Report Reveals CCP’s Strategy of Cultivating Dictators in Developing Nations via ‘Business Training’ Initiatives

The Global South refers to developing countries, which are mostly (but not exclusively) in the southern hemisphere, including India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, and most countries in Africa and Latin America. China is included too.

The report found 795 online seminars were offered to foreign government officials in these countries in 2021 and 2022, funded and run by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s Ministry of Commerce, promoting “an autocratic approach to governance” and pushing the narrative of authoritarian control is essential for economic development.

The findings are based on 1,691 files obtained from the Academy for International Business Officials (AIBO) under the CCP’s Ministry of Commerce. The AIBO that trains CCP cadres in the ministry has been in coordination with the CCP’s embassies to promote its online seminars in the Global South. According to the report, 21,123 individuals participated in the CCP’s online seminars over the two-year period.

The report’s author, researcher Niva Yau, categorized the training programs into six groups based on their contents to analyze how they serve “China’s broader ambitions to undermine the liberal democratic norms that currently underpin the global order.”

The first two groups are labeled “Clearly authoritarian” and “Potentially authoritarian” and have lessons on CCP practices that violate personal freedom, including “non-democratic regime practices” like “administrative control over the media, information, and population.”

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“The programs also provide practical assistance for host countries to fast-track adaptation of Chinese practices,” said the report.

Training programs that fall into two other groups, “Information operation access” and “Security access” are centered on activities that serve the CCP’s “intelligence-collection purposes” and help further the Chinese regime’s access to foreign countries’ information operations and security infrastructure.

The CCP’s ideology, including leader Xi Jinping’s writings are included in the training curriculum. So is promotion of the Chinese regime’s Belt and Road Initiative, a large infrastructure loan program for the developing countries that serves to expand the CCP’s political influence.

The report points out that the China model promoted in the trainings and activities is rooted in the CCP’s political ideology, including the centralization of power and the economy.

The training programs encourage “sympathy for Chinese narratives among officials across the Global South,” says the report, which sees the programs as part of broader propaganda efforts by the CCP to craft positive narratives about China and the benefits of engaging with China.

According to the analysis, the programs repeatedly remind participants that the CCP owes its success to authoritarian governance practices, while being critical of democratic practices and principles.

The report notes that the pattern of promoting autocracy and undermining democracy in developing countries will likely continue given that the CCP is scaling up these types of programs.

Democracy Versus Authoritarianism

The training programs are part of the CCP doubling down on its goal of expansion in the world’s poorest countries. Mr. Xi reiterated solidarity with those countries on June 12 in a video speech at the opening ceremony of the celebration for the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He said, “China will always be a member of the Global South and the developing world” and “will actively seek to import more from other developing countries, step up cooperation in trade, investment and development.”

“The report revealed that so many CCP’s ideological training programs for the Global South officials, which was little known, are run by a seemingly neutral department—ministry of commerce,”

Cheng Cheng-ping, a professor of economics at Taiwan’s National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, says the training programs, which are run by the neutral-sounding ministry of commerce, show that the CCP under Mr. Xi has a “systematic approach to influence and dominate the global order that is beyond our imagination.”

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