The Internet in China.
It’s a high-tech dystopia.
And officials from around the world
are going to China to learn how to build
their own internet dystopias.
Welcome back to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
Internet censorship in China today has reached
absurd levels.
People have been jailed for the things they
say on WeChat.
Here’s a quick list of some of things
censored on the Chinese Internet.
Tiananmen Square Massacre
An empty chair
Winnie the Pooh.
And even the letter N.
That must make the Chinese version of Sesame
Street so difficult.
But to find out exactly how bizarre
the Internet censorship in China is,
I sat down with Sarah Cook.
She’s a senior research analyst and director
of the China Media Bulletin for Freedom House—
an NGO focused on research and advocacy for
democracy,
political freedom, and human rights.
Thank you for joining us today, Sarah.
So how bad is internet censorship in China?
Well, to be honest, the Chinese Communist
Party
has created the most multi-faceted and sophisticated
system
of internet censorship in the world.
Actually, in Freedom House’s Freedom on
the Net report
for the last three years China has been designated
as the worst abuser of internet.
Worse than Syria?
Yeah, I think its different factors,
so it's worse than Syria and Iran.
I think it's a different dynamic in terms
of what the political situation in these countries
are.
In Syria, it might be that you don't have
internet access
because something's been bombed out.
In China there's quite a good amount of actual
access to the internet,
and it's increased, but the extent to which
people are able
to actually do certain things on the internet,
and the scale of controls that are exercised
that are in place
even if they're not always activated and exercised
is tremendous.
It goes through the entire internet system
in China
and it's by far the most sophisticated and
pervasive
of anywhere else in the world.
So I know a lot of people make the mistake
of
thinking of internet censorship as the government
preventing certain information from getting
out there,
but a big part of it is actually pushing
a message the government wants.
What is the message the communist party is
pushing?
Well, it depends, really.
It depends on the topic,
and it depends on the audience in some ways.
You have the set taboo topics so,
not letting people know about June 4th or
about Falun Gong
or about Taiwanese and the Square Massacre.
Yeah, the Tiananmen Square Massacre,
or about what's really happening to Uighurs
and Tibetans
in different parts of China.
But part of that is also manipulating the
message,
so again, it's this combination of censorship
and propaganda
that are really two sides of the same coin,
and so some of it is suppressing the bad news
and then part of is promoting the good news.
And actually, Xi Jinping talks about promoting
positive-
The China story.
Well the China story, that's more outside
of China.
Telling a good China story, that's more outside
of China.
Within China, they want to promote positivity
and just to give an example, the extremes
to which they go to do that,
you see from lead censorship directives that
they will tell websites that,
let's say the landing page of a Google News
type of website has ...
The top story has to be this.
In some cases I think there's a sense
that the rankings on social media platforms
of what's the hottest news now is manipulated.
So they're telling you…
Last year when the constitutional was changed
to enable Xi jinping to become President for
life,
if you looked at the top ranking topics on
social media,
it was how to eat noodles on a high speed
train.
This is inside China?
This is inside China.
These are platforms that are run by Chinese
companies and so-
Not necessarily Google, this is Chinese-
Yeah, these are Chinese, this is Chinese social
media.
This is Weibo.
Sina Weibo, WeChat.
Yeah, these are Chinese, because the Chinese
government
uses the Great Firewall to block the kinds
of social media applications
that we all use, Facebook, Twitter,
those aren't really accessible to people in
China
unless they have a way of jumping the Firewall.
But, within China than you have these Chinese
alternatives
that have become extremely popular and they
have
whole departments of staff whose job is basically
to identify and censor content,
and then in some cases based on structure
specifically to promote other content.
Wow, so when Xi Jinping became President for
life,
the main story was how to eat noodles?
That was one of the top ranking stories on
Weibo
because they had censored so ...
