HONG KONG PROTESTS MARK MAJOR TURNING POINT IN RESISTANCE TO CHINESE TOTALITARIANISM

By NEWT GINGRICH

One of the most important struggles on the planet is taking place right now between the people of Hong Kong and the Chinese dictatorship of Xi Jinping.
My next podcast on Sunday, June 23, will be on the meaning of the struggle in Hong Kong. 

This is an extraordinarily important moment.
The Communist Chinese system wanted to extend its ability to prosecute people in Hong Kong by passing a new law that would make it easy to extradite people from the special administrative region to the mainland court system. 

Hong Kong residents saw this as a direct assault on their rights under the agreement that returned Hong Kong from British control to Chinese control.
The principle had been established that there would be one country but two systems. 

The British belief in the rule of law, due process and free news media had been continued even after the colony left British control and was once again Chinese territory (which it had been before 1842).
Under British rule, Hong Kong had become an astonishingly wealthy and prosperous city-state. 

Its 7.4 million people are intensely entrepreneurial. 

It has the highest concentration of extremely wealthy people of any city in the world and the largest number of skyscrapers. 

Its low-tax system has been studied by economists as a model for supply-side economics and was in many ways a model for President Ronald Reagan. 

Alvin Rabushka's Hong Kong: A Study in Economic Freedom is a good example of the effect the low-tax, high-growth, wealth-creating system had on modern economists.
As the British left, the entrepreneurial, hard-working and creative millions in Hong Kong worried that they would be absorbed into the mainland dictatorship. 

They were assured that they would be part of a "one country, two systems" model in which Beijing would manage foreign policy and national security but Hong Kong would retain its unique characteristics.
However, from the beginning, freedom was limited, as Beijing insisted on a limited electorate (largely dominated by supporters of Beijing). 

The average Hong Kong resident has little impact on the government and knows it.
It has been 22 years since the July 1, 1997, handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. 

The system has worked moderately well in maintaining a balance of economic and personal freedom within and next to a totalitarian system.
However, Beijing simply can't let Hong Kong alone. 

It would be wise for Beijing to emphasize the "two systems" part of the "one country, two systems" formula. This would increase the possibility of the people of Taiwan moving toward reunification with China.
The problem with this idealistic optimism is that freedom for Hong Kong reassures Taiwan but undermines the totalitarian system.
A key part of the Communist Party's claim to legitimacy is the notion that "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is the only practical way to manage a country with 1.4 billion people. 

Their social contract has been that they would improve incomes and the quality of life in return for the Chinese people accepting a totalitarian system with intense social controls and pervasive policing.
There have been three objective challenges to the Beijing dictatorship: Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. 

In all three places, people of Chinese background and culture live in freedom and create wealth on a remarkable scale.
Today, Beijing does not have the power to change either Taiwan or Singapore. 

But it does have the power to change Hong Kong. 

Like all totalitarian systems, it simply can't help itself. It must keep extending its power of coercion even if it is unchallenged.

What has been remarkable is the popular outrage and the collective courage of the people of Hong Kong. 

According to a poll by the University of Hong Kong, overwhelmingly, they identify with Hong Kong and not China. 

Many do not want to become part of the totalitarian system. 

They have had 1 million to 2 million people participate in demonstrations—more than one in every seven residents.
The Beijing-supported Chief Executive Carrie Lam initially used the police to try to suppress the demonstrators. 

This led to a harsh backlash and an even greater turnout for Sunday's demonstration.
This turned the Hong Kong struggle into a major turning point. 

Having gotten the extradition bill withdrawn with a million-person demonstration, after Lam apparently lost her nerve, the people of Hong Kong then turned out in twice that number to demand the chief executive step down and the bill be permanently blocked.
In a remarkable moment of timing, the day after the 2-million-person march, Joshua Wong, a leading pro-democracy activist, was released from prison after serving one month of a two-month sentence for demonstrating in 2014. 

Wong is a symbol of commitment to freedom and a charismatic figure who immediately called for Lam's resignation.
Protesters occupy a street demanding Hong Kong leader to step down after a rally against the now-suspended extradition bill outside of the Chief Executive Office on June 17 in Hong Kong.

