[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                 TECHNO-AUTHORITARIANISM: PLATFORM FOR 
                    REPRESSION IN CHINA AND ABROAD
=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

              CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                           NOVEMBER 17, 2021

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
 
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              Available at www.cecc.gov or www.govinfo.gov

                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
46-147 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
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              CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                    LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS



      Senate                                    House

JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon, Chair          JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts,  
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California                 Co-chair
MARCO RUBIO, Florida                 CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma             THOMAS SUOZZI, New York
TOM COTTON, Arkansas                 TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey
STEVE DAINES, Montana                BRIAN MAST, Florida
ANGUS KING, Maine                    VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan
                                     JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
                                     MICHELLE STEEL, California

                     EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

                           Not yet appointed

                      Matt Squeri, Staff Director

                   Todd Stein, Deputy Staff Director

                                  (ii)


                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                               Statements

                                                                   Page
Opening Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley, a U.S. Senator from 
  Oregon; Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China.....     1
Statement of Hon. James P. McGovern, a U.S. Representative from
  Massachusetts; Co-chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on 
  China..........................................................     2
Statement of Hon. Chris Smith, a U.S. Representative from New 
  Jersey.........................................................     3
Cain, Geoffrey, author of ``The Perfect Police State: An 
  Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance 
  Dystopia of the Future''.......................................     5
Hoffman, Samantha, Senior Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy 
  Institute......................................................     7
Wang, Yaqiu, Senior Researcher on China, Human Rights Watch......     9
Hillman, Jonathan, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and 
  International Studies..........................................    10

                                APPENDIX
                          Prepared Statements

Geoffrey Cain....................................................    36
Samantha Hoffman.................................................    39
Yaqiu Wang.......................................................    44
Jonathan Hillman.................................................    46

Merkley, Hon. Jeff...............................................    53
McGovern, Hon. James P...........................................    54

                       Submissions for the Record

CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form..........................    55
Witness Biographies..............................................    57

                                 (iii)

 
  TECHNO-AUTHORITARIANISM: PLATFORM FOR REPRESSION IN CHINA AND ABROAD

                              ----------                              


                      WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2021

                            Congressional-Executive
                                       Commission on China,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m. 
in Room 106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Jeff 
Merkley, Chair, presiding.
    Also present: Representative James P. McGovern, Co-chair, 
Senators Lankford, King, and Ossoff, and Representatives Smith, 
Steel, Suozzi, and Wexton.

  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF MERKLEY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 
   OREGON; CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

    Chair Merkley. Good morning. Today's hearing of the 
Congressional-Executive Commission on China entitled ``Techno-
Authoritarianism: Platform for Repression in China and 
Abroad,'' will come to order. This hearing will explore China's 
role in embracing technology-enhanced authoritarianism and 
promoting its spread around the world.
    In China and around the globe, we are seeing that the same 
technology that drives the global economy, facilitates 
communication, enables financial flows, and provides the 
conveniences of modern life can also be used for repression. 
Without proper guardrails to protect privacy and basic human 
rights, technology can control populations, trample freedom of 
expression, and undermine institutions of democratic 
governance. For the Chinese government and Chinese Communist 
Party, it starts at home.
    Over many years, the Commission has documented the 
development of what has become the most pervasive surveillance 
state the world has ever seen. Authorities embrace technologies 
such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cloud 
computing--the building blocks of the modern economy--to impose 
political and social control of targeted populations. These 
technologies offer the government an unprecedented degree of 
control, enabled by the collection of massive amounts of data 
from cellphones, from personal computers, DNA, security 
cameras, and more.
    Nowhere do we see this more tragically than in the Xinjiang 
Uyghur Autonomous Region. Today we will hear testimony 
outlining the extent of the surveillance in Xinjiang, as well 
as the heart-wrenching toll on individuals and their 
communities. We will also hear from expert witnesses who will 
shed light on the use of technology in mainland China and 
abroad, for legitimate purposes of government efficiency and 
digital connectivity but also to spread the web of repressive 
control to cities across China, regions across China, the 
developing world, and even the Chinese diaspora community in 
the United States.
    This adds up to a complex picture. The technologies we will 
hear about have dual-use potential, to be used for good or for 
ill. Many countries to which China exports surveillance systems 
and elements of the so-called safe cities model embrace these 
technologies out of a desire to combat crime or reduce traffic 
or provide municipal services. Yet these technologies, this 
high-tech authoritarianism, can be used to strip rights and 
dignity from millions of people across the planet.
    Acting to defend freedom and to defend democracy will 
require the establishment of norms for the proper use and 
boundaries of this technology, but we can't stop there. We have 
to work with defenders of freedom across the globe to develop 
attractive and affordable alternatives. This won't be easy. 
That's why Co-chairman McGovern and I have convened this 
hearing. We need to hear from experts on how Congress, the 
United States Government, and the international community can 
address these difficult challenges.
    Just as the United States confronts limitations in its 
ability to shape the behavior of the Chinese government, so too 
will we face limitations in shaping the rest of the world, 
especially when it comes to technology that empowers everyday 
life. That's why we need smart action in concert with a 
coalition of partners. I look forward to the testimony today to 
help us work to identify the approaches that can harness 
technology in a way that respects, rather than endangers, 
fundamental human rights.
    I'd now like to recognize my co-chairman Congressman 
McGovern for his opening remarks, and that will be followed by 
Congressman Smith, who is joining us electronically.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
MASSACHUSETTS; CO-CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON 
                             CHINA

    Co-chair McGovern. Well, thank you, Chairman Merkley. Thank 
you for convening this hearing on the Chinese government's use 
of technology and digital platforms to expand and export its 
repressive policies. You know, where there was once optimism 
that the internet and new technologies would create a more 
open, democratized global commons, there is now a cloud of 
darkness. Anti-democratic and authoritarian governments have 
learned to harness such technology as a means to assert social 
control. This is no longer just about human rights abuses 
suffered by people over there. It is about the risks we now 
face from the phones in our pockets.
    Take TikTok. It is immensely popular in the United States 
and can be a lot of fun, or so my kids tell me. It was 
developed by a Chinese company, and there is nothing inherently 
wrong with that. But we hear reports that videos on topics 
sensitive to its government are blocked or disappear. Americans 
deserve to know whether China's censorship regime is intruding 
on their daily lives. This concern is why the Commission, under 
my chairmanship in the last Congress, expanded its reporting to 
include human rights violations in the United States and 
globally.
    Our soon-to-be-released annual report will document how the 
Chinese government silences criticism, chills the expression of 
political views, and undermines international norms. The 
Commission's next hearing will look at the economic coercion 
aspect of this trend. We cannot forget that the Chinese 
government's techno-authoritarianism is felt most gravely by 
the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. The surveillance regime 
that they have set up in Xinjiang is the most advanced and 
enveloping in the world. Is this the model for the rest of 
China and the world?
    This is the key question that we hope today's witnesses 
will address: How can the United States ensure that its exports 
do not abet the spread of the surveillance state? Can we 
harness international partners? And how do individuals make 
sound consumer choices? We are addressing an immensely 
complicated and technical set of issues, and I'm pleased that 
our witnesses bring a breadth of expertise to these evolving 
challenges. I hope you will continue to share your research 
with us. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to hearing 
the testimony of our witnesses.
    Chair Merkley. Congressman Smith.

                 STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH,
             A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY

    Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, 
and thank you for convening this very, very important hearing. 
As we all know, the Silk Road was a network of trade routes 
connecting the East and West from roughly two centuries before 
Christ to the 18th century--a transformational route in the 
development of the civilizations not only of China, but also 
the rest of the world. Likewise, the Great Wall of China was 
built not only for defense of China's borders, but for the 
regulation as well as the encouragement of trade. In short, 
these twin legacies of Chinese civilization have contributed 
much to the greater development of the world through open and 
transparent exchanges of goods and ideas.
    Unfortunately, China under Xi Jinping and the Chinese 
Communist Party has not continued this proud tradition. Instead 
of the Great Wall that once protected its citizens while 
ensuring robust exchanges with the world, the Great Firewall 
now prevents Chinese citizens from global engagement through 
one of the most extensive internet censorship systems the world 
has ever seen. Similarly, China's Digital Silk Road is not a 
modern version of the Silk Road, but an intrusive ecosystem of 
internet architecture and surveillance technology aiming to 
expand the People's Republic of China's influence around the 
world.
    Sadly, the surveillance facilitated by such tools is a fact 
of life for Chinese citizens, and increasingly for those who 
live in countries that have adopted Chinese technology. Chinese 
authorities' relentless persecution of predominantly Muslim 
Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Central Asian people in the 
country's Xinjiang region provides a disturbing preview of 
these tools' misuse on an even broader scale. Residents are 
tracked through surveillance drones, ubiquitous street cameras, 
and the obligatory spyware apps on their phones.
    As we all know, many of those who practice a religious 
faith, including Christians in their churches, are now 
subjected to ever-increasing amounts of surveillance. Even 
China's COVID-19 tracking systems and apps that are supposed to 
protect its citizens are instead used to categorize them via 
different color codes according to their health status and 
other personal data, which are then shared with the police. 
This is not dystopian fiction, ``1984.'' This is China today.
    Shockingly, U.S. companies have been complicit in helping 
China build this techno-totalitarian state. In 2006, as you may 
know, Mr. Chairman, I chaired a hearing where the 
representatives of Google, Cisco, Yahoo, and Microsoft 
testified as to their role in assisting the repression in 
China. The year before, Yahoo had shared information with 
China's secret police that led to the arrest and a 10-year jail 
sentence of cyber dissident Shi Tao. Yahoo also handed over 
data regarding one of its users, Li Zhi, who had criticized 
corrupt local Chinese Communist Party officials in an online 
discussion, for which he was sentenced to eight years in 
prison.
    We have now also seen companies like Thermo Fisher 
Scientific provide equipment to security services in China for 
a reputed genetic surveillance program. That was stated in the 
company's 2019 announcement that it would stop selling its 
equipment in Xinjiang in 2019, amid concerns raised by 
scientists, human rights groups, and our Commission that the 
authorities could use the tools to build systems to track 
people. The New York Times recently reported that Thermo Fisher 
equipment continues to be sold to police in Xinjiang.
    American companies such as Thermo Fisher Scientific, not to 
mention those companies who subsidize China's genocide Olympics 
that was the subject of a few hearings that were held by this 
Commission and by the Lantos Human Rights Commission, often 
tout their commitment to corporate social responsibility 
principles. Such virtue signaling is now commonplace and is a 
form of marketing. Corporate social responsibility, however, 
starts with U.S. global businesses recognizing that their sales 
of technology products to China for use by China and its allies 
furthers the interests of the government of China, and often 
against its own people. Instead of virtue signaling, they 
should take a stand against Chinese human rights abuses.
    If we fail to affirm our foundational American principles, 
including our commitment to freedom of expression and speech, I 
fear that the digital authoritarianism of China will become the 
new reality, increasingly, for all of us. Thank you, Chairman. 
I yield back.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congressman Smith.
    I'd now like to introduce our panel. Geoffrey Cain is an 
award-winning foreign correspondent, author, technologist, and 
scholar of East and Central Asia. He is the author, most 
recently, of ``The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey 
into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future.'' 
He's written for The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Time 
magazine, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, and The Nation.
    Samantha Hoffman is a senior analyst at the Australia 
Policy Institute. Her work explores the domestic and global 
implications of the Chinese Communist Party's approach to state 
security, offering new ways of thinking about how to respond to 
China's pursuit of artificial intelligence and big data-enabled 
capabilities to augment political and social control.
    Yaqiu Wang is a senior researcher on China at Human Rights 
Watch, working on issues including internet censorship, freedom 
of expression, protection of civil society and human rights 
defenders, and women's rights. Her articles have appeared in 
Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and 
elsewhere. She has provided commentary to BBC, CNN, the New 
York Times, and others.
    Jonathan Hillman is a senior fellow at the Center for 
Strategic and International Studies and the director of the 
Reconnecting Asia Project, one of the most extensive open-
source databases tracking China's Belt and Road Initiative. He 
is the author of ``The Digital Silk Road: China's Quest to Wire 
the World and Win the Future.'' Prior to joining CSIS, he 
served as a policy advisor at the Office of the U.S. Trade 
Representative.
    Now I'll ask the witnesses to deliver their testimony for 
five minutes each, in the following order: Mr. Cain, Dr. 
Hoffman, Ms. Wang, and then Mr. Hillman.
    Mr. Cain, the floor is yours, and welcome.

  STATEMENT OF GEOFFREY CAIN, AUTHOR OF ``THE PERFECT POLICE 
     STATE: AN UNDERCOVER ODYSSEY INTO CHINA'S TERRIFYING 
             SURVEILLANCE DYSTOPIA OF THE FUTURE''

    Mr. Cain. Chairman Merkley, Co-chairman McGovern, and 
members of the Commission, thank you, and it is an honor to be 
invited to testify here today on China's surveillance apparatus 
and the threat that it poses globally. Democracies around the 
world are straddled with a grave and unprecedented problem, the 
creation of new totalitarian surveillance technologies, 
developed faster than we can implement the democratic laws, 
norms, and checks and balances that will ensure that these 
technologies do not fall into the wrong hands.
    Today I will talk about a place where these technologies 
have enabled genocide and crimes against humanity. I will talk 
about the situation of the Uyghur population in China's western 
region of Xinjiang, where about 1.8 million people have 
languished in a network of hundreds of extrajudicial 
concentration camps, out of an ethnic minority population of 
about 11 million people. That's about one-tenth of the minority 
population.
    Since 2016, the People's Republic of China has engaged in 
an unprecedented experiment in social control in this region. 
It has deployed novel technologies in artificial intelligence, 
facial recognition, voice recognition, and biometric data 
collection to oppress its people in new and novel ways. In the 
20th century, genocides took place in gas chambers and mass 
graves. But in the 21st century, modern technology has allowed 
the People's Republic of China to commit the beginnings of a 
genocide, wiping out a people in silence, through cultural 
erasure and forced sterilization. This all comes without the 
use of mass physical violence and mass killings.
    This is all documented in my book, ``The Perfect Police 
State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying 
Surveillance Dystopia of the Future,'' published in June 2020 
by the Hachette Book Group. From August 2017 to February 2021, 
I was an investigative journalist in China, Turkey, and 
Kyrgyzstan, where I interviewed 168 Uyghur and Kazakh and other 
refugees from different ethnic minorities. These refugees 
consisted of former concentration camp detainees, their family 
members, American and European diplomats tracking the 
atrocities, former Chinese government officials, academics, 
former Uyghur technology employees at major Chinese 
corporations, and former Uyghur intelligence operatives from 
the Ministry of State Security, a powerful body in China.
    In December 2017, I made my final visit to Kashgar, the 
Uyghur heartland, and Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang. 
Within three days, I was detained and asked to leave. To 
protect my data, my sources, and my own safety, I have not 
returned. Uyghur and Kazakh refugees in interviews all told 
similar stories about the region's descent into a total 
surveillance dystopia. Most commonly, they recounted how 
authorities from the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry 
of State Security, and numerous Chinese technology firms such 
as Huawei, Hikvision, SenseTime, Megvii, and many others have 
innovated the technologies that are deployed for a dragnet.
    The police then use these technologies for what 
interviewees said was a system of mass psychological torture. 
When refugees and former camp detainees say ``psychological 
torture,'' they mean the feeling of constantly being watched, 
not by humans, but by crude software algorithms designed to 
predict future crimes and acts of terrorism with great 
inaccuracy. The software platform, known as the IJOP, or the 
Integrated Joint Operations Platform, gathers data from a 
myriad of sources, including police human input, camera 
surveillance, and criminal and court histories, according to 
these former technology workers. For them, it was straight out 
of the science fiction dystopias that they saw once they had 
left the region, including ``Minority Report,'' the film with 
Tom Cruise about a pre-crime unit that arrests and brainwashes 
people, accusing them of future crimes that have never 
happened.
    These former technology workers told me about how the 
system worked from the inside of the Chinese surveillance 
apparatus. They said that artificial intelligence used data to 
train a crude, simple algorithm and find correlations between 
data points, and would then match up a number of unrelated, 
outside factors to determine whether people would commit a 
crime in the future. The system would then send a bump or nudge 
to the smartphones of local police to investigate and detain an 
individual for reasons often unclear to the human police using 
the software. These reasons for detention could be as far-flung 
as whether they went through the front or back door, whether 
they began a physical exercise routine suddenly, or whether 
they've had the flu and were simply late for work that day.
    Without a human to oversee these decisions, refugees said 
they were terrified at the prospect of doing anything that 
departed from their daily schedules and might flag them as 
potential criminals. They trained themselves to become like 
machines or robots, able to answer every question from the 
police in a preprogrammed way, repressing their own feelings, 
thoughts, and desires in the process. These psychological 
tactics have been well documented at the network of 
concentration camps that now exist in the region of Xinjiang. 
Refugees who have been there have described their fellow 
detainees as lacking personality or expression, as if they had 
had a memory wipe.
    Their only way of surviving was to do what the camp guards 
and teachers told them, without question. The surveillance 
technology was designed to force them to deny their own reality 
and internalize the thinking of the Chinese Communist Party. By 
internalizing this propaganda, these detainees did exactly what 
the apparatus wanted of them and that was to erase their own 
internal sense of culture, heritage, community, and upbringing 
which separated them and their culture from the dominant Han 
Chinese population.
    With that, there is certainly much that we can do to tackle 
this problem. I am aware of time, so I will hand over the floor 
to the next speaker. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Cain.
    And now we're going to turn to Samantha Hoffman, who is 
joining us from Australia. Welcome.

