Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World by Clive Hamilton (PDF)

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‘Heavily sourced, crisply written and deeply alarming.’ The Times ‘This is a remarkable book with a chilling message.’ Guardian The Chinese Communist Party is determined to reshape the world in its image. Its decades-long infiltration of the West threatens democracy, human rights, privacy, security and free speech. Throughout North America and Europe, political and business elites, Wall Street, Hollywood, think tanks, universities and the Chinese diaspora are being manipulated with money, pressure and privilege. Hidden Hand reveals the myriad ways the CCP is fulfilling its dream of undermining liberal values and controlling the world.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review ‘A remarkable book with a chilling message… The book’s convincing message is plain… Everyone must stay on their guard.’ — Will Hutton, Guardian‘Revelatory… A detailed and necessary examination.’ ― Sunday Times‘Hidden Hand is heavily sourced, crisply written and deeply alarming.’ ― The Times’Hidden Hand should be required reading for our diplomats, intelligence analysts, military officers and businesspeople.’ ― The Australian’An in-depth explanation of how China conducts its operations to gain important knowledge – ranging from tech secrets to financial information.’ ― International Business Times’It takes courage to prod somnolent liberal democracies out of their complacent and dangerous incomprehension of the CCP. We are in Hamilton’s and Ohlberg’s debt.’ — Journal of Democracy'[Hidden Hand] should be required reading for anyone working in government and policy, the private sector, or media — really, for anyone with a stake in resisting the shadowy machinations of a totalitarian regime that seeks to exert its will on free societies.’ ― National Review About the Author Clive Hamilton is an Australian academic and the author of Silent Invasion, a national bestseller revealing China’s influence operations in Australia. He has written for the Guardian, New York Times, Foreign Affairs and THES. Mareike Ohlberg is a senior fellow in the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund. While at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, she co-authored the landmark report ‘Authoritarian Advance: Responding to China’s Growing Political Influence in Europe’. She has written for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs and Neue Zurcher Zeitung.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Hidden Hand is written by two academics. Clive Hamilton is an Australian academic, who is currently professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra. Mareike Ohlberg is a senior fellow in the Asia Programme of the German Marshall Fund. Prior to that she worked for the German think tank; the Mercator Institute of China Studies.Hidden Hand interest piquedBoth of them are seasoned China watchers. China is a popular subject and Hidden Hand would have just gone into my Amazon wishlist but for the 48 Group Club. The 48 Group Club is a British China-orientated association that fosters cultural and social ties. It had threatened legal action over content that they alleged was incorrect or defamatory. My interest in Hidden Hand was piqued.So What’s it like?Hamilton and Ohlberg have pulled together an account of China’s relationships with various elites in countries around the world and intergovernmental bodies such as WHO. Having kept an eye on China for over a decade, little of the content was new for me.What I found was new, was the the way it is woven together in a cohesive pattern of activity in the Hidden Hand. A sustained, pervasive bid for global influence on a scale that most people couldn’t imagine. And those that could imagine would likely be thought of as excessively paranoid.One thing that immediately comes across is the depth of research that the Hidden Hand contains. The index and bibliography are a big chunk of the book. The facts come thick and fast, but delivered in a dispassionate manner.The reframeThis book wouldn’t be as well received if it had been published 12 months ago. A split between Wall Street and manufacturing company CEOs, COVID and the steady drip of diplomatic clashes that China has had with western countries have reframed the view for Hidden Hand. Now you have an audience that is more receptive. They are more willing to take an objective, critical analysis of China rather than give them the benefit of the doubt like an errant teenager.Missing answersHidden Hand tries to come up with starting points for answers. Holding elites accountable. Engaging members of the Chinese diaspora. Taking a multilateral stand. All of which are hard to do. There are changes happening to espionage related laws in the UK. The EU is taking a more policy-based approach and Trump administration officials have talked about US CEOs as being unregistered foreign agents. This is a long term battle, something that will go for decades.The Wall Street CEOs will be hunkering down; hoping to out wait Trump. In Europe and the UK, the root and branch work required to inoculate their countries are not yet underway.The final missing piece from the Hidden Hand is understanding the first generation Chinese diaspora. In particular the way the communist party has successfully grafted itself into the very centre of what it means to be Chinese. And then thinking carefully about how to decouple that idea.

