“Command of Mind”: China’s Stealthy Invasion to Destroy Freedom and Democracy

In the past few years, in Chinese universities there have been more than a dozen cases of students reporting their professors to authorities for “improper remarks” in classroom. The accused professors were subsequently punished, varying from issuing apologies to losing teaching positions. In March this year, such case occurred inTaiwan. Zhao Mingwei, an associate professor at Chung Yuan Christian University, was reported by a student from mainland China for making remarks in his class that the new coronavirus pneumonia originated in Wuhan, China. Pressured by the university authorities, Professor Zhao had to apologize twice.

Similar incidents have happened in the United States too. For example, in 2017, the Chinese students in the University of California, San Diego pressured the school to cancel an invitation to the Dalai Lama for the commencement speech. In November 2019, Columbia University’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) protested a panel discussion on the human rights situation in China and its overseas infiltration, forcing the school to cancel it at the last minute, citing security reasons.

Such incidents were generally considered to be gross interferences of freedom of speech and academic freedom. However, things may not be as simple as they seem to be. In fact, there is a hidden agenda behind these phenomena. First of all, it should be understood that such behavior, whether inside or outside China, is encouraged by the Chinese government. In China, the “student informants” system has been publicly implemented in colleges and universities. It is supposedly a student organization responsible for “providing teaching and learning information to school authorities".Setting up this kind of student organization means that such behaviors as students’ reporting their teachers and spying on each other have been institutionalized.

To understand why Chinese government encourages such behaviors, we need to begin with the “Command of Mind” concept.

It has been twenty years since the publication of Unrestricted Warfare: Thoughts on War and Tactics in the Age of Globalization. Inspired by this book, China’s younger generation military theorists, mostly born in and after 1970s, have brought some of the ideas proposed in this book further by carefully following new technological trends.  These military theorists are well-educated, many have doctorate degrees, and have had exchanges and visits with the military of other countries. Compared with their redecessors, they have broader views and are more aggressive with "theoretical innovations".

Talking about war, one cannot avoid the idea of "commanding power, that is, the “complete control in certain aspects of warfare”. In the so-called “old warfare” or "traditional warfare”, military operations are carried out in physical spaces, mainly sea, land and air. Therefore, “commanding power" means "command of the sea", "command of the land" and "command of the air".  On November 11, 1949, less than six weeks after Mao Zedong announced the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, the PLA Air Force was formally founded. It soon participated the Korean War. Lack of "command of the air”  led to PLA’s tremendous casualties, even Mao Zedong's eldest son died of incendiary bombs dropped by a US Douglas A-26 Invader.  Due to technological disadvantage, so far PLA is unable to overtake command of the air and the sea from the US which is perceived as China’s ultimate enemy. 

As the “Unrestricted Warfare” has subverted the “commanding power” concepts of traditional warfare, in the "new warfare" of the information and globalization era, CCP will not exhaust its national power to compete with the US military in commanding the air and the sea so as to avoid the fate of being dragged down by an "arms race" like the USSR. Instead, they are trying to seize the commanding powers of the “future warfare”.

In 2010, Guo Jiwei, author of Biotechnology Supremacy Warfare: Reconstructing Military Strategy for the New Era, proposed the concept of “biotechnogy supremacy”, namely, the commanding power in biological warfare. Four years later, the People's Liberation Army Publishing House published a book entitled Command of Mind: The Law of War and the National Security Strategy in the Global Media Era, proposing the concept "command of mind” as a “law of war”.

This book was written by two military authors. Zeng Huafeng, one of the two authors of this book, is dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of National University of Defense Technology, and the director of the Joint Institute of Political Theory Teaching Collaboration of the military academies. The other author, Shi Haiming, is associate professor and deputy director of Center for National Defense Technology and Social Development, National University of Defense Technology. He also serves as an editorial board member of National Defense Science and Technology magazine. In the same year of its publication, this book was selected for the recommended reading list for cadres of CCP Central Committee and government offices. It also won the university’s 2014 Award of Major Scientific Development.  In 2017, the book won the first prize of the Fourth Outstanding Achievement in Political Theory Research of the People’s Liberation Army issued by the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission, an indication that the “command of mind” concept is highly valued by CCP’s high level leaders.

What is “command of mind”? Simply defined, it means “commanding power in the national cognitive space”. In essence, it is the power to manipulate and control the way of thinking and cognition of individuals and groups. Authors of the book believed that the battlefield of "future warfare" included not only "physical space", namely natural spaces such as sea, land, air and outer space, but also "virtual space" or "cyber space" and "cognitive space" , a space composed of human emotions, thinking, will, psychological activities, beliefs and values. "National cognitive space" refers to the cognition of the majority of the people of a country regarding their own culture, history, collective memory, social awareness, etc. As one of the battlefields of the new war, "national cognitive space" can be understood as collisions and conflicts between cultures, political systems, and values of different countries. The result is the same as that of a “real” war; the only difference is that the winner will be able to subdue the enemy without a fight. Therefore, the CCP's "command of mind" is essentially a war between totalitarianism and democracy, freedom and repression in a different form.

