Why China isn’t winning coronavirus propaganda battle
China’s leaders are looking to turn the COVID-19 crisis to their advantage, but their task will be much harder than in 2008—and not only because many people across the world… Read more »
Category: Dictatorships
‘Weaponizing insecurity’: Covid-19 tests legitimacy of all modes of governance
Autocratic and illiberal leaders are using the coronavirus crisis to weaponize insecurity, says journalist and historian Anne Applebaum. She talks to Financial Times’ columnist Gideon Rachman about the threat to… Read more »
COVID-19 reveals realities of geopolitical competition
The COVID-19 crisis reveals that the world is a competitive arena in which great power rivals like China seek advantage, that the state remains the irreplaceable agent of international power… Read more »
Pandemic populist pandemonium? Dictators using coronavirus to strengthen grip
A contagion on the scale of the coronavirus may offer authoritarians a greater opportunity than any event short of war, Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council… Read more »
‘A New Invisible Hand’: Corrosive capital is repurposing democracy
Illiberal regimes like those in China and Russia use capital as a foreign policy tool and often as a form of strategic corruption to bolster authoritarianism as a globally competitive… Read more »
‘Democracy’s Defenders’ offered beacon of hope to dissidents
It is almost 30 years since the demise of Encounter, the London-based monthly review of culture and politics, but no other magazine has since come close to matching its influence, Gerald Frost writes for… Read more »
Hard truths about China’s ‘soft power’: How Beijing exploits pandemic
History accelerates in crises. This pandemic may not itself transform the world, but it can accelerate changes already under way, notes FT analyst Martin Wolf: One ongoing change has been… Read more »
World in a ‘dangerous place for maintaining a democratic future’
Has the coronavirus placed the world in a “really dangerous place for maintaining a democratic future”? With much of the world on lockdown, the coronavirus crisis has chipped individual liberties… Read more »
Kremlin joins China’s sharp power bandwagon
The coronavirus pandemic confirms that China’s authoritarian state capitalism with its hegemonic ambitions is by far the most difficult strategic challenge the West has ever faced, according to one observer…. Read more »
China’s ‘misplaced pandemic propaganda’ machine let loose on coronavirus
As the COVID-19 pandemic escalates, China has shifted its propaganda machine into high gear, in an effort to change the narrative about the virus’s origins and the Chinese response. But… Read more »