   STATEMENT OF SAMANTHA HOFFMAN, SENIOR ANALYST, AUSTRALIAN 
                   STRATEGIC POLICY INSTITUTE

    Ms. Hoffman. Thank you, Chairman Merkley, Co-chair 
McGovern, and members of the Commission. Thank you for the 
opportunity to speak today on this important topic.
    I'd like to begin with a brief explanation of what I think 
the appropriate definition of techno-authoritarianism is, which 
is that when we're talking about authoritarian technology, we 
are really talking about the ways that technology is attached 
to existing methods of political and social control, and 
economic management as well, in the PRC. So oftentimes while we 
tend to focus on the most coercive applications of technology, 
we sometimes tend to overlook the more everyday applications of 
technology and the way that that enhances authoritarian power 
as well.
    With that, I'd like to go over three core assessments and 
offer some policy recommendations. I'd like to note that 
throughout my testimony I offer some charts that help to 
explain the concepts I'll go over. And I'm happy to answer more 
in Q&A.
    So, the core assessments. First, assumptions that liberal 
democracy would automatically be strengthened, and 
authoritarians would automatically be weakened when the world 
became digitally interconnected have been proven false. 
Democracies are not going to self-correct in response to the 
problems created by authoritarian applications of technology. 
Competing with China in this space--it's not simply about 
winning or losing a race in terms of R&D of emerging and 
critical technologies such as AI or data science and storage 
technologies. Leadership in R&D in these areas is essential, 
not least to guarantee supply chain resilience, but just as 
consequential is the competition taking place in the conceptual 
space. So for the United States and like-minded countries to 
stay ahead, they must innovate in thinking about use cases in 
order to also set boundaries, so that these technologies can 
positively affect society without also undermining liberal 
democratic values.
    Second, the ability to identify and protect strategic data 
will become an increasingly complex and vital national security 
task, especially under the conditions of China's military-civil 
fusion strategy. Knowing how particular datasets are collected 
and used by foreign adversaries, and imagining potential use 
cases, will be an essential part of ranking which datasets 
should be prioritized for protection. Developing effective 
countermeasures requires understanding the implications of the 
fact that the Chinese party-state conceives of the usefulness 
of data in a strategic competition in ways that go beyond 
traditional intelligence collection.
    Finally, we cannot measure risk based on today's 
capabilities alone. Technology evolves on a trajectory. To 
develop effective policy responses requires assuming that the 
challenges China faces today in realizing the optimal outcomes 
of the application of technology to its authoritarian 
governance may not be as significant in the future, as the 
concepts increasingly catch up with capabilities.
    The areas of policy I think we need to focus on, I think 
that we oftentimes--too often offer prescriptive solutions, 
when actually we haven't clearly identified the problem yet. So 
with that, I'd like to recommend for U.S. policy that time be 
spent to recalibrate data security policy and privacy 
frameworks to account for the fact of the Chinese party-state's 
use of data to reinforce its political monopoly. Oftentimes, 
companies and governments assume that their data and privacy 
regulations share the same goals as the other, which isn't true 
when it comes to the Chinese party-state and PRC companies. 
Even if common vocabularies are used or if some policy drivers 
are similar, in the PRC, unlike in liberal democracies, data 
security and privacy concepts--including legislation on data 
security in the personal information protection law recently--
reinforce the party-state's monopoly on power. So companies and 
governments--the United States included--need to recognize this 
risk and calibrate their policies to account for it.
    Second, the United States should collaborate with like-
minded countries to develop systems for improving risk-based 
approaches to improving the regulation of data transfers. 
Organizations and governments must be able to assess the value 
of their data and the value of that data to any party in their 
supply chain who may have access to it downstream.
    Finally--I'm aware I'm running out of time--governments 
must take a multidisciplinary approach to due diligence. 
Governments, as well as businesses and organizations, need to 
develop frameworks for conducting supply-chain reviews that 
take into account country-specific policy drivers. Developing 
such a framework shouldn't be limited to just assessing the 
vendor's risk of exposure to political risk. It should also 
include detailed analysis of the downstream actors who have 
access to the vendor's data. And it must include analysis of 
things such as the broader data ecosystem of which they're a 
part and the obligations that the vendors within that ecosystem 
have to their governments. Taking this more holistic approach 
to due diligence will better ensure that data can be protected 
in a more effective way.
    Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you so much, Ms. Hoffman.
    And now we're going to turn to Yaqiu Wang. Welcome.

           STATEMENT OF YAQIU WANG, SENIOR RESEARCHER
                  ON CHINA, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

    Ms. Wang. Chairman Merkley, Chairman McGovern, members of 
the Commission, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this 
issue dear to my heart. I owe my presence here today to the 
relative internet freedom China once had, and America's 
commitment to freedom of information. I was born and grew up in 
China. As a teenager, every day I would go online and listen to 
Voice of America's ``Special English,'' a news program 
broadcast in slow-speed English. That's how I started to learn 
English, and that's also how I and many others in China got 
information uncensored by the Chinese government.
    That was 15 years ago, and Beijing has since gotten so much 
better at controlling the internet. It's not only that many 
foreign websites are blocked, that people inside China can't 
access websites outside of China, but also that many people 
from China who now live in the U.S.--with the free internet 
readily accessible to them--they would still go back to the 
censored Chinese internet to get news information.
    I'd like to use my five minutes to focus on WeChat and 
TikTok, two Chinese apps that have a significant presence in 
the U.S. First and foremost, it's essential to remember that 
all Chinese tech companies are subject to the control of the 
Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese diaspora heavily relies on 
the super-app WeChat for information, communication, and 
political organizing. This heavy reliance on this one app for 
everything gives Beijing huge latitude to shape the diaspora's 
views in ways more favorable to the CCP. It allows Beijing to 
know a lot about the people who have left China, down to things 
like who is meeting whom, at what time, and where, and it also 
allows Beijing to potentially mobilize an important demographic 
in the U.S.
    Earlier this year, a network of fake social media accounts 
linked to the Chinese government attempted, but failed, to draw 
Americans out to real-world protests against racial injustice. 
The reason we know about this is because it happened on 
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube--American tech companies that 
are comparatively more transparent, that periodically disclose 
influence operations, and that are under more public scrutiny. 
We do not know whether similar schemes targeting the Chinese 
diaspora are happening on WeChat, because it's hard to do 
research.
    Then there is TikTok, which has far, deep reach into the 
lives of the American public, especially young people. One 
thing lawmakers need to understand is that what you see on 
TikTok is not so much decided by who you follow, but by the 
company's algorithm. There is no way for outsiders to know what 
information is being suppressed or promoted on TikTok that is 
due to the Chinese government's influence. If you search the 
hashtag #Xinjiang, you will find many, many videos with smiling 
and dancing Uyghurs, but not so many videos about the camps and 
surveillance and the human rights suffering. Why is this the 
case? We don't know.
    In short, there is a lot we don't know about what Chinese 
tech companies are doing in the U.S., what is being censored, 
promoted, and suppressed, and how data is being accessed, used, 
and shared, and to what extent it's the Chinese government that 
is telling them to do these things. But we can know that and 
it's up to you, people in Congress, to make it happen. Congress 
has recently increased its scrutiny of American tech companies. 
Chinese tech companies' rising popularity in the U.S. and their 
ties to the Chinese government should give added urgency to 
passing laws to require tech companies to be more transparent 
in their operation and to protect user data.
    Lastly, here I speak not as an expert but as a member of 
the Chinese immigrant community in America. I urge the U.S. 
Government to invest in Chinese language journalism and media. 
Making fact-based information available in our native language 
is one of the most effective ways to counter Beijing's malign 
influence. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Ms. Wang.
    And we now turn to Mr. Jonathan Hillman. Welcome.

   STATEMENT OF JONATHAN HILLMAN, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR 
              STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

