Category: Communist regimes

China ‘regressing on reform’: Beijing’s sharp power underscores need to promote liberalization

     

India and China are jostling for influence in Iran and Central Asia, Nikkei reports, as New Delhi’s 7,000km transport corridor cuts across Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Prime Minister Narendra… Read more »

Cuba’s dissidents hope transition generates change ‘from within’

     

Cuba’s national assembly meets today to elect the next president of the country, Foreign Policy reports. Current vice president Miguel Diaz-Canel is widely expected to be chosen. Still, current president… Read more »

New ‘battle of ideas’? China-US rivalry enters realms of ideology

     

  The US and other Western democracies “are getting increasingly uneasy about China’s political development and the nature of Chinese influence abroad. Ideology once again defines the terms of the US-China relationship,” analyst… Read more »

China’s sharp power approach ‘more about bylines than bombs’

     

Russia isn’t the only authoritarian regime to deploy disinformation as a tool to undermine liberal democracies. “Within the last few weeks, China has leaped into the front ranks of global… Read more »

Blunting China’s sharp power: strengthening Xi’s rule ‘not just a power grab’?

     

Measures announced last month to strengthen the leadership role of the Chinese Communist Party and remove term limits for President Xi Jinping have raised fears about the increasingly authoritarian trajectory… Read more »

In new era of strategic competition, China’s autocracy at odds with democracy

     

China’s model, which has brought more people out of poverty faster than any other system in history, continues to flourish, argues Wall Street executive Steven Rattner, a counselor in the… Read more »

Sharp elbows behind China’s sharp power

     

Despite his stridently nationalist rhetoric, Beijing’s ‘sharp power’ poses no threat to other nations, according to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Speaking at the close of the annual session of the… Read more »

‘Londongrad’: spy attack shines spotlight on kleptocratic haven

     

“Kleptocracy at its worst” is how US Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently characterized dealings at 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a heavily indebted state development fund currently under investigation for fraud… Read more »

Cuba – ‘the worst kind of dictatorship’ – denies entry to ex-presidents

     

Former Colombian President Andres Pastrana and ex-Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga said they were denied entry to Cuba on Wednesday, after traveling to the Communist-run island to receive an award from… Read more »

China’s ‘bad emperor’ returns

     

  The weakness of China’s traditional authoritarian political system has for centuries been called the “bad emperor” problem, notes Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at Stanford University and director of… Read more »