Category: Democracy Assistance and Promotion

China’s propaganda aims to obscure ‘crime against humanity’?

     

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has used the coronavirus pandemic to shore up his political power at home, but the tools the Communist Party has exploited to do this are threatening… Read more »

Hong Kong using Covid-19 crisis as ‘golden opportunity’ to decapitate protest movement

     

Hong Kong authorities arrested fifteen prominent activists, including former lawmakers, in what is thought to be the largest crackdown (HT: CFR) on the city’s pro-democracy movement since mass protests began… Read more »

Is China winning? Covid-19 a ‘unique stress test’ of political resilience

     

Like an asteroid, coronavirus is the textbook example of an exogenous shock. The threat came from beyond. Yet the pathogen offers a unique stress test of each country’s resilience, argues… Read more »

Essential weekend reading: Why the West is worth saving

     

No historical rhythm guarantees that democracy is just around the corner in China or Russia or anywhere else, argues Michael Kimmage, Professor of History at The Catholic University of America…. Read more »

Ethiopia’s template for monitoring rights in Covid-19 crisis

     

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has announced that it will conduct a “rapid assessment” of the details of the state of emergency measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus…. Read more »

CCP rule by fear endangers Chinese citizens – and the world

     

As China tames the coronavirus epidemic now ravaging other countries, its success is giving rise to an increasingly strident blend of patriotism, nationalism and xenophobia, at a pitch many say… Read more »

Gangnam Smile: North Korean defectors make history

     

The most important thing about South Korea’s legislative elections this week is the fact that they happened at all, notes John Delury, a professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University,… Read more »

Pestilential ‘battle of narratives’ a return to ideologies?

     

Surely among the strangest and least expected outcomes of the Great Pestilence is that the country that hatched the virus looks as though it will now enjoy the technological and… Read more »

Are some NGOs really ‘foreign agents’?

     

Here’s what people in Georgia and Ukraine say, according to a recent survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC), Gerard… Read more »

Post-Corona World Disorder: Time to rethink West’s values trade-off?

     

The harsh, unavoidable “reality is the world will never be the same” following the Covid-19 pandemic, according to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Democracies like the United States can… Read more »