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Major R. “Jake” Alleman
If a powerful nation seized a vibrant democratic city and placed it under authoritarian rule, how would the world respond? What if a nation opened hundreds of concentration camps to imprison, sterilize, and use an ethnic minority for slave labor? Unfortunately, we don’t have to wonder. In the first case, it took four months for international interest to subside after the People’s Republic of China (PRC) eliminated Hong Kong’s democracy. In the second, the PRC’s oppression of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, it took only one month. The United States is in an information war with one of the most information savvy regimes in history, and it is losing.
In both cases mentioned above, the PRC faced global condemnation for their actions. Looking at the situation several years removed, however, that condemnation changed nothing. Instead, the PRC found ways to control the narrative. By leveraging a unified front across all instruments of national power—including diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME)—the PRC advanced its objectives through illegitimate actions, all the while maintaining a façade of legitimacy, to the detriment of the United States and the liberal world order. In what follows, I will analyze the PRC’s actions against Hong Kong and the Uyghurs, in order to apply them toward a predicted future campaign against Taiwan.
Suppression in Hong Kong
The methods by which the PRC conducts these campaigns are not subtle. When nations began expressing support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and exposed Chinese hypocrisy for backing out on its promise to let Hong Kong manage its own affairs, all elements of Chinese national power sprang into motion. Diplomatically, they threatened to suspend trade negotiations with the United Kingdom, made veiled threats to Hong Kong-based Canadian citizens, and chastised the German government over support for Hong Kong. In the information environment, they enforced broad censorship campaigns in Chinese-owned social media space and launched cyber-attacks on sites hosting pro-Hong Kong content. While the military was not utilized against protestors, the People’s Liberation Army conducted shows of force, including the mobilization of paramilitary forces across from the Hong Kong border as protests hit their high water mark. Finally, on the economic front the Chinese sanctioned multiple high profile individuals and targeted pro-democracy businesses operating within Hong Kong.
The PRC’s propensity to wield DIME elements doesn’t stop at nations or international leadership; they act against even the smallest offenses. Consider their scorched-earth reaction after an NBA general manager, Daryl Morey, sent a single tweet supporting Hong Kong during the 2019 pro-democracy protests. All eleven of the NBA’s official Chinese partners cut ties (economics), China’s state-run television network stopped broadcasting NBA games (information), and the Chinese consulate in Houston—ostensibly a diplomatic mission in a foreign nation to protect the interests of its citizens in that nation—demanded the team “correct the error and take immediate concrete measures to eliminate the adverse impact” (diplomatic). What was the result of this pressure? The NBA kowtowed to Beijing, issuing apologies and making concessions to try and salvage their lucrative relationship with the Chinese market.
The PRC recognizes their actions against Hong Kong’s sovereignty – first violating it, then lying about it – carries the threat of losing political legitimacy on the global stage. To counteract that and control the narrative, the PRC identifies specific actions across all its DIME levers, then floods the information sphere with disinformation. Much like Stalin’s “Not a step back!” order to the Red Army during World War II, Chinese messaging is heavy on discipline and light on compromise.
Oppressing the Uyghurs
To spin the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the PRC utilized many of the same tactics they did with Hong Kong. Beijing has used its One Belt One Road Initiative projects as economic leverage to convince Muslim majority nations to turn away from the Uyghurs. The PRC put enough pressure on Turkey that they even extradited Uyghur dissidents back to the PRC. President Xi and PRC leadership have spent billions on a pervasive information campaign targeting both internal and external audiences. These campaigns employ a blend of fake accounts posing as foreign citizens, targeted censorship enabled by mass data harvesting, and tailored disinformation like heavily scripted tours for journalists and foreign officials. The PRC claims that Xinjiang is a hotbed of extremism to justify heavy-handed measures, resulting in the region resembling a military occupation. This lie provides cover for PRC allies to rationalize and justify the PRC’s behavior.
