ABSTRACT
Despite widespread analytic attention in many liberal democracies over the past decade, the underlying concepts and practices of China's overseas political influence activities have remained ill-defined. Academic studies have mostly been limited to specific narrow lines of the People's Republic of China (PRC)'s overseas activity, while media and policy discourse have tended to aggregate a variety of activities into singular narratives, overlooking differences in their underlying concepts, actors, and degrees of success. This chapter unpacks the key concepts that motivate PRC political influence activities in liberal democracies, outlines the specific practices and actors involved, and evaluates their levels of success. It argues liberal democracies’ institutions have been strongly resistant to PRC influence on national security and foreign policy, but permissive of PRC encroachments against human rights among Chinese diaspora communities.
