ABSTRACT
This chapter first summarizes the Chinese Dream political narrative that explains and justifies the ambition of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to remake global governance. Next, it indicates the CCP’s well-developed capacities to carry out well-orchestrated, self-aggrandizing political campaigns in international institutions and national societies around the world. Then People’s Republic of China (PRC) support for the military junta that overthrew democracy in Myanmar in 2021 is used to illustrate how the PRC helps human rights-abusing regimes in East Asia to consolidate power and legitimacy. It uses its regional influence to extend diplomatic recognition, give aid, and facilitate regime efforts to suppress civil society. The chapter ends by noting how PRC behavior is mobilizing countervailing geopolitical forces; how lengthening experience with democracy and the effects of open global social media make it unlikely that the Chinese party-state will be able to return East Asia as a whole to an updated Sinocentric tributary system; and that the overweening hubris of today’s CCP blinds it to the very real domestic and international difficulties it must overcome between today and 2049, the year by which the Chinese Dream is to be realized.
