FIIA OCTOBER 2020 BRIEFING PAPER I 294 DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM IN CHINA AND RUSSIA COMMON GOALS AND DIVERGING STANDPOINTS IN THE ERA OF GREAT-POWER RIVALRY Elina Sinkkonen Jussi Lassila -◄ FINNISH - INSTITUTE 11 OF INTERNATIONAL - AFFAIRS FIIA BRIEFING PAPER OCTOBER 2020 I 294 DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM IN CHINA AND RUSSIA COMMON GOALS AND DIVERGING STANDPOINTS IN THE ERA OF GREAT-POWER RIVALRY • China and Russia are jointly advancing their shared interests in the international arena and are building up cooperation in the tech sector. • Despite far-reaching plans, the asymmetry of cooperation in favour of China is increasingly at odds with Russia’s national goals in digital technology. • Diferences in resources and standpoints are also refected in the implementation of digital surveillance. China’s surveillance system is sophisticated and extensive whereas Russia’s is largely inconsistent and emerging, as evidenced by the fact that there was virtually no control of the internet in Russia until 2012. • While advanced surveillance in authoritarian countries is worrying, technology in strategic sectors is also a key feld of increasingly disconcerting great-power competition. As a result of strategic competition, the world is faced with the risk of technological decoupling, which would contribute to further fragmentation of the international community and deepening of existing rivalries. ELINA SINKKONEN JUSSI LASSILA Senior Research Fellow Senior Research Fellow Global Security Research Te EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood Programme, FIIA and Russia, FIIA ISBN 978-951-769-661-6 ISSN 1795-8059 Language editing: Lynn Nikkanen Cover photo: Pixabay Arkadiankatu 23 b The Finnish Institute of International Affairs is an independent research institute that produces POB 425 / 00101 Helsinki high-level research to support political decision-making as well as scientific and public debate C Telephone +358 10)9 432 7000 FINNISH both nationally and internationally. INSTITUTE Fax +358 [0)9 432 7799 All manuscripts are reviewed by at least two other experts in the field to ensure the high - OF INTERNATIONAL quality of the publications. In addition, publications undergo professional language checking -II. AFFAIRS www.fiia.fi and editing. The responsibility for the views expressed ultimately rests with the authors. DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM IN CHINA AND RUSSIA COMMON GOALS AND DIVERGING STANDPOINTS IN THE ERA OF GREAT-POWER RIVALRY INTRODUCTION Meanwhile, the Russian National Technology In- itiative from 2014 also builds on ideas of competing China and Russia have become increasingly authoritar- blocs, and more recent plans aim to elevate Russia’s ian in recent years, and the ways in which they can use competence to that of a leading technological power. technology to control their own citizens and to pro- Echoes of great-power rivalry can also be heard in the liferate new surveillance methods to less developed context of internet regulations: Russia and China pro- authoritarian countries have caused concern. In July mote internet sovereignty and oppose the free fow of 2020, the law on mandatory preinstalled applications information. Many experts have speculated that the for smartphones, computers and smart TVs sold in Rus- internet will be divided into two spheres, an authori- sia came into force. Te new regulations were claimed tarian China-led one and a Western version. to give Russian consumers domestic options, but critics Tis Briefng Paper overviews digital surveillance are worried about information security and potential and tech investment strategies in China and Russia in non-consensual information-gathering. China, for its the era of increasing great-power rivalry. Instead of part, passed a new regulation in December 2019 requir- inciting a threat narrative of an authoritarian alliance, ing all new smartphone buyers to scan their face before discussion on technology cooperation between China being able to use the phone. Te regulation was framed and Russia should acknowledge diferences between as a part of larger eforts to ensure cyber safety by mak- the countries and take into account other ancillary ing it harder to access the internet incognito. Tese are threats of which technological decoupling is a real and only some of the recent examples of how authoritarian signifcant part. countries can use technology to monitor their citizens and boost domestic tech companies. Global competition in technology is a tournament DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE IN CHINA AND RUSSIA in which Chinese tech companies in particular take part. Great-power rivalry can be seen in US decisions Advances in technology point to more potent surveil- to ban telecom companies Huawei and ZTE from its lance. Today’s surveillance technologies range from markets, and in pressuring European countries to re- cameras, drones and satellites to surveillance sys- strict Huawei’s market access as well. China has re- tems monitoring communications data. Te essence acted to this by increasing its budget for the Made in of modern surveillance used for communications