AS THE United States counters the rise of China, it is taking steps to meet the challenge to its global leadership, boosting investment in technology and infrastructure, shifting military assets toward Asia, and strengthening alliances. But its efforts are defensive; they shore up its existing position and react to Chinese attempts to weaken it. There appears to be no clear idea of how to go on the offensive—how to sufficiently weaken support among the Chinese people and within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) so the regime falters from within. Such an offensive strategy was key to ending the Cold War.

This strategy undermined the Soviet regime at its most vulnerable point—its legitimacy at home. A robust military and set of alliances deterred direct aggression, but they were at best defensive measures that provided time and space for concepts like capitalism, the rule of law, democracy, and human rights to win the hearts and minds of people behind the Iron Curtain. These ideas gradually won over elites and populations in the Soviet Union as differences in what the two systems could deliver became more apparent. Eventually, belief in the communist system eroded, dissolving the regime from within.

The coming decades will likely see another protracted battle, this one with the Chinese Communist Party. The nature of this competition will inevitably be different given China’s economic dynamism, the interdependencies between the United States and China, and the divide between our histories and cultures. Nevertheless, the CCP is vulnerable at home to challenges to its legitimacy if America can show how ideas such as economic freedom, the rule of law, property rights, and religious freedom can bring greater benefits to the Chinese people than what the Party offers.

While the Party-State generally receives plaudits from its population for its economic management, its overbearing role is a burden or source of unpredictability for many. The recent crackdown on the country’s tech giants, for example, has made many entrepreneurs and executives nervous, likely dulling their spirits and making them feel they would be safer if they could shift their wealth and activities overseas. Meanwhile, hundreds have been detained for their grassroots activism, hundreds of thousands—if not millions—are aware that their civic activities are curtailed, and tens of millions are directly affected by restrictions on religious freedom. Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, all of these trends have worsened, and today China is much less free than it was during the late 1990s and 2000s.

Xi’s aggressive assertion of Party dominance has presented an opportunity to drive a wedge between the Party and people in China. What form might this wedge take? The United States can undermine the Party’s legitimacy at home by weakening China’s economic performance and taking steps to better broadcast alternatives to the Party to the Chinese people. The United States will have to curtail the financial flows that bolster Party rule, ensure that this curtailment is tied to the Party’s behavior, open its door more widely to Chinese elites and the middle class to emigrate, and much more creatively use Chinese language media to reach the population. Changing popular sentiment will not be easy given the Party’s control over information, but it is possible if the right channels of influence are chosen. It may not achieve much in the short term given the nature of the regime and strength of the Party-State. In fact, it may lead to a nationalist reaction and more repression. But if dissatisfaction spreads, it will force the Party to shift direction—and undermine its cohesion and resolve.

ALTHOUGH THE Chinese Communist Party does not have, in the manner of the Soviet Union, a grand strategy to promote its governance model worldwide, it is anxious to prove the superiority of its model—what it calls Socialism with Chinese Characteristics—domestically to ensure it maintains high levels of support from its own people. This is a continuation of a long-standing strategy. The CCP, a Marxist-Leninist party built on the model and with the active assistance of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, has been waging a war for the hearts and minds of the Chinese people since its founding in 1921, and it has stepped us these efforts since Xi came to power in 2012.

From the CCP’s perspective, this battle for domestic legitimacy is about showing that it governs better (and more morally) than others—that it produces better results, especially material prosperity. At home, it seeks “victory” on many levels—by “proving” its model is best through its performance and ability to respond to popular needs and complaints; leveraging nationalism and anti-foreign sentiment to boost its popularity; controlling information, education, and entertainment and thus the narratives that pervade society; and restricting civil society and collective action of any kind through its robust regulatory and security apparatus. Winning the support of the urban middle class—which has rapidly expanded from almost nothing to hundreds of millions of people (the size depends on the definition) over the past few decades—is considered especially important given this group’s greater exposure to international information and greater capacity to express its dissatisfaction.

Reflecting a combination of China’s historic concept of legitimacy (the Mandate of Heaven, which dynasties retained or lost depending on how effectively they ruled), modern concepts of material prosperity, and communist ideals, the Party believes, as Bruce Dickson writes, that its legitimacy is “based not on the consent of the governed but on its ability to modernize the country.” This means, above all else, delivering stability, robust economic growth, steadily rising living standards, and declining poverty. In more recent years, the CCP’s goals have expanded to encompass a better environment, stronger global standing, and less corruption—three concerns of the country’s middle class—as well as reducing inequality and uplifting moral standards.

