Chinese police officers walk outside the newly built Museum of the Communist Party of China in Beijing on June 25, 2021. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
The Chinese regime has the “world’s most elaborate and pervasive” censorship system, regulating what its citizens are saying at home. In the past decade, Beijing’s censorship has increasingly gone global, posing a significant challenge to American interests, according to a new congressional report.
“This undertaking has proceeded along multiple lines of effort, including punishing U.S. private companies and individuals who express positions the CCP deems to be objectionable, restricting U.S. access to economic data, and conducting disinformation campaigns aimed at sowing division within U.S. society,” the report stated.
Assistance by US Technology
The CCP uses censorship as a tool to attain its monopoly on political legitimacy and control its citizens’ behaviors, according to the report.
However, much of its rigid control of the internet was built on American technology and expertise. According to the report, China historically “relied heavily on hardware component parts and software sourced from the United States to construct and operate its online censorship.”
While the regime has been pushing for industrial self-reliance over recent years, the CCP’s “censorship apparatus is still reliant on U.S. imports, especially those used in emerging technologies such as AI, machine learning, and big data applications,” the researchers noted.
COVID-19
Under the current CCP head Xi Jinping, the CCP has “significantly expanded the scope and stringency of its censorship apparatus, with a particular focus on solidifying its control over internet content,” the report stated.
Instead of exerting absolute control on all topics, the CCP employs a flexible approach to censorship that allows limited discussion of sensitive issues, such as corruption and mismanagement by local officials, as long as they don’t threaten the Party’s hold on power. By doing so, the Chinese public can air their grievances while the Party is then able to shift blame to lower-ranking officials who are said to have “incorrectly” implemented the orders of the central authorities.
The tightened suppression of information at home also poses a threat to people abroad. The report highlighted how the CCP responded to the outbreak of COVID-19, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, to illustrate the terrible cost of the regime’s growing censorship efforts.
When the world sought to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, “China stifled researchers by restricting what could be published, and then it flooded domestic and international media platforms with disinformation,” the report stated.
It suggested the United States issue a “public advisory list” of China-based companies that contributed to the CCP’s censorship, including their subsidiaries and shell companies. “Doing so will greatly assist due diligence by U.S.-based technology firms and will enable them to avoid inadvertently supporting China’s censorship regime.”