Digital Authoritarianism, China and Covid: coronavirus showcases China’s cyber-powered social control capabilities, with implications for human rights worldwide.

Executive Summary: The combination of retreating US leadership and the COVID-19 pandemic has emboldened China to expand and promote its tech-enabled authoritarianism as world’s best practice. The pandemic has provided a proof of concept, demonstrating to the CCP that its technology with ‘Chinese characteristics’ works, and that surveillance on this scale and in an emergency is feasible and effective. With the CCP’s digital authoritarianism flourishing at home, Chinese-engineered digital surveillance and tracking systems are now being exported around the globe in line with China’s Cyber Superpower Strategy.

China is attempting to set new norms in digital rights, privacy, and data collection, simultaneously suppressing dissent at home and promoting the CCP’s geostrategic goals. The danger for other countries importing Chinese technological solutions is that it will result in a growing acceptance of mass surveillance, habituation to restrictions on liberties, and fewer checks on the collection and use of personal data by the state, even after the public health crisis subsides. Democratic governments need to be vigilant in setting standards and preserving citizens’ rights and liberties.

To read this analysis by the Lowy Institute’s Lydia Khalil in full, go to: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/digital-authoritarianism-china-and-covid

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