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Circumventing the Great Firewall

Podcasts Jan 15, 2019 Xiao Qiang

The Chinese authorities' control of citizens' online activity is intensifying under President Xi Jinping. But for Xiao Qiang, an expert on Chinese censorship at the University of California, Berkeley, the more worrying trend is a shift toward dystopian forms of digital domination that could affect people worldwide.

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j. von Hettlingen Jan 18, 2019

Xiao Qiang highlights how China is using artificial intelligence and big data techniques to exert even greater control over its population. It boasts some 800 million Internet users, and subjects them to the world’s largest censorship operation. The Great Firewall – the Chinese government concept of “content security” – blocks hundreds of thousands of websites from outside the country. Apart from information surveillance, it monitors public opinion.
Since the 1990s the internet had provided Chinese citizens a critical channel of communication, offering them an unprecedented opportunity to express political views and criticise the state – despite censorship – on a variety of issues ranging from official corruption to peasants’ protests over land grab, from welfare to social grievances, human rights, and income inequality etc. What leaders most fear is a well-informed and critical citizenry, which demands transparency and directly challenges their privilege, ideological control, and the legitimacy of the Communist Party.
Subsequently the Chinese government has made control of the internet a high policy priority. It has been intensifying its crackdown since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. Government officials have learned that they can not merely target internet users, but must focus on information technologies, access to the network, and the companies that provide these tools. They operate under a political agenda to control and dominate content and to suppress oppositional views and voices. Surveillance of users and enforced self-censorship of companies is part of this overall strategy.
The government had passed laws, set up an internet police force, and trained the infamous "Fifty Cent Army" which are undercover commentators hired by the authorities and tasked with manipulating public opinion to the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party. It also forces internet companies, foreign and domestic, to self-police the postings on their sites. The content must do nothing to defame the state’s socialist road with Chinese characteristics, as well as to harm its priorities or policies.
For Xiao, the more worrying trend is a shift toward dystopian forms of digital domination that could affect people worldwide. A new generation of digital technology is being used to collect information - from facial and voice recognition to DNA records and a ubiquitous network of surveillance cameras. Assembling it all together could allow the state “to identify and quash opposition in advance.” He says Xi Jinping’s “Brave New China” is building a “responsive tyranny,” or a “digital totalitarian state,” which will be “a nightmare for Chinese citizens and for those all over the world who value human freedom.” But he is optimistic that this “Great Firewall” would be torn down one day.
For now China seems willing to bear the economic and scientific costs, as well as potential damage to its credibility for the sake of regime survival. For the international community, Beijing’s cyber-policy sends a message what a more powerful China would mean to the liberal world order, which prioritises values such as freedom of speech. It also reflects the paradox inherent in China’s efforts to promote itself as a champion of globalisation, while simultaneously advocating a model of internet sovereignty and closing its country to information and investment from abroad.
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