With its enormous economic power, China is now a global political and military force engaged in an ideological struggle with the West. This new authoritarian power is using democratic systems to undermine democracy in pursuit of its global ambitions.

Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg outline in their new book, Hidden Hand, the nature and extent of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence in operations across the Western world – in politics, business, universities, think tanks and international institutions such as the UN and WHO.

Clive Hamilton is an Australian author and academic. His influential books include “Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia,” “Growth Fetish,” “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change” and “Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene.” For fourteen years he was the executive director of The Australia Institute, a think tank he founded. A professor at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, he has held visiting academic positions at the University of Oxford, Yale University and Sciences Po. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, The New York Times, Times Higher Education Supplement, Nature and Scientific American.

Mareike Ohlberg is a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. She has an MA in East Asian Studies from Columbia University and a PhD in Chinese Studies from the University of Heidelberg. She has authored a doctoral thesis on Chinese propaganda targeted at foreign audiences, and was a co-author of the landmark report “Authoritarian Advance: Responding to China’s Growing Political Influence in Europe.” Her articles have been published in The New York Times, The Neue Zuercher Zeitung and various other European media.