Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally
directed the communist regime to focus its efforts to control the global
internet, displacing the influential role of the United States, according to
internal government documents recently obtained by The Epoch Times.
In a January 2017 speech, Xi said the “power to control the internet”
had become the “new focal point of [China’s]
national strategic contest,” and singled out the United States as a “rival
force” standing in the way of the regime’s ambitions.
The ultimate goal was for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to control
all content on the global internet, so the regime could wield what Xi described
as “discourse power” over communications and discussions on the world stage.
Xi articulated a vision of “using technology to rule the internet” to
achieve total control over every part of the online ecosystem—over
applications, content, quality, capital, and manpower.
His remarks were made at the fourth leadership meeting of the regime’s
top internet regulator, the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, in Beijing
on Jan. 4, 2017, and detailed in internal documents issued by the Liaoning
Provincial Government in China’s southeast.
The statements confirm efforts made by Beijing in the past few years to
promote its own authoritarian version of the internet as a model for the world.
In another speech given in April 2016, detailed in an internal document
by the Anshan City Government in Liaoning Province, Xi confidently proclaimed
that in the “struggle” to control the internet, the CCP has transformed from
playing “passive defense” to playing both “attack and defense” at the same
time.
Having successfully built the world’s most sprawling and sophisticated
online censorship and surveillance apparatus, known as the Great Firewall, the CCP under Xi is turning
outwards, championing a Chinese internet whose values run counter to the open
model advocated by the West. Rather than prioritizing the free flow of
information, the CCP’s system centers on giving the state the ability to
censor, spy on, and control internet data.
Countering the US
The Chinese leader acknowledged the regime lagged behind its rival the
United States—the dominant player in this field—in key areas such as
technology, investments, and talent.
To realize its ambitions, Xi emphasized the need to “manage internet
relations with the United States,” while “making preparations for fighting a
hard war” with the country in this area.
American companies should be used by the regime to reach its goal, Xi
said, without elaborating on how this would be done.
He also directed the regime to increase its cooperation with Europe,
developing countries, and member states of Beijing’s “Belt and Road
Initiative,” to form a “strategic counterbalance” against the United States.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive infrastructure
investment project launched by Beijing to connect Europe, Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East through a network of rail, sea, and road linkages. The plan has
been criticized by the United States and other Western countries as a conduit
for Beijing to increase its political and commercial interests in member states
while saddling developing countries with heavy debt burdens.
The BRI has also pushed countries to sign up to “digital silk road”
projects—those involving information and communications technology
infrastructure. At least 16 countries have
signed memoranda of understanding with the regime to work in this area.
Three-pronged Strategy
Xi ordered the regime to focus on three “critical” areas in its pursuit
of controlling the global internet.
First, Beijing needs to be able to “set the rules” governing the
international system. Second, it should install CCP surrogates in important
positions in global internet organizations. Third, the regime should gain
control over the infrastructure that underlies the internet, such as root
servers, Xi said.
Domain Name System (DNS) root servers are key to internet communications
around the world. It directs users to websites they intend to visit. There are
more than 1,300 root servers in the world, about 20 of which are located in
China while the United States has about 10 times that, according to the website root-servers.org.
If the Chinese regime were to gain control over more root servers, they
could then redirect traffic to wherever they want, Gary Miliefsky,
cybersecurity expert and publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine, told The Epoch
Times. For example, if a user wants to go to a news article about a topic
deemed sensitive by Beijing, then the regime’s DNS server could route the user
to a fake page saying the article is no longer online.
“The minute you control the root, you can spoof or fake anything,” he
said. “You can control what people see, what people don’t see.”
In recent years, the regime has made headway in advancing Xi’s strategy.
In 2019, Chinese telecom giant Huawei first proposed the idea for an
entirely new internet, called New IP (internet
protocol), to replace the half-century-old infrastructure underpinning the web.
New IP is touted to be faster, more efficient, flexible, and secure than the
current internet, and will be built by the Chinese.
