Beyond the Great (Fire)Wall of China: The case for 'Internet sovereignty'

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China's increasing internet censorship is threat to free and open internet everywhere

In the last decade, we saw the name China becoming synonymous for internet censorship, oppression of free speech and democratic crackdowns. During the last 20 years, Chinese authorities have introduced over 60 regulations that curb free speech and collective action on the web. One of the latest regulations was announced a few days ago by the regulating agency Cyber Administration of China (CAC) over commenting on internet forums and blogs.

The new law makes name verification mandatory for online commenting, making all the internet companies and service providers verify the identities of all users before they can post anything on their platform.

According to CAC, the new regulation is ‘to promote the healthy and orderly development of online community and safeguard national security and public interests’, reports The Diplomat. Most of the laws passed in recent years were under the context to ‘safeguard the national security and public interest’, which translates to Chinese Communist Party's security and government's interests.

In fact, under Xi Jinping's presidency, there has been a systematic increase in online control and suppression of free speech. Earlier this year, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a direction that requires VPN services to obtain government approval before operating. They also prohibited the use of VPN by individuals without permission, essentially making use of VPN illegal.

It was two years ago, at the venue of World Internet Conference at Wuhan, Xi Jinping called on countries across the world to respect one another's ‘Internet sovereignty’ and different internet governance model. Xi added that countries had the right to choose how to develop and regulate the internet, and with world's largest online population of over 700 million, China should have a say in drawing up the global rules that should include right to censor and block, reported the BBC.

The machinery of China's internet control. often referred as ‘The Great Firewall of China’, is far more sophisticated and multi-layered than in any other country in the world. Its arms reach beyond blocking websites and content. One of the core components of China's internet censorship is how it monitors internet use of individual citizens, with an internet police force of over 2 million personnel as reported in 2013, especially social networks.

With Facebook and Twitter kicked out in July 2009 after riots in the western Xinjiang province, Weibo and WeChat have become the leaders in Chinese social networking space. A study conducted by David Bamman, Brendan O'Connor and Noah Smith titled 'Censorship and deletion practices in Chinese social media' revealed the shocking extent of large scale censorship of political content in social media, by actively deleting of messages published by individuals on social media. The study discovered that censors in China quickly deleted words with controversial meanings or references.

It has been pointed by Harvard's Gary King, that you can say more or less what you like in China, as long as nothing you say might have the effect of getting people out onto the streets. Any posts that could conceivably stimulate collective action, even when the posts are favorable towards the government are taken down from social media.

According to scholar Rebecca MacKinnon, through constant censoring and regulation, Chinese leaders have invented a new way of running society by what is called "networked authoritarianism". "They (China) want to modernize and energize China so that it can fulfill its destiny as a world power, and for that, they need it to transform their country into a hyper-networked society", writes John Naughton for The Guardian.

"On the other hand, they do not want democracy, with all its attendant nuisances such as human rights, governments bound by the rule of law, transparency, accountability, and they fear that the internet may give the citizens ideas above their station. So they are determined to have the net, but also to manage it effectively. And this they are doing with impressive success," added Naughton.

In fact, some commentators even argue that Chinese government, conscious of the difficulty of running a huge country without the feedback loops provided by democracy, is using the internet to provide that feedback, thus keeping a finger on the pulse of the society.

Nevertheless, since early 2016, CCP and government have asserted an even stronger dominance of public discourse than it has in years, leading to increased regulations. Experts point recent slowdown in economic growth as well as a growing existential threat to the party as reasons.

What this all means to the rest of the world is the most worrying. China is moving ever more confidently in strengthening The Great Firewall's legal foundation, reinforcing its control of the web. Notably, "they are no longer defensive about its censorship record, China is trumpeting its vision of " Internet sovereignty" as a model for the world and is moving to make it a legal reality at home", writes Simon Denyer in The Washington Post.

"The path is the choice of history, and the choice of the people and we walk the path ever more firmly and full of confidence", said Lu Wei, the man known as China's Internet czar.

In fact, Denyer points out that the scariest part is the message China is giving to other nations, that is censoring the internet actually works. With more and more nations, from Russia to Pakistan, jumping onto the "Internet sovereignty" bandwagon, the days of the open and free internet may be soon over, and we got none but the Chinese to blame.