China and Russia are working to destroy democracy

Illiberalism and authoritarianism are on the march at the expense of liberal democracy.

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracies again face a struggle against authoritarianism. This is not the ideological battle of the Cold War. It is a confrontation between systems of government. As democracies show cracks and authoritarian regimes gain strength, the global balance of power is shifting to a world where authoritarian regimes are setting rules for new global challenges, especially in information, technological, and in some cases economic spaces.

Using economic and technological tools once thought to be democratizing forces, authoritarian regimes are undermining and eroding democratic institutions while enabling the growth of more authoritarian governance systems. Illiberalism and authoritarianism are on the march at the expense of liberal democracy.

Policymakers assumed that technological developments, trade and investment would pierce the veil of authoritarian states. President Bill Clinton famously said in 2000 that China trying to crack down on the internet was "like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall." In 2005, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters after meeting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao: "The whole basis of the discussion I have had in a country that is developing very fast — where 100 million people now use the internet, and which is going to be the second-largest economy in the world — is that there is an unstoppable momentum toward greater political freedom."

But Russia and China had other ideas. These regimes continued to see democracy as a threat to their power, and they invested in means to halt this march toward freedom. They understood earlier than democratic leaders that technology could be harnessed for control and manipulation, developing tools to constrain, surveil and insidiously shape the views of their populations. And they took advantage of market asymmetries and nontransparent Western financial practices to gain leverage.

Russia harnessed tools of surveillance with Soviet roots to monitor telecommunications traffic and internet traffic within its borders. Its System of Operational-Investigatory Measures enables the Federal Security Service to collect, analyze and store all forms of communication that pass over Russian networks, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Russia also uses information-warfare tactics to control and manipulate public perception in support of the regime, according to the Computational Propaganda Project at the University of Oxford. The now-infamous Internet Research Agency originally targeted domestic audiences when it first began posting to Twitter in 2009.


Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party has shown that apparently Jell-O can be nailed to the wall. Its Great Firewall of a censored internet, according to Human Rights Watch, is now supplemented by indigenous platforms and apps that allow it to police users' activities online, shaping their information reality and tracking their daily routines. This is combined with an artificial-intelligence-powered system of surveillance and facial recognition that monitors offline activities, enabled by cameras that dot every corner of Chinese cities.

The Chinese Communist Party has used this system most aggressively in the Xinjiang region, where it monitors and manipulates nearly all aspects of Uighurs' lives and has put large numbers of Uighurs in "reeducation camps" for perceived disloyalty to the regime, according to reporting by The New York Times. A tech-powered system backed by all of this data is being rolled out nationwide.

Leaders in Moscow and Beijing have also manipulated markets to fortify their own power. The Chinese Communist Party has developed a directed form of state-backed market economy, and it has exploited asymmetries between its system and the international economic system. Rather than greater economic openness generating a push against the party-state for political freedoms, the party-state uses its corporate entities not only for economic growth, but also for coercive political leverage and to cultivate influencers.

And as Karen Dawisha writes in her book Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? President Vladimir Putin and his cronies used the privatization period in Russia to enrich themselves at the expense of the Russian people. Now they rely on the Western financial system to protect these ill-gotten gains, employing a patronage system that bolsters Putin's power and enriches his inner circle.

Increasingly, these regimes are turning their tools of coercion outward to spread authoritarianism to advance their own interests. The erosion of institutions inside democratic countries along with a retreat in U.S. global leadership has provided these regimes with soft targets.

In the case of Putin's Russia, this manifests in a strategy of undermining democracies to gain power and diminish their appeal at home. Seeing vulnerabilities in democracies as opportunities to boost his position, Putin has turned his information weaponry outward, using his intelligence apparatus and proxies to exploit divisions and weaknesses to create chaos and damage democratic governments and institutions across the trans-Atlantic space.

The former president of Freedom House, David Kramer, rightly observed that "corruption is Putin's biggest export." And according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, Russia uses state-owned companies, particularly in the oil and gas sectors, to create and exploit dependencies, cultivate influencers, and coerce governments to adopt policies favorable to Moscow.

For its part, China aims to remake global rules to be more favorable to it, while legitimizing its system of government. While the Chinese Communist Party's end goal may not be weakening democracies, that is the effect. These include: undermining the rules-based order, using coercive tactics including political interference in democracies, and using state-backed capital to make governments more dependent on Beijing while distorting markets.

