WASHINGTON—For years, the Chinese Communist Party has been gifted the upper hand in the “battle of narratives” with the United States about its place in the world. But a lawmaker and a group of China experts want to turn that around.
A major narrative that the Chinese regime has been successfully spreading, both in China and around the world, is that China’s rise under the CCP is inevitable and that the party is “undeterrable,” John Lee, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said at a Dec. 11 panel hosted by the think tank.
“If you absorb those narratives, you may hate what China does in the world, but you feel powerless to actually do anything about it,” he said at the event, calling it “the one area where we do need to go on the offensive.”
“Now that doesn’t hurt Xi Jinping,” Mr. Lee said, “but what would hurt Xi Jinping is if Joe Biden had said Xi Jinping is an incompetent and corrupt dictator.”
“Because if the CCP is believed to be competent, orderly, and doing what it does for the benefit of the Chinese people, which is what it tells its own country, it doesn’t matter that Xi Jinping is a dictator,” he explained.
“So what we need to do is expose that facade that he’s a successful and corruption-free dictator.”
Going on the offensive in messaging is critical because for China’s communist regime, he said, “the Cold War hasn’t ended.”
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), who moderated the conversation, embraced Mr. Lee’s view.
“This is going to be a war of ideas,” he said in comments to The Epoch Times. “Chairman Xi certainly talks about the decline of democracy in the West, and we should talk about the fact that dictatorships and socialism have never been successful, are not successful, and never will be successful going forward.”
“Democracy may have its flaws, but it is by far and away the best system of government in the world,” he said, adding that the United States can’t have its key resources: pharmaceuticals and manufacturing supply chains, held hostage by China.
And the United States “shouldn’t be shy about pointing out” the abuses China’s socialist regime is carrying out against the Chinese people, he added.
“I think many media outlets here in the United States, many companies are afraid to talk about that because of dependency for their profits. These are all things that we should be proud to talk about.”
One key message that Beijing has been trying to impress on the world right now is that the fundamental problem is the “U.S. versus China” framework, while alleging that the United States is to blame for the negative direction of the relationship.
But the reality is just the opposite, says Miles Yu, director of the China Center at Hudson Institute and China policy advisor to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“It’s not China versus the United States, it’s China versus the rest of the world,” he said. “China presents a different model of governance that’s contradictory to the prevailing global order.”
Washington wants the relationship with China to improve, and has sent a string of U.S. cabinet officials to China for that purpose. But to Mr. Yu, the idea of reducing the United States’ “harshness” to improve ties, if it “appeals to the narcissistic ego in Washington,” is “total nonsense.”
“Every single time the U.S.-China relationship gets worse, it’s always the Chinese Communist Party’s policy—their words, their actions—at fault,” he said as a reminder to the rest of the world.
The narrative Washington is trying to drive home is, “As long as we’re nicer to a bully, the bully will stop being a bully.”
He considers that framework and Washington’s current focus on “competition” in dealing with China to be a “very flawed concept.”
The CCP strives to cast its engagement with the United States as a “win-win” scenario but the regime doesn’t actually believe it to be so, he warned.
“The Chinese Communist Party would never—never—accept the fact that they might be losing,” he said, because if that happens, “that means the regime will be gone too.”
With the Chinese economy on the brink of collapse, Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Craig Singleton sees an opportunity “to take out some of the oxygen that Xi so desperately needs to boomerang his economy around.”
By structurally reformatting supply chains and reducing the world’s reliance on China, he said, the United States will be able to “puncture the narrative that China’s the future, that the Chinese model is somehow better.”
“I think there’s a growing like-minded understanding with partners and allies that that’s possible.”
