CCP Weapons of Mass Persuasion

Speakers: Dr. Jackie Deal (President, Long Term Strategy Group) & Ms. Ella Harvey (Public Service Fellow, John’s Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies)

Date: 2 May 2023

Speaker Session Summary

SMA hosted a speaker session with Dr. Jackie Deal (President, Long Term Strategy Group) and Ms. Ella Harvey (Public Service Fellow, John’s Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies) as part of its SMA INDOPACOM Speaker Series.

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) origin is chronically understudied despite its strategic importance. The competitive strategy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today relies on information operations and techniques of cooption and subversion that the CCP learned during its first decade, the 1920s, coupled with approaches to conventional warfare honed soon thereafter. Dr. Deal and Ms. Harvey identified three recurring models or phases of CCP strategy: 1) internal takeover – coopting an adversary by appearing to cooperate or form a partnership with it, finding sympathizers in the nominal partner’s camp, and shaping joint activities in directions favorable to the CCP; 2) preparing for a break – exacerbating divisions within the partner’s camp and inflating the CCP’s capabilities to demoralize the partner in advance of a split; and 3) scripted military confrontation – launching a surprise attack designed to enable the CCP to exploit its superior preparation and positioning relative to the partner.

The CCP initially applied models 1 and 2 against the Kuomintang (KMT), the dominant Chinese revolutionary party in the 1920s. Soviet Comintern representatives in China who mentored the CCP’s founders, teaching them propaganda, recruitment, and organizational techniques, encouraged them to join the KMT in what became known as the First United Front. The CCP used this nominal alliance with its bigger, better-armed rival to siphon off KMT members and resources for several years before the KMT awakened to this dynamic and tried to exterminate the CCP. The CCP fled to the countryside but survived by applying the skills it had learned to ingratiate itself with local rural populations. With their support and by exploiting superior terrain knowledge, the party effectively countered four KMT siege campaigns.  The KMT only succeeded in its fifth campaign, driving the CCP to retreat toward the Soviet border in the mid-1930s, but again with Soviet encouragement, the CCP was able to form a Second United Front with the KMT in 1937.

The CCP leveraged the Second United Front to acquire resources that the U.S. was sending the KMT for the war with Japan. The target of the CCP’s strategy was thus not only the KMT but also the U.S. This was the period of the first official contact between the party and the U.S. government, and the CCP applied model 1 by cultivating a positive relationship with, among other sympathetic Americans, the journalist Edgar Snow, who then wrote a bestseller depicting the CCP as friendly, noble, and proto-democratic. The CCP’s internal takeover peaked when it hosted a U.S. military delegation, the Dixie Mission, at Yan’an. The party then transitioned to model 2 as the war ebbed and the U.S. became an obstacle to its takeover of territory left behind by the Japanese. Model 3 was evident when CCP forces captured one small U.S. detachment and killed the leader of another as he sought access to an airfield to evacuate former Japanese POWs. 

Despite this record, the CCP was able to initiate another cycle of the three models or phases vis-a-vis the U.S. only a few months later when President Truman sent George Marshall to broker a coalition government between the KMT and the CCP. It is a testament to the success of the CCP’s model-1 work that Washington viewed the CCP as a governing partner for the KMT even after the CCP had ambushed U.S. forces. If the U.S. had not been so deluded, it might have made different choices at the outset of the Chinese civil war, and the war might have turned out differently. 

Based on this history, the presenters emphasized the centrality of perception shaping or cognitive warfare in the CCP’s strategy, and its relevance to military outcomes. They pointed out that given the wealth of sensors at its disposal, the U.S. is actually well-positioned to compete in the information space. Working with like-minded partners, U.S. forces could use their many collection platforms and installations globally to counter CCP information operations with relevant facts. 

To request access to the video, please email Mariah Yager, mariah.c.yager.ctr@mail.mil.

Briefing Materials

Link to publication: https://www.andrewwmarshallfoundation.org/new-publication-ccp-weapons-of-mass-persuasion/

Jackie Deal is President of Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG) and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Ella Harvey is a Public Service Fellow at John’s Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.