The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) efforts to infiltrate governments around the world have been at turns remarkable and remarkably calculated. While readers might expect that China's ambitions have been met with resistance from Western countries, the CCP's rise in Europe has been welcomed, if not enabled, by respected European leaders, authors Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg argue in a new book, Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World. "Long seen by the CCP as the irrelevant junior partner of the United States, Europe is now viewed as the great prize. By winning over Europe, the CCP hopes to convince the world that China is the 'champion of multilateralism' and a much-needed counterweight to U.S. hegemony and unilateralism," Hamilton and Ohlberg write. The CPP is effectively manipulating global players like the EU to advance its larger geopolitical goals. The CCP provides financing to the EU-China Friendship Group, which counts 45 members of the European Parliament (seven political parties) as members. In the same way that no entity can use the term Royal in the United Kingdom without the crown's permission, the words "People" or "Friendship" are regulated by the CCP and require party approval for use in an organization's name. Universal human rights, democratic practice and the rule of law have powerful enemies, and China under the CCP is arguably the most formidable.
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