    Mr. Hillman. Chairman Merkley, Chairman McGovern, members 
of the Commission, thank you for holding this important 
hearing.
    Briefly, I'd like to underscore four points from my written 
testimony, which focuses on China's Digital Silk Road. First, 
China is positioning itself as the developing world's primary 
provider of digital infrastructure, and it stands to reap both 
commercial and strategic benefits in the coming years if it is 
uncontested. There is an urgency to China's activities, which 
are expanding out of necessity and opportunity. As China's tech 
companies face greater scrutiny in advanced economies, they are 
doubling down in the developing world. Huawei, for example, in 
recent years has signed dozens of deals with foreign 
governments to provide cloud infrastructure and e-government 
services.
    There's also great demand for digital infrastructure. 
Nearly half of the world still lacks access to reliable 
internet. Africa, which has about 17 percent of the world's 
population, has less than 1 percent of the world's installed 
data center capacity. So the opportunity for growth is vast. 
The United States can engage with these emerging economies and 
benefit U.S. workers and companies, or it can allow China to 
cement a position of strength.
    Second, security concerns, serious as they are, will not 
win this competition. In much of the world, cost trumps 
security. Competing will require expanding the availability of 
affordable, responsible alternatives. Consider China's ``safe 
city'' exports, which its companies claim will reduce crime, 
increase economic growth, and even help fight the pandemic. 
Those promises, packaged with financing, can give the 
impression that these systems will essentially pay for 
themselves. But we know that these systems are also vulnerable.
    In addition to raising serious human rights concerns, there 
are basic questions about their performance or examples of 
systems failing or not delivering the benefits they promise. 
These shortcomings open the door for the United States and its 
allies to offer responsible alternatives. Decisionmakers in 
developing countries need more than a reason to say no to 
China's offers. They need something to say yes to. They're 
looking for partners that promote development without fueling 
dependency.
    Third, the United States has several advantages that it can 
leverage to compete. U.S. companies are playing catch-up in 5G 
in some respects, but they remain ahead in several important 
areas, as well as in emerging technologies that could shift the 
playing field in favor of U.S. interests. For example, U.S. 
companies are leading efforts to provide global broadband from 
Low Earth Orbit satellite constellations. U.S. companies offer 
top-quality cloud services, ``smart city'' systems, and data 
centers.
    In other words, the United States already has many of the 
essential ingredients to compete, but in some cases it needs to 
do a better job of bringing those ingredients together and 
competing on cost. The United States has another powerful asset 
that China does not, a network of partners and allies. Several 
promising efforts are underway to mobilize and operationalize 
common concerns about China's digital activities and provide 
alternatives, including the G-7's Build Back Better World 
partnership, the Trilateral Infrastructure Partnership, the 
Blue Dot Network, and efforts through the Quad and the U.S.-EU 
Trade and Technology Council. All of these efforts will need 
resources to succeed.
    Finally, Congress and the executive branch have important 
roles to play in helping the United States win this 
competition, even though this competition is often happening in 
the private sector. They can help sharpen the U.S. toolkit by 
enabling the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation 
to do more, expanding the U.S. Commercial Service, and updating 
defense partnerships to include a greater focus on technology. 
And they can expand the availability of affordable alternatives 
by making additional resources available for the Build Back 
Better World partnership and related allied efforts, supporting 
technical assistance and capacity-building programs overseas, 
and using trade policy to lead on digital issues.
    Additional recommendations are included in my written 
testimony. Clearly, none of this is going to be cheap, easy, or 
fast, but the United States has much to offer the developing 
world and much to gain by expanding the availability of 
affordable, responsible alternatives. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you all very much for your testimony. 
We're now going to turn to opportunities for Members of 
Congress to ask questions. We ask you to keep your responses 
fairly brief and to the point so that we can get in as many 
questions as possible.
    I will start, Mr. Cain, with your observation that 
individuals--for example, Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region--
experience continuous monitoring by technology, and that that 
monitoring is directed into a system--the Integrated Joint 
Operations Platform--which then triggers various officials to 
go and question individuals. And that that can result from 
which door they used, whether they were late for work, whether 
they had changes in their physical exercise--all of which 
pushes people into a kind of robotic world in which they are 
extraordinarily careful about what they say and what they do. 
In addition, not just about how they conduct themselves daily 
but erasing their sense of culture and heritage.
    What you're describing does kind of feel like it's out of a 
science fiction future, but it's here today and the 
technologies are increasing very quickly. As you look down the 
road, do you see China expanding the use of these technologies 
into additional communities within China? Are you seeing that 
authoritarian figures around the world are seeking out this 
Chinese model and technologies to be able to use these 
strategies within their own countries? And if so, if you could 
give us a couple of examples, it would be helpful.
    Mr. Cain. Certainly. Thank you. So, yes, I do 
wholeheartedly agree with the assessment you just gave that 
this does feel like a science fiction novel. When I was in 
Xinjiang, it truly felt as if I was walking through the George 
Orwell world of ``1984.'' So, to answer the second part of your 
question, there has already been a widespread attempt by both 
Chinese technology companies, with the support of Chinese 
Communist Party officials, to expand the use of these 
technologies, often under the guise of projects called safe 
cities, or under the guise of fighting crime or law 
enforcement, but often in reality used by authoritarian 
governments or quasi-authoritarian governments around the world 
to oppress their political opponents and dissidents, and other 
people whom they find troublesome.
    In my written testimony, I did list a few examples that 
have been reported in recent years. These reports picked up in 
2019 and have been continuing to pick up more. This is not a 
problem that's ending in any way soon. To give one example 
here, in 2019 the government of Uzbekistan, as reported in the 
Wall Street Journal, announced that it was going to adopt a 
safe city system in its capital, Tashkent, with 883 cameras. In 
very Orwellian terms, the government announced that they would 
use these cameras and this system to ``digitally manage 
political affairs.'' Just keep in mind, this is an 
authoritarian government with a deep history of harassing and 
imprisoning dissidents.
    Another example is Uganda in sub-Saharan Africa. The Wall 
Street Journal reported in August 2019 that technicians from 
Huawei, the major technology firm that makes smartphones and 
servers, helped the government access the Facebook pages, 
phones, and messages of opposition bloggers who were 
criticizing the president. Now, Huawei did deny this 
allegation, but some of its employees have stated repeatedly in 
the press that they see their role as simply providing the 
technology and not necessarily following up on its political 
uses or human rights considerations.
    Those are two examples I can name. I hope that my 
information answers your question. Was there anything else you 
would like to ask me to go over?
    Chair Merkley. Thank you. Right now that's great. I wanted 
to get those examples into the record and just note that we 
anticipate that this will spread to additional countries where 
authoritarian governments are seeking to control targeted 
populations or their population as a whole.
    I want to turn to Ms. Wang. Ms. Wang, you noted that the 
diaspora of China uses WeChat. I assume that this is because, 
one, they're familiar with it, and two, it gives them a 
connection to their extended family and friends back in China. 
But you note that one of your recommendations is that we should 
pursue open-source technology that would provide people in 
China the ability to circumvent censorship more easily and, I 
assume, folks outside of China to also be able to communicate 
and avoid the Chinese control of that social media. What 
prevents China from simply blocking such alternative open-
source technology? Is there a feasible technological route to 
bypass WeChat?
    Ms. Wang. Thank you for your question. There are currently 
ways to bypass China's Great Firewall, but it's always a cat 
and mouse game. There are VPNs available, and the Chinese 
government blocks those VPNs. Then there are more new ways to 
circumvent the censorship. Then the Chinese government blocks 
them again. So it's always, you know, the creativity to create 
new ways to circumvent the censorship competing with the 
Chinese government's own creativity to block it. So I think in 
order to win this war we need more investment in those 
technologies. We need to get better than the Chinese government 
at circumventing the internet censorship.
    There are investments currently by the U.S. Government on 
those too, but I think in previous years there were two, but 
they are not open-source technologies. With open-source 
technologies, the third party can look into those technologies 
to make sure they're transparent--they don't have loopholes. So 
if people around the world can work together--I mean, I attend 
those off-the-record conferences talking to app developers who 
have a heart for internet freedom, and they work together. And 
I think the U.S. Government can play a role to make this happen 
in a better way. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much.
    Co-chair McGovern.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
    Mr. Hillman, this month's cover story for The Atlantic, 
entitled ``The Bad Guys Are Winning,'' is about an alliance of 
autocrats, and notes that the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the 
Egyptians not only detained and deported Uyghurs, but have also 
purchased Chinese surveillance technology. In which countries 
has the Chinese model of mass surveillance and censorship 
advanced the furthest? And what U.S. programs can promote 
sustainable, transparent, global infrastructure financing as 
alternatives to Belt and Road? And if not, are there gaps in 
U.S. authorities or tools that Congress could address to 
bolster these programs?
    Mr. Hillman. Thank you for the question. You know, there 
are too many--unfortunately, too many examples to name of these 
safe city projects overseas. We did a study in 2018 just of 
Huawei's safe city projects. We found 73 agreements across 52 
countries, with a lot of that activity in Asia and Africa. 
Pakistan, I believe, had the most agreements of any single 
country. I think that there is an opportunity here for the 
United States and its allies to offer a superior alternative. I 
mean, we're actually already cooperating in some ways on this 
technology. The city of Las Vegas has a smart city that is 
provided in part by Dell, a U.S. company, and by NTT, a 
Japanese company.
    I think we need to do more, though, to set standards that 
are going to drive this competition--to compete at a higher 
level, rather than being a race to the bottom. I would love to 
see an allied alternative for a sustainable city that 
emphasizes environmental sustainability, that emphasizes social 
responsibility, that emphasizes data security. We have the 
companies who are working in these areas. I think we need to 
bring it together. And we need to offer financing. I think your 
question about whether we can do more--does the U.S. Government 
have the tools it needs--is a really important question, 
because what we see China doing is effectively selling products 
that are not the best but come with low costs and financing. 
And that's a very attractive proposition and sometimes 
difficult to turn down.
    One really concrete improvement that could be made is to 
allow the U.S. Development Finance Corporation to do more with 
its equity authority. That's a new authority that the DFC has, 
but its hands are a little bit tied right now in terms of its 
ability to use that authority. I think that's really one area 
where Congress and the executive branch could make a change 
that would make a difference. Thanks.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
    Ms. Hoffman, your testimony calls for collaboration with 
like-minded countries to develop systems for improving risk-
based approaches to improving the regulation of data transfers. 
Can you give us a sense of the bureaucratic landscape and 
challenges in this? Which department should be the lead, or 
does this require top-level direction from the White House?
    Ms. Hoffman. Thank you. I think I'll first just say that 
the biggest issue with our current risk-based assessment is 
that we tend to assume that technology is either good or bad, 
and we look at this issue in a black and white way. But really 
what we're talking about with a lot of digital and data-driven 
technologies, certainly the ones covered in my testimony, is 
that they're always, in a sense, and for lack of a better term, 
dual use, because data derived from these technologies can be 
valuable for many different reasons, and it largely depends on 
the intent of the actor who has access to that data--what they 
intend to do with it.
    And it could be multiple things. You could be talking about 
problem solving and you could talk about enhancing capacity for 
control. In my testimony, for instance, I give an example of 
technologies--or different databases, essentially, that all 
feed into normal, everyday problem solving, traffic management, 
but then also political and legal control, feeding into the 
national defense mobilization system. So there are a number of 
ways that the technologies can be used to contribute value--or 
these datasets can contribute value to a lot of different 
things at once.
    So that being said, I think that this requires really a 
whole-of-government approach. Of course, leadership from the 
White House is encouraged on this issue, but I think that 
there's not any one particular department that can lead on 
this. I think that the main thing that needs to be done 
actually is, we need to invest in the kind of research that 
would allow us to decide a better metric for judging risk, 
because right now the way that we do that is quite black and 
white. We look at the security implications of technology but 
forget--for instance, I wrote a paper on a company called 
Global Telecommunications Technology, which provides 
translation services. But with the data that it collects--it's 
a company that's controlled by China's central propaganda 
department--it embeds its products in Huawei and Ali Cloud and 
other places, it collects data in 67 languages and uses that to 
support propaganda. So there are different ways that we have to 
imagine risk. And right now we don't have the correct toolkit 
to be able to respond.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. I'm going to ask one more 
question--I don't know if I can fit it in a minute here--but, 
Mr. Cain, I want to thank you for your endorsement of the 
Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. You know, one of the 
challenges with ensuring that goods are not made with forced 
labor is the unreliability of audits, such as the 
administration's Xinjiang Business Advisory notes. Do you think 
that the extreme levels of surveillance in Xinjiang add to that 
unreliability? And does it mean that monitored workers are 
unable to speak freely about their experiences to auditors 
without risk of exposure?
    Mr. Cain. Yes. Yes, that is correct, and I think that this 
has been well documented now in numerous news sources and 
academic reports on the region. There is a serious problem of 
extreme surveillance simply overpowering whatever audit 
function can exist within your typical multinational or 
American corporation that operates in the region of Xinjiang. 
There have been reports already of corporate auditors being 
sent to the region to fulfill these audits, but they have been 
detained and harassed by authorities in Xinjiang.
    Just on the basis of that alone, we can reasonably conclude 
that whatever information is being given to the auditors who 
might be succeeding in obtaining some degree of information, 
it's deeply unreliable and almost certainly covers up the fact 
that there is a massive problem in the region of this slavery 
and forced labor. I just don't quite see a way around that when 
you consider that the surveillance is so deep. I think that in 
whatever legislation is to hopefully be passed eventually, 
there must be a presumption--a rebuttable presumption that 
whatever goods or whatever exports are originating in Xinjiang 
have been touched by forced labor in some way.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Congressman Smith.
    Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, 
and thank you to our very distinguished witnesses. Tremendous 
testimony. Let me just very briefly--I mentioned that hearing 
that I did in 2006 with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco. 
Four of them. I asked them under oath, because I swore them all 
in, how do they respond when somebody says they want personally 
identifiable information about a dissident or human rights 
activist? And they said they just follow orders--reminiscent of 
another regime going back to the 1930s. Just following orders 
to give up all of this information, and many people went to 
prison because of it. The multi-decade transfer of technology 
that has enabled this brutal dictatorship called the Chinese 
Communist Party is just appalling.
    Maybe our distinguished witnesses might want to speak to 
that New York Times piece, ``China Still Buys American DNA 
Equipment for Xinjiang Despite Blocks.'' I mean, that was 
October 22nd, a couple of weeks ago. You know, Ms. Wang, you 
made some really great points about WeChat and TikTok, how they 
store information for at least six months. I wonder if the 
diaspora is in any way aware of that, that this is all being 
stored. You know, Google, under a great deal of pressure, gives 
people the ability--at least at 18 months--to get rid of some 
of the information that they seem to store forever. And I'm 
wondering, has anybody been arrested pursuant to the 
information that has been stored on WeChat, or people back home 
harassed? Because it's just sitting there like low-hanging 
fruit for the ubiquitous Chinese secret police to do whatever 
they want.
    And finally, I have a lot of questions but there's not 
enough time--we in a bipartisan way keep pushing for stronger 
enforcement, good laws. And yet I'm wondering if it's being 
prioritized sufficiently. You know, it's one thing to say we're 
all for you, we want to make sure that the internet and 
certainly all of these apps are not being used to track and to 
incarcerate, but is it being prioritized sufficiently within 
the U.S. Department of State--the past administration, as well 
as this one? I don't want to be in any way partisan because I 
have been unhappy with all Democrats and Republicans since 
Speaker Pelosi and I and others so vigorously oppose MFN 
without human rights conditionality. You know, you don't trade 
with a dictatorship and think they're somehow going to 
matriculate to a democracy. They get more potent and more 
capabilities to do wrong.
    So if you could speak to those issues. Ms. Wang, maybe I'll 
start with you.
    Ms. Wang. Thank you for your question. I'm a member of the 
Chinese immigrant community here. I would just simply say that 
it's impossible not to use WeChat to live your life. I don't 
have WeChat on this phone, but I have WeChat on another phone, 
just to separate the data. You know, for example, if I go to a 
Chinese restaurant, they offer a discount and that discount 
only exists on the app, on WeChat. You cannot get the discount 
through your Facebook or other social media app. I wanted to 
mail something back to China, and I have to use WeChat in order 
for this to work.
    Because of that kind of ecosystem--so, you know, among 
immigrants in the United States, we are living here, have a job 
here, we communicate with each other on WeChat. Just this 
convenience provided by WeChat sucks us into the system. I 
mean, you know, the question is whether we are aware of the 
problem. Obviously, we know that the government censors, 
surveils our communication. But I think that people are just 
resigned to the fact that this is our way of living. I mean, I 
make a concerted effort--I only have WeChat on another phone. 
When I need to use it, I use that phone. For most people--I 
mean, if you just have a day job that you work as an 
accountant, what's the point, right?
    So that allows the Chinese government to have huge latitude 
to collect information and shape views. You know, one good 
example I would give is that in the past there were local 
newspapers in New York, where I live, that cater to the Chinese 
diaspora. Now in order for the local newspapers to be read by 
the Chinese diaspora here, those newspapers have to go through 
WeChat, because people only read the news on WeChat. So in a 
way, the local news information catering to the Chinese 
diaspora has to go through Beijing censorship before it 
delivers to you. That is the kind of control the Chinese 
government is able to exert on the Chinese diaspora.
    Whether there is evidence that people have been arrested 
because of what they say on WeChat, I mean, yes. There is a 
good story done by the New York Times: There is a woman who 
lives in Canada. She was just using WeChat, talking--I think 
she criticized the Chinese government. When she went back to 
China, she got arrested. It's all because of what she said in 
Canada. This is a story that is disclosed, and she is willing 
to talk about it. I'm sure there are many stories of people who 
have no awareness that their communication is being looked at, 
and when they go back to China, they get detained. Thank you.
    Representative Smith. Thank you, Ms. Wang. Would anybody 
else like to speak to the prioritization of this issue? Is it 
being sufficiently prioritized within the U.S. Government?
    Ms. Hoffman. I'd be happy to speak.
    Representative Smith. Please, thank you, Dr. Hoffman.
    Ms. Hoffman. I think, first, and just to reiterate the 
points that Ms. Wang just made, I know so many stories, just in 
interviews that I've conducted and through my own network, of 
people who have been harassed for their digital communications 
while they were overseas. And in some cases--I know of one 
particular disturbing case where the person concerned and their 
family were both permanent residents or citizens of liberal 
democracies. And the family, in one case, was harassed by 
Chinese embassy authorities about the other family member's 
activity online, and they were harassed in person. Sorry to be 
vague, but I think it's important to protect the identity of 
those people. And I know of other cases along similar lines, 
where people received threats online as well. It's a very real 
problem.
    Now, in terms of the prioritization, I think that--I mean, 
I'll always say that the U.S. Government and other governments 
around the world aren't prioritizing these issues enough. But I 
will say that increasingly there is an awareness of the 
problem. I think that the issue is that sometimes we think 
that--okay, now that we're aware--we'll solve the problem, 
whereas I don't think we've adequately defined it yet. And 
that's why in my testimony I talk a little bit more about how 
we conceptualize the issue of tech authoritarianism.
    We're not just talking about the most coercive use of 
technology. We're also talking about the export of normal, 
everyday problem-solving technologies not just to other 
authoritarian or illiberal regimes, but to democracies, 
including the United States. And so until we adequately define 
the problem, many policy responses that we develop aren't going 
to truly address the nature of the problem. And so my concern 
is that we're sometimes jumping ahead with solutions before 
we've identified the problem.
    Representative Smith. Thank you.
    Ms. Hoffman. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you, Congressman.