Because it's a combination,
because they had censored so much of the keywords
in the conversations
that Chinese people were trying to have about
this important news topic
and so you didn't have that trending and then
I think,
we suppose that there was some kind of manipulation
in the trending as well.
So this ties into the whole Patriotic Education as well?
Well "Patriotic Education" is a term that's typically used specifically in Tibet.
But in general there's a type of, yeah, just general
kind of nationalistic education.
Very pro-Communist Party.
And it's not just that, especially under Xi Jinping,
it's like promoting Xi Jinping Thought per se.
And certain, like, tenets of Xi Jinping Thought, and referring to him as the Core Leader.
That's where under Xi you get the sense of a personality cult that you didn't necessarily see before.
So in the West, the sort of original model,
the internet was that it was free and it was
open.
China is offering an alternative model to
internet.
What is the China internet model?
Well, the Chinese government would say it's
a form of cyber sovereignty.
It's the idea that the internet does not cross
borders.
It's that the internet really stops at the
border,
and you create a virtual border and in China
it's the case of the Great Firewall.
But it's also elements of various laws, like
the cyber security law
and requiring data centers to be applications,
or things like iCloud to have its servers
inside China,
and not be able to be outside of China.
So that whatever happens within China
is really under the Communist Party's control.
There's multiple ways in which that's done,
either technologically or also legally and
administratively,
but that's, in a lot of ways, the model.
It's a combination of this high-tech techno
dystopia
that is maybe less achievable for other countries
depending
on their technological caliber and resources,
monetary resources,
but it is also ... A different model that
is maybe easier
to mimic and some specific kinds of legislation,
arresting bloggers, sending them to prison,
arresting,
forcing local social media companies to do
their own censorship,
and then injecting this type of proactive
manipulation
of paid government commentators or other forms
of ...
That China's probably called gaining the upper
hand
in terms of quote, guiding public opinion.
So it's all of those factors combined,
but ultimately it's this idea that within
China's borders particularly,
within a particular country's borders you
should
have full control over what people can see
and do on the internet
and not allow these companies outside,
like Facebook or Twitter or others to be able
...
Or the New York Times, to produce information
that your people can read and see.
So if you look at China's model of internet
controls
it's not just censorship, which we think of
a lot.
It's a combination of censorship but also
extensive
and pervasive surveillance and monitoring
of what people are doing online.
Real name registration so they can ...
That's how they can arrest people.
They can trace that this person has a seemingly
anonymous account,
and it actually belongs to this particular
individual.
You can't be anonymous on the Chinese internet.
And increasingly with people who are on Twitter,
they're not anonymous on Twitter.
Somehow they Chinese government is figuring
out ways to trace it back,
the Twitter account, back to their phone number,
and they're getting a knock at the door
for what they're writing on Twitter.
Even though Twitter is banned in China?
Even though Twitter is banned in China people
are jumping the Firewall.
It's open, and in some cases people have like,
three thousand followers.
It's not people with millions of followers
necessarily,
but they're getting knocks on the door in
some cases
for just opening an account or things like
that,
and they're being harassed.
So that's ... and even arrested.
I just need to make sure.
That's not happening to the good people
of the People's Daily Twitter account.
No, of course not.
Right.
So that's a thing.
That's the ... So there's actually been a
relatively recent case
of some employee of Chinese Day media getting
in trouble
for creating a personal Twitter account,
when you have Chinese Day media like Xinhua
and People's Daily,
and China Daily, and CG Daily,
they all have millions of followers and they're
able to access,
talk to millions of people around the world,
but if you're a Chinese Human Rights lawyer,
a professor-
Or even an individual employee of those state
run companies-
Yeah, and then people are starting to get
in trouble.
And that's something very new.
A year ago that wasn't happening.
That's something relatively recent.
So you've got a combination of censorship,
of surveillance,
and of intimidation and harassment,
and this proactive manipulation that all of
it together creates
a very interesting environment in China.
