Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World

Act fast

Clive Hamilton’s remarkable book has chilling message. The Chinese Communist party is intent on international domination by any means necessary. By financing a Washington think-tank, owning part-shares of ports such as Valencia, Bilbao, Piraeus in Greece and Rotterdam and encouraging “friendship” clubs such as Britain’s 48 Group Club, etc. China wants a soft international discourse with a hard infrastructure in the Belt and Road Initiative, that encircles Western power centres so that the dominance of the Chinese Communist Party cannot be challengedChina has different definitions of human rights, terrorism and security to those accepted internationally. The book defines these definitions and illustrates how the Party is intent on winning international acceptance for them. For example human rights should be understood as everyone’s collective right for Chinese-style economic and social development. And China wants all states to act in harmony with China.The Belt and Road Initiative is President Xi’s policy to build and enhance ports and transport infrastructures across Asia and Africa, partnering with governments. Hamilton shows that this is nothing more than a front for China’s geopolitical aims. He illuminates the stunning, audacious scope and reach of it. He shows that it’s the centrepiece of China’s efforts to reorient the world around the interest of the Chinese Communist party.Signatories to the Belt and Road Initiative get access to Chinese grants and loans for developing their infrastructure in return for prioritisation of Chinese civil and military traffic. But the accreditation process requires signatories to accept China’s benevolence, a harmonious globalisation accepting China’s definitions of terrorism, security, human rights and multilateralism. As party insiders confirm, the Initiative is intended to deliver the Party’s geopolitical dominance.Hamilton makes clear that the pretence that Party and state are separate has been dropped under Xi Jingping. Every business in China, state-owned or private, is monitored and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.At last some western states are taking notice of China’s strategy. Until now the consensus has been that you to must engage with it. But this book illustrates that Xi Jingping and his Party’s ambitions are being rumbled. The message is convincing. Don’t be fooled by talk of global harmony, or access to the world’s second-biggest market. The Chinese Communist Party strategy is to create a world in which Chinese enlightenment values are primary.

very important - and concerningAlthough in the first half of the book the authors make a very convincing case that the CCP has infiltrated the West, reading pages and pages of ‘This person did this, this person did that’ gets very boring very quickly.However, it is worth persevering because the content is so important, and the book improves from chapter 7 (page 119) onwards.It was concerning to read on page 67 that the authors believe that the British elite has been infiltrated past the point of no return by the CCP. “Any attempt to extricate itself from Beijing’s orbit would probably fail”.I knew that the situation in Australia was bad, but was not aware of how bad things are in the U.K.In the West, a hot topic is the many injustices perpetrated by white people many generations ago.Meanwhile, in China, Uighers are being sent to concentration camps...(I thought we agreed that after the horrors of the Second World War we would let this happen ‘Never again’? And yet here we are, doing business with the CCP... What does that say about us?)Having read this book, I wouldn’t be surprised if the BLM protests and subsequent wall-to-wall media coverage had been orchestrated by the CCP and their Western sympathisers in an attempt to distract the world from the Covid-19 pandemic, which of course originated in China, and to destabilise the West...I would also recommend reading The Chief Witness by Sayragul Sauytbay, which exposes the horror of the concentration camps, the CCP’s systematic dismantling of Muslim culture and the CCP’s obsession with destroying the lives of its ‘enemies’ who manage to escape China.

I always had a feeling about that, but now it seems to be falling into pieces.I'm reading and it is quite a revelation, and a lot makes sense, and you probably can relate to things that have been happening in your country as they use the same strategy, maybe slightly different here and there but in general, they are the same tactics and suddenly starts to make sense.I can not stress enough, if you want answers of what's going in, this will give a glimpse of that.I can see the pattern relating my country Brazil, where I live, UK, and because is in our faces, the US and all the other countries that are mostly on the news and social media, the pattern is there, just could not get much of the answer.It's like a big puzzle suddenly starting to make sense.Awesome book and how the info has been put together.

I guess the only point of writing reviews here is to alert potential fellow readers to what they will encounter.In this case, what you get is an opening anti CCP polemic (I broadly agree but that's by the by) followed by chapter after detailed chapter of, as they say these days, granularity. If you want to know how a bit of the Chinese government influenced the Melbourne or the Hamburg local authority - in detail , with names - here it is. Followed by more detail. More of a PhD thesis than a book written and edited to be read by a global audience.Great, valuable work. Just a bit hard going for the general reader.