    Representative Smith. Thanks.
    Chair Merkley. We're now turning to Senator Lankford.
    Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you to all 
the witnesses and for the truths that you're bringing to light. 
It's exceptionally helpful to be able to continue to get the 
facts to the forefront.
    I do have some follow-up here that I want to be able to 
talk to Ms. Hoffman about. Mr. Hillman had mentioned there are 
52 countries right now that they know of that have the ``safe 
cities'' technology. My question is, How is the Chinese 
government using that data in these 52 different countries that 
have the safe cities technology? Not how those countries are 
using it, how is China using that data that they're then 
harvesting from those 52 countries that are using the ``safe 
cities'' technology?
    Mr. Hillman. Thanks, sir, for your question. You know, I 
think there's evidence--some of this is tough to study in open 
sources--but there's evidence to suggest that there are 
vulnerabilities in these projects that are putting at risk the 
data in the countries that are using them, and potentially 
giving access to that data to Chinese authorities. So for 
example, in Pakistan there's actually a legal case underway 
with a county that was involved in developing a safe city 
project there that alleges that it was forced to install a 
backdoor that would allow access to data from Beijing. There's 
also been examples of hardware being discovered on surveillance 
cameras where Pakistani engineers were not initially made aware 
of that hardware; you know, hardware that could allow you to 
gain access remotely to those systems.
    So you know, we see these examples of data challenges. You 
know, there's another good example in Papua New Guinea, which 
borrowed money from China and allowed Huawei to build a data 
center there. When a third party did a study of that data 
center, the conclusion that they reached was that the security 
was so poorly designed that it was probably intentionally 
designed that way. So I think that there's ample signs to be 
concerned about some of the espionage risk. There's also, in 
some cases, a commercial incentive for China's large providers 
of surveillance equipment to collect data on foreign 
populations so that they can improve their algorithms and the 
ability of their algorithms to recognize foreign faces, for 
example.
    Sometimes I've heard just anecdotally that giving access to 
that data might result in getting some preferential financing 
for the project. So there's both an intelligence concern here 
as well as a potential commercial angle for some of the Chinese 
companies that are involved.
    Senator Lankford. Ms. Hoffman, do you want to add to that?
    Ms. Hoffman. Yes, thank you. One issue that I'd like to 
cover is the way that Chinese companies can draw value out of 
data without any sort of malicious disruption or break-in, 
because I think oftentimes we focus on the risk of espionage 
with PRC technologies. But the other part we miss is that with 
a company--any company, like Huawei, Alibaba, others--they are 
providing a service. And at the same time, you know, it depends 
on who sits within their supply chain. There could be automatic 
access to the kinds of data that they collect. That's described 
in my written testimony. It's the first figure I think that 
helps to explain that concept a little bit more. But then it's 
also the concept that I described in a paper from 2019 called 
``Engineering Global Consent'' about the propaganda department 
company I mentioned earlier.
    Now, that being said, I think that the recent Data Security 
Law as well as the Personal Information Protection Law in the 
PRC further illustrate what we already know about the way that 
the Chinese party-state can exert pressure on companies and 
other individuals and entities to access data whenever it 
chooses. So in particular, the Data Security Law says that data 
security in China is governed by the state security concept, 
which is ultimately about the party-state's political security. 
And that's what makes it different from national security. And 
it also says in article 2 of the law that data handling 
activities taking place outside the PRC, when those activities 
are seen to harm state security, or the public interest and the 
lawful rights and interests of citizens and organizations in 
the PRC, then they can be pursued for legal responsibility in 
accordance with the law.
    Now, what could be harming state security? Well, that could 
be the political opponents of the CCP we were discussing 
earlier. But it could be anything that the party-state sees as 
potentially undermining its power, and so essentially there are 
no limits to the party-state's power in this case. Companies 
might say, Well, we don't want to hand over data, we're not 
going to do that. But ultimately, if they're operating in the 
PRC and they're based in the PRC, they're bound by PRC law.
    Senator Lankford. So if there is a company that's a 
Chinese-owned company that's a ``privately owned,'' non-state-
owned company that's functioning in the United States or in any 
other country, and they're sending data back to China, that 
data can be owned and can be captured then by the Chinese 
government, or the actions of that company can be overseen by 
the Chinese government, correct?
    Ms. Hoffman. Yes.
    Senator Lankford. Ms. Wang, there's been a lot of 
conversation about a social score for Chinese citizens--that in 
the surveillance state that they live under, that they're all 
graded internally and receive some sort of score even to get 
access to mass transportation, to jobs, to moving, to being 
able to have the ability to travel overseas. What do you know 
about this social scoring of individuals in China?
    Ms. Wang. The social credit score system, in its current 
form it's mostly a blacklist. So, for example, if you have not 
fulfilled your obligations, such as, you know, you had a loan 
that you didn't pay on time, then you would be on this list and 
then it would affect your daily life. When you go to the train 
station you cannot buy a ticket because of your record of not 
paying a loan. And it doesn't only affect you. It also affects 
your family. And there are instances where children cannot be 
enrolled in the school system because their parents have not 
paid a loan. So it's like punishment--guilty by association.
    I mean, currently the data has not been integrated. In 
different localities there are different systems. And it is the 
Chinese government's ultimate goal to have all the data 
integrated into one giant database so they can have access to 
it, and no matter where you're based, take it and exact 
punishment against you based on whatever things you have done. 
I mean, look at the health code that was developed during 
COVID--right now, this health code is being used against 
political dissidents and human rights lawyers because you have 
to have the code to travel. It has to be a green code. But as a 
human rights lawyer, you are here for the past few months; you 
have done nothing. And you have a red code. And, you know, it's 
a health code. It shows that you are a health risk. But this 
has nothing to do with your actual health situation. It's 
entirely that you're a human rights lawyer and now you have a 
red code, and you cannot travel.
    So the point is that the government can construe it as, 
``We try to build a social credit system that is for the good 
of society,'' but it can be used in other ways, to carry out 
their political goals. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much. We're now going to turn 
to Congresswoman Steel, to be followed by Senator King, and 
then Congressman Suozzi, and then Senator Ossoff.
    Congresswoman Steel.
    Representative Steel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you 
very much, and thank you to all the witnesses for coming out 
today because this is a very important issue. China continues 
to shape and abuse the global rule-based system and China 
cannot be a transparent world leader and continue to strip Hong 
Kong's rightful freedoms and autonomy and allow forced labor in 
the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and world leaders cannot 
continue to allow China to abuse its own citizens and threaten 
those who live in other countries, too.
    So all the witnesses, whoever can answer these questions--
and I'm just so grateful for that--the United States called 
China out for their abuses in development of a 5G network. Yet, 
many U.S. companies are investing in China's semiconductor 
industry. So what threat does that pose? And what message does 
that send to the rest of the world? If any witness can answer, 
I'm grateful.
    Mr. Cain. So, yes, without a doubt the problem of major 
multinational corporations and American corporations investing 
in the Chinese semiconductor industry, which is heavily state 
backed, which has the enormous support of various state 
coalitions and bodies within China, is a major threat to both 
American industrial and security interests. This is something 
that, speaking more historically, there has long been an 
American business interest in investing in East Asian 
semiconductor markets. Japan was the original one, then South 
Korea, Taiwan, and now the People's Republic of China is trying 
to build its own semiconductor industry. And this has been 
going on for about two decades now. It's one of the core 
technologies to ensuring that these surveillance technologies 
can actually function.
    But I would just like to point out that there is a bill 
that has been on the floor already--let me just double check--I 
think it was the House, yes, introduced in 2020, the CHIPS for 
America Act, which is H.R. 7178. You know, I read the 
legislation. I thought it was very well written. It was a bill 
that I came upon in my own research. You know, it was just 
something that popped up, and I think it does do potentially 
great work because it offers subsidies and investments to 
ensure that America can continue to produce its own 
semiconductors and that we can bring manufacturing home. I 
think this is ultimately the solution to protecting our 
interests and our own democracy and security from infiltration 
and from the meddling of the Chinese Communist Party.
    Representative Steel. Thank you very much for that answer 
because we have a supply chain crisis, too. Manufacturing 
companies coming back here and then we are building our own 
here. I think it's going to make life much easier, and we can 
stop China from abusing these businesses.
    My second question is, China must abide by international 
laws. If they fail to do so, the U.S. and democratic partners 
must hold China accountable. It's very, very tough to do 
because they're not really transparent. So as China becomes a 
leader in artificial intelligence, how dangerous is this to the 
future threat of human rights abuse that they are doing right 
now? And do China's digital currency plans add to this abuse?
    Ms. Hoffman. I'd be happy to comment on that. I did some 
research last year on China's digital currency and I think 
that's actually a great--I don't feel like I'm an expert 
particularly on digital currencies, but on DCEP (China's 
Digital Currency Electronic Payment system) I think the most 
interesting thing is actually the technology itself, rather 
than the currency, the concept of the digital yuan. I think 
it's the technology behind it. Now, it's all very much in 
development, and I think that this is an area where other 
countries can get ahead.
    But I think that the same issue with digital currency-
related technologies, as with anything else ``smart cities''-
related, if China is ahead in setting standards--what I tend to 
look at would be that domestically it's technical committees 
that are setting standards. And those involved--say, if you're 
talking about facial recognition systems that can involve the 
PLA, research institutes and People's Armed Police, or Ministry 
of Public Security research institutes, along with companies 
like Huawei and Dahua and others--then those technologies, when 
they're exported, would be used to embed those standards that 
are being designed within the PRC.
    So in order to get ahead of any potential violations of 
human rights or undermining of liberal democracy, I think 
that's where we need to get ahead in terms of standards 
setting. And that's where we also need a lot more research. And 
DCEP is an interesting issue because it's still very much in 
development. So while it's not necessarily a threat today, it's 
potentially an issue that we will face a number of years down 
the line. And so getting ahead of it, from a policy 
perspective, is encouraged so that we don't continue with the 
sort of whack-a-mole approach that's been taken with companies 
like Huawei.
    Representative Steel. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much. We'll now turn to 
Senator King.
    Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a 
fascinating hearing. And I think it's interesting to note that 
George Orwell was right as a matter of fiction back when 
``1984'' was written. I thought he was wrong in the '80s when 
the fax machine and mobile phones allowed a flowering of 
individual rights across the world and in fact contributed in 
the early part of this century to the Arab Spring. Now we're 
learning he was right because technology is being used 
aggressively for repressive purposes.
    Ms. Wang, a couple of questions. Are the Chinese people 
aware of the level of internet censorship? Do they know they're 
not getting the whole picture? I'm talking about ordinary 
people who are, you know, a clerk in a factory who goes home 
and goes on the internet. Do they know that they're being 
censored?
    Ms. Wang. I think people generally have an idea, but I 
think the censorship in recent years has gotten so bad that, 
you know, people have a general awareness that ``my 
conversation is being censored, I don't get the full picture.'' 
But they don't know exactly which information is being 
censored. I can speak for my family, because many members of my 
own family believe that COVID-19 originated from the U.S. 
because the Chinese government just has been so heavy on 
propagating this idea. It's hard to talk them out of it. And 
you know, they are in China. They haven't gone out of China for 
several years. And they don't have alternative information. 
And----
    Senator King. So the Chinese people are as subject to 
disinformation as we are?
    Ms. Wang. Yes. I mean, the Chinese government has much 
latitude in spreading disinformation inside the country, so 
there's no counterinformation. They are the only spreader of 
disinformation.
    Senator King. So, to answer my question, you said people 
are somewhat aware. The second one is: Are they aware of the 
extent to which they're being surveilled?
    Ms. Wang. I would say that people have a general idea that, 
in terms of specific people, people don't believe that the 
Chinese government would look into how you talk to your wife, 
until one day the government--the police summonses you saying, 
``You know, you were chatting with your wife; you were 
badmouthing the police.'' And then you say, ``Wow, I can't 
believe they're looking into this.'' Because people just 
generally think, ``What's the point? I'm nobody. Why are you 
looking at me?''
    Senator King. But they are aware?
    Ms. Wang. Generally, yes. Generally. But they wouldn't 
think specifically. People think that the government is looking 
at everybody, but why me, right? It's like everybody has an 
equal chance of being hit by the bus. Only when you get hit by 
the bus do you say, ``Oh, it happened to me right now.''
    Senator King. So as people are gaining awareness of (A), 
the extent to which information is being censored, (B), the 
extent to which they're being fed information that may not be 
true by the government, and (C), that they're being surveilled, 
is there any resistance? Is there any resentment? Is there 
any--does anybody care about this?
    Ms. Wang. There absolutely is resentment. One obvious 
example is after the early days of COVID, which, you know, 
spread because the Chinese government initially suppressed the 
information, you can just see----
    Senator King. Do people know that? Do they know that people 
died because of the government's actions?
    Ms. Wang. Initially, yes. Yes, people are aware the local 
Wuhan government was suppressing information.
    Senator King. So my question is, are they angry? Are they 
resentful? Is there any resistance being built up? Is this 
developing political resistance to the surveillance state, or 
is it hopeless?
    Ms. Wang. Well, I think initially people were very angry 
when COVID just happened. But then later the government was so 
good at disinformation. You know, they were saying, We did such 
a good job of trying to contain the virus, and look at 
America--everybody is dying. You know, it's necessary that we 
control the information. And people were angry at first, then 
they were happy with the government's control. So it's an ebb 
and flow. I think generally people have a kind of discontent 
and anger, but it's heavily suppressed.
    Senator King. Well, we have a tradition here of free 
speech, of the First Amendment, and sort of fierce individual 
liberty impulses. Is there something in Chinese history and 
culture that makes the Chinese people more likely to tolerate 
this kind of central control over their lives? Does this go 
back to the Han Dynasty, or--I'm trying to get at a cultural 
rationale for this acceptance.
    Ms. Wang. I don't think it's cultural. It's entirely 
political. You have experienced the Cultural Revolution, the 
Great Famine, and millions of people died. You internalized 
that message: Do not criticize the government. 1989 happened. 
You tried to criticize the government; your body was rolled 
over by a tank. That's a message--do not criticize the 
government. And I mean, for----
    Senator King. So it's garden variety intimidation?
    Ms. Wang. Yes. And I think for my generation--I'm 34 years 
old--or people younger than me, if you were born into a 
situation where you have never experienced freedom, you don't 
know how it feels to be free. I mean, I was born in China, and 
I`ve lived in the U.S. for over 10 years. I can feel the 
difference--if you have not experienced freedom, you don't know 
how it feels to be free.
    Senator King. Changing the subject a bit, Mr. Hillman, 
we've talked a lot about the spread of Chinese technology, 
Huawei particularly. Are any of these countries experiencing 
buyer's remorse? Is there a realization that they've been had, 
that they've given up something substantial? Or are they just 
happy they got a better deal?
    Mr. Hillman. I think that there definitely are instances of 
buyer's remorse. We've seen a little bit of that in Pakistan. 
Some politicians have made comments about how--I mean, at one 
point, in one ``safe city'' project, about half the cameras 
weren't working. And so there are these instances of 
disappointment, of promises not being delivered, but it's a 
political challenge too, because the incentives are not really 
there for the leaders, the decisionmakers, that approved these 
systems and probably had a big ceremony around their 
announcement, to own up to the fact that they might not be 
performing.
    Senator King. Well, I'm running out of time. But if we were 
talking about future potential customers, is it a matter of 
just developing our own good server and equipment and 
subsidizing it like they do? Do we have to--I mean, that's 
inconsistent with our theory of the market, but do we have to 
fight fire with fire? Otherwise, we're just standing by and 
watching them wire the world.
    Mr. Hillman. Yes. We need to package the parts together. We 
need to bring together not only the hard infrastructure but the 
services and training, too. Training's really attractive. And 
you need financing in some cases to makes this look feasible 
upfront and to make it competitive. As we do that, though, it's 
not only about providing just a different option, but I do 
think we want to be offering a superior option, one that we 
have evidence that it works and one that comes with some 
safeguards, too, that are going to prevent some of the harm 
that we see when these systems are used in the wrong way.
    Senator King. Well, of course, part of the problem is some 
of these authoritarian regimes want that surveillance capacity 
that we may be reluctant to supply them with.
    Well, thank you all very much for your testimony. This is a 
very important hearing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Senator King. And we'll 
turn to Congressman Suozzi.
    Representative Suozzi. I want to--first, this is 
terrifying, what's going on. And I want to thank the Chairman 
for sounding the alarm on this very important issue. I want to 
thank the witnesses for the work they've done, the books 
they've written, the articles they've written, the work that 
they've done worldwide to try to expose this. I think that the 
world is coming to realize that--you know, our view, ever since 
Nixon went to China, that the more that China was exposed to us 
the more they'd become like us--with democracy and capitalism--
just hasn't happened. And the Uyghur situation is the worst 
example of their crimes against humanity, but there are so many 
other things--with the Tibetans and Hong Kong.
    And now this use of technology is really the terrifying 
thing that we face. When I was in seventh grade, I remember 
Sister Ruth saying, You know, the world is moving so quickly 
these days we haven't had a chance to figure out how this is 
affecting us. And, you know, now things are moving at such a 
rapid pace, and the world doesn't realize--we don't realize how 
technology is affecting us in so many different ways. And I 
remember when we were little kids we would watch shows and 
they'd say, If only he'd used his genius for good instead of 
evil.
    There are great things that are happening with technology--
you know, facial recognition and voice recognition and iris 
recognition and gait recognition. These could all be very 
positive things that could be used. I use CLEAR when I go to 
the airport. But this is being manipulated by the Chinese 
Communist Party for the domination of people. And we have to 
expose to the world what's going on. I was very interested in 
Ms. Wang's comment when she said we have to get more Chinese-
speaking journalists to report on this, because we have to 
advise people as to what's happening.
    You know, it's so scary, this idea that people are changing 
their behavior so they don't trigger the artificial 
intelligence surveillance monitors; they're trying to stay very 
robotic. I mean, that's terrifying. We talked about the effect 
of WeChat on the Chinese diaspora, but there are many groups 
that use WeChat even beyond the Chinese diaspora. So they're 
monitoring that as well. And TikTok is used by everybody. And 
they're using that to monitor people's behavior.
    I want to figure out what we can do to let the world know 
this is happening. I don't know how but we have to sound the 
alarm beyond this hearing that this is happening. I think that 
one of the things that Ms. Wang talked about was the use of 
social media to sow civil unrest here in the United States of 
America. I know it's a little bit off topic, but it's so 
important that the American people realize that this is not 
just happening out there somewhere. This is invading our lives 
in WeChat, in TikTok, but also on other American platforms 
where the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the Russians and 
the Iranians and the North Koreans, are trying to sow civil 
unrest in America and elsewhere in the world, using our 
freedoms. Can you give us some examples of what you're aware of 
regarding that, Ms. Wang, of how the Chinese Communist Party is 
trying to sow civil unrest in America?
    Ms. Wang. Well, you know, it's hard to tell because it's 
hard to do research. And that's one of the recommendations that 
was in my written submission, that we need to make those tech 
companies more transparent, so people know how they moderate 
the content, how they enforce their content moderation. You 
know, what kind of data they are collecting this year with the 
Chinese government. So there are ways to know it, and it 
requires the Congress to pass a law to make it a mandate.
    In terms of social unrest, I would give an example of how 
WeChat is powerful in political organizing in the U.S. Right 
now, affirmative action is being--I think right now it's still 
in a Boston court. And this anti-affirmative action is becoming 
a movement, and that movement is very much initiated by the 
Chinese diaspora, and the organizing of that movement is 
primarily on WeChat. I have no evidence whether the Chinese 
government is interested or not, but the idea is that a very 
important civil rights movement in the United States, the 
organizing of this movement is on a platform that is controlled 
by the Chinese government, that can be manipulated by the 
