Because of the prevalence of the Internet and its liberalizing tendencies in Chinese society, the Chinese Communist Party leadership has developed new strategies to fend off political, social and cultural challenges from this decentralized and borderless technology.
Under the rhetoric of protecting information security, China’s top-down model of Internet surveillance is composed of a dual strategy.
First, the government blocks online content and communication that it deems subversive. China has launched a sophisticated filtering system to contain the forces of political, social and cultural liberalization. Severe punishments have been imposed on Internet service providers, hosts and users who violate the rules.
Besides these punitive actions, the state adopts many pre-emptive methods to monitor cyberspace. Co-optation of private enterprises is crucial for neutralizing any crises that otherwise would have threatened the regime. One strategy is to implement a rigid business licensing system that demands obedience and cooperation from the private sector.
As a result, many Chinese online service providers assist the state in policing the Internet. The best example is the self-imposed censorship over any news about Hong Kong’s Umbrella movement last year and the “Jasmine Revolution” in the Middle East in 2011.
Second, the state fights fiercely for technical standard-setting and resource reallocation on a global stage under the guise of defending cybersovereignty, wanglu zhuquan (網絡主權). Beijing considers the Internet to be an infrastructural tool for state-building and is determined to nationalize its domestic cyberspace.
This assertive effort to impose ruling authority over the Internet as an economic sphere and a political space not only betrays the Western conception of a market-based, private-dominated Internet system, but also favors a new cyberstructure that weighs governmental authorities over non-state actors and national security over individual liberty and freedom.
More recently, outraged by escalating domestic discontent, the Chinese government has switched to a harsher approach through banning online criticisms of the state and forbidding citizens to use virtual private networks to visit Web sites outside the country. These aggressive policies of nationalizing cyberspace reveal a growing sense of confidence among China’s top leaders to challenge Western dominance over digital technologies worldwide and to institutionalize a regulatory framework for global and national Internet governance.
In a nutshell, the tension between Internet freedom and control has created a paradoxical feature in China’s cyberspace: Growing online freedom is accompanied by the intensification of government surveillance through formal and informal censorship.
Political dissidents are not alone in feeling burnt. As cyberspace becomes increasingly politicized, only the future can tell whether the Chinese model of Internet governance will appeal to the world in the 21st century.
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee is professor of history and co-director of the Global Asia studies program at Pace University in New York.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
RSS