This paper maps the Chinese government’s restrictions on online freedom of expression, and explores their domestic, regional and international implications. It examines China’s model of internet control, censorship and surveillance, drawing on recent examples that have arisen in the COVID-19 context. It analyses the degree to which this approach shapes wider trends and online restrictions in the rest of Asia, looking also at the influence of Western policies and technologies. And it reviews China’s growing influence on global technology governance in multilateral and bilateral settings. This includes China’s increasing assertiveness in international debates about digital technology regulation, its promotion of a vision of ‘cyber sovereignty’ that emphasizes state surveillance and control, and the leadership’s ambitions for the ‘Digital Silk Road’ initiative.
Conclusion
The post-Second World War order, including the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was constructed from principles and values that were agreed by a wide range of states, including representatives from the Republic of China.109 But the intervening decades have witnessed seismic geopolitical power shifts, and a rapidly changing environment in which human rights are increasingly contested and politicized for strategic ends, with new and emerging powers seeking to redefine international norms.
One such contested space is online freedom of expression. Debates over online freedom of expression are increasingly part of broader geopolitical conversations about whether technology governance should be open and global, or closed and state-based. Technology has become increasingly pervasive in our lives, and the providers of that technology increasingly international. Moreover, the values informing that technology increasingly dictate how free, fair and inclusive the society using the technology can be, as well as the balance of power between the state and individual citizens. A fragmented and state-controlled internet not only carries troubling implications for individual rights online, such as freedom of expression; without an open, stable and secure internet, achievement of the SDGs and economic growth will also be more difficult.
At a time when illiberalism was already on the rise, COVID-19 has made tighter state control of online freedom of expression even more attractive to many governments. It remains to be seen whether the increasing restrictions enacted under the guise of pandemic-related emergency measures will be repealed once the COVID-19 crisis ends, or whether – as seems more likely – COVID-19 will have longer-term detrimental effects on an open and rights-based approach to technology governance.
The Republic of China was recognized by the UN until 1971, when it was expelled and the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the only lawful representatives of China in the UN.