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< | How China is exporting its digital dictatorship to Hong Kong thereby challenging GAFA companies
With the aim of reducing freedom of expression to a trickle in the “semi-autonomous” city of Hong Kong, a very recent illustration of this being the removal of the Tiananmen Square massacre remembrance statue on the University of Hong Kong campus, controlling the Internet ranks as a key priority for the local pro-Beijing government. In reaction to the 2019 massive pro-democratic protests in Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party implemented a draconian legal framework concerning Hong Kong in June 2020, the so-called national security law, that aims to eliminate any form of protest in the city. Although freedom of speech is enshrined in the Hong Kong Basic Law and its Bill of Rights, this protection only applies to local legislation and not national laws imposed by mainland China, like the national security law. Article 43 of this law now allows censorship in Hong Kong of online resources that are “likely to constitute an offense endangering national security”.
Censorship system in China and its gradual implementation in Hong Kong
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> | Evolution of Social Media Landscape in Hong Kong and Rapprochement to the Mainland | | | | |
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< | The Great Firewall in China is the expression used to describe Chinese sophisticated censorship system of online content. It blocks the access to foreign information sources, be it social networks like Facebook, search engines such as Google, websites like Wikipedia, or mobile apps. Thus, only Chinese alternatives are available like WeChat? and Baidu, which are tightly controlled by the CCP. The ultimate goal is to shape public opinion along the party line. The Great Firewall is the combination of legal regulations, technologies, and manipulation of online discussions. It is now known that the party employs between 500,000 and 2 million online commentators, the “50 Cent Army”, to create content in favor of the CCP, using their slogans and promoting the party’s narratives on China’s power. | >
> | This essay aims to show that in Hong Kong, which is no longer a bastion of freedom behind the Great Firewall, social media platforms, including American platforms like Facebook, are subjected to the power of the pro-Beijing government and de facto the CCP. From this observation, it will then discuss the bigger picture, namely mainland’s current Internet censorship system. | | | | |
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< | For a very long time, Hong Kong was a bastion of press freedom; in 10 years, the city has dropped from 18th place to 80th place in the World Press Freedom Index set up by Reporters Without Borders. The CCP is progressively bringing its digital machinery to Hong Kong. Since June 2020, the local government has been blocking access to certain pro-democratic and anti-government websites. Local authorities directly ground their censorship policy on article 43 of the national security law. To this day, about ten websites have been banned, including the website HKChronicles that used to publish pro-democracy articles and detailed information about police violence, as well as the June 4th online museum on the Tiananmen massacre in September 2021. The museum had moved online after having been physically shut down by the police in June 2021. | | | | |
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< | One may ask how China will implement the Great Firewall in Hong Kong, since the city has enjoyed much freedom for a long time. It seems to me that the CCP will simply increase its control gradually, forcing the GAFA to make a choice, either comply with the new rules of the game or leave the city. | >
> | Current Situation in Hong Kong | | | | |
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> | As the 2011 Tahrir Square demonstration in the Arab Spring or more recently the 2018-2019 yellow vests movement in France have shown it, Internet plays an essential role in the emergence of social movements, enabling the communication, promotion and organization of mass demonstrations. Logically, this applied to the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. Yet, Chinese and American social platforms have also been used by the HK government to identify and arrest dissidents (https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/4/154153/Police-arrest-operator-of-telegram-protest-group%25C2%25A0 ), to lead pro-Beijing campaigns to discredit the protesters, and have even been victim of Beijing-led cyber-attacks to prevent the organization of demonstrations (https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/13/18677282/telegram-ddos-attack-china-hong-kong-protest-pavel-durov-state-actor-sized-cyberattack). In June 2020, some tech companies, including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, expressed their concerns about the HK national security law, under which local authorities can request service providers to remove some online content and to communicate sensitive user data if a “threat to national security” is demonstrated, with sanctions up to 100,000 HK dollars ($12,903) and imprisonment for six months. More specifically, they announced that they would suspend their cooperation with the local government on data requests, as this could significantly compromise pro-democratic protesters, which could lead one to believe that they are engaged in defending dissidents and freedom of expression. | | | | |
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> | But, in my opinion, this is misleading since other decisions show that these companies are ready to cooperate with the HK government and the CCP. Indeed, pro-democratic protesters have recently reported that some of their content was removed by Facebook for dubious reasons (see for example the suspension of the Facebook group “Cat Is Cat” for violations of Facebook’s animal trade’s policies: https://restofworld.org/2021/why-facebook-is-losing-hongkong/). This is reminiscent of the removal by Apple of an app, that indicated police movements, because of government pressure in 2019 (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/technology/apple-hong-kong-app.html), and of Google’s inaction in 2019 to help the dissenter Joshua Wong tightly surveilled by the HK government. An older illustration of cooperation between an American platform and the CCP is the 2005 arrest of Shi Tao, whose data had been communicated by Yahoo to the CCP. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/08/shi-tao-china-frees-yahoo). These examples suggest that big “platforms [do not] resist government pressure” (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/what-about-us-in-government-versus-social-media-fights-theres-only-one-loser-the-user/.) To be noted that since 2020, fearing pro-Beijing censorship on Facebook, many protesters have migrated to other platforms such as MeWe? , an American ad-free platform with a light approach to moderation content. | | | | |