Chinese government.
    This is definitely a cause for concern. I mean, in terms of 
other protests, whether the Chinese government is playing a 
role, I mean, I live in New York City. There are anti-Asian 
racist protests, other different kinds of protests concerning 
the Chinese diaspora. Again, it's happening on WeChat, the 
organizing's on WeChat. We don't know whether the Chinese 
government plays a role or not. And we can know if Congress 
makes it happen.
    Representative Suozzi. I think it's very important--first 
of all, this is happening elsewhere in the world as they're 
trying to export their technology through the ``safe cities,'' 
as you said, and the social scores and everything else. And 
they're trying to export the technology so they can have 
control of this data and build this massive database of people 
throughout the world. But we need to get the American people 
more interested in this topic.
    Anything that you can do to help us understand--for 
example, I know that the Chinese government, the Chinese 
Communist Party, was doing a presentation at a Queens museum, 
just right outside my district, where they were completely 
misrepresenting the history of the Tibetan Buddhists. And the 
people in the community, you know, stood up and fought to get 
that removed. And we know how they use the Confucius Centers to 
spread disinformation. And I know about an example of a New 
York City police officer of Tibetan descent who was actually 
working with the Chinese Communist Party to surveil Tibetans in 
the area he was responsible for patrolling.
    So we need to figure out how we can let people know what 
the Chinese government is doing--the Chinese Communist Party is 
doing--that's actually affecting us here in the United States 
now, so we can get them more and more interested in this and 
expose how they're trying to export these ideas, utilizing 
these--so anything you can just throw out there in the few 
minutes or few seconds I have left, I would appreciate. 
Anything that you can give us as examples of really abusive 
behavior.
    Ms. Hoffman.
    Ms. Hoffman. Yes. Thank you. I think that this is a 
challenging question. It's one that's been incredibly 
important. I mean, I think that the biggest issue that we have 
here is perhaps one that Ms. Wang highlighted in a previous 
response, which is that people tend to think that, Well, I'm 
not going to be affected. It's not me. It's hard to 
conceptualize something that is quite abstract, actually, for a 
lot of people. It's very real and palpable for political 
opponents of the CCP, but it's less obvious to you and me, for 
instance. And so I think part of it is that we need to have a 
very clear public conversation about the implications of data 
collection, about what it means when a----
    Representative Suozzi. I think my time has expired so I 
don't want to keep holding the rest of the people up. I'm 
sorry.
    Ms. Hoffman. All right. I'm sorry.
    Representative Suozzi. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congressman.
    We'll now turn to Senator Ossoff from Georgia.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to 
our panel today.
    Ms. Wang, you've covered some of this previously, but could 
you please specify with as much detail as possible the specific 
tools, technologies, platforms, and their manufactures and 
producers, that are used by the CCP to surveil and intimidate 
dissidents and other political opponents abroad?
    Ms. Wang. I think it goes back to, you know, everybody uses 
WeChat, so the government has an easy way to get information on 
what you're doing. I chatted with people about me coming to 
Washington, D.C., on WeChat, and the government can get 
information just by reading my WeChat. Again, it's that heavy 
reliance on this tool gives the government a lot of latitude to 
do that. This is a tool that affects the diaspora. And then if 
you use other websites or any kind of technology developed in 
China, the government very much can have access to that 
information and use those tools to surveil you, even if you are 
in the United States. I don't know if that answers your 
question.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you. I'd like to ask others on the 
panel to share their expertise on the same question, which is 
to specify the platforms, technologies, tools, software 
providers, techniques commonly used by the CCP for purposes of 
surveillance, intimidation, or other forms of influence 
projection targeting those outside of Chinese borders. We'll 
start with you, please, Mr. Cain.
    Mr. Cain. Yes. I actually interviewed a number of former 
technology workers from Huawei, SenseTime and Megvii, and also 
the company that runs WeChat. One of the things to first bear 
in mind is that two laws in China, the National Intelligence 
Law and the National Security Law, passed around 2015 and 2017, 
I believe, essentially make it a crime to not assist the state 
with data that they request. That's not the exact wording, but 
that's essentially the spirit and the fundamentals of those 
particular laws.
    The technology workers who I spoke with, obviously they've 
been out of China for a few years; they can't return. But as of 
2018-2019, they can say without any doubt whatsoever that these 
companies do not need to rely on special cybersecurity lapses 
or special ways of hacking into people's phones and stealing 
their data. It's simply that if there's data that is passing 
through China, and that data is requested by the Ministry of 
Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, another body, 
the companies will turn it over. And they gave many specific 
examples.
    You know, among my population that I was with for many 
years are the Uyghur population and the Kazakhs and some of the 
Tibetans. You know, they provided specific examples of WeChat 
in particular simply handing over massive amounts of data from 
the years 2010 to very recently, 2017-2018. Just simply every 
text message being stored in servers for two years at a time, 
and then using AI surveillance technology to attempt to find 
matches between data points to try to predict whether someone 
might become a terrorist. This AI technology was being deployed 
by various Chinese ministries, but WeChat was the one that 
voluntarily, when requested, provided this data.
    So I haven't found evidence personally yet of a special 
backdoor system that's spying on all of us. I think it's simply 
the CCP asks, and the companies will follow.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you. And continuing with you, Mr. 
Cain, please, how is that law enforced with respect to U.S. and 
multinational firms that are doing business in China, locating 
servers in China, selling products in China?
    Mr. Cain. So, just to clarify, you mean, Senator, the ways 
that we enforce the law here to prevent that from happening in 
China?
    Senator Ossoff. No, enforcement of the National Security 
and Surveillance Laws by which the Chinese government compels 
the disclosure of such information from WeChat for U.S. and 
multinational firms who are doing business in China. In what 
ways are they subject to such enforcement? What data, perhaps 
related to U.S. persons, may be disclosed or be compelled to be 
disclosed to the Chinese authorities on the basis of that law? 
And, Mr. Cain, if you'd prefer, you can feel free to defer to 
anyone else on the panel who may have greater expertise, or 
happy to hear from you on that.
    Mr. Cain. My understanding of both laws is that they do not 
have jurisdiction only within the People's Republic of China. 
It is simply that any data that is passing through a server can 
be requested by the authorities there. In the past I have used 
WeChat. I no longer use WeChat at all because the security 
risks have been well documented. But I have called, just 
experimentally, to see what happens--I have called people in 
Tibet. I have called people in Xinjiang. You know, this was 
before the terrors that exist now, when things were a little 
better. WeChat would show messages--would show a warning that 
says, You know, you are calling this region; your data is 
potentially not going to be protected here. There was a little 
disclosure for a while. I haven't done that lately because I 
don't want to endanger anybody, but that was something that 
these software companies I think made clear and admitted--that 
this data is not safe.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Cain, and with my remaining 
45 seconds, Ms. Hoffman, the Aussie perspective on that 
question, please.
    Ms. Hoffman. Thank you. Well, in a recent report called 
``Mapping China's Technology Giants,'' we highlighted on our 
website the privacy policies for a lot of the PRC technology 
companies that we mapped in this project. It's 27 companies. 
And one thing that we note is that it's common for all 
companies, globally, to state in their privacy policies that 
your data may be transferred to another country where you 
aren't residing, and that when that data is transferred, it 
would be governed by local law. Of course, PRC tech companies 
say the same. And as Mr. Cain has highlighted, when they're 
subject to the State Security Law and the Intelligence Law, 
they really don't have a choice. And they aren't even allowed 
to admit that they've assisted in state security in those 
cases.
    You know, I think that the other part of your question, and 
one that a couple of other questions throughout the hearing 
have highlighted, is that we aren't just talking about the ways 
that political opponents of the CCP, that their data can be 
collected and used. We're also talking about the way that, say, 
U.S. citizens and other citizens around the world can have 
their data accessed and used. And of course, we aren't thinking 
as much about individuals being surveilled--of course that does 
happen--but it's also just about what value data has when it's 
aggregated.
    An example that I once provided is the idea of Hisense, a 
smart TV provider, being a state-owned company--partly or fully 
state-owned, I can't remember at the moment. And, you know, 
smart TV data doesn't sound extremely interesting until you 
think about that data in the aggregate, because what's useful 
for advertisers would also be useful from a propaganda 
perspective in terms of influence operations in the future. So 
it's not just individuals being tracked, it's also the issue of 
the strategic value of aggregated datasets.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Hoffman. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Chair Merkley. Thanks so much, Senator Ossoff, and now 
we're going to turn to Congresswoman Wexton of Virginia.
    Representative Wexton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to 
thank the panelists for joining us here today and for your 
important work in this area. You know, I represent a district 
here in Northern Virginia which has one of the highest 
populations of Uyghur Muslims outside of Xinjiang. And the 
stories that they tell me are terrifying, about what their 
families are going through back home. And you know, the 
surveillance doesn't end in Xinjiang or in China. They will 
talk about how they get a random message on WeChat saying: Do 
you want to talk to grandma? You know, this is somebody that 
they haven't been able to talk to in months. And when they set 
up this video call, there will be a Han Chinese member of the 
PRC sitting on the sofa with grandma. And it's just that kind 
of intimidation and threats that really are very, very 
frightening.
    Ms. Wang, I want to thank you for all your testimony about 
what's happening and everything that you've been dealing with. 
This whole issue with WeChat is particularly frightening 
because it is so insidious and so ubiquitous for the Chinese 
diaspora and because it's not just disaggregated data; they can 
focus on a single individual and surveil what they are doing. 
So it's pretty frightening. And I want to thank you for 
everything that you've done to draw attention to this issue.
    But I do want to talk for a minute about the Olympics, 
which are coming up around the corner. I'm very concerned about 
the PRC's use of surveillance technologies during the Olympics 
and what risks the athletes, in particular, will face while in 
China. If any of them does choose to speak out about the human 
rights abuses that are taking place in China nowadays, what 
sort of retaliatory actions can they expect from the PRC and 
from the Chinese government? I guess, Mr. Cain, if we could 
start with you on that question.
    Mr. Cain. It is alarming, I must say, just the fact that 
Beijing can hold an Olympics, given the state of human rights 
and the downward trend toward authoritarianism in the country. 
So when it comes to thinking about ways to raise awareness, or 
to boycott, or to do something to make people notice what's 
going on in China, I think just more broadly speaking the 
Olympics is the moment to do that, because this is going to be 
a time when all the world's eyes are going to be on China. In 
2008, shortly after the Olympics, there were mass protests in 
Tibet and Xinjiang in 2009-2010, owing to conditions there, to 
human rights atrocities and a lack of civil liberties. And that 
was a moment--I think a rare moment in the past when the 
world's eyes were really on just the depth of the suffering 
that exists in some of these regions.
    I think that naturally there's going to be a lot more 
attention on these problems as the Olympics approaches. I'm not 
totally sure given all the vested commercial interests, the big 
advertising deals, I think there's a feeling among many U.S. 
corporations and foreign companies that I've spoken with 
personally that we need to not be too loud about China and its 
own human rights problems in the interest of preserving our own 
market access and our advertising relationship with the 
Olympics. I'm not sure quite how to get around that one 
particular problem short of continuing to sanction foreign 
companies that do business in Xinjiang and with other human 
rights-abusing regimes. But I am optimistic in one sense, that 
when the Olympics does happen, there will be major broadcast 
coverage of the underbelly and some of the human rights 
atrocities now unfolding.
    Representative Wexton. Thank you. And do you think that 
there will be any retaliatory action as a result of that?
    Mr. Cain. I think that there already has been a good deal 
of retaliatory action. There has been in the past two or three 
years a vast clampdown, you know, both on human rights in Hong 
Kong and other parts of China, but also retaliation against 
foreign journalists who travel to China or who live in China 
and who have been reporting on these topics. I mean, among my 
own personal media circles I can count now on maybe two hands, 
it could even be a few dozen people actually by now, who've 
simply been denied visas, or rejected, or who have lost their 
visas as retaliation for their reporting.
    So without a doubt I do think that there will be threats 
from the Chinese Communist Party against major broadcast media 
that attempt to cover these human rights atrocities as the 
Olympics are underway. But I think that also the PRC has worked 
itself into a bit of a hole in this situation because I don't 
think they have much more leverage, having already yanked the 
visas of so many foreign journalists in the country who already 
speak Chinese who do great coverage of the country. Now that 
they've been pulled out, they're simply going to be sitting in 
South Korea or Japan now, simply covering these atrocities from 
the point of view of refugees who have escaped.
    Representative Wexton. Thank you so much, Mr. Cain. I don't 
think you'll get any argument from anybody on this panel. We've 
had a number of hearings about the Olympics and their sponsors 
and everything and trying to up the pressure on them in advance 
of those Olympics taking place.
    Now, Mr. Hillman, it's clear from your presentation that 
U.S. firms could compete with firms from the PRC in terms of 
providing cutting-edge technology and those services across the 
globe. How can we ensure that the technologies that we're 
exporting aren't going to be used for surveillance technologies 
and to advance authoritarianism? And is the PRC currently using 
any U.S. technology in order to conduct its surveillance 
activities at home or abroad?
    Mr. Hillman. Thanks. It's a challenging question, but I 
think one that we can do not only just through unilateral 
action but also in coordination with partners and allies. 
Developing principles for the use of technology--in a way some 
of that's being done now through the Quad, which includes the 
U.S., Japan, Australia, and India. I think there are similar 
efforts underway through the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology 
Council. And so not only making alternatives available but 
helping to provide technical assistance and training that 
ensures that these alternatives are being used appropriately. 
And then we obviously have tools and sanctions to use in 
instances where they're not being used appropriately.
    There, unfortunately, are examples of U.S. technology, U.S. 
products being used. And, you know, this is something, 
unfortunately, that's not new. I think there's a longer history 
here that goes back to the 1990s and the opening of China's 
market, and the eagerness with which a lot of U.S. companies 
and other foreign firms wanted to go into that market, their 
willingness to form joint ventures, to share technology, and 
still the willingness of some companies to supply components 
that are needed for these systems. So I do think that that's an 
area that deserves more attention.
    Representative Wexton. Thank you very much. I see that my 
time has expired, so I'll yield back.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Wexton. I 
appreciate your raising the Olympics. The Congressional-
Executive Commission on China has tried to really amplify 
attention to the fact that the International Olympic Committee 
has placed the world's athletes in the untenable position of 
making them essentially complicit in China's effort to use the 
Olympics to paint a very beautiful vision of their country and 
to basically hide the genocide that they are engaged in against 
the Uyghur community and other ethnic and religious minorities.
    So it's important that we continue to raise it, that we 
encourage athletes to speak out, that we encourage sponsors to 
speak out, we encourage sponsors to condition any future 
sponsorship on massive reform by the IOC, that we protect the 
athletes' ability to speak freely at the Games, that we 
encourage network coverage, cable coverage to explore the 
underbelly, as referred to by our witness today, and give us an 
opportunity to educate the world about China's practices when 
those Olympics occur.
    I want to address one additional topic that I don't think 
has really been covered today and that is the challenge that 
U.S. companies have in operating in China when they are 
compelled to hand over information. One particular example 
that's been well covered is Airbnb. Sean Joyce, the former 
chief trust officer of Airbnb, resigned in 2019 because China 
was requiring Airbnb to hand over not just phone numbers and 
email addresses, but also messages sent between guests and 
hosts. In other words, participate in the surveillance strategy 
of the country. Many other companies are compelled to share 
information. And it's just an ongoing challenge that needs to 
be highlighted.
    Ms. Wang, can you bring any kind of a spotlight to bear on 
this challenge?
    Ms. Wang. Thank you for the question. I do think this is a 
huge problem. You mentioned Airbnb, and there are many other 
companies. I think one big company is Apple. China is Apple's 
second-largest market and lots of people in China use iPhones. 
By Chinese law, Apple's data is stored in China. So basically, 
what you are communicating through your iPhone inside China is 
known to the Chinese government. The database is jointly owned 
by Apple and a Chinese government-controlled company.
    Besides that, actually, over the years Apple has taken down 
over 1,000 VPNs from the Apple Store. I mean, activists are 
extremely frustrated. They always tell me, I cannot find a VPN 
in the app store to communicate, to access information blocked 
by China. I brought that message to Apple. They always tell me 
the same message--you know, we have to comply with the local 
law. Then I would tell them, But you have a human rights 
commitment; that is in your policy. How do you fulfill that 
human rights commitment? So there's always this back and forth.
    I don't know what the solution is if Apple values its 
market in China so much. You know, I really want to see--there 
should be more awareness of Apple's complicity in human rights 
violations in China, because Apple has a good reputation here 
for its support for privacy rights. I think the public needs to 
be more aware of those tech companies' behavior outside of the 
United States.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you. Do any of our other witnesses 
wish to comment on this challenge?
    Mr. Hillman. If I could, I would just add that I think U.S. 
companies are not only facing that pressure within China, but 
increasingly in some third markets too, where they're being 
asked by foreign governments to provide access to their data. 
That pressure is increased in situations where they have a 
Chinese competitor who's also operating in that market and does 
not hesitate to provide access to that data. So I think it's 
not an easy challenge to solve when your competitor is willing 
to engage in that race to the bottom. The U.S. does have trade 
tools it could use. I think we also need to, again, be working 
with partners and allies so that companies that are operating 
in our markets--you know, in the United States and the European 
Union in particular--are abiding by that higher set of 
standards.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, and I thank all of our 
witnesses--Mr. Cain, Dr. Hoffman, Ms. Wang, Mr. Hillman--for 
sharing your expertise with us today and helping us to gain a 
better understanding of how to combat techno-authoritarianism.
    First, your testimony has portrayed a truly chilling 
description of techno-authoritarianism and the surveillance 
state, a combination of old strategies of neighbors spying on 
neighbors and sanctions for misbehavior combined with new 
technological strategies that involve the collection of 
information from video monitors, from internet use, cellphone 
use, artificial intelligence, processing of information to 
target specific individuals. Basically, an all-encompassing 
surveillance cage that turns humans into state-monitored and -
controlled robots, stripped of their freedom of movement, their 
freedom of expression, as well as their cultural heritage.
    Second, that this strategy is spreading throughout the 
world, through China's Belt and Road Initiative, including 
their safe cities program, their cybersecurity program, and 
through the interest of authoritarian governments in having 
more control over both targeted groups within their country and 
over their general population.
    Third, that the speed of technological development and 
deployment is outpacing the response of democratic governments 
to monitor it, to understand it, to respond to it, and to set 
standards for it.
    Fourth, that without a lot of effort, scrutiny, and action, 
U.S. capital and technology become complicit in supporting and 
accelerating this techno-authoritarianism.
    Fifth, that China is using this strategy to also collect 
information on individuals throughout the world, including the 
Chinese diaspora, and that information is used to influence and 
control people outside of its borders.
    And sixth, that responding to Chinese techno-
authoritarianism is going to require a coalition of free states 
and the development of an alternative model of technology; that 
is, equipment and practices, and that it is certainly urgent 
for us to act.
    I hope today's hearing has helped draw attention to this 
urgency and to the importance of the United States and other 
free nations engaging with international organizations that set 
international norms and standards, such as the International 
Telecommunication Union. That we be very aware of and respond 
to the challenge of protecting data. That we recognize the need 
to increase our Chinese skills, including our Chinese-language 
journalism, and that we help provide open-source responses to 
Chinese applications like WeChat. So that's a significant, 
challenging, and exceedingly important agenda. And I appreciate 
all of you for shedding light on it today. We must pay 
attention and we must act.
    The record will remain open until the close of business on 
Friday, November 19th for any members who would like to submit 
any information for the record or additional questions for our 
witnesses. Thank you all so much. And with that, this hearing 
is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:29 p.m., the hearing was concluded.]