On the one hand you have a lot of information
that's censored and that's inaccessible,
but there's still a vibrancy about it and
all kinds of things that,
if you think about what you do with your phone,
yes,
you check the New York Times,
you check news that would probably be censored
in China.
You also look up what movie is playing nearby.
You use Google to ... Google Maps to try to
navigate
how to get to your friends house.
You look up what the ranking is on this particular
restaurant.
All of those types of things are accessible
in China,
although they're with Chinese apps
and not the ones that we would usually use.
So it's this illusion of choice that's created.
The Chinese government can control everything.
It doesn't necessarily, and the space is shrinking,
but it's created a system where it could control
everything
if it wants and it's able to knit pick
and pull out and censor the things
it doesn't want people talking about
while monitoring who's writing the things
they don't want people talking about.
So what happens to people inside of China
who get on the wrong side of the internet
censors?
Well, it depends.
It can range from having a particular post
be deleted to having your entire account be
canceled.
So there's lots of examples of,
on these parallel social media applications
in China
run by Chinese companies, people with millions
of followers,
just like that it's gone.
You press a button, it's gone.
All gone.
And in some cases it has real impact on their
livelihood too,
'cause people will earn money because they're
a famous author
or whatever and celebrities.
So, can range from those types of examples,
of losing a post deleted,
having your account canceled all the way through
to being sentenced to prison.
In some cases a very long prison term,
10 years, 15 years, very long prison terms.
So if I were making China Uncensored inside
of China
what would happen to me?
A few things would happen.
First of all you would really have no way
of distributing it,
so if you tried to open an account
on one of the Chinese social media
either they wouldn't let you or very quickly
after
they saw what you were sharing they would
just delete it
and that would be the end of that.
You would try to open a website, and you wouldn't
be able to,
and then you would be under liability,
potentially, personally, especially if you
create an episode
where you were, say, mocking Xi Jinping.
Which I would never do.
Which you would never do because China Uncensored
doesn't do any mockery of Chinese officials
or the communist party or ...
So then you would potentially be liable to
being arrested
and getting a knock on your door in the middle
of the night
and be taken away and then be jailed,
and have a trial that lasts for half an hour,
and not being able to access a lawyer, and
then,
you know however long ...
And they'll have this so called evidence,
but we've actually seen that.
We've seen people who have just posted things,
making, just, humorous.
There's a lot of people in China who have
gotten in trouble
for posting humorous things.
The memes about Xi Jinping and Winnie the
Pooh?
Yes.
So for example, I don't know anybody
who's actually been jailed for sharing or
posting a meme
related Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh,
but it's certainly heavily censored.
There have been other people
who have posted something that was a different
kind of a mockery of Xi
who had been sent to an administrative detention,
I think in one case even sentenced to two
years in prison.
Now, this internet model that China is creating,
they are trying to export that around the
world, right.
That's got to be appealing to other authoritarian
regimes.
Yes.
And I would say not always even authoritarians
per se
but I think what we've seen over time is that
there were already elements,
even without deliberate projection and export
from China that were being
adopted by other regimes,
like Iran or Vietnam.
And then I think what we've seen the last
two years
is that the Communist Party's been much more
explicit
about wanting to promote their model,
and make their model not only for other countries,
but even trying to set international standards.
And that gets into more technological stuff
but that relates,
say for example, to 5G standards and others
so that their standards
become adopted elsewhere, they even become,
they even use words like the consensus internationally.
That's creepy.
Yes.
But yes, you definitely,
but now I think more actively you have efforts
to promote the China model.
In some cases it's in terms of the export
of technologies.
In a lot of cases it's different,
it's more about other kinds of know how.
One of the things we found with the latest
issue of Freedom on the Net
was that we looked at how many countries had
sent officials to China
to have some kind of training related to new
media
or so-called information management.
And after we found that out of 65 countries,
36 had sent officials.
