The opinions expressed by authors in this commentary do not necessarily represent the views of the China Institute or the University of Alberta.
Introduction
Censorship in China is not a new phenomenon and has a deep historic reach. Though censorship existed during and even predated the Republican Era (1912-1949), it has reached new structural heights in the People's Republic of China (PRC). China's ever-growing 'Great Firewall' (GFW, 防火长城) has become the world's most sophisticated censorship and surveillance project to date, and has spawned a gale of heated debate. Western countries have been especially critical of the Communist Party of China's (CCP) evolving and strengthening censorship regime. However, some governments in South America, Central Asia, and Africa have taken notice of and turned to China as a model surveillance state, adopting policies and looking to the CCP for artificial intelligence (AI) technology acquisition. Their aim is set in motion similar censorship projects and tightening control over their respective societies.
Party-State Priorities
The specter of the 'Arab Spring' across parts of the Middle East and North Africa, and the Colour Revolution serve as stark reminders of the effect of social unrest as well as state-altering movements facilitated or driven by social media and the Internet. Further social turbulence and organized activity elsewhere in the Middle East, notably Iran and the 2017-2018 protests that erupted, can elevate the importance of strict media management and regulation of material on the Web, principally in non-democratic or democratically-weak states for governments and regimes that seek to maintain tight control over society.
Xi Jinping's ruling over previous years offers a sign of autocratic strengthening and a retrenchment of political and social freedom. Although China maintains an overwhelming interest in economic growth and business in China, Xi has demonstrated at the same time that the CCP prioritizes strict and effective regulation of the Internet and online communication, though not necessarily total control.
The Party-state's bold policy development over the course of 2018 add force to the understanding that China prefers maintaining its proactive role in managing the media, foremost to block any media outlet from acting as a vehicle for seditious activity that can consequently undermine the core power and authority of the ruling party.
China's 'Great Firewall' - What It Is, How It Works
The GFW is a government censorship instrument that manages online content in the country. The instrument allows the CCP to regulate access to online information and govern communication. The regime is instrumental in controlling the flow of ideas within the country. In addition to the regulation of television, radio, and numerous forms of media, the internet receives a great deal of government attention, with some two million people employed to police online activity.
The primary instrument in a broader censorship regime in the country, the GFW has undergone several decades of development. China's state-wide network-security initiative, known as the National Public Security Work Informational Project (全国公安工作信息化工程) or the Golden Shield Project (金盾工程), was launched in 1993. The Golden Shield Project was the country's first mass-surveillance and censorship regime presiding over internet regulation with the main goal of preventing people within the PRC from accessing foreign websites.
Deng Xiaoping's 'Open Door Policy' in 1978 was a formal invitation for Western ideas and served as the basis for a new economic era based on trade and investment. At that time, however, CCP did not have to contend with the existence or implications of the Internet as a transmission belt for 'The Good, Bad, and the Ugly.'
Western communications companies played an instrumental role in helping to set-up the initial framework for China's subsequent censorship practices. In addition to Nortel Networks - a Canadian company headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario -, Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco Systems supplied China with critical technologies, including new communications devices, routers and firewalls, and networking capabilities. Efforts to develop its systems also involved teams of Chinese and foreign IT specialists, engineers, and researchers all working together to put the systems in place and get them up and running.
Development of the GFW was facilitated by rapid advancement in technology and telecommunication applications. Parallel to the speed of technological development in the world, China's internet age has been fundamental in altering the scope of the 'Golden Shield Project' and reorienting its trajectory to focus on the safeguarding of government authority and management of China's populace.
Filtering 'Socialist Immorality'
China's pursuit of cyber sovereignty is rooted in the State-party's interest in maintaining the status quo of government control, quashing political and social discord, and any potential undermining of the CCPs position in China's domestic politics. The GFW's role is most observable in areas of URL filtering, DNS cache 'poisoning' of spoofing, and virtual private network (VPN) blocking. While the State-party has indicated its intention to ban VPNs, connecting to a VPN within China is still possible. Groups advocating for social reform and democracy figure prominently on the governments filtering program. Any group that has been prohibited from operating in China is prevented from circulating its message online. This includes Buddhist- and Christian-inspired groups as well as political groups advocating independence such as the Hong Kong National Party (香港民族党), which was officially banned on the basis of national security. Local media criticism of the government is also prohibited online, including the dissemination content pertaining to sensitive areas.
