Global Expansion Of China's Data-Driven Authoritarianism

(MENAFN- IANS) New Delhi: As technological advancements become increasingly pervasive in all aspects of life, concerns regarding the ethics of new-age digital ecosystems gain acute significance. On the one hand, the deployment of data-driven technologies into governance has led to path-breaking advantages in terms of efficiency, reduction of time and energy, inclusivity, and exceptional smoothness of operations. And, on the other, it has provided governments with unprecedented access to data regarding citizens' everyday choices, escalating the possibility of invasive surveillance, social repression, and manipulation.

This is of particular alarm when it comes to authoritarian regimes with loose laws around privacy and data security, as well as a stifled civil society. Therefore, China's rising stature in the production and export of data-centric technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) surveillance applications, threatens the current normative world order that rests on democratic citizenship and agency.

The PRC's interest in mass surveillance has a long history. Since 1998, it has enforced an integrated digital surveillance system known as the 'Golden Shield' project, part of which is the infamous censorship system called the 'Great Firewall'. Especially since President Xi Jinping took over the reins of the country in 2013, the PRC has laid out an inescapable network of around 700 million CCTV cameras, which means one surveillance camera for every two citizens. This vast network that tracks and accumulates extensive types and volumes of data from license plate reading to facial recognition is then utilised in service of the country's notorious social credit system which rewards or penalizes citizens based on their social behaviour.

Expectedly, the PRC is also the leading exporter of this mass surveillance technology, increasingly made more sophisticated by AI innovations, with three Chinese firms - Hikvision, Dahua Technologies, and Uniview Technologies - earning an estimated 30 per cent of global video surveillance revenue.

In addition to exporting high-tech surveillance gear in the form of AI-powered camera networks, Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing, which amass intimate behavioural data of citizens, the PRC has also imparted training to government personnel of receiver countries, to equip them with the know-how of operating their cutting-edge tools.

With a burgeoning market for Chinese surveillance technologies in South and South-east Asia, countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have been recipients of the PRC's tools as well as training assistance. Besides this, China has exported these technologies to even poor African countries such as Zimbabwe, Uganda, and so on. To incentivize these poor countries to buy Chinese digital surveillance apparatuses, China relies on tactics such as free trials of the tools and selling at subsidised prices. Moreover, security experts have even raised suspicions regarding Chinese consumer applications such as TikTok, WeChat, and Shein, with many countries banning the same over national security considerations. These applications potentially expose massive volumes of invasive data of foreign consumers to China which can use it to digitally influence them to serve its geopolitical interests.

There are crucial strategic benefits that China stands to gain by exporting what Samantha Hoffman has termed as 'tech-enhanced authoritarianism'. In addition to expanding Chinese influence globally and bringing to life the Chinese vision of a 'digital Silk Road', the diffusion of Chinese digital authoritarian practices will enable deeper political-security relations between China and the recipient countries. It has been observed that when it comes to democratic countries, even though they engage with China economically, there is always some degree of wariness surrounding political-security relations. Besides, as more and more countries adopt the Chinese model of data-driven authoritarianism, these practices acquire more normalisation and legitimacy, not just domestically but globally, having the potential to revise the global order as per Chinese hegemonic ambitions.

According to a February 2025 report by the National Endowment for Democracy, there are at present four key data-centric technologies that posit the risk of dangerously transforming the digital surveillance landscape within China as well as worldwide by Chinese exports. The first of these is AI-surveillance applications that include advanced biometric surveillance and 'smart city brains'. The two combined can gather minute physical and behavioural data of citizens and store them in the cloud infrastructure, to then predict social conduct and lead security response. These technologies have been used for effective governance such as tracing contact during the pandemic, easier traffic controls, shortening police response time to crisis, and tracking criminals.

However, for a techno-authoritarian state such as China, capabilities at such a scale are also used for social control, tracking people's movements, quelling protests, and targetting those who travel to other cities to raise complaints through 'petitioning'. This is even more pronounced when it comes to securitized communities which are perceived as a threat to the state such as the Uyghurs and Tibetans.

Apart from this, there is the development of Chinese Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the January release of DeepSeek that took the world by storm for its remarkably cost-effective attributes. Yet, soon after its release, several government agencies prohibited its use as concerns were raised regarding surveillance, breach of data privacy and malicious use. Moreover, it was exposed to present manipulative responses to politically delicate questions, stoking further fears about its indoctrinating design.

The second type of technology that the report highlighted are 'metaverse' based on virtual or augmented reality and neuro-technologies that work by implantable or non-implantable devices. Both offer possibilities of digitally reading not just an individual's physical behaviour but inner mental and emotional patterns. Therefore, they provide unprecedented opportunities to influence an individual's psycho-affective states, triggering disturbing apprehensions about human agency or 'brain-jacking'. Although the PRC is still in its nascent stage when it comes to these technologies, it has been at the forefront of global publications on brain-computer interfaces.

Thirdly, the report flagged Chinese potential advancements in quantum computing and communications as a threat that will make present-day encryption redundant and jeopardize dissidents, journalists, and minority groups.

Lastly, the launch of China's digital currency (Central Bank Digital Currency) is provoking anxieties about surreptitious and ubiquitous state monitoring of citizens' transactions as well as the possibility of circumventing international sanctions.

In a world that is witnessing rapid shifts in international geopolitical dynamics, democratic countries must come together in time before the global proliferation of Chinese digital authoritarianism gets out of hand. Governments must guard against the threats posed by the range of Chinese surveillance tools, in favour of citizens' digital rights, privacy, transparency, and accountability. Democratic citizenship rests on empowering the citizen with information and agency. International cooperation to ensure a global normative framework for transparent digital governance is in order, so are collective proactive measures to check the spread of Chinese surveillance infrastructure. The time is ripe for democratic nations to preciously protect the fundamental standards of a free and open world.

(N.C. Bipindra is the Chairman of Delhi-based think tank Law and Society Alliance. Views expressed are personal)

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