Democracy checks CCP power
Quirk 19, Patrick W, Patrick Quirk, Ph.D., serves as Vice President for Strategy, Innovation, and Impact at IRI. In this role, Dr. Quirk provides the leadership, management, and vision to ensure that IRI is addressing global challenges to democracy by developing innovative and evidence-based programs, tools, and resources. He leads IRI’s organization-wide strategic planning as well as oversees institutional efforts on monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL), Want to prevail against China? Prioritize democracy assistance, October 7th, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/want-to-prevail-against-china-prioritize-democracy-assistance/[AMoss]
The United States is reshaping how it uses foreign aid in order to compete with China. The executive branch and Congress are exploring efforts — some controversial and still few on details — to better leverage foreign aid as a tool to prevail in an era of great power competition.
This competition is one over resources, influence and nothing short of the world order’s future contours — or, as the 2017 National Security Strategy aptly proclaims: “between those who value human dignity and freedom and those who oppress individuals and enforce uniformity.”
The strength of democracy in places where the United States and China are competing will be a key determinant of the competition’s result. Authoritarian countries are more vulnerable to Beijing’s coercion or cooptation because their regimes are less constrained by independent media, free elections, and other institutional checks that would otherwise control against such subversion. The numbers are not in America’s favor. Over the last decade, democracy has declined globally while the ranks of authoritarian states have swelled.
Recent research from the International Republican Institute confirms that China is exploiting — and exacerbating — democratic weaknesses in target states to advance its interests. This includes signing opaque deals through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that saddle countries with debt and invite massive corruption.
Further, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regularly coopts local civic groups or journalists to stymie negative portrayals of its engagement and thereby protect growing investments and ties to corrupt elites in target countries. At a macro level, China is projecting its authoritarian model as a viable alternative to the West’s liberal democratic variant.
If left unchecked, the potential cost of these Chinese initiatives to U.S. interests is clear: increased instability in regions where democracy is decaying, more countries in Beijing’s grip and less inclined to align with America, and an illiberal Chinese sphere of influence.
Regardless of the final contours of policy changes under consideration, it is clear that the United States should make democracy assistance a central component of its strategy for prevailing against China. This should involve using foreign aid to help make countries more resilient to CCP coercion and, hand in hand with diplomacy, champion the superiority of U.S. liberal democracy to China’s authoritarian option.