Digital IDs will tighten Beijing’s censorship grip

State control affects every aspect of life in China. It is a constant reminder that ‘Big Brother’ from the ruling Communist Party is watching you. All 1.4 billion. 

Next month, President Xi Jinping’s regime will launch “digital IDs, shifting responsibility for online verification from private firms to the government.” 

In short, it will further tighten Beijing’s grip on society. “This is a potentially enormous step change in the state’s control over data,” The Economist reported this week.

“It augments China’s radically different approach to managing and surveilling the digital lives of its citizens, and even change the evolution of [AI] in China,” it said.

Why it matters:

• Digital IDs will only add another layer to increase internet surveillance in China. 
• The online world is already ring-fenced by the Great Firewall to suppress free speech. 

This is where ‘service-level censorship’ comes into play.

ChinaFile

Delve deeper: “It may [also] alter who captures the profits generated from the [digital] economy,” The Economist pointed out in a newsletter.

Between the lines: But this latest move is just part of a bigger crackdown with world-wide ramifications. “China’s censorship is creeping into the global internet,” a ChinaFile report by Jessica Batke and Laura Edelson, of Northeastern University, stressed. 

Big picture: “Beijing’s network-level systems censor international internet traffic that so happen to transit China, no matter its origin or destination,” the study revealed.

Bottom line: “This is where ‘service-level censorship’ comes into play. Beijing has tasked ‘services’ such as blogs, social media apps, and gaming platforms with conducting censorship on its behalf,” it added.

China Factor comment: The Party “has become increasingly repressive in recent years,” Washington-based Freedom House confirmed last year. British human rights watchdog Article 19 also warned that “China is exporting its model abroad.”