Taiwan ranked first in exposure to China’s influence in media and society, according to an index published by the Taipei-based think tank Doublethink Lab on Thursday.
The China Index measures Beijing’s influence on 82 countries and areas around the world, in several domains including academia, domestic politics, economy, foreign policy, law enforcement, media, military, society and technology, Doublethink said on its Web site.
The project is part of the China In The World Network, a program launched in 2019 by the organization, which aims to bring together stakeholders investigating China’s global influence and disinformation strategies.
Photo: screen grab from the China Index Web site
This year’s index, with data collected from March last year to March this year, was released at an international conference Doublethink cohosted with the German Marshall Fund of the US in Berlin on Thursday.
The total scores show that Pakistan was the country most exposed to China’s influence, followed by Cambodia, Singapore and Thailand, with Peru and South Africa jointly ranking fifth.
Taiwan ranks 11th overall.
By region, Beijing’s influence on Southeast Asian nations is the most significant, followed by Central Asia.
Taiwan falls under “East and Southeast Asia,” a region where many countries were exposed to less Chinese influence than Taiwan, including South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan, the group’s data show.
In Europe, Germany, the UK, Georgia, Italy and Serbia were exposed to the most influence from China, while Belgium, Montenegro, Latvia, Albania and North Macedonia were exposed to the least, Doublethink’s data show.
The index showed that the diverse networks China has been building with other countries were more effective in promoting “China-friendly” policies in those places than intimidation, it said.
The volume of imports from China in any given country is directly correlated to the score it receives in the index, it said.
The number of Chinese students in a given country is highly significant to its score in the domain of academia, it said.
China tended to exert its influence by applying pressure on countries with a large GDP, a high GDP per capita and low level of corruption, Doublethink said.
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