Associate Professor Daniel Mattingly has an article in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled “China’s Soft Sell of Autocracy Is Working
And America’s Efforts to Promote Democracy Are Failing.”
Abstract:
For decades, the United States has promoted democracy around the globe. But amid mounting U.S.-Chinese competition, a question has arisen: is Beijing attempting to export its authoritarian political system in a similar way? No, says Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “We do not seek to ‘export’ a China model,” he told an assembly of world leaders in 2017, “nor do we want other countries to ‘copy’ our way of doing things.” It would be a mistake, however, to think that Beijing is not seeking to shape global opinion in favor of China’s political system. The Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to promote autocracy are simply not as explicit as the United States’ hard-sell efforts to export democracy; instead, the CCP is soft-selling autocracy.