China’s Digital Expertise And Export Strategy Concerning, Say Experts
China’s digital savvy and its influence over developing countries is concerning some experts.
May 27, 2021—China’s utilization of digital tools and its export to developing countries poses a serious threat to human rights agendas and the global order of democracy, according to Eileen Donahoe, executive director of Stanford University’s Digital Policy Incubator.
Donahoe said Wednesday that dictators and autocrats are capitalizing on digital resources to better repress and control their own people. Ethiopia shut down its internet nationwide last summer to quell protests demanding justice for the killing of Haacaaluu Hundeessaa. The Myanmar military has used social media to spread disinformation and sway public opinion throughout the Rohingya genocide. China has used its growing digital infrastructure to increase surveillance of its own citizens.
Steven Feldstein, author of The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology Is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance, says that developed countries are better equipped to use virtual assets to repress their citizens. However, countries like China are supplying these digital resources to underdeveloped countries.
In his book, Feldstein says there is little evidence of overt Chinese efforts to push other governments towards digital repression. However, Donahoe says, “China is pushing hard for governments to buy, in a more figurative sense, an entire model of digital authoritarianism as an alternative to democracy.”
She believes that underdeveloped democracies are fragile; repression is easy. If China supplies the technology that can be used for repression, emerging democracies (like Ethiopia) may sacrifice their democratic ideals in the name of control.
Domestic implications
Historically, information processing companies such as Google or Twitter have followed government takedown orders, regardless of the government’s motives. Recently, however, these companies have become increasingly bold in resisting such orders when the order clearly comes from a standpoint of political oppression.
For example, in the past few weeks, Google and Twitter both refused Russian orders to removed content from their websites following anti-Putin protests deemed illegal. Both companies were fined as a result. Donahoe wonders how long these companies should bear fines.
“How much should they be willing to pay out before leaving the country?” Donahoe asks. “Is it better or worse for the community if Twitter and Google are forced to leave Russia?”
Google was forced out of China in the early 2010s over a dispute regarding censorship and search results.
