the needs of their people. National leaders have a right to choose their political system-be it totalitarian, corrupt or downright illegitimate is a rhetoric often repeated by Chinese officials and they deride democracy as a farce, despite being the only system that represents the true will of people.

It is pertinent to note that during the Cold War, Soviet Union too advocated forcibly installing autocratic leaders around the world and emphasized the right of countries to be ruled by nondemocratic regimes. Promotion of authoritarianism as a superior governance model by CCP presents a challenge to democracy particularly when paired with China’s political and economic measures that weaken democratic ones around the world and bolster authoritarian regimes.

There are two broad categories in which China’s international efforts to subvert democracy fall. The first includes its attempts to silence critics of China in developed nations like Canada, Germany, Australia and Japan to shape the narrative about China and magnify the voices of institutions and individuals that promote closer ties with CCP.

To promote a more positive portrayal of China, Beijing wields both inducements and threats with the Chinese ambassador to Sweden dubbing it as 'fine wine-shotgun' tactic. Financial retaliation against those it sees as hostile to China’s interests and preferential market access to friendly businesses, governments, and academic institutions is commonly used to enforce acceptable conduct.

Seeking to control how foreigners are educated about China, they monitors Chinese students abroad, silence academic discourse deemed offensive and threaten Chinese dissidents and their families. Expanding its media footprint, China has started funding foreign newspapers and news portals which together establish an exhaustive strategy to shape, inform and ultimately control perceptions of China throughout the world.

In recent past, it has been seen newspapers taking completely 360 degree turn from their previous stands. The second category of antidemocratic actions is capturing a small coterie of corrupt elites in countries afflicted with fragile democracies and helping them centralize power by insulating them from the demands of civil society. Elites from these countries hope to learn from a political system that has enabled China’s transformation into the world’s second-largest economy and have deployed Chinese technology to repress their citizens and help them maintain power indefinitely.

China’s opaque and corrupt investment practices, coupled with preference for antidemocratic collaborators further corrodes democratic institutions as state-owned enterprises encourage a more unaccountable and corrupt class of political elites who strike murky deals with Chinese banks and undermine their country’s long-term prosperity in return for personal gain. Hence, China's export of repression must be nipped in the bud.

Written by Pushkar Sinha