The Party exploits nationalism to boost its popularity, infusing education, news coverage, and movies with a nationalist message that ensures the public perceives it as the “paramount patriotic force and guardian of national pride.” For example, schools incorporate patriotic education that emphasizes the role of the CCP in securing national independence, ending the country’s century of humiliation (1839–1949), and reunifying the country. Movies play a similar role because, as Zhao Ma says, 

The Chinese Communist Party has long recognized the importance of cinematic propaganda. Film possesses immense power to transmit didactic messages by arousing emotions like anger and compassion. It educates and excites. It’s an indispensable instrument for facilitating the party’s “emotion work.”

 The Party is, however, aware that nationalist forces can be dangerous if mishandled or if driven to act against the Party’s interests.

The Party’s control of information bolsters its position by emphasizing its successes and restricting both coverage of its mistakes as well as alternative truths or narratives that might undermine its position—just as the Communist Party did in the Soviet Union. This modus operandi was apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. While criticism of local authorities was allowed early on—even encouraged to shift the blame from central authorities—as soon as it was able to get a handle on the crisis, the CCP used its monopoly on information to trumpet its successful handling of COVID-19—especially in contrast to the United States and other Western countries. Any criticism of its response was squashed by the censors. Then, books and TV programs were launched to ensure the historical memory of the population would give a positive impression of the Party’s response. Voices that offered a different or even more complex portrayal were silenced.

Xiao Qiang explains,

China has a politically weaponized system of censorship; it is refined, organized, coordinated, and supported by the state’s resources. It’s not just for deleting something. They also have a powerful apparatus to construct a narrative and aim it at any target with huge scale … This is a huge thing. No other country has that.

In contrast, in the decade or so before Xi came to power, newspapers could publish investigative articles critical of some policies, lawyers could use the law and public pressure to expand the rights of citizens, and intellectuals could openly debate political reforms.

The Party recognized early on the great importance of cyberspace to its management of public opinion, charting a path quite different from the rest of the world. While the West triumphed the importance of a unified global internet, the CCP established a separate zone—a Great Firewall to regulate the inflow of outside information—and limited foreign company involvement behind it. This enables it to manipulate online discourse to enforce its truths and shape public opinion. None of the giant American internet companies—Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Google—have a major presence in China (Apple, which produces little of its own content and censors its App Store, is the main exception). The goal is always to control the information such that nothing negative is, “leaking out on the internet and causing a serious adverse impact to society,” as one bureaucrat in China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, wrote in a message leaked by a hacker group.

All of these tools are backed up by the country’s robust regulatory and internal security apparatuses. These limit public free speech, closely monitor citizens and organizations, and ensure that the country’s many protests stay local and do not blossom into anything organized at scale. As such, collective action is always constrained; even if it is effective on specific issues at the local level (e.g., mobilizing against polluting factories, especially corrupt officials), it is never allowed to become a threat. Concerns over the Party’s ability to control events in Hong Kong and possible spillover effects led the CCP to extend these apparatuses into the city in 2020.

While the Party is in a strong position domestically and Chinese society is certainly not clamoring for change, its position is dependent on China’s tremendous success in boosting living standards since 1978. While it has achieved consistently high satisfaction levels (at least with central government performance) in surveys, generations that grow up with no memory of chronic food shortages, poor infrastructure, and political instability will take comfort for granted and expect continuous improvements. This is likely to be especially so among the ever-growing number of urban Chinese with advanced degrees, international experience, and their material needs easily satisfied. As the authors of the longest-running independent effort to track Chinese popular opinion conclude, “citizens who praise government officials for effective policies may indeed blame them when such policy failures affect them or their family members directly.” Or, as Dingxin Zhao says, “Performance legitimacy relies too much on performance. Your relationship with the people is ... transactional. People judge you ... day by day, case by case.”

It is difficult to gauge citizen opinion in China’s restrictive climate; U.S. analysts would be better served by observing CCP messaging. Perceiving a potential vulnerability if performance falters and ideas that challenge its model circulate, the Party has proactively warned that alternative truths imported from the West pose a threat. In 2013, the CCP’s Central Committee General Office circulated the confidential internal “Notice on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere,” also known as Document No. 9, to warn public officials against “false ideological trends” such as constitutional democracy, universal values, civil society, a free press, and economic liberalism. This document identifies a wide range of ways that hostile ideas can subvert the Party’s ideology, including the use of direct media, cultural products, educational exchanges, information on the collapse of communism elsewhere, the idea that modernization produces democratization, and the promotion of diverse value orientations.