The key test now is what Xi is going to do about this direct confrontation between Hong Kong's people power and Beijing's military and police power.
If he allows the people of Hong Kong to get in the habit of demonstrating and talking without repression, there is a real danger this spirit will spread to the mainland.
On the other hand, trying to repress Hong Kong could be much bloodier and more expensive than Tiananmen Square was 30 years ago.
The Belt and Road Initiative- and Huawei-promoting, globe-traveling Xi Jinping wants to be acceptable in capitals around the world.

On the other hand, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chair of the Central Military Commission has a responsibility at home to sustain the totalitarian system.
July 1 is the 22nd anniversary of the handover from Britain to China. 

In recent years, this date has been used by democracy activists to protest and communicate their desire for genuine self-government. 

This year, July 1 could turn into a genuine test of the concept of "one country, two systems."
If Xi exercises disciplined restraint and allows Hong Kong to evolve, we will be in a vastly different world—and may be able to talk about a long-term evolution from dictatorship toward freedom for China.
If, on the other hand, he moves to crush dissent and to impose totalitarian controls on Hong Kong, we will be in a much more serious challenge to freedom across the planet.
This is a critically consequential moment that matters to all of us — not just to the more than 7 million citizens of Hong Kong. 

Now, we must wait and see what Xi decides.

Hong Kong arts centre cancels Chinese dissident author event

Exiled Chinese writer Ma Jian was due to promote his satiric novel China Dream

Ma Jian, who lives in London, writes dark satirical books about life in China.

A Hong Kong arts centre hosting the city’s high-profile literary festival has cancelled appearances by exiled Chinese writer Ma Jian, said the author, as Beijing tightens its grip on the semi-autonomous city.
It is the latest blow to freedom of speech in Hong Kong as concerns grow that liberties are under serious threat from an assertive China.
Ma, who now lives in London, writes dark and satirical works depicting life in China and his books are banned on the mainland.
He was due to promote his latest novel China Dream later this week, a title that plays on Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s rhetoric of national rejuvenation and is described by publisher Penguin as “a biting satire of totalitarianism”.
The author announced on Twitter that his two speaking events had been cancelled by Tai Kwun arts centre, where the festival is held, not by festival organisers who he said were trying to find an alternative venue.
“Just been told that my two events at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival this week can no longer be held at Tai Kwun, where all the other events are taking place. An alternative venue will have to be found. No reason has been given to me yet,” he said in his tweet.
Hong Kong’s government says it wants to turn the city into an arts and culture hub, with Tai Kwun the result of a multimillion-dollar renovation of a colonial-era prison and police station, led by the government and the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
Tai Kwun and the Hong Kong International Literary Festival were unable to immediately comment.
Hong Kong has rights that are not enjoyed on the mainland, protected by an agreement made before the city was handed back to China by Britain in 1997, but there are fears they are being steadily eroded.

A highly anticipated art show by Chinese political cartoonist Badiucao was cancelled last week with Hong Kong organisers citing safety concerns due to “threats made by Chinese authorities relating to the artist”.

Hong Kong authorities also faced a major backlash when they denied a visa without explanation last month to a Financial Times journalist who had chaired a press club talk by a Hong Kong independence activist.
The Hong Kong literary festival attracts leading authors from around the world and this year features Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh and bestselling American author Cheryl Strayed.

Chinazism

Under Xi Jinping, China is seeking to control not just the bodies, but also the minds of its inhabitants.

By Michael Clarke

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has proclaimed that his signature “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) that seeks to link the Chinese economy with the major continental and maritime zones of the Eurasian continent will “benefit people across the whole world,” as it will be based on the “Silk Road spirit” of “peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness.”

The lived reality of the people of China's vast East Turkestan colony—the hub of three of the six “economic corridors” at the heart of BRI—could not be further from this idyll.
Rather, China has constructed a dystopic vision of governance in East Turkestan to rival that of any science-fiction blockbuster.
East Turkestan’s geopolitical position at the eastern edge of the Islamic and Turkic-speaking world and the ethno-cultural distinctiveness of its largely Turkic-Muslim ethnic groups such as the Uyghur have long constituted a challenge to Chinese authorities.
The Chinese Communist Party has since 1949 pursued a strategy of tight political, social and cultural control to integrate East Turkestan and its people into the People’s Republic of China (PRC). 

