China’s Soft Sell of Autocracy Is Working

"For decades, the United States has promoted democracy around the globe.
But amid mounting U.S.-Chinese competition, a question has arisen: is
Beijing attempting to export its authoritarian political system in a
similar way? No, says Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “We do not seek to
‘export’ a China model,” he told an assembly of world leaders in 2017,
“nor do we want other countries to ‘copy’ our way of doing things.” It
would be a mistake, however, to think that Beijing is not seeking to
shape global opinion in favor of China’s political system. The Chinese
Communist Party’s efforts to promote autocracy are simply not as
explicit as the United States’ hard-sell efforts to export democracy;
instead, the CCP is soft-selling autocracy.
To that end, the party has invested heavily in public diplomacy and
influence operations intended to make the global public more accepting
of its nondemocratic political system. It has developed a far-reaching
program of trainings, conferences, and workshops that teach CCP-style
management of the press, the Internet, the military, and civil society
to foreign political leaders. And despite a perception among some
Western policymakers and academics that these efforts are tone deaf,
China’s external influence operations are more sophisticated, effective,
and likely to succeed over the long run than many in the West believe.
They are aimed primarily at people in the developing world, where many
see the so-called China model as effective at delivering what matters
most to them: a path out of grinding poverty and into the global middle
class.
In the face of Beijing’s increasingly resonant foreign propaganda,
Washington has failed to rise to the challenge. It has yet to adopt a
coherent message about the merits of the U.S. political system. In
contrast to China’s messaging, which is tightly focused on winning over
audiences in the developing world, U.S. messaging is scattershot and
less persuasive."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/chinas-soft-sell-autocracy-working