China under President Xi Jinping has also recognized the importance of shaping standards and norms for technology and information architecture. The party is increasingly turning the tools of control it developed at home outward — censoring discussion beyond its borders on indigenous platforms such as WeChat, Bloomberg reported. And it uses a cyberattack tool that some have dubbed the "Great Cannon" to conduct denial-of-service assaults to silence its critics overseas, according to a report by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

Furthermore, the systems of surveillance and control the Chinese Communist Party deployed internally are being exported to other countries, sometimes, according to The New York Times, in the form of so-called smart cities or other seemingly commercial high-tech deals. These deals are not simply about shipping technology. They often include training government officials on how to use the capabilities as the party does, shaping the behavior of officials in other countries and providing them Beijing's means of control.

Of course, these technological exports are not just about commercial gain. They create dependencies on technology and provide data to Beijing. They also shape norms on the use of such technologies, supporting the development of systems that look more like China's, thus legitimizing the party's system of government. As New York Times reporter Paul Mozur has observed, by exporting its systems of surveillance and control, the Chinese Communist party-state "become[s] the axle, and all of these different places become the spokes in this wheel, the new version of global governance, a new alternative to the messy democracies of the past."

The combined effect of these tactics is the weakening of democracies from within and without, and a global creep of illiberalism and authoritarianism. Russia's exploitation of internal vulnerabilities to sow division and accelerate dysfunction within Western democracies creates space for an authoritarian model. And China's increasingly assertive foreign policy, growing political and economic heft, and focus on technological development is shaping markets and governance outside its borders.

When authoritarians define the systems, rules and standards that constitute and govern that architecture, the information domain will be more authoritarian and less democratic by design. Council on Foreign Relations scholar Adam Segal has observed that China is remaking cyberspace in its own image. "If this happens, the internet will be less global and less open. A major part of it will run Chinese applications over Chinese-made hardware. And Beijing will reap the economic, diplomatic, national security, and intelligence benefits that once flowed to Washington."

Democracies have not yet grasped the magnitude of this challenge. This recognition — acknowledging that a new systemic challenge has already begun — must be the first step in an effective response.

The democratic response needs to remain consistent with democratic values and involve humility and a powerful push for renewal. We must jettison the illusions that democracies are self-perpetuating and certain victors, or that technology and greater trade and investment inherently favor democratic growth. This will require more than tweaking around the policy edges.

First, we need to recognize where this battle is playing out and show up. Standards-setting processes for technologies like 5G and artificial intelligence may seem technical and niche, but they will play a critical role in defining information architecture. China has taken a strategic approach to these processes and institutions, sending large and well-connected delegations to standards-setting bodies. It has recognized that shaping these guidelines not only provides commercial and geopolitical advantage, but also allows it to spread its indigenous information platforms.

The battle is also happening in countries across Africa, Latin America, the Pacific, and even Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, where China's increasingly assertive investments are providing an attractive option in areas where the United States has pulled back. The U.S. must renew its global leadership, working closely with allies in Europe and Asia.

Second, democracies need to present a competitive offer. Critical to competing is reinvesting in ourselves. That means renewing our democratic purpose through civic education and investing in infrastructure and our education system more broadly. It also means adding resources to basic technological research that goes beyond the commercially driven incentives of private companies.

Democracies need to recognize the vulnerabilities and weaknesses that have made them less responsive to citizens' demands, driven polarization, and opened space for alternative systems. We need to show internally and externally that democracy produces results that benefit people, and not just politicians or corporations.

Third, we need to update our institutions. Borders and distances no longer protect against many of the threats democracies face, and the battle is not just for territory but for minds. The boundary between foreign and domestic security issues has been blurred, and in many cases interior and finance ministries, not defense ministries, play a critical role in winning these fights. In the financial area, we must eliminate non-transparent practices like anonymous shell companies that enable corruption. And democracies need to adopt whole-of-nation approaches, with coordination across government agencies, between the public and private sectors, and with civil society.

Finally, sustaining a global system that supports democracies and closes space for authoritarian expansion requires democracies to work together. This starts with remembering who our friends are, and prioritizing those relationships and the values that underpin them.

Thirty years ago, democratic movements across Europe succeeded in their struggle for freedom against a formidable force. To avoid a future where those gains are lost, we need to remember the inherent strengths of democracies. Democracy is not self-perpetuating, and reinvesting in it is the best way to ensure its continuation in the decades to come.

Laura Rosenberger is a senior fellow and director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. This column is an edited excerpt of a chapter of the German Marshall Fund's project, "Reassessing 1989: Lessons for the Future of Democracy."