Category Archives: China

Amodei’s AI Plan To Democratize China

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Image of US and Chinese flags painted on computer chip.

Flags of the USA and China on a semiconductor. William Potter.

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2025

By Anders Corr

A new strategy that could peacefully democratize China and other autocratic states was published recently. By ensuring a democratic lead in artificial intelligence (AI), its benefits could be used to incentivize autocracies into nonaggression against democracies. Then, AI could unblock information and defeat autocratic censorship, ultimately improving education in autocracies to the point that Chinese people themselves would successfully drive and achieve democratic reforms. 

While using the stick of military AI to deter autocracies has long been discussed, the idea of using the carrots from AI to buy peace with autocracies, and then using the same technology to defeat censorship and achieve democratization in those countries, had not, to the best of this author’s knowledge, been published before October. Continue reading →

Leadership Reaffirmed: A Blueprint for America’s Global Strategy toward China

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 12, No. 11, November 2024 

By Yan Bennett

Donald Trump poses for his official White House portrait

Donald J. Trump. Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead.

Dear President-elect Trump,

Congratulations on your recent victory. The American people have reaffirmed your leadership, granting you a renewed mandate to continue advancing the policies that prioritize the security, prosperity, and strength of our nation. This victory represents an endorsement of your commitment to putting America first and underscores the opportunity to build on the significant strides made during your first administration.

As stated in your first National Security Strategy (NSS), your administration laid out “a strategic vision for protecting the American people and preserving our way of life, promoting our prosperity, preserving peace through strength, and advancing American influence in the world” (NSS, 2017 ii). The American people have placed their confidence in your ability to navigate these immense challenges with steady strength and assertiveness.   Continue reading →

It’s Past Time to Secure the Internet

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 12, No. 11, November 2024 

The image depicts a world globe focusing on America.

Nick Aldwin via Flickr

By Tim Sell

If we’ve learned anything in the last three years, it’s that open borders don’t work. They put American citizens at risk. Why haven’t we learned, over the last thirty years, that an open Internet causes the same problems? I read about problems everyday from Russian hackers and Iranian agents creating election havoc and stealing identities and money. About a year ago, I experienced bank fraud and identity theft. When I reported this to my local police department, I was told nothing could be done,
as the attack came from “overseas” on the Internet.

Continue reading →

China’s Sharp Power

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 10, No. 8, August 2022

A series of paintings of communist leaders, including Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx and Mao Zedong, lined up along a Hong Kong road.

A series of paintings of communist leaders lined up along a Hong Kong road, 2016. Source: Flickr.

Roman Štěpař
Charles University

If we understand geopolitics as a “representation of space”, then the Indo-Pacific region can be seen as an emerging geopolitical hotbed in which major powers struggle not only for control but also for discourse of values and worldviews. In this particular geopolitical competition of values and mindsets, a sharp power is gradually gaining prominence, and in the Indo-Pacific region, China is at the center of the action.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lessons of Gorbachev’s “failure” were passed on to Chinese citizens. They denounced Moscow’s ideological neglect for this catastrophe and warned that it was possible that it would happen in China as well. Chinese foreign policy has as a result been transformed. After 40 years of remarkable rise, China has now clearly demonstrated its desire to lead the world by reasserting itself in a position that its leaders consider “historically correct.”

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Genocide in The People’s Republic of China

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Violations of International Criminal Law in the Suppression of Falun Gong

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 10, No. 7, July 2022

Caylan Ford

ABSTRACT

Falun Gong practitioners hold yellow banners with writing in red characters. Soldiers can be seen approaching the practitioners in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Falun Gong practitioners hold banners in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, circa 2000. Source: Falun Data Infocenter.

In July 1999, the Communist Party of China launched a nationwide campaign to eliminate Falun Gong, a spiritual practice believed to have as many as 70 million adherents. Since that time, hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained without due process in prisons, reeducation-through-labour camps, detention centers, and “black jails.” Torture and other high-pressure methods are used to force adherents to renounce their beliefs, sometimes resulting in deaths, while official sources and state-run media agencies depict the group as evil and openly call for its “complete eradication.”

In response to the suppression campaign, Falun Gong adherents outside China have sought to invoke the concept of universal jurisdiction to bring charges against senior Chinese leaders alleging torture, genocide, and crimes against humanity. This essay assesses the claims of genocide committed against the Falun Gong by making reference to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. It argues that while some aspects of the Falun Gong case are unique—such as the potential ambiguity of the group’s religious identity—the suppression of Falun Gong would likely satisfy the convention definition of genocide. Continue reading →