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> | In June 2021, the HK government passed a new ‘anti-doxxing’ law, holding platforms responsible for doxxing campaigns and exposing their employees to considerable criminal penalties. With this law, American platforms are even more likely to either comply with these rules or simply leave HK, as it represents a relatively small market compared to the platforms’ international presence, which would naturally increase the power of mainland platforms in HK. This law has therefore been described as a “legislation which could usher in government censorship online.” (https://freedomhouse.org/article/impact-national-security-law-media-and-internet-freedom-hong-kong). | | | | |
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< | The dilemma of big tech companies in Hong Kong | | | | |
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> | Chinese censorship-based model and the evolution under Xi Jinping | | | | |
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> | HK’s internet landscape moving closer to the situation in China, it is now key to understand how the sophisticated Internet censorship system works on the mainland, affecting 1.4 billion people. The Chinese Great Firewall blocks the access to foreign information sources, like Facebook, Google, or Wikipedia, to shape public opinion along the party line. Chinese alternatives like WeChat? (that belongs to Tencent) or Baidu are strongly controlled by the CCP which employs between 500,000 and 2 million online commentators, the “50 Cent Army”, to manipulate online discussions, create content in favor of the CCP, and promote the party’s narratives on China’s power. This censorship implies intimidating anyone who criticizes the CCP (not only journalists and activists), deploying physical attacks, cyberattacks, and verbal abuse. A recent illustration of this strategy is the disappearing of Jack Ma who had criticized the Chinese financial system and public banks. | | | | |
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< | Under the new national security law in Hong Kong, local authorities can request service providers to remove some online content and to communicate sensitive user data if a “threat to national security” is shown. Sanction for noncompliance consists in fines of up to 100,000 HK dollars ($12,903) and imprisonment for six months. Following the enactment of this law in June 2020, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and others announced that they would suspend their cooperation with the local government on data requests, as this could significantly compromise pro-democratic protesters. Yet, this position can only be a temporary one. For now, Google is the only company that publicly declared that it had eventually produced some data to the local government, as part of 3 responses (out of the 43 requests from the HK government). According to Google, the requests concerned threat to life and human trafficking issues, and the data communicated was not content data, just metadata. | >
> | These radical sanctions aim to encourage self-censorship. Indeed, knowing that they can always be monitored and fearing retaliation from the Party, also as part as the gradually implemented ‘social credit’ system, Chinese people have learned to not say nor write (including online) what they really think. Some activists have tried to elaborate techniques to bypass censorship control, like using homophones (particularly numerous in Chinese) or steganography to disguise a message, but this has become very tricky since Xi Jinping came to power (https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/01/china-great-firewall-changing-generation#). | | | | |
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< | In this regard, Hong Kong is the perfect case study to understand how big tech companies have become as powerful, if not more, than states. | >
> | Indeed, as observed by different human rights organizations (ibid), censorship has significantly intensified since the arrival of Xi Jinping who reinforced the means dedicated to crackdown on dissidents (e.g 2015 repression of about 300 human rights lawyers), to identify content that is contrary to the party line (through IA notably), to organize propaganda and to block access to foreign websites. As a result, the young educated generation, even more isolated from international platforms, has become very much in favor of the Great Firewall seen as a way to protect the Chinese from false information and societal instability, as opposed to the former generation which was more critical. During the pandemic, censorship has reached a new level of intensity with first Dr Li Wenliang being muzzled, then the CCP only allowing news that presented China’s management of the pandemic as a great success and as the symbol of Chinese superiority, and more recently creating a narrative according to which the pandemic actually originated from the US. (https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/2021-03-17-restrictions-online-freedom-expression-china-moynihan-patel.pdf). | | | | |
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I don't see how. What power do they have to modify China's redefinition of the culture of Hong Kong? Did Google ever do anything to protect Hong Kong patriots other than to tell Joshua Wong to use a Chromebook? Why are US "big tech" companies the only examples used? Didn't the CCP prove by its treatment of Jack Ma personally, and Didi and Ant Financial corporately that tech companies have no power whatever in China unless it is conditionally given to them by the Party?