Perhaps the most startling measure of the PRC’s effectiveness with their Xinjiang campaign is how much support they gained from when news first broke of their actions. Despite the well recorded and detailed accounts coming out of Xinjiang, the PRC’s control of the narrative has allowed them to consolidate and expand support. By 2022, the UN released a report declaring the PRC’s Xinjiang actions, “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” What was the response from the international community? Support for the PRC actions “curtailing extremist activities” rose to their highest level of 72 nations—an increase from 49 just four years prior.
Despite atrocities against the Uyghurs, the PRC continues to enjoy a place on the UN Human Rights Council – a coup stemming from their sustained diplomatic efforts to subvert the credibility of the United Nations. If there were any concerns that conducting a mass ethnic cleansing campaign of its own citizens would hurt the PRC’s international legitimacy, said concerns now appear baseless.
The Future of Taiwan
The PRC thus has established a precedent of maintaining their global legitimacy despite the brief outcries for Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Now their sights are set on Taiwan. Actions are already underway across all instruments of national power to shape the information environment in the PRC’s favor. PRC diplomatic efforts have successfully whittled down the number of nations who maintain official ties with Taiwan to eleven, plus the Vatican. They have also applied pressure on the UN to recast historical events to prove that Taiwan is inextricably part of the PRC. The PRC corporation Xiamoi has shipped cell phones to Europe with a built-in censorship suite they could activate remotely to forbid phrases like, “Long live Taiwan independence” and “democracy movement.” The PLA consistently pushes the line on military threats to Taiwan, with pressure continually ramping up. And the PRC continues to use the market as a cudgel. For example, the Civil Aviation Administration of China successfully coerced US and other foreign airlines to remove references to Taiwan on their booking sites by threatening to cut off access to the Chinese air travel market. The PRC will continue to do all this and more to control the narrative around Taiwan. And their increased information warfare over recent years indicates an approaching culmination point.
As evidenced by their actions regarding Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and around Taiwan today, the Chinese playbook to control the narrative is relatively transparent. It leverages the four principal levers of national power—diplomatic, information, military, and economic—in a synchronized fashion that creates an effect greater than the sum of its parts. Knowing that helps clarify how a post-Taiwan invasion scenario might look.
There would be four main lines of effort, each targeted at specific audiences where that lever has the most sway. First, the PRC would conduct global information operations to saturate the information sphere with pro-PRC stories, and attack any countering opinions. This could include references to defending Chinese sovereignty, protecting Chinese citizens, or accusing the United States of instigation.
Second, the PRC would leverage its economic heft to bribe or threaten smaller states into submission while making larger states think twice about acting. They could threaten trade relations with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines and they could influence other nations via multinational conglomerates.
Third, the PRC would likely utilize diplomatic assets to convey the party message to senior leaders in other nations, while also spinning their actions in a way that supports PRC global objectives. Their position on the UN Security Council guarantees a veto against any international resolution against their actions, and their coercive wolf warrior diplomats would aggressively push whatever message the PRC needs to other foreign leaders.
Finally, the PRC would demonstrate PLA military capabilities as an overt threat should the target audiences fail to be convinced otherwise. Even if the PRC was engaged in an invasion or blockade of Taiwan, they will likely have enough missiles, naval assets, and aircraft in reserve to threaten any of their smaller Pacific neighbors.
The PRC has become highly effective at information warfare. They have successfully steered the global narrative on Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and they are building the framework for a future Taiwan narrative. The tepid, disjointed, or muted response from the global community reveals a grim reality: the PRC is winning the information war. Unless the United States and its allies can find a way to mount a coordinated and persistent response, it risks allowing Beijing to reshape the world in its own authoritarian image.
Major R. “Jake” Alleman, USSF, is an Intermediate Level Education Fellow at the Institute for Future Conflict, US Air Force Academy, CO.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Air Force, Defense Department, or the US government.