This is starkly revealing, eve if you believe only half of it. Well researched, with plenty of real facts which can be audited. China has a very coherent if covert method of dealing with the outside world, and goes to enormous lengths to ensure "good" publicity. Its policies may be regarded as an octopus with many tentacles. Clearly, China understands its foreign audience a great deal better than we are allowed to understand their domestic arrangements. Their economic investment in Africa, for example, is absolutely astounding. Have a think why Barbados has recently decided to dispense with the Queen as their (albeit notional) Head of State. Really-take a look and learn why, even if you have no interest in the Monarchy, or Barbados, for that matter.

A great primer for understanding the world's "other superpower". vitally important to understanding the history and culture ! I enjoyed this book immensely.If the world doesn't make sense to you, turn off the news, and read this book. it answers many questions.

muito pequeno.

Hidden Hand is written by two academics. Clive Hamilton is an Australian academic, who is currently professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra. Mareike Ohlberg is a senior fellow in the Asia Programme of the German Marshall Fund. Prior to that she worked for the German think tank; the Mercator Institute of China Studies.Hidden Hand interest piquedBoth of them are seasoned China watchers. China is a popular subject and Hidden Hand would have just gone into my Amazon wishlist but for the 48 Group Club. The 48 Group Club is a British China-orientated association that fosters cultural and social ties. It had threatened legal action over content that they alleged was incorrect or defamatory. My interest in Hidden Hand was piqued.So What’s it like?Hamilton and Ohlberg have pulled together an account of China’s relationships with various elites in countries around the world and intergovernmental bodies such as WHO. Having kept an eye on China for over a decade, little of the content was new for me.What I found was new, was the the way it is woven together in a cohesive pattern of activity in the Hidden Hand. A sustained, pervasive bid for global influence on a scale that most people couldn’t imagine. And those that could imagine would likely be thought of as excessively paranoid.One thing that immediately comes across is the depth of research that the Hidden Hand contains. The index and bibliography are a big chunk of the book. The facts come thick and fast, but delivered in a dispassionate manner.The reframeThis book wouldn’t be as well received if it had been published 12 months ago. A split between Wall Street and manufacturing company CEOs, COVID and the steady drip of diplomatic clashes that China has had with western countries have reframed the view for Hidden Hand. Now you have an audience that is more receptive. They are more willing to take an objective, critical analysis of China rather than give them the benefit of the doubt like an errant teenager.Missing answersHidden Hand tries to come up with starting points for answers. Holding elites accountable. Engaging members of the Chinese diaspora. Taking a multilateral stand. All of which are hard to do. There are changes happening to espionage related laws in the UK. The EU is taking a more policy-based approach and Trump administration officials have talked about US CEOs as being unregistered foreign agents. This is a long term battle, something that will go for decades.The Wall Street CEOs will be hunkering down; hoping to out wait Trump. In Europe and the UK, the root and branch work required to inoculate their countries are not yet underway.The final missing piece from the Hidden Hand is understanding the first generation Chinese diaspora. In particular the way the communist party has successfully grafted itself into the very centre of what it means to be Chinese. And then thinking carefully about how to decouple that idea.

In the 1960s, after Sputnik, the bosses of the communist party in Moscow believed that they soon would rule the world. It did not happen. The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the fall of the wall in Berlin, come as a shock to the Chinese communist Party (CCP).In Peking, the Cold War never ended. The approach of the CCP is much broader than the attempt of the brothers in Moscow. Who could imagine a KGB thug rooting out plants in a field in the US mid-west? This soil had been rented by Monsanto, and the plants were genetically modified. Intellectual property is protected by US law, so stealing these plants was a crime. The FBI appeared on the scene.The term new silk road sounds harmless, but what does it mean? Ports in Europe are bought by Chinese enterprises, controlled by the CCP. Think of Piraeus in Greece, or Trieste in Italy. A production line for robots in Augsburg is acquired, and the German government does nothing.Ambassadors of western States in Peking are turned and praise China at home. They haven’t understood that the CCP and the state of China are the same entity.Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg thoroughly reveal the methods of the CCP in a number of areas: The economy, the chinese diaspora in the west, culture, the media, thinks tanks and finance.It’s high time the western democracies wake up. The aggressive CCP cannot be tolerated.George Thaller, author

The art of communication has turned amazingly equivocal ever since the French masters dabbled in semiotics. 'Hidden hand' apparently is a no-nonsense exploration of China all set to to win over the Western democratic ethos. I being a third world citizen enjoy this game from the rampart and revel at seeing the Western democracy comes out loser as we are well aware of the balderdash that goes in the name of upholding Western Democratic Values.