Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Rules of the Internet

ZTE and Huawei have become flashpoints in the Trump administration’s confrontation with Beijing over cybersecurity, investment, trade, and technological leadership. All this comes as the administration slapped tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods last Friday. But amid the hysteria surrounding these two companies, we may be missing a less obvious but potentially more impactful challenge: China’s ambitions to radically overhaul the internet.

China, in other words, appears to be floating the first competitive alternative to the open internet—a model that it is steadily proliferating around the world. As that model spreads, whether through Beijing’s own efforts or through the model’s inherent appeal for certain developing countries with more similarities to China than the West, we cannot take for granted that the internet will remain a place of free expression where open markets can flourish.

China has been open about its intentions to change how the world addresses development. As part of that vision, for over a decade, it has advocated for something its leaders call “cyberspace sovereignty” as a rebuke to established actors in internet governance like the United States, Europe, and Japan. To advance this model, Xi created a powerful government body to centralizecyber policy. In addition to passing a major cybersecurity law, China has pushed through dozens of regulations and technical standards that, in conjunction, bolster the government’s control of and visibility into the entire internet ecosystem, from the infrastructure that undergirds the internet, to the flow of data, to the dissemination of information online, to the make-up of the software and hardware that form the basis of everything from e-commerce to industrial control systems. In a 2016 speech, Xi called for core internet technologies deemed critical to national and economic security to be “secure and controllable”—meaning that the government would have broad discretion, even without specific written regulations, to decide how it protects information networks, devices, and data.

China’s cyber governance plan appears to have three objectives. One is a legitimate desire to address substantial cybersecurity challenges, like defending against cyber attacks and keeping stolen personal data off the black market. A second is the impulse to support domestic industry, in order to wean the government off its dependence on foreign technology components for certain IT products deemed essential to economic and national security. (In effect, these requirements exclude foreign participation, or make foreign participation only possible on Beijing’s terms.) The third goal is to expand Beijing’s power to surveil and control the dissemination of economic, social, and political information online.

But Beijing wants not only to prevent the United States from interfering with its domestic cyber policies: It also wants to set the tone for how the rest of the world governs the internet. To exert influence on its partners, it uses direct outreach to foreign governments, as well as massive investments in internet technologies through the Belt and Road Initiative, extensive military-to-military cooperation, and growing participation in international institutions.

In 2015, for instance, China selected Tanzania (China is Tanzania’s largest trade partner) as a pilot country for China–Africa capacity-building, giving Beijing substantial influence over Tanzania’s government. China used that influence to foster collaboration around cyberspace governance. Since 2015, Tanzania has passed a cyber-crime law and subsequent restrictions on internet content and blogging activity that parallel China’s content controls. Both have been informed by technical assistance from the Chinese government. At a roundtable in Dar es Salaam sponsored by Beijing, Edwin Ngonyani, Tanzania’s deputy minister for transport and communications, explained, “Our Chinese friends have managed to block such media in their country and replaced them with their homegrown sites that are safe, constructive, and popular.” Among other countries where China invests heavily, Nigeria has adopted measures requiring that consumer data be hosted in Nigeria, while Egypt has pending legislation that would mandate ride-sharing companies to store data in-country while also making it more accessible to authorities. Chinese partners like Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt engage in aggressive online content control.

China’s model appeals to these countries because it provides them with tools to take control of an open internet. Online platforms used for terrorism and political dissent threaten national stability. The Edward Snowden revelations and crippling cyber attacks like WannaCry and Mirai create a sense of vulnerability that China’s model promises to fix.

The most alluring feature of the China model appears to be content control, as a broad range of China’s neighbors and partners engage in blocking, filtering, and manipulating internet content. Also alluring: its rules for storing data on servers in-country, which can help law enforcement and intelligence officials get access to user information.

The problem with China’s model is that it crashes headlong into the foundational principles of the internet in market-based democracies: online freedom, privacy, free international markets, and broad international cooperation. China’s model may also not even be effective in delivering on its promises. For example, government-imposed content-control measures have proven to be poor tools in fighting online extremism. Filtering or removing online content has been compared to a game of “whack-a-mole,” making it ineffective and cost-prohibitive. Such controls also suppress countervailing discourse from key anti-extremism influencers, which have proven to be effective in offering compelling alternative narratives and discrediting extremist ideas.

The implications for the strength and resilience of the global internet ecosystem are troubling. China’s control-driven model defies international openness, interoperability, and collaboration, the foundations of global internet governance and, ultimately, of the internet itself. The 21st Century will see a battle of whether it is the China model or the more inclusive, transparent, collaborative principles that underpinned the internet’s rise that come to dominate global cybersecurity governance.