Underappreciated by the West is despite its apparent engagement policy, the CCP has always believed that the West is intent on regime change, and that fear of democracy and nonstop anxiety about its own legitimacy underpins a lot of words and actions from Beijing - tough not all

A few other actions, like the militarization of SCS, might come from the angle of maximizing the interest of China as a country, but so many others, especially those causing significant controversies in the West and widely misunderstood in the West are just driven by CCP's fear

The problem about Confucius Institutes is (okay, largely) neither spying nor infiltration, but circumventing academic freedom - not allowing free discussions of "sensitive" subjects is not at least mainly or foremost intended to INFLUENCE Western discourse, but a CCP self-defense

There was quite a heavy discussion here about taking CCP's words at its face value, especially those declaring the success of China offered an alternative model for the world. It's been interpreted as challenging U.S. leadership and Western values/system.
In my opinion, those

declarations first and foremost are for the Party cadres and Chinese people: look how successful China has become under the CCP's leadership, we can now even be an example in the world! But at its core it's to shore up domestic legitimacy against democracy aka regime change.

Chinese actions internationally are far below what's been characterized in the Western media as challenging U.S. leadership. The sporadic projects here and there under one Beijing-friendly govt? Just a few yrs that govt got voted out. Bejing is never serious about these talks.

The most it has done are only piecemeals. A bridge in Maldive? a new govt now. Railway in Malaysia? Look at what happened. BRI memo can co-opt Italy? Pireas port in Greece? Give me one example where they've supported Beijing in high-profile incidents? I can't find any.

Who - China, Italy, Greece - is naive enough to believe some infrastructure projects are gonna matter politically enough to grab them from EU and transatlantic alliance? It's never gonna happen and Beijing knows it.

CCP's understanding of regime change is very low bar. Maybe in Washington, the idea of regime change is when W said in public he's gonna topple Saddam Hussein. In Beijing's mind, CIA is everywhere, not merely gathering intelligence, but mostly pushing for regime change.

There's a deep fear, because at its core Beijing knows authoritarianism is on the wrong side of history and must stay on high alert all the time. Civil society groups are tools for regime change, so are human rights lawyers, and law professors - they are everyone everywhere

The censorship via Chinese money and tech exported to outside mainland China is regarded as self-defense, NOT offense. Bill Barr said yesterday China was censoring Hollywood. Yes, but in Beijing's view it's just self-defense, not intended to change America.

Censorship in TikTok, WeChat and everything else are largely the same. However, the net results could reasonably be seen as the CCP is unintentionally exporting its way of life to the West in the process. But there was never a master plan for that.

But maybe it's a luxury to talk about intentions - sometimes or more often than not they just don't matter any more.

But I think this thread is my argument with the testimony from Daniel Tobin in front of @USCC_GOV https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/testimonies/SFR%20for%20USCC%20TobinD%2020200313.pdf

if given enough time and budget, one could write a completely different narrative from Tobin's like he did, faithfully based on CCP's public documents and speeches. Party speak always does very good hedging if you know it.

a big moment of truth in terms of Xi was his speech as Vice President in 2009 in Mexico.
moment of truth was he was not No.1 then, also it was not a totally public speech - the audience were Chinese in Mexico so 自己人 “ourselves”. I'm sure he was speaking his mind then.

if you ask Chinese who don't deeply understand US narrative, they have a deeeeeep sense of being wronged. They GENUINELY believe China has not done aggression in recent years - what aggression and assertiveness are you talking about?