By J. Michael Cole
The government in Beijing is upping its pressure on Taiwan’s Ma Ying-jeou as he nears the end of his presidency.
Not unlike other authoritarian and totalitarian regimes throughout history, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always had a paranoid streak, whose stridency has ebbed and flowed according to the times. In periods of high instability, such as during the Cultural Revolution, the CCP leadership went to extraordinary lengths to eliminate its enemies — real and imagined. Unrest in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and signs that Taiwan may be “slipping away” after half a decade of cautious rapprochement, seem to have engendered a new phase of paranoia in Beijing, as evidenced by the detentions of and travel restrictions imposed against dozens of Chinese individuals in recent months.
Those measures have been accompanied by an increasingly xenophobic line in Zhongnanhai. President Xi Jinping, the hoped-for reformer who, as it turns out, is very much the strongman, has repeatedly warned against “pollution” by Western values and has directed the implementation of policies to counter such nefarious influences. Chinese agencies and propaganda outlets, meanwhile, claim to have uncovered “evidence” of several plots hatched abroad to destabilize China.
If we believe the rhetoric, Uyghur “terrorists” from Xinjiang have been acting on behalf of foreign organizations and Taiwanese “separatists” are pawns of American and/or Japanese forces. Meanwhile the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong, which has brought part of the metropolis to a standstill, is said to have simultaneously been funded, scripted, fomented, and influenced by a plethora of disparate foreign groups, including the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Apple Daily owner Jimmy Lai, the CIA, British agents, the Oslo Freedom Forum, and out-of-favor Taiwanese politicians. Even American jazz musician Kenny G, who briefly visited a protest site last week, was sniped at by Chinese authorities.
Besides highlighting a heightened sense of paranoia in China, which is fueled in part by the growing sense of “us versus them” that naturally accompanies budding nationalism, the emphasis on foreign forces is a political tool used by Beijing to downplay the severity of the crises. By blaming external agents, the CCP hopes to minimize the importance, scope, and reach of the movements to portray them as a misguided minority. It thus seeks to discredit their grievances with a domestic audience as part of containment efforts. Rather than stem from indigenous forces animated by legitimate grievances, the activists are either fools who are easily deceived by duplicitous foreign agents (who must be brought in line), or downright enemies of the CCP and, by default, China (who must be defeated). Of course the grievances are very real, whether it be broken promises in Hong Kong or repression in Xinjiang, and the locals are sufficiently intelligent and resourceful to organize without foreign help. But China doesn’t want its citizens to believe the dangerous — and potentially infectious idea — that this is the case.
Read the full story at The Diplomat