Advertisement Trans-Pacific View author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Kevin Sheives – associate director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy, and a China specialist formerly at the U.S. Departments of State, USTR, Defense and Congress – is the 252nd in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.” Explain the scope of China’s challenge to global democracy. Cold War analogies aside, the world is in a battle for ideas, values, and the protection of sovereign democracies from outside influence and interference. The concept of sharp power points to how outside authoritarian governments impair free expression, neutralize independent institutions, and distort the political environment. These malign actors span Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and others like the Gulf states. However, only China can pair economic and diplomatic power with global ambition and corrosive intent. China’s actions, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are more subtle than Russia’s interference attempts. They are designed to create a pro-CCP environment in democracies, and more focused on co-optation rather than confusion. China has proven in recent years that it wants to shape how democracies think, how they consume information, how they do business, and how they operate their political cultures. This isn’t public diplomacy or soft power; China is undermining the lifeblood of democracies. Unfortunately, China’s outright coercion, disinformation, censorship, and influence-peddling campaigns against Australia are all too commonplace in democracies of all stripes – near and far from China’s borders. Rather than learning from its mistakes, China’s rigid Party-led system has doubled down on its errors after recently declining global perceptions of China.