As Chinese authorities struggle to contain the deadly Wuhan coronavirus, they are turning to a sophisticated authoritarian playbook honed over decades of crackdowns on dissidents and undesirables to enforce quarantines… Read more »
While democrats once believed that innovations in information and communications technology and data analysis would promote more open societies, the actual effects of these tools have been mixed, according… Read more »
In the fall of 2017, Xi took the podium at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to claim that China’s version of one-party autocracy offered an option for “countries that… Read more »
As autocracies have learned to co-opt new technologies, they have become a more formidable threat to democracy. In particular, today’s dictatorships have grown more durable. Between 1946 and 2000—the year… Read more »
The post-truth world of alternative facts, deepfakes and other digitally disseminated disinformation is the territory explored by Samuel Woolley, an assistant professor in the school of journalism at the University of Texas, in The Reality… Read more »
A leading German university has been plunged into scandal after it emerged that it had signed a contract binding it to abide by Chinese law while accepting hundreds of thousands… Read more »
When Zulhumar Isaac’s parents disappeared amid a wave of detentions of ethnic minorities, she had to play a perilous game with the state to get them back, Sarah A. Topol… Read more »
Midnight military coups and backroom deals did not bring strongmen to power in former democracies that have joined the ranks of the world’s autocracies. Everyday frustrations over high health-care costs,… Read more »
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the Chinese Communist Party “the central threat of our times” on Thursday, even as he sought to talk up the prospects of a United… Read more »
A digital ecosystem that can “defend and promote democracy” is needed to counter autocrats’ digital warfare, a top EU official said Thursday. Russia and China* are waging a “digital war”… Read more »