And now for a shameless and vile act of self-promotion
THE ECONOMIST: “CREEPY EXPORTS...China's values-free security global police training is hard to compete with"
Gift link to The Economist coverage of the policing paper that Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Cameron Waltz and I discussed with Bill Bishop on his Sinocism live podcast.
Beware! Experimental Features Below:1
CAD-CHAB: “A Chart a Day (Chaos Held At Bay)”
This one shows you “China’s values-free security diplomacy” (as Alice Su of the Economist put it, pointedly) in action. The wide rates of adoption across the democratic spectrum should disabuse all those who think that most countries won’t work robot-hand-in-glove with Chinese security forces (firms and agencies) in order to emulate at least some part of China’s vaunted security state model.
Whatever norms and practices and standards are transmitted, it may help to think about it as a bundle of security goods & services that China provides to countries that share its “outlook” on national security (i.e., that regime security is priority #1). Export may imply a higher level of direct applicability in foreign countries, though…I told Bill on the podcast that “externalize” is the more academic but accurate way to think about how China’s security activities affect the international security system (or the national security systems of its partner states).
++PLUS (for a limited time only)++
Some of the maps and charts from the article are worth a second look:
MAD-MANG: “A Map a Day (Makes a Navy Gray)”
Seems like almost everyone outside North America and Western Europe is in the market for Chinese police training of some form.2 This MAP helps further visualize the intuition from the CHART above, and the Economist serves up a particularly fine pairing. Watch this space for more exquisitely tasteful visualizations TK!
Experimental new feature that may be included in future posts depending on whether and how they are received.
“Received” as in: do you think features like these are pointless and idiotic? Interesting and poetic? Don’t care either way? Inquiring minds want to know, so comment with feed back and as ever, please do share to show you care:
Police training comes in many forms. The paper in question gets deep into the malarkey about the types of trainings on tap from Chinese police academies and public security institutions. One insight: Shandong Police College is probably the most entrepreneurial and energetic proponent of Xi Jinping’s 总体国家安全观.