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> | Conclusion | | | | |
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< | The scenario presented is one in which tech companies, that claim to defend freedom of speech and democratic values, detain personal data on individuals searched by an anti-democratic government. To me, this strongly resembles to an extradition situation but instead of a country A bargaining with a country B, the country A deals with a tech company. But what is the legitimacy of a private entity that is not politically and democratically entitled to make such decision? Would it be different and sufficient, if the tech company was backed-up by a state (GAFA stated they would only cooperate with the HK government if the request was approved by the US Justice Department)?
More recently, in September 2021, the HK Legislature passed amendments to anti-doxing regulations. Doxing refers to the disclosure of one’s personal data on the internet that favors harassment. Doxing has been particularly used as a tool of resistance by pro-democracy protesters in 2019 to threaten police officers (through Telegram in particular). In the same way, police officers have used this method against protesters (on a website called HKLeaks). The 2021 amendments, which aim to crack-down on dissidents, provide that participants in doxing can be fined of up to 1 million HK dollars (about $129,000) and five years' imprisonment, thereby significantly increasing the sanction for doxing. Because this new legislative arsenal exposes big tech companies’ employees to considerable criminal penalties related to what users post online, GAFA and others had threatened to stop offering their services in Hong Kong in July 2021. Now that the law has passed, the departure of these big tech companies seems increasingly likely. The other scenario, not to be ruled out, is collaboration with the HK government. In mainland China, Apple has already shown a willingness to cooperate with the Chinese government regarding censorship, removing hundreds of VPN apps from its mainland app store at the request of authorities. A choice must be made...
This is not exactly a conclusion, more a jumble.
The best route to improvement is increase in clarity. The next draft should be able to state the main idea you are contributing to the conversation clearly and simply at the top, so the reader can immediately apprehend it. You can then present the learning that brought you to that idea concisely, linking to relevant sources. Whatever the central idea is, it can then be measured against the reality on the ground, which concerns not just the few million people in Hong Kong, but the other 1.4 billion people affected, whom you do not mention. A conclusion, based on what you have learned, can then be offered to the reader in a form that allows her to take the ideas you present further on her own.
The lazy EC-influenced use of GAFA can be replaced by an actual discussion of the companies that do business in Hong Kong and China and how they do it. (Amazon, after all, is buying there and collecting data on the producers from whom it buys, which is a completely different subject than the role of Apple or Google, each of which is a trifle more complex than you let on. The Chinese platforms, about which you also say nothing, cannot be left out of the story. If the middle name of the Internet is Party, as Xi Jinping says, then Xinjiang, Guandong, Hong Kong, Lhasa and Chengdu are all in the same net, are they not?
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> | In a nutshell, it has been shown that China’s interference in Hong Kong’s Internet landscape is already in place, forcing Hongkongers to adopt self-censorship reflexes ( https://www.dw.com/en/hong-kong-how-is-chinas-crackdown-changing-the-citys-identity/a-60007287) and platforms to cooperate or leave the territory. On the mainland, Internet censorship has intensified in recent years, and especially during the pandemic, making opposition to the regime rarer than 10 years ago and changing public debate. Beyond national borders, scholars have also observed that the CCP has started adopting a more aggressive stance in promoting China. Influence operations, to seduce foreign audiences by creating a positive narrative of China but also to infiltrate and coerce them, are now endowed with more substantial means, and Hong Kong and Taiwan are seen as outposts to test the efficiency of these operations (https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2020/beijings-global-megaphone, https://www.irsem.fr/rapport.html). | | | | |
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< | Sources :
These could just be links in the text. You're writing for the web, so make it easy for the reader to find what you're relying on with a click.
- Dan McDevitt? , Nikkei Asia
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/China-has-brought-its-repressive-surveillance-tools-to-Hong-Kong
- Harriet Moynihan and Champa Patel, Chatham House
https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/2021-03-17-restrictions-online-freedom-expression-china-moynihan-patel.pdf
- Stephanie Kirchgaessner, The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/30/big-tech-firms-may-be-handing-hong-kong-user-data-to-china
- Elina Cheng, Hong Kong Free Press
https://hongkongfp.com/2021/09/11/google-handed-user-data-to-hong-kong-authorities-despite-pledge-after-security-law-was-enacted/
- Pak Kiu, Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/hong-kong-legislature-passes-controversial-anti-doxxing-privacy-bill-2021-09-29/ | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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