The Chinese government's desire to use technology for social control and governance is becoming more and more apparent. As these technologies mature and abuses by the Chinese government increase under President Xi Jinping, the United States has vowed to confront the rise of "technological authoritarianism." The United States described its technology and that of its allies as a democratic alternative. But is it really so?
The Chinese government's Great Firewall is notorious on the Internet, preventing people in the country from accessing hundreds of thousands of websites outside of China. Using a combination of coercion and incentives, the authorities are forcing major Chinese internet companies to administer increasingly effective censorship of online speech, using human and artificial intelligence. Efforts to "expand" the firewall or disseminate sensitive information, such as the use of names or graphics, cannot compete in this distorted arms race.
In the physical and offline spaces, China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) over the past two decades has created an overlapping, multi-layered national structure of mass surveillance, weaving a tighter web around people. The government issues an identity card to every citizen and requires people to use this number to access many public and private services. The requirement for a "real name record" allows police to collect and compile a large database of personal files associated with identification. Meanwhile, the government has shut down the country with video surveillance cameras (CCTV). Authorities have purchased AI technology from private companies, some of which are linked to the government and military, to help them automatically analyze useful information from public surveillance image streams.
Chinese authorities' mass surveillance systems do not just attempt to identify specific individuals in the crowd. Its goal is to turn "unstructured information" into "structured information" by turning the messy view into something like a text file that can be easily parsed and searched automatically. In the field of view, the AI extracts information such as the size and orientation of the crowd, the color and type of objects present, including whether a person has acne or arched eyebrows, from live or archived videos. Therefore, searches for these attributes (“Where is that red umbrella?”) can be performed easily, even in real time.
Although Chinese police rely heavily on visual surveillance in the form of CCTV networks, their surveillance systems incorporate other technologies. This includes IMSI devices that find and track all connected mobile phones in a given area, automatically detecting the unique identifiers of people's phones and other connected devices, such as IMEI numbers and MAC addresses. Monitoring also includes a large collection of samples of people's speech, DNA, iris scans, and even their gait to form a multimedia image.
For example, you can get away with a 3D-printed mask to bypass facial recognition, but mass multimedia surveillance tends to be pervasive, ubiquitous, all-encompassing, and almost unavoidable. Police also use analytics to identify relationships and identify abuses. For example, in Xinjiang, where the government has cracked down on Uyghurs, a big data system known as the Integrated Joint Platform detects behavior that authorities consider suspicious, such as suddenly ringing phones, and reports these individuals to officers for questioning. : Arbitrary Arrest and Trial.
Many of these tracking technologies are not unique to China. But the depth, breadth, and intrusion of the Chinese government's mass surveillance of its citizens may be unprecedented in recent history. This mass surveillance goes unchallenged in China because there are few meaningful checks on state power, and the Ministry of Public Security is particularly irresponsible.
Other government tools, such as the central bank digital currency, which allow authorities to track and monitor individuals' financial transactions, among other capabilities, are not part of the MPS monitoring architecture. But they bear the character of the Chinese government's technological authoritarianism, a top-down form of government that controls people and heavily influences their behavior by defining what is and is not acceptable.
The emerging and expanding Chinese "technical sphere" includes other functional and profitable technologies. According to reports, Huawei 5G equipment has been certified in dozens of countries. Beijing's Beidou navigation system now dominates the US version of GPS in more than 160 countries. TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has gone global. Alibaba is making its way in Southeast Asia, and Tencent's WeChat is keeping the Chinese diaspora alive.
Although most of them are private companies based in China, they are all subject to varying degrees of pressure, censorship and surveillance by the Chinese government. Technological systems and their impact on society are notoriously difficult to study anywhere, since many of these systems are black boxes whose trade secrets are closely guarded by corporations. However, due to the absence of rule of law and freedom of the press in China, it is very difficult to obtain information from these companies or hold them responsible for violations.
China's technology envelope supports a fearsome and innovative governance model. A technocratic state ruled by strong men, offering the people a mirage of modernity and progress. By contrast, with their competitive elections, free media, and independent judiciary, democracies are slow, chaotic, captivated by vested interests, and unable to meet the challenges of our time. The technological bells and whistles of this governance model complement the Chinese Communist Party's overall effort to make democracies look outdated.
However, it is important not to overestimate the capabilities of the Chinese technological sphere. Chinese police ambitions for mass surveillance are often hampered by difficulties such as integrating data into information silos. But as the outline of technological despotism in China becomes increasingly clear, how have democracies, particularly the United States, responded?
The US government views the Chinese government as its main competitor, and this competition, including technological competition, has been described as valuable. For example, former President Donald Trump's Clean Network effort sought to encourage other governments and network operators to partner with companies that meet a set of criteria, and are located mostly in countries with democracies and the rule of law, but also because they have transparent ownership structures. . Exclusion of Chinese companies from US telecom networks. It has also restricted Chinese tech companies' access to US technology, finance and markets, citing human rights concerns. In turn, the Biden administration created the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, "new technologies based on shared democratic values, including respect for human rights."
