Chinese imperialism refers to the expansion of China's political, economic, and cultural influence beyond the boundaries of the
People's Republic of China. Depending on the commentator, it has also been used to refer to its artificial islands in the South China Sea[1] and the
persecution of Uyghurs in China.[2][3] Although there has not been a long-standing imperial regime in China since the
1911 Revolution and the country is officially a
People's Republic, some refer to China as an imperialist country. This includes socialist parties in the Pacific such as the
New People's Army, some
Maoist parties, and the New Left (especially some of the
Chinese New Left). China's
relations with Africa have also been accused of being "
neo-colonialism".[4][5][6]
History
Since the
Chinese economic reform of 1978, China became a new economic, military, and political
great power. As China transformed, there were hopes that the Chinese government would give up its expansionist ideas.[7] However, since
Chinese Communist Partygeneral secretaryXi Jinping's rise to power, and as a result of increasing territorial conflicts in which China stated that most of the disputed lands belong to China, it is generally believed that China continues to adhere to
irredentist claims.[8][7]
With China's rapid economic development and its increased investment in Africa, a new round of debate has emerged over whether Chinese investment in Africa is imperialistic.
Horace Campbell has called this debate "superficial" and considers China's involvement as still distinct from Western imperialism.[25]Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) coordinates much of the investment. According to Evan Hsiang in Harvard International Review, China's investment in countries such as
Zambia, which had a debt crisis in 2020 and had the "highest number of Chinese lenders of all African states", has been seen with the lens of economic imperialism, but may result from mismanagement and lack of regulations rather than planned debt traps. Nonetheless, Hsiang also cites "China's structural dominance" in the Zambian mining industry and that many of the projects neglect working conditions due to "China's unchallenged power" and the projects go through due to pressure by Chinese bureaucracy on African governments. He recommends that greater scrutiny of FOCAC would limit exploitative interactions.[26]
China official sources have pointed out that countries were not compelled to take the loans and they came with no strings attached in their agreements; however outside observers have noted that many of the debtor countries have entered fiscal difficulty, such as
Sri Lanka, who
defaulted on its sovereign debt.[24] Sri Lanka's
Hambantota International Port has been leased to China for 99 years starting in 2017.[27] China signing a
99-year lease on a foreign port is seen as both a current erosion of sovereignty and a symbolic one similar to 19th century colonialism, because that is the amount of time Britain leased
colonial Hong Kong from China in 1898.[27][28][29][30] China has also leased
Gwadar Port in
Pakistan for 43 years,[31] significant protests have occurred against Chinese interests in the port of Gwadar.[32] The
China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been seen as a geostrategic effort to advance the PRC's influence.
Baloch insurgent militant groups in Pakistan have also labeled the CPEC as an imperialist endeavor by China.[33][34] According to The Economic Times, Chinese state interests in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh form a cohesive strategy to encircle India. This overall strategy, named by U.S. and Indian commentators, is the
String of Pearls which is a combination of economic and naval interests by China surrounding India.[35][36] Supporting India's claim is the ability of the Gwadar port to host naval ships, and with the increasing presence of China there, the
People's Liberation Army Navy may be able use Gwadar as a forward base.[35]
However other researchers dispute this view. An October 2019 report by the
Lowy Institute said that China had not engaged in deliberate actions in the Pacific which justified accusations of debt-trap diplomacy (based on contemporaneous evidence), and China had not been the primary driver behind rising debt risks in the Pacific; the report expressed concern about the scale of the country's lending, however, and the institutional weakness of Pacific states which posed the risk of small states being overwhelmed by debt.[37][38] A 2020 Lowy Institute article called Sri Lanka's Hambantota International Port the "case par excellence" for China's debt-trap diplomacy, but called the narrative a "myth" because the project was proposed by former Sri Lankan president
Mahinda Rajapaksa, not Beijing. The article added that Sri Lanka's debt distress was not caused by Chinese lending, but by "excessive borrowing on Western-dominated capital markets".[39]
According to The Diplomat, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) investment also exacerbates separatism and ethnic tensions in host countries, because the PRC government and state-backed corporations "preference for dealing exclusively with the those who hold positions of power. Analysis of the BRI should go beyond the 'debt trap', geopolitics, or economic spillovers, but also examine the social fissures that emerge from the massive inflows of Chinese capital in host countries."[34]
Xinjiang internment camps were established in the late 2010s under Xi Jinping's
administration.[40][41]Human Rights Watch says that they have been used to indoctrinate
Uyghurs and other Muslims since 2017 as part of a "
people's war on terror", a policy announced in 2014.[42][43][44] The camps have been criticized by the governments of many countries and human rights organizations for alleged human rights abuses, including mistreatment,
rape, and torture,[45] with some of them alleging genocide.[46][47]
With the 1978 Chinese economic reform launched by
Deng Xiaoping, China has increased its political stance, its influence and its power abroad.[48] China has increased its influence, while using military and economic wealth and claims to island territories that have caused anxiety in neighbors to the east, such as the Philippines and Japan.[49][50]
The South China Sea disputes involve both island and maritime claims of China and the claims of several neighboring sovereign states in the region, namely Brunei, the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The disputes are over islands, reefs, banks, and other features in the
South China Sea, including the
Spratly Islands,
Paracel Islands,
Scarborough Shoal, boundaries in the
Gulf of Tonkin, and the waters near the Indonesian
