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| Image: Flickr User - Official U.S. Navy Page |
By Prashanth Parameswaran
A recent conference surveyed Beijing’s efforts against Washington and its allies.
China is actively waging political warfare against the United States and its allies, a group of experts told a conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday.
While Chinese actions are usually viewed through a military lens, some have stressed that they should be examined as part of a broader effort to influence the thoughts and actions of foreign governments, groups and individuals in a manner favorable to Beijing’s own objectives – activities known as political warfare or influence operations.
“The objective here is to shape how things are perceived,” Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the co-host of the conference along with the Project 2049 Institute.
Chinese political warfare, said Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, is deeply rooted in Chinese history, with origins from both Chinese strategic thinkers like Sun Tzu as well as Marxist-Leninist influences. While the practice is not illegal and Beijing is hardly the only one employing it, Stokes argued that the degree to which Beijing has been distorting objective reality and the lengths to which it has been willing to go to do so has been particularly striking.
Read the full story at The Diplomat