After the Soviet Union disintegrated, the CCP thoroughly studied the failures of Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU) that led to its collapse. Ultimately, it was the people’s anger and hatred at the regime that led to USSR’s downfall. This was the reason when the crisis broke out, "not a single man", as Xi Jingpin said, came to its rescue. However, in the view of the two authors, CPSU was the victim of a silent “cognitive attack” by the United States. “The United States has carried out a subtle attack in the Soviet Union’s cognitive space," the authors claimed. As a result, "the meanings of such concepts as state, nation, politics, etc. were deconstructed and subverted. People’s thoughts and consciousness gradually fell into chaos. Under America’s perceptive manipulation and control, national heroes and historical memories used to be held noble, great, and glorious were finally deconstructed or subverted.” To avoid repeating CPSU’s mistakes, the CCP must firmly control “command of mind” and “defend national cognitive space”.

Since "command of mind" is a war in the national cognitive space, like traditional wars, one of the key points is to stabilize the home front, this is to say, “command of mind” must be applied to the Chinese people first. To this end, the CCP formulated the “four matters of confidence” ---- “confident in our chosen path, confident in our guiding theories, confident in our political system, and confident in our culture." Known as the “conficence doctrine”, it is used to resist “universal human values” and excessive punishment to curb “history nihilism”, that is, any question regarding the official narrative of history of China, CCP and PRC. In colleges and universities, the CCP has established an informant system to punish teachers making “inappropriate remarks”, and banned US social media networks and major newspapers, rigorously censors all forms of publications, etc. All these are actions to "defend the national cognitive space". 

The essence of these actions is to manipulate and control Chinese people’s mind, especially that of children and adolescents, by manipulating their way of thinking and shaping their perceptions about themselves and the world. As a result, “education” in China has been reduced to “mind training”, the goal is to train students to blindly accept official discourses and historical narratives. Saturated with official language and discourses, people have developed “conditioned reflections” to certain terms. For example, when it comes to Taiwan, their direct response is "liberation"; talking about the Dalai Lama, they immediately blurt out "separatist". This makes it difficult for many students to fit into the learning atmosphere in the West that requires independent and critical thinking. This is even more so on the Internet. When faced with different vies, many of them repeat what they were taught or just curse, rarely engage in meaningful discussions. In fact, Chinese people are the first victims of CCP’s “command of mind" tactic.

Meanwhile, CCP has launched a "command of mind” offensive by taking advantage of the basic values ​​such as freedom of speech, academic freedom, and market economy in Taiwan, Europe and the United States. This “invisible war” is taking place at this moment. For example, in the name of "promoting the Chinese culture", China has

established "Confucius institutes" in universities and "Confucius classrooms" in middle schools around the world, quietly exporting "red culture", acquired influential media through “trusted sources” and helped funding Chinese media in more than 60 countries to spread its propaganda, infiltrated European and American universities and cultural institutions through “Thousand Talents Program” and other pro-China organizations, funded think tanks in Europe and the United States to carry out research projects in line with Chinese discourses in order to influence their China policies.

For years CCP has been stealthily imposing censorship on any criticism on its policies and human right violations. In this way, CCP is slowly and steadily invading America’s "cognitive space" to influence and distort people's perception. On the other hand, CCP is taking every opportunity to “tell the China story” through their “great outreach programs”.  What is the "Chinese story"? Zeng Huafeng, one of the authors of the book, explains: "it is necessary not only to answer the question whether socialism China has a superior development advantage over the West at the moment, but also to answer from historical point of view that the Chinese socialist road is superior to the Western capitalist road."

The Wuhan pneumonia virus has caused great harm to the Chinese people, it also spread to the whole world, causing unprecedented damages to world economy. Faced with criticism from the whole world, the CCP has launched “command of mind” offensive disguised as “(dis)information campaign” at all levels.  As we can see, the offensive started from home front. In just a couple of weeks, the Chinese people overwhelmingly accepted the CCP’s claim that China was an anti-epidemic model, and "has won two months for the rest of the world”. Some experts and elites in other countries danced to CCP’s tune by praising its way of handling the virus.

People in the free world generally believe that freedom of speech and press is the best weapon to fight against propaganda. The worst propaganda we can think of is Goebbels's "a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth." The free world believes that as long as we uphold freedom of speech and press, we will defeat the Goebbel-style lies. However, now that the CCP has employed advanced scientific research results from modern psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science and other disciplines to take “command of mind", can we still be so confident? The CCP is studying our freedom of speech and take every opportunity to use it as a weapon against us. They have used a whole set of methods, not just repeating lies for a thousand times. They know the importance of freedom of speech to the system of free and democratic countries, and they attack the foundations of our constitution and force us into a passive and disadvantageous situation. How to establish a countermeasure against the CCP's "command of mind" under the premise of upholding the principle of free speech is a challenge that we have to face.

Chinese version: https://www.upmedia.mg/news_info.php?SerialNo=87910