This has periodically stimulated violent opposition from the Uyghur population who chafe against demographic dilution, political marginalization and continued state interference in the practice of religion.
“Stability” in East Turkestan is however now a major strategic imperative for the Party, driven by periodic violent attacks in, or connected to, East Turkestan by Uyghurs that Beijing blames on an externally-based organization, the “Turkestan Islamic Party” (TIP) and the region’s role as hub of key elements of the BRI.
This obsession with “stability” in East Turkestan has seen the regional government’s expenditure on public security balloon, with provincial spending on public security in 2017 amounting to approximately $9.1 billion —a 92 percent increase on such spending in 2016.
Much of this expenditure has been absorbed by the development of a pervasive, hi-tech “security state” in the region, including: use of facial recognition and iris scanners at checkpoints, train stations and gas stations; collection of biometric data for passports; and mandatory apps to cleanse smartphones of potentially subversive material.
This system is not only reliant on technology but also significant manpower to monitor, analyse and respond to the data it collects. 

Its rollout has thus coincided with the recruitment of an estimated 90,000 new public security personnel in the region.
This is consistent with the Party’s move toward tech-driven ‘social management’ throughout the rest of China. 

However, in East Turkestan it has become defined by a racialized conception of “threat” in which the Uyghur population is conceived of as a “virtual biological threat to the body of society.”
From government officials describing Uyghur “extremism” as a “tumour” to equating religious observance with a virus , the Party’s discourse frames key elements of Uyghur identity as pathologies to be “cured.”
The Party’s “cure” for such pathologies is a programme of mass internment of Uyghurs — up to one million people according to some estimates — in prison-like “re-education” centres based on analysis of the data harvested through its system of “predictive policing.”
Here, receiving a phone call from a relative studying or travelling overseas or attendance at a mosque result in an almost immediate visit from local police and indefinite detention in a “re-education” centre.

The totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century—Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Fascist Italy—while divergent ideologically were united by their drive to make a “total claim” on the individual. 

“They were not content,” as historian Ian Kershaw reminds us , “simply to use repression as means of control, but sought to mobilize behind an exclusive ideology to ‘educate’ people into becoming committed believers, to claim them soul as well as body.”
The goal of China’s “re-education” of Uyghurs, according to a East Turkestan CCP Youth League official, is to “treat and cleanse the virus [of “extremism”] from their brain” and “restore their normal mind” so that they may “return to a healthy ideological state of mind.”
Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China is thus arguably pursuing a “total claim” on the bodies and minds of the Uyghur people via a twenty-first century, technologically-enabled version of this—a “totalitarianism 2.0.”

Not Feeling Safe in China

“China has reached a point where I do not feel safe being a professor and discussing even the economy, business and financial markets.”

By Elizabeth Redden
Christopher Balding, who successfully lobbied Cambridge University Press to unblock articles it censored at Beijing’s request, does not feel safe as a professor in China

An American professor who lost his post at a Chinese university is now leaving China, citing concerns about his personal safety.
“China has reached a point where I do not feel safe being a professor and discussing even the economy, business and financial markets,” Christopher Balding wrote in a blog post about his departure from Peking University HSBC Business School, in Shenzhen, and his subsequent decision to leave China.
Balding has a prolific presence on Twitter, which is blocked in China, and frequently appears in the media commenting on issues related to the Chinese economy, including as a television commentator for Bloomberg and in opinion pieces for Bloomberg and Foreign Policy. 

In August of last year, Balding spearheaded a petition calling on Cambridge University Press to resist the Chinese government’s demand that it censor articles in the China Quarterly journal. (Cambridge originally assented to the government’s request to block access to hundreds of journal articles in mainland China, but reversed course after coming under heavy criticism from academics like Balding.)
Balding could be sharply critical of the Chinese government, tweeting in recent weeks about China's human rights record and the threat he sees Beijing as posing to the liberal world order -- subjects he also addressed in the blog post about his departure.