=======================================================================


                            A P P E N D I X

=======================================================================


                          Prepared Statements

                                ------                                


                  Prepared Statement of Geoffrey Cain

    Chairman Merkley, Co-Chairman McGovern and members of the 
Commission, it is an honor to be invited to testify here on China's 
surveillance apparatus and the threat it poses globally.
    Democracies around the world are straddled with a grave and 
unprecedented problem: the creation of new, totalitarian surveillance 
technologies, developed faster than we can implement the democratic 
laws, norms, and checks and balances that will ensure these 
technologies do not fall into the wrong hands.
    Today I will talk about a place where these surveillance 
technologies have enabled genocide and crimes against humanity. I will 
talk about the situation of the Uyghur population in China's western 
region of Xinjiang, where about 1.8 million people have languished in a 
network of hundreds of extrajudicial concentration camps, out of an 
ethnic minority population of about 11 million people. Since 2016, the 
People's Republic of China has engaged in an unprecedented experiment 
in social control in Xinjiang. It has deployed novel technologies in 
artificial intelligence, facial recognition, voice recognition and 
biometric data collection to oppress its people in new ways.
    In the twentieth century, genocides took place in gas chambers and 
mass graves. But in the twenty-first century, modern technology has 
allowed the People's Republic of China to commit the beginnings of 
genocide, wiping out a people in silence, through cultural erasure and 
forced sterilizations, without the use of mass physical violence and 
killings.
    This is all documented in my book The Perfect Police State: An 
Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the 
Future, published in June 2020 by the Hachette Book Group. From August 
2017 to February 2021, I was an investigative journalist in China, 
Turkey and Kyrgyzstan, where I interviewed 168 Uyghur and Kazakh 
refugees. These refugees consisted of former concentration camp 
detainees, their family members, American and European diplomats 
tracking the atrocities, Chinese government officials, academics, 
former Uyghur technology employees at major Chinese corporations, and 
former Uyghur intelligence operatives from the Ministry of State 
Security, an intelligence body.
    In December 2017, I made my final visit to Kashgar, the Uyghur 
heartland, and Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang. Within three 
days, I was detained and asked to leave. To protect my data, my 
sources, and my own safety, I have not returned.
                    technology, torture and genocide
    In interviews, Uyghur and Kazakh refugees all told similar stories 
about the region's descent into a total surveillance dystopia. First 
and most commonly, they recounted how authorities from the Ministry of 
Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, and Chinese technology 
firms such as Huawei, Hikvision, SenseTime, Megvii and others have 
innovated the technologies that are deployed for a dragnet. The police 
used these technologies for what interviewees say is a system of 
psychological torture.
    When refugees and former camp detainees say ``psychological 
torture,'' they meant the feeling of constantly being watched, not by 
humans, but by crude software systems designed to predict future crimes 
and acts of terrorism, with great inaccuracy. The software platform, 
known as the IJOP, or the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, 
gathered data from a myriad of sources, including police input, camera 
surveillance, and criminal and court histories. It was straight out of 
the science fiction movie Minority Report, about a police unit that 
arrests and brainwashes people believed to be future criminals before 
they have even committed a crime.
    Former Uyghur technology workers, from major Chinese companies, 
told me about how the system worked from the inside. They said that the 
artificial intelligence used data to train a crude, simple algorithm 
and find correlations between data points, and then determined who was 
likely to commit a crime based on a number of unrelated, outside 
factors. The system sent a ``bump'' or ``nudge'' to the smart phones of 
local police to investigate or detain an individual, for reasons often 
unclear to the human users of the software. These reasons for detention 
could be as far-flung as whether or not a resident began a physical 
exercise routine suddenly, entered their home through the front or the 
back door, or had the flu and was late for work one day.
    Under constant surveillance, sometimes without a human to oversee 
these decisions, refugees said they were terrified at the prospect of 
doing anything that diverged from their daily schedules and flagged 
them as potential criminals. They trained themselves to become like 
machines or robots, able to answer every police question in a pre-
programmed way, repressing their own feelings, thoughts and desires.
    At concentration camps, where psychological and physical torture 
have been well-documented, refugees described fellow detainees as 
lacking personality and expression, like people who had a memory wipe. 
Their only way of surviving was to do what the camp guards and teachers 
said, without question. The surveillance technology was designed to 
force them to deny their own reality and internalize the thinking of 
the Chinese Communist Party. By internalizing CCP propaganda, these 
detainees did exactly what the CCP wanted from them: detainees erased 
their own internal sense of culture, heritage, community, and 
upbringing which separated them from the dominant Han Chinese 
population.
                              key sources
    Looking beyond data alone, the personal stories of Uyghur and 
Kazakh refugees are harrowing and have much to warn us about the misuse 
of surveillance technologies.
    To protect their safety, I granted anonymity to two key 
interviewees who appeared in my book. They are ``Maysem,'' a young 
woman now in her thirties from Kashgar, who obtained a master's degree 
in the social sciences from a university in Ankara. She remains in 
Ankara as a refugee after being taken to a lower-level ``reeducation 
center,'' followed by a high-security ``detention center,'' in late 
2016 for about one week.
    Maysem asked for anonymity and for the author to obscure some 
details of her story because she believes her entire family has been 
taken to a camp as of late 2017 or early 2018, and remain vulnerable.
    The other key anonymous source was ``Irfan,'' who now resides in 
Turkey and had obtained a mid-senior management position as an 
information technology (IT) worker at a major Chinese 
telecommunications firm in Urumqi, his hometown. Irfan asked for 
anonymity because he was revealing what the PRC would probably consider 
state secrets, surely leading to the imprisonment of his family in 
Xinjiang, and his own imprisonment and perhaps even execution should he 
ever be required to return to China.
    Under contract with the Ministry of Public Security, Irfan led 
teams of IT workers and engineers who, from the late 2000s and early 
2010s, began establishing networks of surveillance cameras all over 
Urumqi. Irfan witnessed the escalating surveillance by the Ministry of 
Public Security firsthand. This included the rollout of dragnet 
artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition and voice recognition 
systems, and digital surveillance camera technology from 2010 to 2015 
until his departure from the telecommunications company in 2015.
    Irfan also detailed the connivance, complacency and involvement of 
major Chinese telecommunications firms in creating the surveillance 
apparatus in Xinjiang. All the firms he detailed have been sanctioned 
by the U.S. Department of Commerce, a government body that, under both 
the Biden and Trump administrations, has similarly accused these firms 
of involvement in human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
    I did not grant anonymity to interviewees who had already become 
public figures and whose stories were available in the public domain, 
search engines and media websites. One key public interviewee was 
Yusupjan Ahmet, who came from Karamay, Xinjiang and who had migrated to 
Turkey as an intelligence operative for the PRC Ministry of State 
Security.
    Yusupjan detailed his life story in a series of hours-long, 
recorded interviews with the author. He stated that he intended to 
travel to Afghanistan in the early 2010s to become a jihadist fighter, 
that he was instead imprisoned, and that the state coerced him into 
spying on fellow Uyghurs by torturing and threatening his mother.
    In 2017, with the help of a former military officer in Pakistan, 
Yusupjan was flown to Afghanistan where he joined a local Taliban 
militia, while posing as a jihadist. The Ministry of State Security 
ordered him to report back on the activities and whereabouts of Chinese 
citizens, mainly Uyghurs, who had become jihadi combatants in 
Afghanistan. In 2017, the Ministry of State Security relocated Yusupjan 
to Turkey, where he was ordered to gather intelligence on the local 
Uyghur community in Istanbul, Turkey. In particular, PRC intelligence 
operatives wanted him to infiltrate local Uyghur-owned businesses 
posing as a young person seeking employment.
    PRC intelligence officers told Yusupjan that the Turkestan Islamic 
Party (TIP), a fundamentalist terror group, had infiltrated the Uyghur 
community in Turkey, and that his objective was to locate and document 
these supposedly widespread underground networks. Yusupjan, however, 
was disillusioned to find no evidence of widespread infiltration. He 
found the PRC's claims to be little more than a conspiracy theory 
designed to justify the mass detention of his fellow Uyghurs back in 
China.
    In 2018, Yusupjan defected from the Ministry of State Security and 
went into hiding. He relocated to Zonguldak, a small industrial town in 
northern Turkey on the coast of the Black Sea. There, he kept a low 
profile, working as a gas station attendant. Two other Uyghur residents 
in Zonguldak told the author that while they heard, through local 
community talk, that Yusupjan was a resident, they knew little about 
him and his life story. He kept a low profile.
    In November 2020, while visiting a friend in Istanbul, Yusupjan was 
preparing to offer an interview to the BBC. As he left his friend's 
apartment, a man wielding a gun, reportedly of Azeri (Azerbaijan) 
background, appeared on the street and shot him twice in the back of 
the shoulder. Yusupjan survived, but has been hospitalized, close to 
paralyzed and unable to walk for months.
                    exporting the surveillance state
    The technologies are no longer unique to Xinjiang. Chinese 
companies have made them available for export around the world, posing 
threats to democracy and rule of law. Mexico, Brazil, Serbia, 
Singapore, Turkey, Spain and South Africa are all examples of countries 
that have embraced ``Safe Cities'' programs, designed by Huawei for 
surveillance and crime prevention.
    While there is nothing wrong with adopting technologies that can 
stop crime, one legitimate fear is that authoritarian or quasi-
authoritarian governments will exploit these systems to seize more 
power and monitor their political opponents. One study by the Brookings 
Institution concluded, ``countries that are strategically important to 
the PRC are comparatively more likely to adopt it, but so are countries 
with high crime rates.''
    I will give some examples. The authoritarian government of 
Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country between China and Russia, announced 
at a security meeting in May 2019 that it signed with Huawei to develop 
a Safe Cities system with 883 cameras in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, 
to, in Orwellian terms, ``digitally manage political affairs.'' In non-
democratic Uganda in sub-Saharan Africa, The Wall Street Journal 
reported in August 2019 that Huawei technicians helped the government 
access the Facebook pages and phones of opposition bloggers who 
criticized the president. Huawei denied the allegation.
                  denialism of crimes against humanity
    It is a tragedy that some individuals, companies and governments 
have chosen to downplay or deny evidence of mass atrocities in the 
Xinjiang region, sometimes for their own market access to the PRC. 
Their denials are in line with CCP propaganda.
    My research underwent a three-month, rigorous fact-checking 
process, looking for inconsistencies, omissions and inaccuracies. With 
a professional fact-checker and a journalist, we compared our own 
refugee testimonies with the published reports of other refugees, 
academics and journalists, including research by all the scholars 
testifying here today. We checked the locations and structures of 
concentration camps and other locations on Google Maps satellite 
imagery, in technology company press releases and official reports, and 
in investigative journalism already published in other periodicals such 
as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BuzzFeed. We also 
double-checked Chinese-language media.
                           how to take action
    Because of the situation before us, I urge Congress to take action 
on these points. The following are a sample of possible actions, and 
are not exhaustive:

      Pass the CHIPS for America Act (H.R. 7178), introduced in 
the House in 2020. The Act will invest in and incentivize research and 
development and supply chain security in America's semiconductor 
industry. Establishing a strong semiconductor supply chain at home, in 
America, will be key to stopping malign state actors from undermining 
our democracy through technology.

      Pass legislation that would require the U.S. Department 
of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to publish reports on 
a regular basis for Congress and the public, providing evidence for 
sanctions of foreign businesses. While BIS already releases reports on 
sanctions, sometimes they do not offer much detail as to why specific 
entities have been added to the sanctions list. In October 2021, BIS 
began amending export controls to cover items used in surveillance and 
espionage that disrupts networks, a great step in the right direction.

      Pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (H.R. 1155). 
A similar bill was passed in the Senate in July 2021, and H.R. 1155 has 
been introduced in the House but has not proceeded. The bill would 
pressure the PRC to curtail the Xinjiang surveillance dystopia, by 
blocking goods made with forced labor in Xinjiang, such as clothes and 
electronic components, from entering the U.S. market.
                                 ______
                                 

                 Prepared Statement of Samantha Hoffman

                 China's Tech-Enhanced Authoritarianism

Core Assessments

    1. Assumptions that liberal democracy would automatically be 
strengthened and authoritarians weakened as the world became 
increasingly digitally interconnected have been proven false. 
Democracies are not going to self-correct in response to the problems 
created by authoritarian applications of technology. Competing with 
China in this space is not about ``winning'' or ``losing'' a race in 
terms of R&D of emerging and critical technologies, such as AI or data 
science and storage technologies. Leadership in these R&D areas is 
essential, not least to guarantee supply chain resilience, but just as 
consequential is the competition taking place in the conceptual space. 
To stay ahead, the United States and like-minded countries must 
innovate thinking about use-cases, and set boundaries, so that these 
technologies positively affect society without liberal democratic 
values being undermined.

    2. The ability to identify and protect strategic data will become 
an increasingly complex and vital national security task, especially 
under the conditions of China's military-civil fusion strategy. Knowing 
how particular datasets are collected and used by foreign adversaries, 
and imagining potential use cases, will be an essential part of ranking 
what datasets should be prioritized for protection. Developing 
effective countermeasures requires understanding the implications of 
the fact that the Chinese party-state conceives of the usefulness of 
data in a strategic competition in ways that go beyond traditional 
intelligence collection.

    3. We cannot measure risk based on today's capabilities alone. 
Technology evolves on a trajectory, and to develop effective policy 
responses requires assuming that the challenges China faces today in 
realizing its optimal outcomes may not be significant in the future as 
concepts increasingly become capabilities.

What Is Tech-Enhanced Authoritarianism?

    When we talk about ``authoritarian technology'', this should be 
defined as the uses of technology that enhance authoritarian power. The 
phrase ``tech-enhanced authoritarianism'' is a way of thinking about 
this concept that demystifies the phrase ``techno-authoritarianism''. 
Techno-authoritarianism connotes a vision of the future that, for most 
passive observers, is either like Huxley's Brave New World or Orwell's 
1984. The reality though is not like science fiction.
    On one hand, we see the Chinese party-state deploying extremely 
coercive applications of technology, most notably in places like 
Xinjiang and Tibet and with public security surveillance projects like 
the ``Sharp Eyes'' or ``Skynet''.\1\ But, elsewhere, it is technologies 
that provide services or enhance convenience and problem solving that 
allow the party-state to expand and reinforce its power. For example, 
data from IoT sensors can improve logistics and predictive analytics 
that increase supply chain visibility and efficiency in normal times, 
but in crisis those same technologies could facilitate defense 
mobilization capacity.
    China's tech-enhanced authoritarianism is unique in a national 
context. When these technologies are exported globally, it is not 
necessarily the intent of an end user to use them in ways that enhance 
authoritarian power. Some fragile democracies or illiberal regimes 
import the technologies for coercive purposes, but others are genuinely 
seeking the best and most affordable technologies for problem-solving. 
With many technologies associated with tech authoritarianism appearing 
benign in their everyday end-use, problematic assumptions are made that 
undermine the risks they embed. For instance, one problematic claim 
that is made goes as follows: ``[x] technology or [y] system is not 
inherently problematic, it is applied in ways that solve ordinary 
governance problems, but there is a potential that in the wrong hands 
that it will be misused.'' Following the same problematic logic, some 
claim that if that technology is exported, ``we can control the problem 
because we control its end-use''. The problem is analysts describing 
``misuse'' are thinking subjectively.
    For the Party-state, problem-solving technologies can also enhance 
authoritarian control, the two are not mutually exclusive. The tendency 
to compartmentalise ``good'' and ``bad'' use points to a failure to 
conceptualise the strategic potential value of the technologies. The 
Chinese Party-state sets itself apart because it is setting itself up 
to be able to exploit that inherent dual-use at all times. This is 
notable in terms of how it applies PRC law to Chinese companies and in 
terms of how it seeks to seize advantages in the development of 
technical standards.

Data Security and Digital Supply Chain Security

    Technologies that collect, store and transfer data facilitate the 
delivery of wide range of services on which society is becoming 
increasingly dependent. In a June 2021 report, ``Mapping China's 
Technology Giants: Supply chains and the global data collection 
ecosystem,'' \2\ we found that existing global policy debates and 
subsequent policy responses concerning security in the digital supply 
chain miss the bigger picture because they typically prioritize the 
potential for disruption or malicious alterations of the supply chain. 
Yet, digital supply-chain risk starts at the design level. Not all 
methods used to acquire data need to be intrusive, subversive, covert 
or even illegal--they can be part of normal business data exchanges. 
Figure 1 illustrates how a digital supply chain can be compromised 
without a malicious intrusion or alteration. The data-sharing 
relationships that bring commercial advantages are also the same ones 
that could compromise an organization.


[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    My October 2019 ASPI report, Engineering Global Consent, provided a 
case study describing what this problem can look like in reality. The 
report identified and described a machine-translation company 
controlled by the Central Propaganda Department, Global Tone 
Communications Technology (GTCOM), which engages in global bulk data 
collection.\3\
    GTCOM claims that one of its many platforms, InsiderSoft, 
accumulates about 2-3 petabytes of data per year, including from 
Twitter and Facebook.\4\ The company feeds the data it aggregates into 
various tools, some linked to state security. For instance, in 2017, 
GTCOM's Big Data Director, Liang Haoyu said: Through the real-time 
listening and interpretation of cross-language data, the company has 
established information security systems for countries and regions, and 
ultimately finds relevant security risks in targeted areas through open 
channels . . . [Only with] image recognition on top of text and voices, 
can [we] better prevent security risks.\5\
    There are strong indications that GTCOM generates military and 
other state security intelligence out of the data it collects (and not 
only because an image from GTCOM Big Data Director Liang Haoyu's 
aforementioned speech shows a screen claiming `90% of military-grade 
intelligence data can be obtained from open data analysis'). GTCOM runs 
the 2020 Cognitive Research Institute (the 2020 Institute), which is a 
mechanism through which the company does R&D to enhance `machine 
learning, deep neural networks, natural language processing, speech 
recognition, AI chips, data mining, distributed computing'. The 2020 
Institute has numerous NLP (natural language processing) algorithms, 
including for automatic text identification, sentiment analysis, event 
element extraction, sensitivity determination (whether text contains 
`violent, reactionary, pornographic or other sensitive information'), 
relation extraction, and `military text classification'. The `military 
text classification' algorithm classifies text according to subfields 
such as nuclear, shipping, aviation, electronic and space.
    Data and the information it helps generate can also support the 
party-state's development of tools for shaping public discourse. 
Separately from GTCOM, research funded by the National Natural Science 
Foundation of China, the National Key R&D Program of China and a key 
project of the `National Society Science Foundation of China' has 
worked specifically on automatic news comment generation; that is, 
synthetic comments on news articles. The methodology is based on NLP 
and large-scale datasets of real comments in Chinese and English. Given 
GTCOM's Propaganda Department ownership, its state security role and 
the fact that it collects bulk data in 65 languages, the research 
indicates a potential tool that a state-controlled company such as 
GTCOM could use, especially given that the research was funded with 
national-level grants. It's also simply indicative of how GTCOM's bulk 
data may be used by others who have access to it, such as researchers 
working in cooperation with GTCOM's 2020 Institute. Other R&D 
associated with GTCOM may also have security implications, even if it's 
not immediately obvious. For instance, among GTCOM's patent 
applications is a machine translation method based on generative 
adversarial networks (GANs). GAN can be used to synthesise images based 
on AI or use visual speech recognition to perform lip-reading and 
speech output (it's the same type of technology commonly associated 
with synthetic media, meaning `fake news' and `deep fakes'). It's an 
intriguing patent not because of the technology itself, but because 
GTCOM is controlled by the Propaganda Department. The department's 
intent isn't simply to use GTCOM to provide language services, but to 
shape global public discourse.

Future Trajectory

    Sometimes that control might just be about improved information 
integration and sharing. Integrated Joint Operations Platform is 
designed to help with the integration and sharing of data on citizens 
across multiple government agencies.\6\ One metric used to identify 
threats is energy usage from smart electricity meters: abnormally high 
energy use could indicate `illegal' activity, but such meters in their 
normal use would also improve the accuracy of meter readings. Another 
example is building datasets for use in the PRC's `national defence 
mobilisation system' (a crisis response platform) using data sourced 
from a variety of government cloud networks, from smart cities to 
tourism-related cloud networks (Figure 2).


[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    This is partly tied to administrative efficiency objectives set 
over two decades ago, before current technical capabilities existed. I 
noted in a 2018 article for China Brief \7\ that in his report to the 
15th Party Congress in 1997, then-CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin 
noted that a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy hampers economic 
development, and the Party's ability to manage both itself and its 
relationship with society. His prescription was the establishment of a 
``highly efficient, well-coordinated and standardized administrative 
system.'' \8\ Streamlining administration does more than improve the 
government's capacity to provide advertised administrative services, it 
improves the Party-state's overall visibility and, if effective, 
ability to predict and respond to problems (both ``normal'' governance 
problems and authoritarian control).
    Current public conversation on China's capabilities among China 
analysts can often, misleadingly, focus on PRC discussion on its 
challenges with the integration and processing of data. Hundreds of 
companies' products are involved in smart cities projects across the 
PRC, making the implementation appear chaotic and uneven. 
Standardization is taking place at the design level, however, which 
indicates that seamless interoperability between smart cities systems 
is possible to achieve. While these capabilities are not currently at 
an optimal state, the trajectory appears to be in the Party-state's 
favor and levels of standardization across database schema for tools 
like Facial Recognition Systems improve. There is a constant evolution 
with digital technology. We must imagine technology's trajectory and 
future use cases to adequately develop policies governing their use. 
For now, the critical domains of influence are in possessing 
infrastructure, the storage, processing capacity and the data contained 
within it. If they invest the time and cost into doing so, the actor 
that controls those means can later control much more in terms of how 
technologies or the data derived from and passing through them are 
used.
    In a report earlier this year for the National Endowment for 
Democracy, I highlighted how domestically, technologies are being 
researched and developed to meet the needs of the CCP, which are 
typically set out in government standards documents.\9\ Government and 
research institutes collaborate with companies on national standards 
technical committees to standardize equipment development and the 
requirements that companies must meet to successfully bid for a 
project. For instance, a 2015 document GA/T1334 on the technical 
requirements for facial recognition in security systems was drafted 
through the cooperation of over a dozen bodies, including research 
institutes, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National 
University of Defense Technology, and the First Research Institute of 
the Ministry of Public Security; technology companies, such as 
Hikvision and Dahua; and public security bureaus, such as the Shanxi 
Provincial Public Security Department and the Wuhan Public Security 
Bureau. Documents like these are used as a basis for technical 
requirements in government procurement contracts.
    In practice, local governments across the PRC have not yet achieved 
seamless interoperability between government departments and with other 
local governments using smart cities platforms, but this does not mean 
that it will remain out of reach. The setting of standards, and the 
requirement that project bidders meet those standards, makes it more 
likely that plans such as Skynet or Sharp Eyes will gain cohesion and 
be successfully implemented, despite the many players involved. The 
same logic applies at the international level. Although the PRC cannot 
force its standards on other countries, it can help to set standards 
that become the global norm and ease the international adoption of its 
technology, effectively embedding the CCP's political values and 
increasing the regime's ability to exploit this advantage and project 
sharp power.