data China 2025 programme and China Standards 2035 is that programs are difcult to detect and easy to use initiative, and in trying to reduce reliance on US tech remotely. suppliers. China is also considering measures against Authoritarian regimes that rely on digital surveil- Nokia and Ericsson, two European leaders in telecom lance and repression are identified as being among networks, in case the European Union member states the most durable. During the last twenty years, the ban Huawei from taking part in building 5G networks challenge of popular protests has become more con- in Europe. On October 20, 2020 Sweden announced sequential for numerous authoritarian regimes around that it will not allow Huawei or ZTE gear to be used the world. Tis has increased the need to monitor and by frms taking part in its 5G spectrum auction. Te suppress opposition via digital means to secure regime Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed its disapprov- survival. Furthermore, the adoption of digital repres- al of Sweden’s decision and urged Sweden to “cor- sion has not diminished the use of physical measures, rect its mistake ---to avoid negative impact on the as these new tools are used to identify and control op- Swedish businesses operating in China”.1 At the time position members more efectively.2 of writing there is no information on any concrete China is, perhaps, a prime example in many respects. countermeasures. Te Chinese Communist Party has always taken social 1 PRC Foreign Ministry, ‘Regular Press Conference on October 21, 2020’, https:// 2 Kendall-Taylor, A., Frantz, E. and Wright, J. (2020), ‘Te digital dictators: how www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1825675.shtml. technology strengthens autocracy’, Foreign Afairs 99(2): 103–115. FIIA BRI EFING PAPER OCTOBER 2020 I 3 unrest issues seriously. Consequently, China has applied However, regardless of well-established founda- censorship of some sort ever since the internet became tions for the state's mass surveillance, SORM has faced commercially available in the country in the mid-1990s. fnancial and technological difculties. In the absence Internet surveillance is now one among many forms of of a single, state-controlled telecom operator, most surveillance and control in a society that is permeat- independent operators have managed to “shirk” the ed by digitalization and, increasingly, artifcial intelli- requirements while appearing to be following them gence (AI). Digitalized visual surveillance is one such formally almost to the letter. As one specialist pointed form. China has invested heavily in CCTV cameras with out: “It’s like a kind of Italian strike, where documents automated facial recognition programs. In Xinjiang, get passed back and forth for years but no one actually monitoring includes obligatory DNA sampling used for does anything.”4 A common technological challenge ethnic profling.3 Xi Jinping’s regime has also built the stems from the fact that networks built in the past are capacity to forecast large-scale popular protests and has simply incompatible with the hardware that the au- adapted its political indoctrination to the era of big data thorities would like to use. by using AI in surveillance and censorship. A partial indication of these difculties is that there In addition, China aims to resolve diferent soci- are no signs of the Kremlin's extensive capacity to etal and economic problems with an emerging “social control the information space, regardless of numer- credit system”, driven by information technology. By ous shutdowns of allegedly harmful websites and acts collecting data from diferent sources, the social credit of pressuring their authors. Indeed, the importance of system can monitor, assess and change the behaviour the internet has grown at the expense of traditional of both citizens and companies. As state actors could state-controlled media (above all TV), regardless of not manage big data collection endeavours on their ever-tightening internet legislation. Russian citizens own, China’s social credit system includes a wide vari- are fully aware of protests, forest fres and ecological ety of commercial actors. Te system was supposed to disasters around the country through the internet. In be ready in 2020, but as there are data-sharing prob- short, the state’s increasing investments in developing lems between diferent parts of the system and sanc- mass surveillance have not resolved the fundamental tioning mechanisms remain underdeveloped, the 2020 problem of the free fow of information. In this regard, deadline will not be met. However, many parts of the the Kremlin’s main strength in controlling citizens is system are already operational. based on the deterrence provided by punishment and In post-Soviet Russia, the legal (or illegal) founda- physical control over the ofine space rather than on tions of the state's surveillance practices were formed comprehensive digital surveillance.5 in the 1990s when the “System for Operative Inves- Although China has been viewed as an important tigative Activities” (Sistema operativno-razysknikh partner by the Kremlin since the early 2000s, a major meropriyatiy, SORM) was introduced.