Through the course of the past year, we have been part of the 2020–21 Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship curriculum, and our chosen area of interest has been the intersection of technological growth, surveillance and privacy in China.
The salience of such issues within the United States magnifies the relevance of this interest. The U.S. does not have any centralized federal legislation about data privacy andlacks strong regulations of it at the state level. This may come as no surprise when one considers how ill-informed many lawmakers have demonstrated themselves to be in congressional hearings, including in April 2018 when Sen. Orrin Hatch asked Mark Zuckerberg,"How do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?" While the level of congressional inquiry has improved since then, the fact remains that lawmakers have largely let companies develop their own data protection policies, expecting Americans not to use monopolistic services such as Facebook if they have concerns about their data privacy.
The main difference between the U.S. and China is the level of state control and access to data.Despite increasing regulations over time, the Chinese state hasaccess to big data directly via governmental programs and indirectly via its involvement in corporations.This access to vast stores of data may rival that of Facebook and Google, but unlike social media companies, the Chinese state has the unilateral power to imprison its citizens. That is why its capabilities and practices are complicated, and perhaps more dangerous.
Governmental practices include the use of cameras (an estimated1 billion worldwide by the end of this year), facial recognition, internet surveillance, biometric data, the social credit system and the ability to access people’s computers and phones. In fact, most of China’s security apparatus is focused on maintaining domestic stability, with alarge portion of its budget going toward these tools. Given this focus, we are motivated to inquire about the regulations that govern the relationship between the Chinese government and the Chinese tech sector. These regulations extend to many aspects of this relationship, including, but not limited to, tech funding capabilities, government access to corporate owned-data and government intent in using that data to monitor civil society and relevant security threats.
The complicated nexus of control between Chinese tech giants and the Chinese state government is accentuated with the rise of Chinese technology in mobile phones, semiconductors (a historically dependent but recently developing industry) and other tech advancements (e.g., TikTok and Baidu) across the world. Not only does this give rise to the need for appropriate practices and safeguards within the issue-prone areas of intellectual property regulations and the quality of Chinese technology, but it also has direct effects on which country will win the technological race of our lifetimes. In our understanding of the nature of the China-U.S. technological and economic relationship, it is integral for the two countries to navigate opportunities for collaboration and development within the realm of technology.
The future of technology in China holds direct implications for the future of technology growth, privacy and surveillance across the world. In a world with increasingly few barriers between the private and the public, the outcome of the technological competition race has direct effects on our behaviors, connectivity and freedom. The extent to which the Chinese state controls the growth of domestic private technology has direct effects on the norms, practices and ethics of global data privacy, surveillance and intellectual property regulations. It is our responsibility to become informed about the dynamics of Chinese technological growth in order to better respond to the evolution of the global techno-ethical infrastructure during our lifetimes.
In order to discuss some of these questions, the panel on China and Technology in theEPIIC Symposium (March 18 - March 20, 2021) brings together a diverse range of speakers and includes academics, journalists and professionals from think tanks, companies and eminent universities.At the moment, thelist of speakers includes academics such as Qing Wang (Warwick Business School), specialists such as Robert Williams (executive director of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School) and journalists such as Rebecca Fannin (Forbes).
With debates that include not only the science and engineering aspects of technology, but also the societal, legal and economic implications of Chinese technological dominance,this conversation aims to bring together students of all disciplines, faculty and the broader public in an effort to educate ourselves about and better understand the nature of the international technological revolution that we are in. We are very excited for this panel and sincerely hope that you can join us.
Atrey Bhargava is a senior majoring in economics and international relations. Leo Westgard is a sophomore majoring in political science and civic studies. Both are in this year’s EPIIC program on “China and the World” and are organizing a panel on Chinese technology for the March 18-20 symposium. Atrey can be reached at atrey.bhargava@tufts.edu and Leo can be reached at leowestgard@gmail.com.