And that included places like Thailand or
Vietnam, say,
who are very heavy internet restrictions
but also places like the Philippine's for
example that doesn't,
or parts of Latin American countries that
have a fairly open internet,
and they were sending officials there for
some kind of a training.
Any European countries?
I don't remember the specific list of countries.
I would be surprised, because one of the reasons
people also go on this
is also 'cause it's kind of a nice, all expenses
paid, junket to China.
And that can be attractive for some random
Filipino official
in the Ministry of Communication.
So this technology didn't come out of thin
air.
How did Western tech companies help build
this system.
So, in some cases it was pretty direct.
We have reason to believe that Cisco for example
played a role
in helping the Chinese government build the
Great Firewall
and other aspects called Golden Shield
which is an internet censorship and surveillance.
But at the same time you also have, I would
say, indirect examples,
where from even seemingly innocuous academic
exchanges
and things like that or other types of joint
venture partnerships
there was a certain degree of know
how that was transferred to Chinese companies
or Chinese tech geniuses,
and those people then applied it to systems
that are actually used to suppress internet
freedom in China,
so that you see a little bit with certain
things
coming out about artificial intelligence and
the like,
and so I think you see that in terms of actually
developing the system.
So besides the structural elements, on a more
micro level
you have Western companies who do engage in
censorship for Chinese users.
So, for example, Apple has deleted apps from
Chinese mobile app stores.
And that includes specific news websites like
NTDTV or the New York Times,
but it also has deleted and removed hundreds
of the kinds of applications
that let people jump the Firewall and access
uncensored news.
And then you have, for example,
LinkedIn that does some level of censorship
for people in China
in terms of what profile they are able to
see.
So you definitely have also ways in which
Western companies,
when they're dealing with content,
have to censor on behalf of the Chinese government.
So it's very disturbing to hear that companies
like Microsoft or Google are doing research
with Chinese military universities,
then that technology might be used in Shenzhen
for mass surveillance.
Do you think there's any possible that this
kind of censorship
will be exported to a country like the United
States?
For instance, I know Mark Zuckerberg has talked
about
wanting more control over the internet.
Well, I think in some ways we see certain
forms of Chinese censorship
already coming to the west.
That takes the form, in some cases, of self-censorship
by companies,
like airlines who aren't going to put Taiwan
in the dropdown menu
because they came under Chinese pressure or
a case,
I think it was Mercedes-Benz,
where they had a post on a social media website,
I think it was Instagram, that was outside
China,
not Chinese people, and they quoted the Dalai
Lama
and the Chinese government got upset
and then they actually deleted it and issued
this very, kind of-
Official apology.
Yes, official apology.
So I think you see that kind of censorship
slowly sneaking into the West,
but the other thing is that you have a Chinese
company called "Tencet"
that once runs an instant messaging application
called "WeChat"
and it's used a lot by people in the Chinese
diaspora,
and including Americans, Canadians, Chinese
Americans, Chinese Canadians.
Because it's a way to communicate with people
back in China.
Because it's a way to communicate with people
back in China
and they're just used to it.
If they come out,
they're used to it and that's how they'll
keep in touch with people here.
And so you're actually starting to see examples
of censorship of people here by WeChat, including,
in some cases,
communication between politicians and their
constituents
or between local news media in Chinese and
Australia
and how much they're actually ...
There's almost no reporting that's critical
of China
in a way that's very different than what's
on their main website.
So you actually start to see that type,
especially for the Chinese diaspora,
start to see that sneaking into the west.
And it can have a real political impact,
in terms of political candidacies.
For example, I don't know the China and I
don't know if you've tried.
I'm kind of doubtful that you would be able
to create a WeChat account
for ... You know?
That's a good idea.
And so you might not.
You could test that out.
You might not be able to then reach certain
constituencies
in the United States, even though they're
in America,
you're in America.
And so you see that element starting to infiltrate
into the west
with some level of political ramifications
too.
And then in terms of surveillance, absolutely.
