Elisabeth Braw is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, China has shifted into high gear when it comes to PR. But its efforts — including, most recently, President Xi Jinping’s announcement that China would go carbon-neutral by 2060 — aren’t having the intended effect.
As a devastating recent survey shows, the global public isn’t sold on China as a benign benefactor and global player. And while Beijing may not care what Western citizens think, Chinese businesses should — or they will soon feel the power of the public’s unhappiness.
Xi’s announcement — during the U.N. General Assembly in September — fits into China’s broader aim of setting itself apart from the United States, the archrival it hopes to replace as the world’s superpower.
There are serious cracks in the shiny façade of these efforts.
Much of the emergency medical supplies Beijing sent to coronavirus-stricken countries with great fanfare in the early months of the pandemic turned out to be defective or insufficient, causing the stunt to backfire and undermining public trust.
Beijing’s embrace of “wolf warrior diplomacy” — in which it alternatively tried to convince the West on issues such as the repression of its Uighur minority in Xinjiang province and the democracy protests in Hong Kong — also raised red flags among its intended recipients.
Last month, China’s ambassador to Belgium tweeted a photo of a group dancing, writing “ethnic minorities dancing in Xinjiang. Only happy and carefree people can dance so beautifully.” His ambassador colleague in Canada, meanwhile, ominously warned his host government that there could be consequences for the “health and security” of Canadians living in Hong Kong if Canada granted asylum to Hong Kongers.
The Western public wasn’t fooled, neither by stingy coronavirus aid nor by obfuscation about Uighurs and Hong Kong.
As a Pew Research Center poll shows, disapproval of China is rising sharply in Western countries. In the U.K., some 79 percent hold a negative view of China, up 19 percentage points since last year, while in Sweden the rate is 85 percent and in the United States 73 percent. Even in Italy, a target for Chinese charm offensives long before the pandemic, the disapproval rate is rising: 62 percent, up from 57 percent last year.
Western public opinion may not matter to Beijing, especially considering that it doesn’t exactly nurture democracy at home, but it matters to Western governments. If better PR alone won’t fix relations with European countries, bad PR is actively exacerbating the problem.
In Sweden, the shift in public perception has already had political consequences, Pål Jonson, the chairman of the parliament’s defense committee, told me. He pointed out that Sweden “has adopted a new strategy on China that includes stark warnings regarding the country’s actions in Sweden.”
Last month, Sweden also banned Huawei from its 5G network. The Chinese foreign ministry quickly retorted with warnings that the step would have a “negative impact” on Swedish businesses.
That may be true, but while European businesses will be affected by deteriorating relations, in the long-run, it’s China Corp. that stands to feel the most pain.
Consider the case of Huawei in the U.K., a country heretofore rather well-disposed toward China. This summer, the U.K. government decided to ban Huawei in its 5G networks, just months after it had decided to include it. Pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration played a role, but anger among Britons and their MPs over Huawei’s links added plenty of fuel to the fire.
The recent sale of Italy’s strategic Port of Trieste is another key example of a government shifting position in response to anti-Chinese backlash. Last year, soon after Italy joined China’s Belt and Road initiative, the Port of Trieste explored cooperation with the China Communications Construction Company, a Chinese state-owned behemoth. Instead, at the end of September, the Hamburg port operator HHLA acquired a majority stake in the port.
Germany’s Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, meanwhile, recently encouraged German businesses to diversify their supply chains beyond China, to other Asian countries.
Moves like this might cause companies to think twice about accepting large investments by Chinese outfits, all too aware that customer anger can harm their brand and thus the share price. For example, Oatly, a trendy Swedish oat milk firm, has taken a hit to its brand since a state-owned Chinese investment company bought a 30 percent stake.
Activist investors could even start following the example of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who bought a small number of shares in various Russian companies and then started turning up at shareholder meetings to decry the firms’ corruption.
At the very least, Western businesses will be facing ever-more intense scrutiny over any dealings with China.
In a recent interview, Mark Cuban, the owner of the American basketball team Dallas Mavericks, was asked why the National Basketball Association takes “$500 million dollars-plus from a country that is engaging in ethnic cleansing.” His answer — simply that “they are a customer of ours” — may not hold up for very long under growing scrutiny of the ethics of taking Chinese money.
Such a development would be disastrous for Beijing, which over the past several decades has strengthened its global position by investing in Western companies: French telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent, Standard Bank in the U.K., German industrial-machinery maker Krauss Maffei and the football club Inter Milan to name just a few.
The Chinese Communist Party may consider its PR techniques successful at home, but its globe-spanning businesses stands to reap the sorry fruit of Beijing’s bullying and obfuscation.
For a country investing enormous effort into its Made in China 2025 plan for economic superpower status, that should set off alarm bells.