Natuna Islands. The main point of criticism is that the PRC is building artificial islands to extend its claims into other nations' territorial waters and militarizing the islands.[51][52][1]Chinese salami slicing strategy and
cabbage tactics describe the way the PRC has used small provocations to increase its strategic position.[53]
Tibetan Review evaluated the China's government policy on Tibet as colonial based on several criteria, including "forced penetration of the colonizing group", "social destructiveness", "external political control", "economic dependence of internal groups", "sub-standard social services", and "social stratification".[54][55][better source needed]
Chinese media and cultural imperialism
Global media and international communication scholars theorize, research, analyze, discuss, and debate the dimensions of China's media and cultural imperialism.[56] Building upon the frameworks of
media imperialism and cultural imperialism, researchers have focused on everything from the international expansion of China's Internet companies[57] and movie industries[58] to the "soft power" and public diplomacy campaigns of China's state media companies in other countries[59] as examples of media imperialism.[60]
Some Western and non-Western news media stories have also begun to frame China as an incipient media and cultural imperialist. For example, CNN notes that
Confucius Institutes have been criticized for promoting a political narrative or surveilling overseas Chinese instead of solely promoting Chinese culture.[61] Also, according to The Diplomat, Korean commentators have said that there is a dimension of cultural imperialism by China, including China's censorship of
Korean content[62] and claiming some Korean historical figures as Chinese.[63] Furthermore, an article in Time compared the late 19th-century American culture of promoting masculinity and
foreign colonization to the promotion of masculinity in China in recent years, and claimed that China is no different from other empires in this regard.[64]
Freedom House also reported that China has supported authoritarian dictatorships in
internet censorship and cyber surveillance, advancing the PRC's political model, having "supplied telecommunications hardware, advanced facial-recognition technology, and data-analytics tools to a variety of governments with poor human rights records, which could benefit Chinese intelligence services as well as repressive local authorities".[65][66]
Views of Chinese imperialism
There are fierce debates among left-wing intellectuals in China and around the world about whether China has become an imperialist country.[67]Li Minqi, a member of the Chinese New Left, believes that China is becoming increasingly important in the global capitalist system, but is still "
semi-peripheral" rather than an imperialist country.[68]Wang Hui is also critical of China's changes: he argues in New Left Review that China has become one of the "strategic partners" of imperialism, and that any analysis that attempts to point out the social issues would be accused of wanting to "return to the days of the
Cultural Revolution".[69] The
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), a Maoist party of the Philippines, views the CCP as an imperialist party attacking Filipino fishermen and the Filipino people, and in collusion with
Duterte. "The CCP pays lip service to Mao occasionally, especially in happy rituals, and avoids offending the great number of Chinese people and party cadres and members who love his memory and agree with his ideas and deeds," said
Jose Maria Sison, a key figure in the party.[70] The
New People's Army, the armed wing of the CPP, has been ordered to attack Chinese businesses in the Philippines due to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea and dissatisfaction with Chinese investments.[71]
In a 2017 paper
David A. Lake argued the autocratic system of the People's Republic of China would "make it harder for the country to commit credibly to limits on its authority over others. [...] In the absence of such credible restraints, potential subordinates will be far more reluctant to accept the authority of China over their affairs. It will be harder for China to build international hierarchies in the twenty-first century than it was for Britain or the United States during their respective rises to power."[72]
Edward Wong, former Beijing bureau chief of
TheNew York Times, believes that both China and the United States are empires, and the US as an empire is known for its soft power, while China is known for its hard power.[73] Tanner Mirrlees, a political economist, conducted a comparative analysis of the economic, military and media-technological power of the United States and China. He argues: "the United States and China are clearly the world's most significant imperial powers...but not yet equal powers because the United States outmatches China in many ways. If there is an incipient inter-imperialist rivalry between the United States and China, it is an asymmetrical one because the United States possesses greater structural capacities and resources to achieve its goals in world affairs than China currently does."[60]
Chinese exceptionalists and
nationalists argue that although China is unique in terms of its culture and traditions, "it is like the
Roman Empire, but as if the Roman Empire had continued to this day!" and China has never been a global imperialist force in its thousands of years of history.[74]
^
abAlessio, Dominic; Renfro, Wesley (2022-08-01). "Building empires litorally in the South China Sea: artificial islands and contesting definitions of imperialism". International Politics. 59 (4): 687–706.
doi:
10.1057/s41311-021-00328-x.
ISSN1740-3898.
S2CID240567127.
^
ab"Xi's China can't replace the US as a financial superpower". Yahoo Finance. 4 April 2023.
Archived from the original on 2023-04-05. Retrieved 2023-04-05. The financing of so-called "belt and road" infrastructure projects has been viewed, at best, as a way for Beijing to extend its diplomatic soft power in developing nations and, at worst, a form of financial quasi-imperialism.
^Hawksley, Humphrey (5 June 2018). Asian Waters : the Struggle Over the South China Sea and the Strategy of Chinese Expansion (First ed.). New York, NY.
ISBN978-1-4683-1478-6.
OCLC992743373.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)
^Murdock, Graham. (2019). "The Empire's New Clothes: Political Priorities and Corporate Ambitions in China's Drive for Global Ascendancy." In O. Boyd-Barrett and T. Mirrlees (eds.), Media Imperialism: Continuity and Change (pp. 291-303). Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield.
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538121559/Media-Imperialism-Continuity-and-Change