China is exporting its model of digital authoritarianism abroad using its sprawling tech industry and massive infrastructure projects, offering a blueprint of “best practices” to neighbors such as Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam, a human rights group has warned.
In 2015, two years after launching its massive Belt and Road Initiative, China launched its Digital Silk Road project to expand access to digital infrastructure such as undersea cables, satellites, 5G connectivity and more.
Article 19, a UK-based human rights group, argues that the project was about more than just expanding access to Wi-Fi or e-commerce.
The Digital Silk Road “was as much about promoting China’s technology industry and developing digital infrastructure as it was about transforming standards and Internet governance norms away from a free, open and interoperable Internet towards a fragmented digital ecosystem based on “Censorship is building up and surveillance where China and other networked autocracies can thrive,” the watchdog said in a report published in April.
The 80-page report describes how the Chinese state is inextricably linked to its technology industry, a key player in the Digital Silk Road project, as private companies such as Huawei, ZTE and Alibaba act as “proxies” of the Communist Party.
China has signed dozens of technical standard agreements with 49 countries involved in the Silk Road, while other countries in the region, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Thailand, have agreed to further communiqués with Beijing on digital infrastructure.
The Asia-Pacific region is particularly important to Beijing, Article 19 says, because it has “strategic importance for China as it introduces next-generation technologies and seeks global partners to normalize its authoritarian approach to internet governance.” .
According to the 2019 article, some countries such as Cambodia modeled their digital governance after China. Since 2021, the Southeast Asian country has been working to build a “National Internet Gateway” in the style of China’s “Great Firewall,” restricting access to many Western media outlets, Wikipedia and social media sites such as Facebook and X.
Others also expressed concerns about the project.
“The Cambodian government says this will strengthen national security and help crack down on tax fraud. But the impact on Cambodian network connections will affect everyone who connects to these networks, which could have serious consequences for social and economic life and potentially threaten freedom of expression,” the Internet Society warned in December.
Nepal and Thailand are both reportedly interested in building a similar Article 19 firewall and have played an active role in monitoring ethnic minority Tibetans and Uyghurs living abroad on Beijing’s behalf.
Under President Xi Jinping, the line between the Communist Party and the Chinese state has become significantly blurred. The party has also extended its influence deep into the private sector, establishing cells in more than 90 percent of China’s 500 largest companies, according to Article 19.
These companies, including tech giants, have been drafted into Beijing’s “united front” influence campaign to improve China’s image abroad and expand its global influence, Article 19 says, despite promises that they are independent of the state.
Concerns about data, privacy and potential influence campaigns have helped fuel a push in the United States to ban TikTok, the hugely popular Chinese video app. Those behind the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act argue that the app could allow the Chinese government to access user data and influence Americans.
Security concerns have also affected the businesses of companies such as Huawei and ZTE not only in the US but also in other democracies such as Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the UK. In the US, the two companies were classified as “national security threats” and banned from building critical infrastructure.
Beyond China’s borders, closer ties between the state and tech companies have also raised questions about how issues such as privacy or censorship abroad are handled by Chinese tech companies that operate undersea cables that give them de facto control over vast swaths of the global internet Traffic.
Article 19 said it was “plausible that China would share such data with allied authoritarian governments or use it as part of its influence over others. Without greater transparency and oversight, these concerns cannot be ruled out.”