⭐It is now becoming increasingly clear that during the past four decades, the Chinese government has built up an incredibly widespread network of influence operations in many parts of the world. Earlier works on this network in specific countries were Clive Hamilton’s Silent Invasion (2018) on the influence operations in Australia, and Jonathan Manthorpe’s The Claws of the Panda (Febr. 2019), describing how China had been able to infiltrate the Canadian political system, exerting undue influence on Canadian government, educational institutions, and business.But now there is a comprehensive work that covers Chinese influence operations in many corners of the world: Hidden Hand, Exposing how the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World, by the same Clive Hamilton, working together with German China scholar Mareike Ohlberg. The result is a rich trove of examples of how the Beijing regime operates is different parts of the world.Hamilton and Ohlberg do an excellent job in describing how Beijing has organized the activities under a wide umbrella of United Front organizations with rich-sounding names like The China Association for International Friendly Contact, the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, and the U.S. National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification.An important method used is to influence political elites, and Hamilton and Ohlberg have a separate chapter each for North America, Europe and the periphery, in each case giving a number of examples of how Beijing was able to influence key figures in each region. The book goes into significant detail on how a number of retired politicians and former diplomats sold their soul to the CCP and became a mouthpiece for the repressive regime.Last but not least, the book dedicates a chapter on “reshaping global governance”, highlighting the sinister and pervasive ways in which China has been able to turn international organizations such as the World Health Organization, the ICAO, Interpol and even the UN itself into pliant groupings which will do little to counter the Chinese narrative designed to reshape these organizations with only one goal in mind: make them subordinate to the PRC’s interests.The book is an important wake-up call for both Americans and Europeans. It is, designed to show how pervasive the influence operations have become, and of course intended to start a comprehensive push-back in order to safeguard not only hard-won values such as freedom and democracy, but also protect the very foundations of the liberal rules-based international order, which are being undermined by China’s actions.

⭐I guess the only point of writing reviews here is to alert potential fellow readers to what they will encounter.In this case, what you get is an opening anti CCP polemic (I broadly agree but that’s by the by) followed by chapter after detailed chapter of, as they say these days, granularity. If you want to know how a bit of the Chinese government influenced the Melbourne or the Hamburg local authority – in detail , with names – here it is. Followed by more detail. More of a PhD thesis than a book written and edited to be read by a global audience.Great, valuable work. Just a bit hard going for the general reader.

⭐Informative , but the problem is the anti Trump agenda is very obvious….pity.

⭐Clive Hamilton’s remarkable book has chilling message. The Chinese Communist party is intent on international domination by any means necessary. By financing a Washington think-tank, owning part-shares of ports such as Valencia, Bilbao, Piraeus in Greece and Rotterdam and encouraging “friendship” clubs such as Britain’s 48 Group Club, etc. China wants a soft international discourse with a hard infrastructure in the Belt and Road Initiative, that encircles Western power centres so that the dominance of the Chinese Communist Party cannot be challengedChina has different definitions of human rights, terrorism and security to those accepted internationally. The book defines these definitions and illustrates how the Party is intent on winning international acceptance for them. For example human rights should be understood as everyone’s collective right for Chinese-style economic and social development. And China wants all states to act in harmony with China.The Belt and Road Initiative is President Xi’s policy to build and enhance ports and transport infrastructures across Asia and Africa, partnering with governments. Hamilton shows that this is nothing more than a front for China’s geopolitical aims. He illuminates the stunning, audacious scope and reach of it. He shows that it’s the centrepiece of China’s efforts to reorient the world around the interest of the Chinese Communist party.Signatories to the Belt and Road Initiative get access to Chinese grants and loans for developing their infrastructure in return for prioritisation of Chinese civil and military traffic. But the accreditation process requires signatories to accept China’s benevolence, a harmonious globalisation accepting China’s definitions of terrorism, security, human rights and multilateralism. As party insiders confirm, the Initiative is intended to deliver the Party’s geopolitical dominance.Hamilton makes clear that the pretence that Party and state are separate has been dropped under Xi Jingping. Every business in China, state-owned or private, is monitored and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.At last some western states are taking notice of China’s strategy. Until now the consensus has been that you to must engage with it. But this book illustrates that Xi Jingping and his Party’s ambitions are being rumbled. The message is convincing. Don’t be fooled by talk of global harmony, or access to the world’s second-biggest market. The Chinese Communist Party strategy is to create a world in which Chinese enlightenment values are primary.

⭐Effective opposition? elections that change government? courts that are largely independent? diverse media, critical of government, thriving civil society….against injustice. I am not sure I can agree with much of this.

⭐I haven’t quite finished reading this book, but I have found it both fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. The extent to which the CCP has infiltrated the West over such a long period of time and influenced so many of the “elite”, but also is very active with its Chinese diaspora via frontline groups/societies is a revelation. Worth reading.

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