Recommendations for U.S. Policy

    Recalibrate data security policy and privacy frameworks to account 
for the Chinese state's use of data to reinforce its political 
monopoly. Companies and governments too often assume that other 
governments' data and privacy regulations share the same goals as their 
own. That isn't true when it comes to the Chinese party-state and PRC-
based companies, even if common vocabularies are used or if some policy 
drivers are similar. In the PRC, unlike in liberal democracies, data 
security and privacy concepts (including draft legislation) reinforce 
the party-state's monopoly power. Companies and governments need to 
recognize this risk and calibrate their policies to account for it.

    Collaborate with like-minded countries to develop systems for 
improving risk-based approaches to improving the regulation of data 
transfers. Organizations must assess the value of their data, as well 
as the value of that data to any potential party in their supply chain 
that may have access to it or that might be granted access. In an age 
in which information warfare and disinformation campaigns occur across 
social media platforms and are among the greatest threats to social 
cohesion, data that's about public sentiment is as strategically 
valuable as data about more traditional military targets. Risk needs to 
be understood in a way that keeps up with the current threat landscape, 
in which otherwise innocuous data can be aggregated to carry meaning 
that can undermine a society or individuals.

    Take a multidisciplinary approach to due diligence. Governments, 
businesses and other organizations need to develop frameworks for 
conducting supply-chain reviews that take into account country-specific 
policy drivers. Developing such a framework shouldn't be limited to 
just assessing a vendor's risk of exposure to political risk. It should 
also include detailed analysis of the downstream actors who have access 
to the vendor's data (and must include analysis of things such as the 
broader data ecosystem they're a part of and the obligations those 
vendors have to their own governments). Taking this more holistic 
approach to due diligence will better ensure that data can be protected 
in an effective way.

    [Endnotes appear on the following page.]
Endnotes:


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                                 ______
                                 

                    Prepared Statement of Yaqui Wang

    Chairman Merkley, Chairman McGovern, distinguished members of the 
Commission, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this issue dear 
to my heart. I owe my presence here today to the relative internet 
freedom China once had, and to the respect for freedom of information 
in the United States.
    I was born and grew up in China. As a teenager, every day I would 
go online and listen to Voice of America's ``Special English,'' a news 
program broadcast in slow-speed English. That's how I started to learn 
English, and that's also how I and many others in China got information 
uncensored by the Chinese government.
    That was 15 years ago, and Beijing has since gotten so much better 
at controlling the internet. It's not only that many foreign websites 
have been blocked, but also that some people from China who now live in 
the U.S.--with free internet readily accessible--still go back to the 
censored Chinese internet to get their news.
    I'd like to use my five minutes to focus on WeChat and TikTok, two 
Chinese apps that have a significant presence in the U.S.
    First and foremost, it is essential to remember that all Chinese 
companies are subject to the control of the ruling Chinese Communist 
Party (CCP).
    The Chinese diaspora heavily relies on the super-app WeChat for 
information, communication, and even political organizing. This allows 
Beijing to shape the Chinese diaspora's views in ways more amenable to 
the CCP. It allows Beijing to know a lot about the people who have left 
China, down to things like who is meeting whom, at what time, and 
where. And it also allows Beijing to surveil and potentially influence 
and mobilize an important demographic in the U.S.
    Earlier this year, a network of fake social media accounts linked 
to the Chinese government attempted, but failed, to draw Americans out 
to real-world protests against racial injustice. The reason we know 
about the scheme is because it happened on Facebook, YouTube, and 
Twitter--American companies that periodically disclose influence 
operations, including by government and government-aligned actors. We 
don't know whether similar manipulations are also happening on WeChat 
because it's difficult to do research.
    Then there is TikTok, which has far deeper reach into the lives of 
the American public, especially young people. One thing lawmakers need 
to understand is that the company's algorithm largely decides what 
users see. There is no way for outsiders to know what information is 
being suppressed or promoted on TikTok because of government influence. 
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute's analysis of the hashtag 
#Xinjiang showed a depiction of the region that glosses over the human 
rights suffering and instead provides a version that is filled with 
smiling and dancing Uyghurs.
    In short, there is a lot we don't know about what Chinese tech 
companies are doing in the U.S.--what is being censored, promoted, and 
suppressed, and how data is being harvested, accessed, used, and 
shared. There are risks that these companies can be or are being used 
by the Chinese government to undermine the rights of American users.
    Congress has recently increased its scrutiny of American tech 
companies. Chinese tech companies' rising popularity in the U.S. and 
their ties to the Chinese government should give added urgency to 
efforts to pass laws to require tech companies--regardless of where 
they are headquartered--to protect user data and to be more transparent 
in how they moderate content.
    Lastly, here I speak not as an expert, but as a member of the 
Chinese immigrant community in America: to counter harm from Chinese 
tech companies and improve independent, professional Chinese-language 
media, the U.S. Government should invest in journalism training and 
similar programs for aspiring Chinese-language journalists. Making 
fact-based information available in our native language is one of the 
most effective ways to counter Beijing's malign influence.
    Thank you and I look forward to your questions.

                Recommendations for the U.S. Government

    1. Enact comprehensive data protection laws that require all tech 
companies to practice data minimization for all users; conduct human 
rights impact assessments that address all aspects of companies' 
operations, including their underlying business model; and require 
human rights due diligence for their operations globally.
    2. Consider regulations that encourage transparency from all social 
media platforms, including disclosure of their content moderation 
policies and enforcement, such as what content they've censored or 
suppressed because of their own policies or at the request of 
governments.
    3. Improve independent, professional Chinese-language journalism by 
investing in journalism training and similar programs, expanding the 
space for Chinese-language speakers to learn about and discuss human 
rights issues inside China and around the world.
    4. Invest in open-source technologies that provide other channels 
of communication and enable people in China to more easily circumvent 
censorship.

   WeChat Censorship and Surveillance Affecting the Chinese Diaspora

    International WeChat users are estimated at between 100 million and 
200 million; there are an average of 19 million daily active users in 
the United States.
    Over the past couple of years, I've interviewed members of the 
Chinese diaspora around the world on the Chinese government's 
activities undermining human rights abroad. A recurring problem I've 
run into is that some of my sources only wanted to use WeChat to 
communicate, mainly because they had not installed any other messaging 
apps.
    The centrality of WeChat in information acquisition and 
communication among the Chinese diaspora, especially first-generation 
immigrants from China, should be a source of real concern.
    Chinese law requires internet companies to store internet logs and 
relevant data for at least six months to assist law enforcement. 
WeChat's own privacy policy notes that it may need to ``retain, 
disclose and use'' user information in response to requests from the 
government. Hence, the Chinese government can--if it wants--know a lot 
about the people who have left China, down to things like who is 
meeting whom, at what time, and where. And because WeChat is a payment 
app as well, it can see to whom they send money or from whom they get 
it or even who pays for dinner.
    WeChat is also where many members of the Chinese diaspora obtain 
information, including about the countries they immigrated to. A survey 
of Mandarin speakers in Australia found that 60 percent of those polled 
identified WeChat as their primary source of news and information, 
while only 23 percent said they regularly accessed news from mainstream 
Australian media, such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and 
the Sydney Morning Herald.
    Some of the most popular publications catering to the diaspora 
originated on WeChat. In order to attract readership, traditional 
Chinese-language media outlets now also publish through WeChat. In this 
sense, news produced by a local Chinese-language outlet in New York 
goes through censors in Beijing before it reaches the Chinese-speaking 
community in New York.
    Because of the importance of WeChat among the Chinese diaspora, 
some political parties and politicians in countries such as Australia, 
Canada, and the U.S. have opened their own WeChat accounts or regularly 
utilize popular accounts to reach out to their Chinese speaking 
constituencies.
    And there is evidence that the Chinese government, through 
censorship on WeChat, has interfered with communications between 
elected officials and constituents in Western democracies.
    In September 2017, Jenny Kwan, a member of the Canadian parliament, 
made a statement regarding the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in which 
she praised the young protesters who ``stood up and fought for what 
they believe in, and for the betterment of their society.''
    The statement and anything related quickly disappeared.
    After it was taken down, Kwan told me in an email, ``We posted the 
statement on Sept 6, 2017. One hundred people viewed it, 1 like and 3 
comments were posted before it was deleted by the WeChat management. We 
only noticed that it was taken down since you asked the question.''
    In this case, the Chinese government quietly and effortlessly 
prevented an elected official in a democracy from being heard by her 
own constituents. Imagine the consequences if the Chinese government 
decided to disrupt these conversations on a broader scale.

                          Censorship on TikTok

    TikTok has repeatedly stated that the Chinese government has not 
asked it to remove any content, and that if it does, the company will 
not comply. But such reassurances have not found broader acceptance.
    For example, there are few videos on TikTok concerning the Hong 
Kong protests--even though the largely youth-led movement has garnered 
massive international attention. After American teenager Feroza Aziz 
posted a video condemning the Chinese government's mass detention of 
Uyghur Muslims that went viral, her account was suspended. TikTok 
asserted the suspension was the result of an earlier satirical video of 
hers referencing Osama Bin Laden being mistakenly flagged for violating 
the app's anti-terrorism policy.
    In 2020, my colleague and I tried to test some of these concerns. 
We started by uploading clips of Tank Man, the young man who famously 
stood his ground in front of a procession of Chinese army tanks during 
the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.
    One clip, uploaded to an account registered in Australia, was 
visible to the account holder but not to anyone else. When we raised 
the issue with TikTok, representatives of the company said via email 
that the video was ``incorrectly partially restricted based on 
guidelines related to displaying identifiable military information.'' 
Our video was later reinstated.
    After I published an article mentioning the incident, including 
TikTok's response, Tik Tok's representative emailed me, calling my 
reporting ``misleading'' and demanding retraction. Because we 
considered our report to be fair and accurate, we declined to do so. 
Yet, I was taken aback by the incident and thought about how I would 
have acted differently if I were an independent researcher without the 
support of an institution--it's possible I would have given in to this 
pressure.
                                 ______
                                 

               Prepared Statement of Jonathan E. Hillman

    Chairman Merkley, Chairman McGovern, and distinguished Members of 
the Commission, thank you for holding this important hearing and asking 
me to participate.
    This testimony draws from my book, The Digital Silk Road: China's 
Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future, and related research at the 
Center for Strategic and International Studies, where I direct the 
Reconnecting Asia Project.\1\
    The bottom line is that China is gaining globally through its 
Digital Silk Road and positioning itself to reap commercial and 
strategic rewards, but its dominance is far from assured. The United 
States has several advantages, including world-leading research 
universities, innovative companies, deep pools of private capital, 
openness to immigrants, and a global network of partners and allies. 
The question is whether the United States can rise to the challenge and 
lead a coalition that offers real benefits to the developing world. In 
much of the world, cost trumps security. Competing will require 
expanding the availability of affordable alternatives.
    If uncontested, China's Digital Silk Road will undermine U.S. 
economic and strategic interests. Developing economies will rise in the 
coming decades, as underscored by demographic trends, and offer vast 
opportunities for growth.\2\ For example, Nigeria, the world's twenty-
eighth largest economy in 2017, is projected to become the world's 
ninth largest economy by 2100. During the same period, India will move 
from seventh to third place. These projections provide a glimpse of an 
emerging world that the United States can engage with, and benefit U.S. 
workers and companies, or allow China to cement a position of strength.
    China also stands to gain intelligence and coercive powers if it 
achieves its global network ambitions. It could have eyes and ears not 
merely walking around foreign capitals but woven into foreign 
government buildings, public security command posts, and data centers. 
It could learn about scientific breakthroughs as they are made, 
corporate mergers and acquisitions as they are contemplated, and 
patents before they are filed. On ``the worst possible day,'' Beijing 
could disrupt, disable, or destroy its adversaries' communications, 
financial markets, and military systems.\3\
    These risks must be taken seriously because the warning signs are 
already here. For five years, servers at the African Union headquarters 
sent data to Beijing covertly in the dead of night. Cameras watching 
over Pakistani streets came equipped with hidden hardware while others 
malfunctioned. A Chinese subsea cable that stretches from Africa to 
South America added little but debt to Cameroon's economy. Laos's first 
satellite is actually majority-owned by Beijing. These are the signs of 
digital dependency.
    The testimony that follows describes how we got here, provides a 
tour of the battlefield, and outlines what the United States needs to 
do. First, it explains how U.S. mistakes paved the way for China's 
telecommunications giants. Second, it provides an overview of the 
global digital infrastructure competition in four areas: wireless 
networks, smart cities, internet backbone, and satellites. Third, it 
explains why a coalition is necessary to compete, identifies partners, 
and notes areas of friction that must be managed. Finally, it 
summarizes recommendations for U.S. policy.

                     I. Learning from Past Mistakes

    The Digital Silk Road sits at the intersection of Chinese leader Xi 
Jinping's signature policy efforts. It is the technology dimension of 
China's Belt and Road Initiative, Xi's vision for moving China closer 
to the center of everything through infrastructure projects, trade 
deals, people-to-people ties, and policy coordination. By helping 
Chinese tech companies expand into foreign markets, it also advances 
``Made in China 2025,'' which aims to capture dominant market shares in 
high-tech industries.
    The Digital Silk Road was first mentioned in 2015, as the 
``Information Silk Road,'' but its roots run much further back. During 
the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese leaders fashioned industrial policies and 
negotiated deals with foreign companies that helped Chinese 
telecommunications firms dramatically improve their capabilities. 
Through the Digital Silk Road, China aims to further reduce its 
dependency on foreign companies while making more of the world 
dependent on Chinese technology.
    Conventional narratives usually overlook or oversimplify this 
longer history. The story often told in Washington is that Huawei and 
other Chinese firms essentially lied, cheated, and stole their way to 
success. To be sure, there was plenty of unfair and illegal behavior, 
from receiving massive state support to blatantly copying competitors' 
products. But this oversimplified narrative is dangerously self-
serving. It avoids taking responsibility, misses mistakes, and offers 
little insight for competing more effectively. An honest assessment 
leads to three hard truths:

    1.  U.S. leaders overhyped the benefits of connectivity. Triumphant 
in the aftermath of the Cold War, U.S. commentators predicted that the 
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was digging its own grave by adopting 
satellite TV, the internet, and other communications systems at home. 
But CCP leaders set out to modify and wield these tools for their own 
purposes. Today, commentators warn that China is exporting 
authoritarianism. In reality, telecommunications systems are tools, 
neither inherently good nor bad. Understanding impacts, and fashioning 
solutions, requires looking closely at local contexts.

    2.  Foreign companies rushed into China and helped to create their 
own competitors. Foreign manufacturers handed over access to their 
knowledge and capabilities, consultants helped transform Chinese 
companies' business operations, and researchers went to work for their 
former companies' competitors. After China's domestic 
telecommunications capabilities matured, Chinese officials restricted 
market access for foreign companies. Avoiding these mistakes in 
emerging technologies will require closer public-private cooperation 
among the United States, its partners, and allies.

    3.  Chinese companies expanded into overlooked markets. U.S. 
companies focused primarily on larger, wealthier markets, leaving 
Chinese providers to serve lower-income and rural markets. Even as 
Chinese tech companies now face greater scrutiny in advanced economies, 
they are still building a position of strength in emerging markets, 
where most of the world's population growth is expected. To compete in 
those markets, the United States and its partners have to offer 
affordable alternatives.

                     II. Navigating the Battlefield

    China's Digital Silk Road is advancing in four key areas: wireless 
networks, smart cities, internet backbone, and satellites. While not 
exhaustive of China's digital activities, these activities literally 
stretch from the ocean floor to outer space, and they enable artificial 
intelligence (AI), big data applications, and other strategic 
technologies. In all four areas, China is gaining globally and 
positioning itself to reap commercial and strategic rewards, but its 
dominance is far from assured. It also has vulnerabilities and 
weaknesses that the United States and its allies could exploit.

