Hayward: How China’s Viral Authoritarianism Infects the West and Threatens the Enlightenment

breitbart ^ | JOHN HAYWARD

[davikkm]

China’s challenge to the United States over the coming decades will not only be a contest of economic and military might. It will be a clash of ideologies, as President Xi Jinping made quite clear in his marathon address to the 19th Communist Party Congress. China is betting that its brand of authoritarianism will go viral and infect not only Eastern nations it hopes to bring under its hegemonic sway, but the Western world as well.

What China has undertaken is a complete inversion of the early promise of the Internet, and before that a core principle of Western foreign policy: the conviction that liberty is viral. Before the Internet, it was firmly held that exposing authoritarian nations to Western liberty and its tangible benefits through economic and cultural contact would gradually erode the power of dictators and politburos. “Engagement” was the key to spreading freedom around the world, a process that would be greatly accelerated by the Internet and its uncontrollable tidal wave of information.

A great deal of Western foreign policy in the postwar era was based on this conviction, especially after the so-called “end of history” when the Soviet Union fell and the Berlin Wall came down. Note well that the author of the thesis that authoritarianism suffered a permanent defeat at the hands of classical liberalism, Francis Fukuyama, worked for the U.S. State Department.

[davikkm]

Chinese that are honest will tell you that China’s society is built on appearance whose foundation is lies.

[minnesota_bound]

Apple and google and yahoo, companies that make routers etc have no issue supporting China censorship.

[rlmorel]

People, especially liberals, like to conveniently ‘forget’ that it is a communist Chinese government. We have heard the left lament that it is a pity things couldn’t be done as they do them in China.

[PapaBear3625]

What China has undertaken is a complete inversion of the early promise of the Internet, and before that a core principle of Western foreign policy: the conviction that liberty is viral. Before the Internet, it was firmly held that exposing authoritarian nations to Western liberty and its tangible benefits through economic and cultural contact would gradually erode the power of dictators and politburos. “Engagement” was the key to spreading freedom around the world, a process that would be greatly accelerated by the Internet and its uncontrollable tidal wave of information.

Social media, AI, etc can also be used to implement totalitarian social control, where every "politically incorrect" opinion can be subject to group criticism.

[indthkr]

China / State-Centric weaponized internet

[Unam Sanctam]

Our own authoritarian left wing elites are doing pretty well destroying the Enlightenment and our liberties on their own.