Capitalist Roader Balding@BaldingsWorld
Maybe it isn't the fact that China is developing economically, but the fact that China is an illiberal authoritarian regime who has no respect for human rights
Replying to @LunaLinCN: Some countries are alarmed, challenged and traumatised by the speed of China’s rise.@
8:15 AM - Jul 14, 2018
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47 people are talking about this


Capitalist Roader Balding@BaldingsWorld
Beijing has made it clear for sometime it wants to do away with the liberal international order. Continued multilateral steps toward openness and respect for human rights are dead if you accept the Chinese vision. Trump in history will be a blip. Focus on what matters
Abigail Grace@abigailcgrace: Biggest takeaway from the Central Work Conference? China is publicly indicating that it will now advance “major power diplomacy” on its own terms. http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1571296.shtml …
3:47 AM - Jun 26, 2018
23
23 people are talking about this

In his blog post, Balding said the HSBC Business School informed him in early November -- not long after the Cambridge University Press petition -- that it would not renew his contract. 

He did not specify the reason his contract was not renewed but made clear in his blog post that he believes it was different than the “official” reason he was given.
“Despite technical protections, I knew and accepted the risks of working for the primary university in China run by the Communist Party in China as a self-professed libertarian. Though provided an 'official' reason for not renewing my contract, my conscience is clean and I can document most everything that demonstrates the contrary should I ever need to prove otherwise. I know the unspoken reason for my dismissal. You do not work under the Communist Party without knowing the risks," Balding wrote.
HSBC Business School's media office did not respond to requests for comment. 

However, the dean of the business school, Hai Wen, told The Wall Street Journal that an evaluation of Balding found “poor” performance in teaching, research and other areas. 

The dean said that Balding's dismissal was a “normal academic employment decision.”
Balding declined to elaborate about the circumstances of his dismissal, but said via email, "I think the academy should be increasingly concerned about the silencing of opinions of Chinese and foreign academics working in China."
"Having enjoyed my time in China with wonderful research opportunities, I think my record of professional advancement during my tenure at the HSBC Business School of Peking University as well my impactful research across a variety of topics and channels speaks for itself. My standards in the classroom were drawn from the highest quality syllabi, requirements for student work and honesty, which I will continue to stand behind. I will always think back with fondness to this time."

The Climate for Foreign Scholars in China
Balding’s departure comes at a time of increasing concern about a crackdown on academic freedom in China and a continuing shrinking of the space for critical academic discourse. 

Still, Balding’s blog entry is striking for the degree to which he -- as an American academic employed by a Chinese university -- expressed fear for his physical safety.
”One of my biggest fears living in China has always been that I would be detained,” he wrote. ”Though I happily pointed out the absurdity of the rapidly encroaching authoritarianism, a fact which continues to elude so many experts not living in China, I tried to make sure I knew where the line was and did not cross it. There is a profound sense of relief to be leaving safely knowing others, Chinese or foreigners, who have had significantly greater difficulties than myself. There are many cases which resulted in significantly more problems for them. I know I am blessed to make it out.”
Louisa Lim, a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Melbourne and author of the book The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, described Balding’s case as "the latest in a series of worrying developments regarding constraints upon foreign academics working in, or on, China."
"Over the last couple of years, we have heard reports of surveillance, harassment and intimidation, including the weeklong detention of the Australian Chinese professor Feng Chongyi" in spring of 2017, Lim said via email. 

"I co-host a podcast, The Little Red Podcast, and we had an episode on the intimidation and harassment of academics where we interviewed a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Melbourne, Dayton Lekner, who spent some time in China researching the 1957-1959 Anti-Rightist movement, and was subject to a police interrogation on his research."
“That a junior scholar should be subjected to such outright intimidation shows the granular nature of state surveillance of foreign academics. In that episode, we also made an open callout for academics to get in touch with their stories, and we did hear from academics working in fields similar to Christopher Balding's who expressed their fears regarding working in China, and other experiences of surveillance by state security. Many foreign academics are reluctant to speak openly about their concerns, having invested their careers in having access to China, but Christopher Balding's piece does track with what many others are saying behind closed doors.”
“In recent years, we've seen what amounts to a forcible closing of the Chinese mind,” Lim added. “Not only are there fewer academic exchanges, but recently we're even hearing of examples of Western textbooks and writings being censored in Chinese classrooms with sections blocked out. In the current climate, the kind of unspoken constraints placed upon academic research are making partnerships between Chinese and Western academics harder to manage. One cause of concern for Western academics is whether their actions -- or writings -- could cause trouble for Chinese colleagues or co-authors, and the burden of this responsibility sometimes causes Western academics to self-censor or temper their public behavior.”
Jonathan Sullivan, the director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham, in England, said that the situation has become “significantly tighter” across the board in China. 