While New IP may indeed bring about an improved global network,
Miliefsky said, “the price for that is freedom.”
“There’s going to be no free speech. And there’s going to be
eavesdropping in real-time, all the time, on everyone,” he said. “Everyone who
joins it is going to be eavesdropped by a single government.”
The proposal was made at a September 2019 meeting held at the
International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a U.N. agency responsible for
setting standards for computing and communications issues that is currently
headed by Chinese national Zhao Houlin. New IP is set to be formally debated at
the ITU World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly to be held in March
2022.
Miliefsky said the plan is unlikely to gain widespread support among
countries, but may be adopted by like-minded authoritarian states such as North
Korea, and later by countries that signed onto BRI and are struggling to repay
its loans to China.
This would accelerate a bifurcation of the internet, what analysts such
as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have dubbed the “splinternet,” Miliefsky
said. “The communist net and the rest of the world.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to Huawei for comment.
Importing Talent
According to the document, Xi ordered the CCP regime to set up “three
ecosystems”—technology, industry, and policy—to develop core internet
technologies.
Having skilled workers was key to this plan, with Xi directing that
talent should be hired from around the globe. This would be done through
Chinese companies, Xi prescribed.
He told Chinese firms to “proactively” invite foreign “high-end
talents,” and to set up research centers overseas and hire leading ethnic
Chinese and foreign specialists to work for them.
Meanwhile, Xi asked the regime to set up a professional training system
in China, which can systematically develop a highly skilled workforce in the
long run.
He also directed officials in each level of government to guide Chinese
companies to develop their business plans to align with the regime’s strategic
goals, and encourage capable enterprises to take the lead in developing
innovations in core technologies.
Enterprises were to be educated in having “national awareness and
safeguarding national interests,” Xi said. Only then should the regime support
and encourage their expansion.
Because talent and critical technology are concentrated overseas, the
Chinese leader also ordered authorities to support the development of a group
of multinational internet companies that can have global influence.
Turning the Internet Red
Xi, in his 2016 speech, described all online content as falling into
three categories: “red zone, black zone, and gray zone.”
“Red zone” content refers to discourse aligned with the CCP’s propaganda
requirements, while “black zone” material falls foul of these rules. “Gray
zone” content lies in the middle.
“We must consolidate and expand the red zone and expand its influence in
society,” Xi said in a leaked speechin August 2013. “We must bravely
enter into the black zone [and fight hard] to gradually get it to change its
color. We must launch large-scale actions targeting the gray zone to accelerate
its conversion to the red zone and prevent it from turning into the black
zone.”
Inside China, the CCP has a stranglehold on online content and
discussion through the Great Firewall, a massive internet censorship apparatus
that blockades foreign websites and censors content deemed unacceptable to the
party. It also hires a massive online troll army, dubbed the “50-cent army,” to
manipulate online discussion. A recent report found that the
CCP engages 2 million paid internet commentators and draws on a network of 20
million part-time volunteers to carry out online trolling.
Freedom House, in its 2020 annual internet freedom report, labeled China as the world’s worst
abuser of online freedom for the sixth straight year. Chinese citizens have
been arrested for using software to circumvent the Great
Firewall and punished for posting
comments online unfavorable to the Chinese regime. In a now-notorious incident
during the early stages of the pandemic, whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang was
reprimanded by police for “rumor-mongering” after warning colleagues in a
social media chat group about a SARS-like virus in Wuhan City.
In the 2017 remarks, Xi told the regime to develop a larger group of
“red” online influencers to shape users’ perceptions of the CCP. He also called
for an expansion of the 50 cent army to operate both inside and outside of
China’s internet.
Since the pandemic, the CCP has sharply escalated its efforts to
influence online opinion overseas. Using large networks of troll accounts on
Twitter and Facebook, the regime has been able to propagate and amplify
propaganda and disinformation on topics such as the pandemic, racial tensions
in the United States, and the regime’s oppression of Uyghur Muslims in
Xinjiang.