In addition to extensive censoring of Wikipedia and Wikileaks, the CCP interdicts the activities of a long list of information and media companies such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Reuters, LeMonde, among others. Government suppression, repressed groups, 'Tiananmen', and ideas that suggest the possibility of dissent are blocked entirely. Some popular global social media sites that are blocked in China include: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, Flickr, Picasa, WordPress.com, Blogspot, Blogger, SoundCloud, Dropbox, Gmail, Google+, Google Hangouts, to name a few; but netizens in China are still able to access some of these from time to time. Video sharing through Youtube, Netflix, Vimeo, Daily Motion, and Nico Video is restricted.
Google Maps remains inaccessible in China without the use of a software that raises the security profile of a given network, such as using a proxy server or subscribing to a VPN, though VPNs come at a cost and are not always reliable. The GFW can detect online traffic associated with VPNs and subsequently eliminates the connection. Netizens in China are also likely to experience disruptions in blogging, the maintenance of websites considered destabilizing or insurrectionary, or that involve material deemed obscene in nature. In 2017, a man from Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region by the name Wu Xiangyang, felt the ire of the CCP when he was given a five-year jail sentence for selling VPNs. Further sentences followed for others contravened CCP rule. The decision took place during a rise in government crackdown on Internet censorship and sends a firm message for others in the country.
Building the Firewall from the West
Google has been cited as playing a key role in supporting autocratic rule in China and anti-democratic processes, more broadly, through its censored search product, dubbed 'Project Dragonfly'. The controversial initiative is an Android-specific app designed to restrict access to specific content in China such as democracy and human rights. Google left China in 2010, pointing to an abuse of government power through the curbing of free speech, but is now planning its return with a new search engine rife with censored results. 'Dragonfly' automatically filters out and results deemed objectionable by the CCP.
The push for business in China is deeply rooted in profit potential. China, with its nearly 1.4 billion population and the largest single population of Internet users in the world, is a vast market. Google's interest in re-entering China, at the same time, reveals a drastic turn from its previous (nearly a decade old) position amid the backdrop of CCP hacking practices and restrictions on rights and freedoms. The immediate and potential downside is the moral component of doing business with a government that pens an unsavoury human rights record, including extensive censorship. This invariably carries implications for the parent government of companies, particularly if companies are seen as a type of citizen.
Protest at Home
Google's 'Project Dragonfly' has since fueled protest right in the heart of Silicon Valley, and brings a number of disconcerting questions to the fore. In addition to concern over project secrecy and a lack of employee awareness about what they work on in the company, and how the company's products are going to be applied and where, the matter of normative ethics and moral judgment is at play.
Employees at Google have shown ample uneasiness over technology developer's level of power and the changing center of authority within a company. Resignations from Facebook and Google point to moral positions and the ethics of company practice over profit. Senior research scientist at Google, Jack Poulson, resigned this past summer, citing alarm over a 'pattern of unaccountable decision making' and the development of a product 'tailored to the censorship and surveillance demands of the Chinese government'. In August, human rights groups sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, reasoning that the CCP 'extensively violates the rights to freedom of expression and privacy; by accommodating the Chinese authorities' repression of dissent, Google would be actively participating in those violations for millions of internet users in China'.
Employee interests and pressure on companies can potentially elevate responsibilities to a federal level. Employees of Google have expressed their desire in the federal government assuming an official role in the work of companies whose initiatives are likely to run headlong into an array of ethical hazards. There is also room to treat Google's 'Dragonfly' as an initiative that can impact international trust as commodity.
Google's work on 'Dragonfly' follows previous efforts to follow the political interests of the State-party. LinkedIn's presence in China was aided by the company agreeing to block certain online content. Facebook issues raised controversy over CCP spying on its citizens and potentially punish them.
Exporting a Culture of Censorship and Security
China is not alone in building its wall. Indeed, other governments rely on innovative technologies as means of securing the societies they govern and containing dissent among their populations.
Over recent years China has been exporting is censorship technology to such countries as Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Belarus, Russia, Egypt, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan, among others. Interest from these countries has in part fueled a rise in foreign acquisition as well as new system set-up and training of AI technology for security purposes. Huawei, the largest telecommunications provider in the world, has established its 'Safe Cities' model in more than 30 countries - allowing not-so-democratic regimes 'high-tech' means of keeping a watchful eye their populations, their behavior, and extent to which they fall in-line with authority.
The US and UK have firewall projects of their own but not all firewalls are created equal. In the UK, web blocking and Internet censorship addressed the so-called smutty, including child pornography and the broadcasting of extremist material. Critics have drawn concern from the possibility of random- or over-blocking, and warranted fears of government overreach.