But while he said the situation for Chinese academics specifically has deteriorated -- “criticism is much less tolerated and expressions of loyalty are becoming the norm” -- he added that “foreign academics are an insignificant part of this bigger picture.”
"Not to diminish the experiences of any foreign colleagues working in China, I’m sure there are individual situations that I would find intolerable, but conditions are much worse for Chinese citizens in academia and all other sectors," Sullivan said in an email. 

"If 'we' don’t like it 'we' can up and leave, as many academics, journalists, businesspeople etc. have done … The chances of a foreign academic being arrested or otherwise punished is low -- it is much more likely that if you upset the authorities you’ll be denied a work visa or your employer encouraged to make your life more difficult with extra teaching etc."

“I have noticed a hardening of some opinions (sometimes performative for others in the room), a reluctance among others to discuss certain topics and less enthusiasm for collaboration. ” 

Sullivan noted that the projects are on topics related to popular culture and politics, "so they involve some criticism but it's not highly sensitive." 

He also noted that his perspective comes from someone who visits China regularly but does not live or work there.

Rogue Nation

Xi Sets China on a Collision Course With History
By MAX FISHER

Xi Jinping, front row center, at the closing ceremony of the Party Congress in Beijing last year. 

There was always something different about China’s version of authoritarianism.
For decades, as other regimes collapsed or curdled into dysfunctional pretend democracies, China’s held strong, even prospered.
Yes, China’s Communist Party has been vigorous in suppressing dissent and crushing potential challenges.
But some argue that it has survived in part by developing unusually strong institutions, bound by strict rules and norms.
Two of the most important have been collective leadership — rule by consensus rather than strongman — and term limits.
When the Communist Party announced this week that it would end presidential term limits, allowing Xi Jinping to hold office indefinitely, it shattered those norms.
It may also have accelerated what many scholars believe is China’s collision course with the forces of history it has so long managed to evade.
That history suggests that Beijing’s leaders are on what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once called a “fool’s errand”: trying to uphold a system of government that cannot survive in the modern era.
But Xi, by shifting toward a strongman style of rule, is doubling down on the idea that China is different and can refashion an authoritarianism for this age.
If he succeeds, he will not only have secured his own future and extended the future of China’s Communist Party, he may also establish a new model for authoritarianism to thrive worldwide.

The Harder Kind of Dictatorship
If Xi stays in office for life, as many now expect, that will only formalize a process he has undertaken for years: stripping power away from China’s institutions and accumulating it for himself.
It helps to mentally divide dictatorships into two categories: institutional and personalist.
The first operates through committees, bureaucracies and something like consensus.
The second runs through a single charismatic leader.
China, once an almost Socratic ideal of the first model, is increasingly a hybrid of both.
Xi has made himself “the dominant actor in financial regulation and environmental policy” as well as economic policy, according to a paper by Barry Naughton, a China scholar at the University of California, San Diego.

Xi in Beijing, in October.

