16 February 2021, NIICE Commentary 6815
Dechun Zhang & Dr. James Gomez
The COVID-19 offers the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a reasonable excuse to expand their use of digital authoritarianism in the name of public health and safety. Digital authoritarianism refers to a way for governments to control their citizens through technology, inverting the concept of the internet as the engine of human liberation, according to Adrian Shahbaz, the Director for Technology and Democracy at Freedom House.
China’s Public Surveillance
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese government increasingly strengthen the media and internet surveillance. The surveillance methods including restricting the use of virtual private networks, deleting a large amount of online content, deleting social media accounts and mobile phone applications, and arresting hundreds of internet users for their online speech. Chinese citizens were restricted on using the virtual private networks, which lead them hard to expose or interact to the outside world’s news. And combined with China’s state propaganda, it created an information bubble that ensures the Chinese public isolate themselves from foreign criticism on China.
Chinese social media networks have also censored the terms related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. According to the Citizen Lab, more than 2,000 keywords related to the pandemic were suppressed on the Chinese messaging platform WeChat between January and May in 2020.
Moreover, Chinese government also employs the surveillance uses on political and social persecution in China. Digital authoritarianism also incorporates technological incentives and Chinese Social Credit System, that only allows compliant citizens to fully participate in society and the economy. Chinese Social Credit System is a punishment system, that institutionalizes data transmission between private technology companies and government agencies. Chinese government punished and censored dissent on internet platforms and other places in accordance with the “fake news” law. One of the salient examples is the Doctor Li Wenliang. Although Chinese government credited the contribution of Doctor Li Wenliang afterward, as the first doctor in the world to warn people about this new virus. He was reprimanded by the Chinese government for spreading allegedly false statements about the outbreak on internet on 3 January 2020. Ironically, the CCP also manipulated the public by spreading state disinformation such as the origin of the Coronavirus was from US, but no “fake news” law to punish the CCP. Hence, the purpose of “fake news” law instead of controlling misinformation, it mainly to censored the content that are critical to the government that can destabilized them.
It is understandable why digital platforms sometimes automatically censored the neutral references to the COVID-19. However, it is interesting to observe that the CCP did not immediately censor the posts criticizing authorities at digital platforms at the early stage of the pandemic. This interesting issue reflect the dilemma between the cooperation of Chinese technology companies and government. On the one hand, profit-motivated tech companies need engaging content to retain user; on the other hand, they face intense pressure from the Cyberspace Administration of China. Therefore, it is evident to observe the China’s selective censorship to serve state business, to maintain social control, and build national capabilities to enhance CCP legitimacy. Moreover, in the name of virus control, Chinese government started to cooperate with tech companies to use big data for the surveillance on the public, collecting data include online communication, travel logs, records on education and health, facial scans, and bio data. Afterward, these data will be aggregated and synthesized through AI algorithms for monitoring and predicting problematic behavior.
For instance, Chinese tech companies Megvii and Baidu have installed infrared sensors in some areas of the Beijing tube system to test passengers’ temperature, in the name of improving the efficiency of identifying suspected cases in crowded public places. China has the largest surveillance networks in the world, with more than 20 million closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in public spaces across the country.
So, what are the Impact of the COVID-19?
The virus offers the Chinese government a cover to expand its surveillance in the name of “avoiding people with bad intentions use the epidemic to disrupt public order,” to suppress the dissenting voice. Consequently, it silenced critics and discussion of the COVID-19, and ensure CCP expand its ‘discourse power’.
Although it was widely known and accepted that Chinese government strictly censor the internet, the COVID-19 pandemic ensures the censorship more strictly. The Cyberspace Administration of China claimed that it will punish internet companies for allowing users to publish “harmful” content or for “spread panic” related to COVID-19. The combination of censorship and media propaganda created an information bubble that make the Chinese public believe that they live in an “imagined prefect country”.
Chinese government has a perfect excuse to expand its Chinese surveillance system under the social context of COVID-19. Chinese surveillance system combines facial recognition technology, security cameras, social media monitoring, telecommunications tracing, and the tracking of digital passenger information to surveillance people 24 hours a day in the name of controlling COVID-19. It offers confidence to the Chinese government to normalize tech-enabled monitor and control in the future.
With the cooperation of big data, social credit system becomes more efficient. The advanced social credit system enable Chinese government defines the standard of “good citizens”. Within the discourse power of the CCP, it ultimately induces individuals to embrace, or at least surrender themselves to, the overwhelming power of the state.
Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic offers Chinese government and the CCP a salient social background to expand their digital authoritarianism use. The sad thing is that most of the Chinese citizens are happy with more intensive digital authoritarianism from Chinese government. As Kloet, Lin and Chow claim that it occurred a sign of biopolitical nationalism during the pandemic, which refers that citizens pride themselves on living in a country with the ‘best’ and ‘most efficient’ containment measures.
As the pandemic is still an on-going issue, we will see the expansion of digital authoritarianism by the Chinese government and the CCP. And, the Chinese citizens will continually perceive the superiority of the Chinese political system, and happy to live in an “imagined perfect China.”
