Thread by @AMFChina

On 1 October 2019 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Dr. Pieke, Director of Merics in Berlin thought it was a good idea to gift the Chinese Communist Party an op-ed for Sueddeutsche Zeitung /1

https://twitter.com/dktatlow/status/1177848462949470208

His op-ed is so bizarre and close to the CCP's party line that I would argue that it could be republished in China's official mouthpiece People's Daily without changing a single word /2

You may wonder what is so problematic about Pieke's op-ed?

Using the theme of 'German angst', Pieke suggests that the problem is *not* an increasingly militaristic and totalitarian China under the leadership of Xi Jinping /3

The problem is supposedly our *perception* of China.

Pieke argues that all of the concerns that one could legitimate raise are the product of western anxiety and thus have no material foundation in present-day mainland China /4

While paying lip-service to the differences between liberal-democratic and autocratic political systems Pieke suggests that the level of state control—e.g. in the form of AI-powered state surveillance—is increasingly similar across political systems /5

In a particularly egregious sentence Pieke suggests that "Gesellschaften als Ganzes sind insgesamt viel formbarer geworden, und Herrschaft wandelt sich schrittweise zu 'social engineering'" /6

Here he implicitly suggests that liberal democratic states—just like autocratic regimes—attempt to manipulate their citizenry to adopt a particular type of ideology or consciousness through social engineering /7

In a thinly veiled anti-American swipe Pieke then tries to substantiate his false equivalence between liberal democracies and China's autocracy by referencing "Wikileaks, Edward Snowden or Cambridge Analytica" /8

To avoid any misunderstanding: state surveillance in western liberal democracies is of course a problem.

I myself have been very outspoken in my critique of state surveillance in the US and UK (see my 2013 op-ed for Asia Dialogue) /9

theasiadialogue.com/2013/07/01/the…

Yet in liberal democracies we do have the *rule of law*.

Scandals such as the large scale state surveillance by the NSA and GSHQ *have* been uncovered by courageous whistleblowers and journalists alike /10

Such safeguards against state overreach are noticeably absent in the People's Republic of China.

There is no rule *of* law but only rule *by* law.

And the CCP is of course above the law /11

Pieke downplays these fundamental differences.

Instead he suggests that outsider views of China can be reduced to 'either loving or hating China', thus trivialising any legitimate critique of the CCP under Xi Jinping's leadership /12

Once he has established this false binary choice of people supposedly either loving or hating China Pieke then reveals his own position.

It is encapsulated in his statement that "(in) vielen dieser Bereiche ist China uns voraus, im Positiven wie im Negativen" /13

Here he insinuates that China is ahead of the western world, and that this includes both *positives* and *negatives*.

He leaves it to the reader's imagination to think of what these positives or negatives may be /14

Yet strikingly—and dare I say, alarmingly—Pieke does not mention the concentration camps in Xinjiang /15

The concentration camps in Xinjiang are not just *a highly depressing reality*, but they also signify the merging of a CCP-led police state, AI-powered political control and a socially engineered cultural genocide of the Uyghur and Kazakh people /16

For Pieke the suffering of the Uyghur and Kazakh people doesn't seem to exist.

Instead, he suggests that we are *projecting fears* about our own future on China /17

This omission is deeply troubling since as the Director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics) in Berlin Pieke will not be able to feign ignorance about the deteriorating situation in Xinjiang /18

Finally, Pieke suggests that regardless of what we think of the PRC it will become a super power and remain globally influential for the next 20-30 years.

The unspoken message is clear: The rise of CCP-led mainland China is unstoppable, so don't even try to thwart it /19

Pieke's central argument raises a fundamental question, for the German public and @merics_eu funder.

What prompted him to write an op-ed in Sueddeutsche Zeitung which elevates the People's Republic of China as a political system *on par* with western liberal democracies? /20

@merics_eu His op-ed is such a crass departure from his predecessor Dr. Sebastian Heilmann—who had a reputation of being hawkish on China—that the question needs to be raised where @merics_eu is heading under Pieke's leadership? /End

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