THE CCP’S comprehensive internal strategy to bolster its legitimacy is supported externally by a number of steps the Party takes to safeguard its standing and undercut states or organizations it sees as threats. 

The clearest manifestation of these efforts is the Party’s efforts to “control and constrain” public messaging. Over the past two decades, the Chinese government and state media have built an immense, global media infrastructure across the world. Working in an era where communication technologies have transformed the media landscape, the CCP has been much more facile in its engagement with international media than the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). While amateurish or ham-fisted at times, and suffering from its share of misfires, the huge scale—backed by the Party’s unprecedented financial resources, state apparatus, and large number of members and affiliated organizations—means that the CCP is casting a wider and more diverse net than the Soviets ever did. In many cases, its target is even different, with the Party “using the countryside to surround the cities”—targeting areas and actors that its rivals ignore or underinvest in (e.g., developing countries, non-English language media, local governments, smaller countries) in order to encircle their strongholds. This is a global application of the very strategy that enabled the CCP to win the Chinese Civil War after starting from a position of weakness.

The Party-State control of the Chinese language media landscape across much of the world (an area mostly ignored by its rivals) gives it the ability to directly reach millions of Chinese speakers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and beyond on a daily basis. This access is something the Soviet Union could only dream about. It both ensures that China’s huge diaspora and number of international travelers remain sympathetic to the Party and denies the United States the ability to influence them. 

WeChat, which has close to 20 million daily active users in the United States, may be essential for Chinese Americans to connect with their family members abroad, but, as Alex Joske and his colleagues write, it “raises concerns because of its record of censorship, information control and surveillance, which align with Beijing’s objectives.” Its dominance of social media and registration requirements force even those outlets which want to avoid working with Beijing to act in the Party’s interests.

More broadly, the Party conducts wide-ranging influence campaigns to promote a more favorable view of China in the United States and elsewhere through its United Front work, an approach inspired by Leninist theory. United Front work coopts everyone, from business elites to scholars to politicians; is “carried out by a sprawling infrastructure of Party agencies, and organizations linked [often in an opaque manner] to the Party”; and “forms the core of the Party’s overseas influence and interference activity.” Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg write, 

...influential Westerners keen to engage with Chinese culture or get to know Chinese businesspeople may find that the organization they are dealing with is a covert part of the united front structure of the Party and that they are being worked on.

American politicians and think tanks have remarkably little understanding of these issues. Few know China or Chinese strategic culture well. Almost none speak the language or have spent significant time in the country. Where there is some knowledge, scholars and think tanks have to navigate the delicate balance between promoting their own interests—which typically require access to China and Chinese officials—and getting at the truth. Too confrontational an approach means no entry visas and ostracization by Chinese authorities.

As a result, there is a bias among scholars toward engagement and avoiding especially controversial issues. In Washington, there are many analysts and scholars working on security issues or China’s policies in third countries—such as Belt and Road and loan programs—and almost none working on the Party’s influence campaigns. The same is true for Congress: the China competitiveness bill, the more comprehensive attempt to reposition America for competition with China, emphasizes the industrial competition and need to counter Belt and Road, but Congress has little to say about Chinese media and could do much more to target United Front penetration of the country.

ANY ATTEMPT to undermine the Party’s legitimacy at home should consider what succeeded in the Cold War. While it was not a major focus for much of the conflict, in the end, the battle for Soviet popular opinion was key to victory. Within the Soviet Union—and wider Communist Bloc—communist leaders consistently sought to base their authority on the moral power of their enterprise. The Soviet strategy worked well as long as the CPSU could convincingly argue that its system was morally better (e.g., it better represented the interests of and better served the poor and working classes) and materially competitive (e.g., technologically and militarily strong and able to lift living standards). But as generations passed, outside information seeped in, and economic progress stalled, the hold of its ideology weakened.

Whereas the Soviet elite could confidently ignore American strengths (its economic vitality, rule of law, system of property rights, freedoms, and widespread opportunity) when it believed the “correlation of forces” (a calculus of the strengths and weakness of each side) was shifting in its favor—as was the case through roughly 1970—when relative decline and stagnation set in during the 1980s, these strengths became too obvious to ignore. The gap in living standards—which was always large, partly because the state directed funds toward the military and capital investment—grew markedly wider. The drawbacks of the political and legal regime increasingly stood out. Meanwhile, countries in Asia and elsewhere were clearly outperforming by adopting capitalism and the freedom and rights that accompany it. As these developments became more evident, they undermined the CPSU’s narrative and catalyzed effective opposition within the Soviet Union.

