As Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg explain in Hidden Hand, Western publishers and other organisations have only become more attuned to and compliant with the CCP’s expansive definition of political correctness. The problem is less the ‘hidden hand’ of the Party, which is often far more transparent about its intentions than the sinister title of the book implies. It is more the ‘invisible hand’ of capitalism, which has driven some universities, companies, and politicians to sell out their principles in the hope of tapping the riches of the Chinese market. As Hamilton and Ohlberg argue, the skill of the CCP lies in exploiting this profit motive and other ‘weaknesses of democratic systems’ in order to curb criticism, win political influence, and advance its global ambitions.

Hidden Hand is a follow-up to Hamilton’s most recent book, Silent Invasion (2018), which detailed the CCP’s efforts to make friends and influence people in Australia. Working alongside Ohlberg, a German scholar of China, Hamilton has expanded the lens of investigation to the wider Western world, with a focus on Europe. The new book mirrors its precursor. The title is overwrought. And the authors deploy a curious mix of unnecessary hyperbole and dry case studies (the glossary and endnotes comprise one third of the book). But the bulk of the material within is genuinely concerning.

For the uninitiated, Hidden Hand provides a broad overview of the CCP’s struggle for influence in the West. For many experts, it will help to connect the dots, even if they are familiar with many of the book’s sources and question its overall tone.

Rather than uncovering secret intentions, the authors examine key statements by the CCP and its general secretary, Xi Jinping, better known in the West as China’s president, to demonstrate the scale of the Party’s ambitions to mould the global order in its favour. Then, using a combination of primary and secondary sources, they document how the CCP has sought to advance its interests by ‘using business to pressure government’, ‘using the local to surround the centre’, and ensuring that, in Xi’s words, those who are ‘eating the CCP’s food’ must not be allowed to ‘smash the CCP’s cauldron’.

Many of the cases they cite are already well known to academics and journalists, from the promotion of CCP-controlled media overseas to commercial espionage in the United States. But they shine a fresh light on ties between CCP-linked entities and business and political élites in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The real value of Hidden Hand is not in its revelations but in the way the authors have compiled so many examples of the CCP’s ‘United Front’ activity across so many different sectors and countries, albeit all in the Western world. There is something deeply unnerving about how easily influential people can be encouraged to parrot CCP talking points about Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the South China Sea.

Xi Jinping and Barack Obama at a White House state dinner during Xi's 2015 state visit (photograph by Pete Souza/White House via Wikimedia Commons)

Yet, Hamilton and Ohlberg regularly undermine their own case by overreaching. While their research on links between British businesspeople and the CCP is illuminating, there is no basis for their sensational claim that ‘Britain has passed the point of no return, and any attempt to extricate itself from Beijing’s orbit would probably fail’. In fact, the United Kingdom is joining Australia and the United States by belatedly rejecting Huawei technology and by taking a harder line on Beijing’s encroachments in Hong Kong and elsewhere.

Similarly, they seem too easily taken in by the rhetoric of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a lofty but largely unrealised plan to intensify China’s economic linkages with Europe and Asia. China’s outward investment drive has had – and will continue to have – a significant impact on the rest of the world, giving the CCP greater political influence and economic power. But the BRI is not ‘the most powerful vehicle by which Beijing is changing the postwar international order’, let alone ‘the ultimate instrument of … economic blackmail’.

While the CCP sets out its grand global designs through the BRI and the United Front, its actions tend to be more like a game of whack-a-mole. Hamilton and Ohlberg overlook that improvisational tendency as they give Beijing more credit than it deserves in a bid to highlight the urgency of the CCP challenge. For the most part, Beijing’s diplomats, spies, and supporters are relying on the naïveté, complacency, and greed of their interlocutors in the West.

Hamilton and Ohlberg show that there are plenty of takers, from former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. But are these politicians really committed to fighting the CCP’s corner, or are they just a cheap date for anyone willing to pay the bill?

Hidden Hand reveals as much about the fragilities of Western democracies as it does about the dark arts of the CCP. The authors’ eminently sensible conclusions will disappoint academics and security analysts spoiling for another fight about China policy. They warn that ‘democracies won’t be able to change China, but they can defend their most important institutions’. That will require reforms to bring more transparency to lobbying, as Australia did in 2018, and to political fundraising. It will also require more coordination between Western allies and a willingness to bear some costs if China seeks to punish nations that defend their sovereignty. Above all, there is a need for more research and public debate about how to handle a state whose values are inexorably opposed to ours but whose economy is inextricably linked.

Hidden Hand will divide expert opinion along much the same lines as Silent Invasion, and the breathless broader debate between ‘panda huggers’ and ‘dragon slayers’. Those who are calling for a tougher stance against Beijing will welcome Hidden Hand for bringing the CCP’s nefarious intentions and its cast of ‘useful idiots’ in the West to public attention. Those who are calling for a rethink of the current pushback will see the book as unbalanced and providing ready fodder for Sinophobes, despite the authors’ insistence that opposing the CCP is about values and politics, not race and nationality.

But a more dispassionate reading of the book will leave most readers with a sense of sad inevitability about the deterioration of relations between China and the West. Unlike the Soviet Union, the CCP does not want to export communist revolution or to ‘shape the world in its own image’, as Hamilton and Ohlberg put it. Rather, it seeks to ‘make the world safe for the CCP’, ensuring that external threats do not undermine the legitimacy of the Party at home. Yet, because of the global nature of China’s power today, the CCP must bring the battle for influence to the far-flung fields portrayed in Hidden Hand.