In the past few decades, the demands of China’s citizens have grown alongside its economy. Corruption is a major contributor to popular discontent: in 2008, scandals over the collapse of poorly-constructed schoolhouses during the Great Sichuan Earthquake and the sale of contaminated infant formula damaged the CCP’s popular legitimacy. The number of public protests and other demonstrations continues to rise as citizens demand state accountability on issues ranging from land grabs by local officials to gross violations of minority rights in Tibet and Xinjiang. Economic growth rates have begun to slow, and economists warn of a coming real estate bubble in the Chinese economy. The 2013 trial of former CCP politician Bo Xilai exposed CCP concern that the above challenges could lead to a split within the party; Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and several other initiatives are seen, in part, as efforts to prevent intra-party schisms from emerging.

The CCP’s concern about the potential for wider societal discontent has resulted in increasing censorship, surveillance, and repression of activists and online dissidents. Scholars suggest that this hardline stance stems from the CCP’s fear of an organized, nationwide opposition movement. The September 2014 protests in Hong Kong likely sharpened this fear.

Under Xi, the CCP has met these challenges with threats to political freedom at home and abroad. A national campaign to crackdown on dissidents and co-opt civil society organizations is underway. China has shared its repressive laws and strategies with other authoritarian regimes. As part of China’s foreign aid strategy, the CCP offers free trainings to foreign political party members, journalists, police officers, and government officials which strengthen ties between government elites in non-democratic regimes and facilitate implementation of mechanisms for authoritarian control in other countries.

China and Chinese telecomm companies are also responsible for the export of censorship and surveillance equipment to governments in Ethiopia, Iran, and elsewhere, aiding in the subversion of a free and open Internet and media system more generally.

China is an active shaper of international norms and institutions, using its influence within the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations to promote norms and practices that benefit and protect authoritarian regimes, such as the principal of non-interference and the refoulment of political refugees. This is especially evident in China’s role in the creation of alternative global financial institutions, such as the BRICS Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Beijing has also played a leadership role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which some observers have called the world’s best-known club of authoritarians. Working in concert with many of its SCO allies in global-level discussions about Internet governance, China has championed principles which attempt to justify increased state control over the Internet, such as “Internet sovereignty.”

China sets the standard for censorship of domestic media, and it has used its enormous population as leverage to induce mainstream Western Internet companies and media outlets to comply with its domestic censorship regulations. Even as China seeks to suppress alternative narratives at home, it has pushed its own narrative abroad through the international expansion of its own state media, especially China Central Television, and the funding of research and cultural institutes which subvert the academic freedom of their host institutions. At the same time, China has sought to control independent sources of information about China by revoking travel visas for foreign correspondents and academic researchers who publish on sensitive topics.

Traditionally suspicious of the Internet’s potential as an organizing tool for dissidents, the CCP has tightened control over cyberspace beyond the infamous “great firewall of China” and the “fifty cent party” of paid, state-friendly internet commentators and trolls. As Chinese citizens learn to bypass these restrictions, China has turned to new measures to suppress online dissent, including legislation mandating jail sentences for those who spread online “rumors” and a campaign subjecting dissident bloggers to arrest, abuse, and the extraction of forced confessions.

Given Beijing’s significant financial resources and emerging presence on the world stage, the policy priorities and preferences of the Chinese government have a demonstrable impact on developments outside of China’s borders and on the international system as a whole. As the CCP works to maintain power at home and protect its interests abroad, its actions are often detrimental to democratic governance and human rights worldwide. Rather than adopting more flexible policies to address increasing demands for accountability at home, China is bending international norms and rejecting democratic practices to steel itself against political change.