The United States built up a variety of communication channels to challenge the Communist version of events and undermine Soviet legitimacy. International broadcasts, public diplomacy, and a wide range of overt and covert activities—distributing books, sponsoring cultural exchanges, and secretly funding of anti-totalitarian organizations—aimed to reach as many people as possible with an alternative to the Soviet story. While interest in these efforts waned during the 1970s during détente, Ronald Reagan reinvigorated them, repeatedly using the bully pulpit to challenge Communist orthodoxy, most famously in Berlin in 1987 when he challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall.

IN ORDER to go on the offensive, the United States should target each of the sources of CCP legitimacy: performance, nationalism, information, and the limits on civil society. As in the Cold War, the United States should clarify the difference between the United States (and its allies) and China—between free and unfree; the rule of law and the rule of man; equal rights and ethnic, gender, geographic, and family background-based discrimination; and an economy centered on private enterprise and one geared toward promoting the interests of the state. In articulating these differences, U.S. leaders should speak proudly of the country’s accomplishments and not fixate on its faults, as the CCP exploits U.S. self-criticism in its own propaganda. As more Chinese acquire higher education, international experience, and material comforts, tangible differences are going to increasingly matter. (In contrast, it is harder to argue—especially at the moment—that a particular regime type is more suitable for China given its history, size, and internal challenges.) Encouraging dissatisfaction with the Party and its policies is key to engendering opposition to Chairman Xi’s agenda among elite actors in society—in and out of the Party.

A subtler approach toward the Chinese people can support such efforts. Whereas an overly assertive America has in the past helped spur anti-American sentiment and a strident nationalism that the Party has been able to leverage (through its stranglehold on media and entertainment), a more tactful approach that speaks directly to the concerns of Chinese citizens could catalyze their reformist tendencies. Alongside this subtler approach, the United States should target the Party’s greatest vulnerability—the economic performance that underpins its popularity and encourages many to acquiesce to the status quo. (Though there are many protests, these are targeted at specific complaints—pollution and land appropriation, in particular—rather than the Party’s overall performance.) Incrementally increasing the cost and risk of investing in and buying from China can both reduce economic growth in China as well as reduce U.S. dependence on it—essential for national security—in a way that does not disrupt the American economy. Tactics include targeted and gradually expanding sanctions, starting with companies connected to the military and Uyghur genocide and gradually expanding to include a wider range of rights violations and dual-use technologies; broad, cross-cutting tariffs that increase over time; and greater monitoring and limitations on investment. The Trump administration’s tariffs—which cover about half of America’s imports—led, before COVID-19, “to a sharp decline in Chinese imports … with purchases … shifting to other countries.”

Tying sanctions and tariffs to a few human rights and corporate governance criteria would clarify the connection between CCP policies and American actions—and highlight how certain CCP policies work against the interests of Chinese businesses, the middle class, and the nation. If the Biden administration could convince American allies in Europe, Australia, Japan, India, and elsewhere to line up with the United States and pass parallel legislation (possibly tied to the same assessments), then the effect would be that much greater. A restoration of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which tied trade relations with Communist countries to their human rights records, could link trade privileges to a small number of issues, as was done during the Cold War vis-à-vis the USSR. Even though its application for China was annually waived, starting in the late 1970s as relations between the two countries warmed, and eventually ended when the country joined the World Trade Organization in 2002, the very process of renewal focused attention on China’s human rights record. This often-ignited controversy and threats in Congress to overturn the waiver, especially after the Tiananmen Square killings of 1989.

In parallel, the United States should be increasing the costs and risks to invest in China. Regulating the rapidly expanding environmental, social, and governance sector so that it encompasses not just environmental concerns (as is the case now), but also social and governance concerns (e.g., genocidal behavior, limits on religious freedom, limits of civil society) is essential to ensuring investors increasingly see China as an investment destination that should be shunned. Today, they flock to China without any concern that their investments are tainted, permitting the CCP’s continuing repression.

All these measures should be well communicated to the Chinese middle and upper classes even if the Party continues its longstanding effort to block alternative sources of information. It would be hard for the Party to deny the information even if it sought to wrap it in a self-serving narrative.