Although these initiatives come from different sides of the growing political divide, they have one thing in common, which is the focus on values, as the words “democracy” and “human rights” permeate these policy documents.
However, this US government history has at least three flaws. First, the stated motive to promote certain values obscures the actual and protectionist policy of at least some measures related to Chinese technology. While it is true that TikTok poses a privacy risk, for example, sensitive data of nearly all US residents is also available in the commercial data brokerage market. That's because Congress has never established a common national standard that significantly limits how most companies collect, use, buy and sell personal information. If the Trump administration truly cares about privacy, it will prioritize passing a federal privacy regulation that appears to have bipartisan support in 2019.
Second, history suggests that technologies created and developed in the United States or other democracies are inherently and automatically more rights-respecting. It couldn't be further from the truth.
Democracy-based enterprises have actively participated in the Chinese state surveillance state since its establishment. Reportedly, North American companies helped build Beijing's surveillance architecture, including the Great Firewall. American companies continued to provide the "ingredients, financing, and knowledge" to bolster China's surveillance infrastructure. However, some of these same companies are listed as "clean" in Trump's Clean Network plan because they "refused to deal with government CCP monitoring tools."
Meanwhile, US mass surveillance, whose scope and invasions have been exposed by former NSA employee Edward Snowden, has inspired partners in the Chinese military police's surveillance complex. US surveillance of allies and partners, such as the European Commission or former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone, has left a lasting scar across the Atlantic. The idea that technology developed or produced by democracies (or even close allies) is inescapably safe, inherently secure, or rights-respecting has not always resonated in Europe.
Nationally, mass surveillance and data collection in the United States have undermined freedom of the press, the public's right to know, the right to legal assistance, and Americans' ability to hold government accountable, Human Rights Watch has documented. Even in cities across the United States, and especially in communities of color that are tightly controlled, the increasing use of facial recognition threatens people's right to walk the streets freely without government noticing.
Moreover, the business model on which some of the dominant US technology companies are based is fundamentally incompatible with human rights. This model is based on an online advertising ecosystem that captures and summarizes everything people say or do online, and extracts this data to increase interest and engagement across all platforms by selling targeted ads. The economics of these platforms depends on widespread user tracking and profiling that violates people’s privacy, and on feed algorithms that enhance and amplify divisive and exciting content.
Finally, the idea that incorporating “democratic values, including respect for human rights” can replace the guarantees and checks needed for democracy to function, is technical determinism and oversimplification of the functioning of technological systems.
The "good versus evil" narrative employed by the US government obscures its role and the role of Western corporations in undermining human rights and democracy, including their global influence. In other countries, the privacy of individuals and civil society organizations is threatened not only by mass surveillance systems sold by Chinese companies, but also by a host of technology companies, many of which are based on China. democracies, and business models that violate rights. and practices that they exported.
The United States can provide a real alternative to digital authoritarianism in China if it is willing to rethink and prioritize rights at home and abroad.
First, Congress should pass a strong federal data protection law regulating the collection, analysis, and sharing of personal data by companies, including security and intelligence agencies. It should protect sensitive personal data more aggressively, including biometric data, and consider banning law enforcement from using facial recognition. It should also regulate the use of data by advertisers and data intermediaries. In addition, the law should require human rights impact assessments of the global operations of US technology companies. Congress should also reform national security surveillance laws, such as repealing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to stop large-scale data collection.
The United States should work with like-minded governments to strengthen export control regimes at home and around the world to ensure that they do not contribute to cross-border pressures. This work should focus on the Chinese companies involved in developing and supporting abusive regimes. The technical field of surveillance in China is big business and more research is needed to find out how many actors there are, how they are interconnected and, most importantly, how many companies outside of China are associated with these abusive regimes, particularly in the form of technology. Dual uses and how to distinguish between them.
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More research is needed to see if US restrictions on Chinese tech companies are having the desired effect or whether these companies have been able to get around them. The United States should also prioritize its work with like-minded governments on various technical standard-setting bodies, such as the International Telecommunication Union, to include the human rights framework in technical standards, particularly Internet governance standards.
But curbing the worst trends with regulations alone is not enough. The US government should devote resources to testing bolder proposals, such as technological regulations, that could have a positive impact on democracy. The US nonprofit New Public has called on governments to develop "digital public spaces," public Internet spaces designed to maximize public goods so that people can "speak, share and interact without distorting or shaping those relationships." The Taiwanese government has partnered with a community hacker group known as g0v, a member of the group, Audrey Tan, the country's minister of digital technology, to enable participatory decision-making. Barcelona Decidim is another experiment that includes a participatory democracy platform.
The United States can become a true leader by curbing its worst technological impulses at home, keeping its technology out of the hands of others, and supporting the development of technologies that foster democratic participation. This will provide a real alternative to the digital authoritarianism of the Chinese government.
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