Xi has also led sweeping anti-corruption campaigns that have disproportionately purged members of rival political factions, strengthening himself but undermining China’s consensus-driven approach.
This version of authoritarianism is harder to maintain, according to research by Erica Frantz, a scholar of authoritarianism at Michigan State University.
“In general, personalization is not a good development,” Ms. Frantz said.
The downsides are often subtle.
Domestic politics tend to be more volatile, governing more erratic and foreign policy more aggressive, studies find.
But the clearest risk comes with succession.
“There’s a question I like to ask Russia specialists: ‘If Putin has a heart attack tomorrow, what happens?’” said Milan Svolik, a Yale University political scientist.
“Nobody knows.”
“In China, up until now, the answer to that had been very clear,” he said.
A dead leader would have left behind a set of widely agreed rules for what was to be done and there would be a political consensus on how to do it.
“This change seems to disrupt that,” Mr. Svolik said.
Xi, by defying the norms of succession, has shown that any rule could be broken. 
“The key norm, once that’s out, it seems like everything’s an option,” Mr. Svolik said.
Factional purges risk shifting political norms from consensus to zero-sum, and sometimes life-or-death, infighting.
And Xi is undermining the institutionalism that made China’s authoritarianism unusually resilient. Collective leadership and orderly succession, both put in place after Mao Zedong’s disastrous tenure, have allowed for relatively effective and stable governing.
Ken Opalo, a Georgetown University political scientist, wrote after China’s announcement that orderly transitions were “perhaps the most important indicator of political development.”
Lifelong presidencies, he said, “freeze specific groups of elites out of power. And remove incentives for those in power to be accountable and innovate.”

What Makes Authoritarian Legitimacy
In 2005, Bruce Gilley, a political scientist, wrestled with one of the most important questions for any government — is it viewed by its citizens as legitimate? — into a numerical score, determined by sophisticated measurements of how those citizens behave.
China, his study found, enjoyed higher legitimacy than many democracies and every other non-democracy besides Azerbaijan.
He credited economic growth, nationalist sentiment and collective leadership.
But when Mr. Gilley revisited his metrics in 2012, he found that China’s score had plummeted.
His data showed the leading edge of a force long thought to doom China’s system.
Known as “modernization theory,” it says that once citizens reach a certain level of wealth, they will demand things like public accountability, free expression and a role in government.
Authoritarian states, unable to meet these demands, either transition to democracy or collapse amid unrest.
This challenge, overcome by no other modern authoritarian regime except those wealthy enough to buy off their citizens, requires new sources of legitimacy.
Economic growth is slowing.
Nationalism, though once effective at rallying support, is increasingly difficult to control and prone to backfiring. 
Citizen demands are growing.
So China is instead promoting “ideology and collective social values” that equate the government with Chinese culture, according to research by the China scholar Heike Holbig and Mr. Gilley. Patriotic songs and school textbooks have proliferated. 
So have mentions of “Xi Jinping Thought,” now an official ideology.
Xi’s personalization of power seems to borrow from both old-style strongmen and the new-style populists rising among the world’s democracies.
But, in this way, it is a high-risk and partial solution to China’s needs.
A cult of personality can do for a few years or perhaps decades, but not more.

‘Accountability Without Democracy’
China is experimenting with a form of authoritarianism that, if successful, could close the seemingly unbridgeable gap between what its citizens demand and what it can deliver.
Authoritarian governments are, by definition, unaccountable.
But some towns and small cities in China are opening limited, controlled channels of public participation.
For example, a program called “Mayor’s Mailboxes” allows citizens to voice demands or complaints, and rewards officials who comply.
The program, one study found, significantly improved the quality of governing and citizens’ happiness with the state.
No one would call these towns democratic.
But it felt enough like democracy to satisfy some.
This sort of innovation began with local communities that expressed their will through limited but persistent dissent and protest.
Lily L. Tsai, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scholar, termed it “accountability without democracy.”
Now, some officials are adapting this once-resisted trend into deliberate practice.
Their goal is not to bring about liberalization but to resist it — to “siphon off popular discontent without destabilizing the system as a whole,” the China scholars Vivienne Shue and Patricia M. Thornton write in a new book on governing in China.
Most Chinese, Beijing seems to hope, will accept authoritarian rule if it delivers at least some of the benefits promised by democracy: moderately good government, somewhat responsive officials and free speech within sharp bounds.
Citizens who demand more face censorship and oppression that are the harshest in the world.
That new sort of system could do more than overcome China’s conflict with the forces of history.
It could provide a model of authoritarianism to thrive globally, showing, Ms. Shue and Ms. Thornton write, “how non-democracies may not only survive but succeed over time.”
But Xi’s power grab, by undermining institutions and promoting all-or-nothing factionalism, risks making that sort of innovation riskier and more difficult.
When leaders consolidate power for themselves, Ms. Frantz said, “over time their ability to get a good read on the country’s political climate diminishes.”
Such complications are why Thomas Pepinsky, a Cornell University political scientist, wrote on Twitter, “I’m no China expert, but centralizing power in the hands of one leader sounds like the most typical thing that a decaying authoritarian state would do.”