There was recently a report,
I think that it came out that Hikvision,
one of these Chinese companies that runs surveillance
in China,
including these facial recognition cameras
in Xinjiang,
had gotten the contract for the UK parliament.
And it wasn't just for the UK parliament I
think,
it was for some of the building with some
of their offices.
So there was suddenly concern ...
I think it might have been put on hold now,
because they were suddenly concerned about
the ...
really the national security implications
of this.
So I think it's really more that element of
the surveillance
and this kind of backdoor concerns, rather
than censorship, per se,
that you see from some of these Chinese technologies,
but when you get to questions of Chinese technology
being involved in the delivery of content,
you see that more in Africa now,
that's where you do start to see censorship
because they'll favor Chinese state media
channels over, say,
the BBC World, in terms of the most affordable
package.
So then you have fewer Africans who are watching
BBC World,
and more who are watching Chinese state media.
And you could see that happening in the West,
but I don't know that that's going to happen.
Okay.
So basically, right now it seems like there's
a battle going on
between the west's free and open internet
model
and China's sovereignty-based model.
What will it take for the free and open model
to win?
Well, it's tricky because one of the problems,
and I think challenges that we're having is
that
there are a lot of people even in democracies
that are questioning the desirability of having
as free and open an internet as we have.
And that's where you get to questions of regulating
Facebook
and other social media companies.
So I think the first thing is really for democracies
to give more attention to and thought to
how do you maintain the open internet?
How do you protect freedom of expression and
privacy
within their own borders so that there is
a more robust model?
And how do you protect against encroachments
from the Chinese model,
including into our own societies?
So for example,
starting out with really looking at WeChat
in the United States
or in other democracies and making sure,
in situations where they're violating
the First Amendment rights of people here,
that there's some kind of repercussion, that
they have to ...
Chinese government, when they ask foreign
companies to censor in China,
they like to say, well, the companies like
to justify,
"Well, we're working according to local laws."
Well, that should really work both ways.
The Tencet should be following local laws
here
and they should be allowing Chinese Americans
a
nd Chinese Canadians and Chinese Australians
to have a free,
open channels of communication on WeChat.
And if not, then they should be fined
or should be sued or something like that,
like any other company would be.
So I think that those are a few of the things,
in terms of really making sure that we're
protecting our systems
against Chinese government encroachment
and private company encroachment
and creating a more robust system of protecting
internet freedom at home.
And then I think finding ways to support Chinese
people's
desire for a free internet,
because there are a lot of Chinese people
who would like a free internet.
We see that when we publish a China media
bulletin.
We hear from our readings and when we work
with people who are ...
circumvention tools to reach people in China
and there are millions ...
We estimated there were 20 to 30 million Chinese
people
who use various tools to jump the firewall
in 2018
to access uncensored information.
Now, in the country of 1 point whatever billion,
that's not a lot,
but it could probably be a lot more
and there's certainly a constituency that
is interested.
And the more people learn about how censorship
worked
and how partial their information environment
is,
we found in our surveys and from academic
studies,
the more likely they are to want to seek out
uncensored information.
So there's still a lot more to be done,
in terms of having Chinese people be granted
greater access to a free and open internet.
So the Chinese people might be the biggest
market
for a free and open internet.
Yes.
And actually, I think it's really unfortunate
that companies like Facebook or Google are
investing
in developing ways of trying to get into the
Chinese market
and have a censored search engine like Dragonfly,
rather than ...
Imagine if all that money was invested in
either supporting
either existing circumvention tools
or designing some other type of tools that
would allow Chinese people
to access the internet freely,
because ultimately these companies would benefit.
They make their money off of users.
It doesn't have to be the Chinese government
that grants American tech companies access
to the Holy Grail of the Chinese internet
market.
They could be taking a piece of the pie themselves
just by getting more people out of the firewall.
Well, thank you, Sarah.
That was incredibly enlightening.
Sure, I'm glad. Thanks for having me.