One of the best ways to reach key audiences inside China is to use Chinese language media outside the country—and outside the Party’s direct control. As such, it is essential that the United States and its allies eliminate the CCP’s influence over much of this media. This means restricting ownership by any individual or entity with a connection to the Party or United Front; threatening WeChat with a ban unless it alters its policies—and following through on one if it does not; ending the use by private companies of any Chinese-government linked broadcasts and articles; encouraging strong independent outlets (BBC Chinese, Apple Daily) to expand or enter the market; subsidizing syndication of articles from reliable sources (to replace CCP sources); establishing an independent source of funding of Chinese language media outlets; proactively leveraging Chinese language social media wherever possible; and closely monitoring the whole sector to ensure the Party or its operatives cannot intimidate any organization or individual working in the media space. The market is unlikely to provide such solutions, necessitating government action. Taiwan, which once played a much more prominent role in Chinese diaspora communities and has all the requisite knowledge on how to counter the CCP’s attempts to infiltrate and influence media from its own experience on the island, could be a useful partner here if the right mechanism for its involvement was developed. Allies should be encouraged to adopt similar measures.

For its part, the United States should pour more investment and creativity into reinvigorating America’s broadcasting capabilities—strengthening Radio Free Asia and leveraging a variety of new techniques such as shortwave radio (such as Song of Hope, which operates from countries just outside China’s borders), virtual private networks, and a variety of clandestine information channels to reach China’s population in ways that can overcome the Party’s concerted efforts to jam or block outside information. While their reach is unlikely to compare to that of the Cold War given the vastly different media landscape and greater capacity of the CCP to control information through traditional channels, these can still reach key audiences (e.g., the urban middle class) with unfiltered news and an alternative truth, if the quality is high enough. This will enable reports of abuses (e.g., corruption, mistreatment at the hands of officials) and actions (e.g., a strike) as well as alternative voices outside the country (e.g., President Joe Biden, dissidents) to reach a much wider audience than is currently possible, spreading dissatisfaction with the current regime.

Lastly, a concerted effort should be made to encourage Chinese elites to emigrate. Exiting is the strongest signal of dissatisfaction and can drain the country of some of its best talent. For the most highly skilled, the United States should develop a program similar to one of China’s many schemes to attract highly-skilled Chinese to relocate to the country, offering bonuses, subsidized housing, and support for families. The more elites take advantage of such opportunities, the greater awareness at home that life is better overseas, undermining the legitimacy of the Party’s message. While there may be some concerns over security in a few sectors—that might have to remain restricted or carefully monitored—most of these people will work in non-sensitive fields and can only enrich the United States with their talents.

THE UNITED States should also prepare for success. What might happen if American efforts begin to gain traction and the CCP fears losing support among the Chinese people? Given its long adherence to the four-part strategy outlined above (albeit with shifting tactics), the Party is likely to double down. On the one hand, that means taking the necessary steps to ensure livelihoods are secured—whether through reforms that give the private sector more economic freedom or that satisfy foreign demands (e.g., on selective human rights issues) or controls that limit prices or force companies to act in national (or Party) interest. We already see some of the latter (which is certainly more likely under Xi) with concentrated attacks on private companies (e.g., in the education sector) who are deemed to be making money in ways that promote inequality or raise living costs.

On the other hand, a CCP response may mean stirring up nationalist sentiment either through the media (as is often done now) or some action abroad. The latter would likely be something with limited risk but maximum play at home, such as stirring up tensions with Japan (always an easy bogeyman in China) or Australia (which is often portrayed as an American lackey) or taking an aggressive line on a border dispute, such as that with India or in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, the Party will increase its control over information—such as social media—and civil society. 

The biggest risk for the United States is overreaction, either forcing China to act precipitously (possibly provoking an unnecessary conflict) or in terms of compromise. A weakened CCP will likely either lash out or revisit its successful playbook of negotiating techniques (often leveraging the business community on its behalf to create ambitious dialogues, frameworks, or agreements that change little in the long run)—or both. The United States will need to see its strategy through with the persistence, patience, and restraint that it often lacks.

Our focus on undermining the Party’s legitimacy at home should be seen as a key offensive element as the United States confronts the challenges posed by China and seeks to build a broad coalition by incorporating countries and Chinese people from across the world. Given the economic interdependencies, policy changes will inevitably mean sacrificing some interests in the short term and overcoming resistance from those who most benefit from the status quo (such as Wall Street banks and firms sourcing goods in China). But challenging Beijing should be seen as in the U.S. greater national interest—essential to ensuring our, and the world’s, security in the years to come.

Seth D. Kaplan, a lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, lived in China for seven years and is an expert on political transitions.

Image: Reuters.