U.S. Tech Quislings

Tech companies automate Chinese censorship around the world
By Nick Monaco and Samuel Woolley 

A troubling trend is sweeping Silicon Valley—big tech acquiescing to digital authoritarianism to gain access to the Chinese market.
In July, Apple removed VPNs from its Chinese app store and announced plans to build a data center in Guizhou to comply with China’s new draconian cybersecurity laws.
This follows Facebook’s decision months earlier to build a tool that allowed third-parties in China to suppress controversial content on its network. 

While these moves can be rationalized from most business perspectives, acquiescing to China’s digitally authoritarian policies for market access will have harrowing political consequences in the long term.
Apple and Facebook, two of the most powerful companies in the world, have set dangerous precedents in these decisions that risk being followed both in and outside of the tech industry. 

When big tech bends its principles to limbo into Chinese markets, it encourages other Western companies and institutions to do so as well.
The latest example is Cambridge University Press. 

The prominent publishing house recently removed hundreds of academic articles from the website of its publications China Quarterly and the Journal of Asian Studies, in response to Chinese authorities deeming them controversial. 

After outcry from academics and researchers, Cambridge University Press reversed its decision – but the fact remains that they were willing to censor peer-reviewed academic research.
At best, such decisions risk entrenching the status quo – China has already ranked as the lowest in the world in Internet freedom for two years running. 

 At worst, these moves encourage the omnipotent aspirations of the Chinese government to build a digital dictatorship.
Chinese AI research and production is set to supersede the US in the next few decades, especially given Trump and the GOP’s refusal to recognize the importance of scientific R&D and blue-sky research. 

Given this outlook, Western tech companies must consider the social ramifications of their involvement in China.
It’s undeniable that the Party may be on the brink of unprecedented automated repression – extremely few companies control the most popular apps in China, and – as experts like Richard McGregor have shown – the Chinese Communist Party always has its hands in the country’s most successful businesses. 

The possibilities that would exist – such as automated mining of publicly and privately available data coupled with mass sentiment analysis to predict and quell dissent in advance – have horrifying implications for human rights. 

Repressive governance could, to a large extent, become an automated affair.
China has already implemented a frightening citizenship score pilot program, which gives each citizen a “social credit score”. 

It is also known that markedly more scrupulous governments, from Mexico to Ecuador, have deployed surveillance and intelligence systems against political opposition. 

The possibility of AI autocracy in the People’s Republic is real, and it is one that Western tech companies are tacitly endorsing when they choose to forfeit digital rights in favor of market access.
It would also be naïve to assume this form AI autocracy will stay put in the Middle Kingdom. Authoritarians have a way of sharing repressive technology – which is why one of Egypt’s biggest telecoms companies, Orascom, owns 75% of North Korea’s only official mobile network, Koryolink. It is also why China’s cellphone company Huawei helped Iranian security forces to stifle dissent at home.
Two-thirds of all internet users worldwide live in countries where criticism of the authorities is subject to censorship. 

It would be reasonable, with this in mind, to assume that China’s AI authoritarian model—if successful—could become the soft-power the country has lacked on the world stage up to now.
The Economist rightfully pointed out in July: “Western companies are at least engaged in an open debate about the ethical implications of AI; and intelligence agencies are constrained by democratic institutions. Neither is true of China. [..] If China ends up having most influence over its future, then the state, not citizens, may be the biggest beneficiary”.

In an era where the leader of the free world is emboldening authoritarians on everything from reneging on human rights to slanderously impugning the press, the onus falls on civil society and the private sector to maintain and promote liberal democratic values at home and abroad. 

Western tech companies are one of the most powerful actors in the latter sphere, and also fund many in the former. 

This puts them in a unique position to promote privacy, security and digital rights around the world.
The social and political consequences of technology are externalities that must be accounted for. 

It is impossible to decouple business decisions in the tech community from responsibility for the consequences that result from them, especially as technology continues to play an ever more crucial role in individuals’ daily lives.