Resistance Is Futile: The Real Reason Why China Seeks Submissive Partners

Kathryn Waldron

Security, Asia

The Chinese Communist Party’s ability to root out dissenters and reinforce its narrative of supremacy has grown dramatically over the past decade thanks to the Party’s embrace of more sinister uses of technology.

When Deng Xiaoping enacted China’s Open Door Policy in 1978, many Westerners assumed the liberalization of China’s economy would eventually be matched by a similar liberalization in the country’s political structure; they assumed that, as the Chinese people became accustomed to the freedom to make their own economic choices, they would eventually demand—and receive—political freedom.

As of yet, these demands have gone unmet. Instead of embracing economic and political openness, the Chinese Communist Party has strengthened its control over the country by silencing anyone willing to offer a narrative different from its own. Those in doubt have only to look at the documents leaked to the New York Times detailing the CCP’s crackdown on Muslim minorities living in the Chinese province of Xinjiang as proof.

So how did the West get China so wrong?

The answer is that too many in the West underestimated the strength of a political philosophy that has no place for protecting the individual, only for ensuring the survival of the Party.

To seize control without raising alarm in the West, the Party has walked a careful line, allowing repression in service of the CCP’s narrative while simultaneously paying lip service to Western concerns about human rights and liberty. The CCP claims to support religious freedom, for example; Chinese President Xi Jinping even favorably compares the precepts of certain religions to his own political philosophies as a way to validate the CCP among religious Chinese. Yet at the same time, the CCP is increasing persecution of many religious groups — especially Protestant Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims. For these believers, even mundane religious behaviors—such as praying in public or lighting incense—can be enough to draw the ire of the Chinese government. Political protesters have experienced a similar increase in repression since Xi took office in 2012.

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