Wireless Networks

    The world is beginning to splinter between countries that use 
Chinese suppliers for their wireless networks and those that do not. 
The latter category is primarily wealthy democracies. Most NATO member 
states have raised barriers to Huawei's participation in their 5G 
rollouts. Australia and Japan have imposed restrictions as well. India 
has not made a final judgement, but it did not include any Chinese 
suppliers in its initial 5G trials.
    In most of the developing world, however, Chinese providers are 
moving ahead. They are often the incumbent providers in these markets, 
having won significant market share after offering equipment at prices 
20-30 percent below their competitors. For example, Huawei is believed 
to have supplied roughly 70 percent of Africa's 4G networks. 5G 
networks are often built on top of existing networks, and the cost of 
starting over may appear prohibitive for lower-income countries.
    Open Radio Access Networks (Open RAN) could tilt the playing field 
in favor of the United States. By virtualizing parts of the network 
that are currently served by proprietary hardware, Open RAN allows 
operators to mix and match different network components from different 
vendors. For operators, the potential upside is greater vendor choice, 
lower deployment costs, and less risk of being locked into a single 
vendor. The United States stands to benefit because its companies are 
leading providers of the specialized software and semiconductors that 
Open RAN relies upon.
    Open RAN could take anywhere from several years to a decade to 
mature. There are already promising examples of Open RAN being deployed 
around the world, at all speeds, from 2G to 5G. But the flip side of 
greater vendor choice is greater complexity. There are still kinks to 
work out as networks combine components from different suppliers. 
Smaller operators may not have the necessary technical expertise, while 
larger operators may not have the patience. Some may still prefer the 
ease of going with a single vendor, even if it is more expensive.
    But the 5G race is just getting started. A third of the world's 
population lives in countries where 1GB mobile broadband plans are 
unaffordable for average earners. Among those with mobile connections, 
only 15 percent of users are expected to use 5G by 2025, while nearly 
60 percent of mobile users will rely on 4G. The global market is still 
up for grabs, and the United States can establish a position of 
strength by making targeted investments at home and expanding financing 
and training activities abroad, as outlined below in Part IV.

Smart Cities

    Megatrends in innovation and urbanization are turning cities into 
ground-zero for competing approaches to development and governance.\4\ 
The arrival of faster networks, cheaper sensors, and more sophisticated 
analytics promises to help reduce crime, ease traffic, and improve 
other public services, while also impacting civil liberties, data 
security, and other public concerns. By 2030, seven out of ten people 
in the world will live in cities, with urban populations growing 
fastest in Africa and Asia. Around the world, planners will need to 
decide which systems and safeguards to adopt.
    China's ``safe city'' model, which emphasizes security applications 
such as surveillance cameras, is gaining traction. Only China has 
companies that are competitive at every step of the surveillance 
process, from manufacturing cameras to training AI to deploying the 
analytics. At home, Chinese companies never question the government's 
use of these capabilities, and government subsidies fuel their global 
expansion. Hikvision and Huawei are China's leading providers globally, 
followed by Dahua and ZTE. Altogether, Chinese firms have exported 
smart city products and services to more than 100 countries.\5\
    These firms offer attractive capabilities at cut-rate prices. Using 
their ``safe city'' systems, they claim, will reduce crime, increase 
economic growth, and even help fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Facial 
recognition and behavior analysis identifies wanted criminals and 
alerts the police to unusual behavior, such as wandering near 
restricted areas. Measuring traffic flows and enforcing driving laws 
improves congestion. Temperature-sensing cameras identify people with 
fevers. These and other capabilities can be fed into a central database 
and command center. Offers that come with financing can give the 
impression that these systems will essentially pay for themselves.
    But China's ``safe city'' exports are also vulnerable in several 
respects. Cases in Kenya, Pakistan, and elsewhere show crime rising, 
cameras malfunctioning, and other challenges.\6\ Greater transparency 
and accountability would surely unearth more instances of overpromising 
and underdelivering. Chinese firms have also been willing to sell to 
essentially anyone, creating reputational risks. Over time, companies 
that press forward without safeguards may find their clientele 
shrinking to a list of names they would not care to advertise.
    These missteps open the door for the United States and its allies 
to provide alternatives. For example, they could offer a ``Sustainable 
City'' certification with financial support that emphasizes commercial 
viability, energy efficiency, social safeguards, and data security. 
This is another area where U.S. domestic renewal and global 
competitiveness are strongly aligned. More cutting-edge examples of 
smart cities at home--such as Charlotte, Las Vegas, and Pittsburgh--
will position U.S. companies to succeed abroad.

Internet Backbone

    China is redrawing the internet as it builds key connections and 
nodes, especially subsea cables and data centers, beyond its borders. 
Its biggest moves are happening in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 
where Chinese tech companies face less scrutiny and demand for digital 
infrastructure is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. 
Africa, for example, is home to 17 percent of the world's population 
but less than 1 percent of the world's installed data center capacity. 
If China's asymmetric strategy for global data flows is successful, its 
firms will carry, store, and mine more of the world's data while its 
domestic networks will move further out of foreign reach.
    In just a decade, China has graduated from being dependent on 
foreign companies for subsea cables, which carry over 95 percent of the 
world's international data, to controlling the world's fourth major 
provider of these systems. Before being sold to Hengtong Group in 2020, 
Huawei Marine (a joint venture between Huawei and Global Marine, a UK 
firm) laid enough cable to circle the earth, including transcontinental 
links from Asia to Africa and from Africa to South America. These 
connections avoid U.S. and allied territory and could become even more 
valuable during a conflict.
    China's cloud providers are also marching into emerging markets. 
The leading U.S. cloud providers--Amazon, Microsoft, and Google--have a 
massive first-mover advantage. But the Chinese government is following 
a familiar playbook: pushing data localization rules that favor its 
providers, leveraging state financing, and packaging services with hard 
infrastructure. Foreign governments and businesses may find it 
difficult to switch providers down the road. On top of the normal 
expenses of migrating from one cloud to another, they may also face 
Chinese economic coercion.
    Meanwhile, the Chinese government is tightening its control over 
networks at home. Like a medieval castle, China's domestic network 
forces international connections into a handful of chokepoints and 
requires foreign carriers to use one of China's ``Big Three'' state-
owned telecom firms (China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom). 
This architecture gives Beijing an unrivaled ability to monitor, 
censor, and cut off traffic. Wealthier and more technically savvy 
individuals can find ways to access the global internet, although 
popular tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs) have been heavily 
curtailed.
    But China's asymmetric strategy also comes with costs. Restricting 
access to the global internet harms the ability of Chinese firms to 
innovate, and restricting international connections leaves even China's 
Big Three dependent upon foreign carriers for international data 
transit. Roughly 80 percent of China's international traffic passes 
through U.S. and European carriers.\7\ Mainland Chinese cities are 
absent among the rankings of the world's most connected hubs, which all 
have open internet exchanges, a model that remains anathema to Party 
leaders. The CCP's conundrum is that greater international connectivity 
requires giving up some control.
    The United States and its allies have several enduring advantages 
in this domain. The United States remains the world's leading hub for 
internet traffic, a position made possible by its open approach to data 
flows, innovative companies, and attractive market. The top three 
subsea cable providers are based in the U.S., Europe, and Japan and are 
responsible for nearly 90 percent of the global market. Three U.S. 
companies control over half of the global market for cloud services, 
and the quality of their offerings is consistently ranked higher than 
their Chinese competitors. Maintaining these advantages, however, will 
require competing in tomorrow's markets.

Satellites

    China has gone from latecomer to leading provider of satellite 
services, especially for developing markets. Following major events in 
the 1990s, particularly the Gulf War and the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, 
China set out to develop its own global navigation satellite system. 
Completed in 2020, China's BeiDou system is more accurate than the 
Global Positioning System (GPS) in the Asia-Pacific region, although 
slightly less accurate globally, and its satellites occupy fewer 
orbital planes, making maintenance easier. The system also allows users 
to send short text messages, and its larger footprint increases its 
availability. In 165 capital cities, BeiDou provides more extensive 
coverage than GPS.\8\
    BeiDou advances both China's commercial and military interests. 
When China exports electronics, increasingly it is exporting the BeiDou 
system, which is included in phones, vehicles, farm equipment, and 
consumer products. In 2019, China's satellite navigation sector pulled 
in $64 billion, and by 2029, the global market for satellite navigation 
devices is projected to grow to about $360 billion. BeiDou includes 
even more powerful services that guide Chinese missiles, fighter jets, 
and naval vessels. China has begun offering these military-grade 
services to partners and could use them as a sweetener in the future 
when selling arms. Strategically, China is reducing its reliance on GPS 
and increasing its partners' reliance on BeiDou.
    China is also carving out a niche as the go-to provider for 
developing countries that want their own communications satellites. For 
about $250 million, only a fraction of which is required up front due 
to Chinese state financing, countries can acquire their own 
geostationary communications satellite. China also provides ground 
stations, testing, training, launch, and operations support. As of 
early 2021, at least nine countries have bought or are in the process 
of buying communications satellites from China. Several satellites have 
experienced launch or operational challenges, and many of China's 
customers have struggled financially.
    Low-earth orbit (LEO), between 500 and 2,000 kilometers high, is 
the next frontier for competition. LEO broadband constellations could 
expand access to low-latency, high-speed internet globally. In addition 
to reaping commercial rewards, nations with leading LEO broadband 
providers could enjoy increased resiliency in their communications, 
accuracy in positioning services, and enhanced early warning 
capabilities. A small group of primarily U.S. and European companies, 
including SpaceX, Amazon, and OneWeb, are on the cutting edge of these 
efforts.
    Some are using intersatellite-laser links, which allow satellites 
to exchange data without passing through a ground-based intermediary, 
increasing performance and complicating government attempts to monitor 
communications.
    China has its own LEO plans. Its companies are behind in the race 
to launch LEO constellations, but they have generous state support, 
making profitability less of an immediate concern. This second-mover, 
state-led strategy allows China to see what works and emulate foreign 
successes. Some countries may prefer China's alternative, which will 
surely favor state control of communications. If the LEO competition 
turns into a marathon, Beijing could also leverage its lending along 
the Belt and Road to obtain landing rights and obstruct competing 
efforts.
    If the United States seizes this opportunity, the coming wave of 
LEO constellations could undercut China's advantage in overlooked 
markets. Western LEO broadband providers could serve rural and less-
wealthy markets without building all the ground infrastructure that has 
deterred them in the past. Some financial assistance--from U.S. and 
allied governments, multilateral development banks, or even 
philanthropists--will be required to make these services affordable in 
low-income markets. Commercial diplomacy, outlined in Part IV, could 
help U.S. providers secure landing rights.

                        III. Leading a Coalition

    China presents a challenge of scale. Its population of 1.4 billion 
provides Chinese companies with preferred access to the world's largest 
market of middle-class consumers and the government with access to an 
ocean of data. The Chinese government's ability to direct resources, 
even if inefficient and wasteful, is giving a boost to emerging 
technologies and subsidizing the cost of Chinese equipment globally.
    Meeting this challenge will require the United States to lead a 
coalition. In the absence of a coalition, China can pit companies 
against each other to access their technology, just as it did during 
the 1980s and 1990s, when U.S. and allied telecom companies undercut 
each other in their race to access China's market. Without the 
commercial incentives that a coalition could offer, U.S. and allied 
companies are likely to remain focused on the largest, wealthiest 
markets, overlooking the developing world.
    A group of wealthy democracies with strong common interests could 
provide a critical mass. Collectively, seven U.S. allies--Australia, 
Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom--
outspend China on R&D. Although the pandemic has clouded their economic 
prospects, they are still projected to account for roughly a fifth of 
global GDP in 2030. All these countries are U.S. treaty allies and 
democracies, but the coalition's mission must extend beyond simply 
protecting wealthy democracies. It must also engage and support rising 
hubs on the periphery, large economies in the developing world with a 
mixture of overlapping and distinct interests.
    Two bridges are especially critical to building this coalition. The 
first bridge stretches across the Atlantic. Despite common values, the 
United States and Europe look at global networks differently. Lacking a 
technology champion of similar size, some European leaders view U.S. 
technology companies as even more threatening than Chinese companies. 
The European Union is trying to position itself as a middle option 
between the open U.S. model and the state-centric Chinese model. 
Disagreements over data flows and content regulation must be managed 
through existing mechanisms and new avenues such as the EU-U.S. Trade 
and Technology Council.
    There are real prospects for stronger transatlantic cooperation as 
well. The United States could remove obstacles to cooperation by 
adopting national data privacy regulations aligned with the EU's own 
General Data Protection Regulation, encouraging greater competition in 
the digital economy, and implementing the OECD global minimum tax 
agreement. At the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency, 
the United States and its European allies should work to elect Doreen 
Bogdan-
Martin as the next director-general and advance socially responsible 
standards in emerging areas such as AI surveillance, while blocking 
Chinese proposals to hand governments more control over the internet.
    The second bridge extends into the developing world and begins with 
India, which is expected to become the world's most populous country in 
the coming years, making it the critical swing state in the global 
network competition. Realizing India's promise as a growing market and 
hub for digital services and manufacturing will require breaking its 
dependency on Chinese hardware.
    In 2019, India imported about 40 percent of its telecommunications 
equipment from China and nearly two-thirds of its data center equipment 
from China and Hong Kong. Three of India's four largest carriers rely 
on Huawei and ZTE equipment for 30-40 percent of their networks.
    Ultimately, India's participation in the coalition should be based 
on actions, not aspirations. New Delhi is the world's leader in 
internet shutdowns and has declined to join talks on e-commerce at the 
World Trade Organization and data flow initiatives at the G20. The 
coalition should work with India to craft a roadmap for addressing 
these shortcomings. India's reforms could be incentivized with policies 
that strengthen its manufacturing sector, diversify supply chains, 
connect its own citizens, and win customers in foreign markets.

                          IV. Recommendations

    A successful strategy for meeting this global challenge begins at 
home, but it does not end there. The United States still has its own 
communities to connect and a digital divide that will widen if left to 
market forces. It must push forward the frontiers of technology by 
educating and attracting the next generation of innovators, ensuring 
they have the resources to succeed and the competitive space for new 
businesses to flourish. It must fashion data policies that protect 
citizens' privacy and their security. At the same time, the United 
States must compete in tomorrow's markets. With that international 
competition in mind, the recommendations below focus on sharpening U.S. 
tools, expanding affordable alternatives, and exploiting China's 
weaknesses.

Sharpen U.S. Tools

    1.  Unleash the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation 
(DFC). Update budget rules to allow the DFC to make better use of its 
equity authority, create a position at the DFC for a senior official in 
charge of ICT investments, and increase the share of digital 
infrastructure projects in the DFC's portfolio.
    2.  Expand the U.S. Commercial Foreign Service to remove and 
prevent barriers to U.S. suppliers in key emerging markets. In Africa, 
for example, China has 10 to 40 government representatives for every 
U.S. foreign commercial service officer there. This expansion should 
include a focus on recruiting individuals with technology backgrounds.
    3.  Conduct a global networks assessment. The National Intelligence 
Council, with input from U.S. agencies and the private sector, should 
assess key trends and scenarios for telecommunications networks and 
their implications for U.S. interests over the next decade. An 
unclassified version of the assessment should be made public.
    4.  Update defense commitments to include a greater focus on 
technology. The recent AUKUS partnership, which includes a technology 
sharing dimension, is an encouraging example of updating defense 
partnerships for the digital age. More should be done to adopt existing 
tech and invest in future capabilities. For example, NATO members could 
be permitted to count some spending on critical digital infrastructure 
with a direct application to NATO communications, such as select 5G 
systems, toward their overall spending obligations.\9\

Expand Affordable Alternatives

    5.  Launch digital pilot projects. As the U.S. and its allies look 
to launch pilot projects for the G7's Build Back Better World 
partnership and related efforts, such as the Blue Dot Network, they 
should put an emphasis on digital infrastructure projects, which in 
addition to being important, often cost less and take less time to 
complete than large transport and energy projects.
    6.  Put a price on security. Provide technical assistance to 
improve how countries assess costs and reach decisions. The initial 
price tag on Chinese projects often only includes the up-front costs 
associated with construction, overlooking maintenance and operations 
costs. Rather than simply warning against security risks, the economic 
costs of those risks should be estimated, widely advertised, and 
factored into cost-benefit analyses.
    7.  Pursue a digital trade deal that pushes back against the rise 
in data localization policies, supports the responsible use of ICT and 
emerging technologies such as AI, and lowers barriers to access for 
small businesses.
    8.  Develop a ``Sustainable Cities'' certification for cities and 
companies that emphasizes commercial viability, energy efficiency, 
social safeguards, and data security. Cities receiving the 
certification could receive financial and technical assistance. 
Companies that qualify could receive priority when competing for 
projects in those cities.
    9.  Create an Open RAN international academy. Open RAN offers more 
choice and presents less risk of becoming locked into a single vendor, 
but it also adds complexity. This effort would train foreign operators 
and share specifications for tested and trusted combinations of 
hardware to reduce uncertainty.
    10.  Launch a global cloud public-private partnership. Work with 
U.S. companies and NGOs to support pilot cloud projects in emerging 
markets that package services, hard infrastructure, and training 
opportunities. In addition to building partners' technical capacities 
and increasing the adoption of trusted services, these projects could 
be used to incentivize openness to data flows.
    11.  Bring LEO broadband to low-income markets. Help U.S. LEO 
broadband providers secure landing rights overseas, and work through 
multilateral development banks to provide financial support for 
customers in low-income markets to access these services.

Exploit China's Weaknesses

    12.  Invest in technologies that challenge authoritarian networks. 
Increase funding for the Open Technology Fund (OTF) and other efforts 
to support tools such as Tor and Signal that help dissidents 
communicate securely and reconstitute their websites after an attack. 
More sophisticated tools will also make China's authoritarian approach 
more expensive to maintain.
    13.  Expose false claims. Chinese companies have left a trail of 
exaggerations and outright lies about their ``safe city'' systems, 
surveillance cameras, data centers, and other products. Technical 
assistance and public-awareness campaigns that uncover and expose these 
shortcomings--not just security flaws but also performance shortcomings 
and broken promises--could help shift the cost-benefit analysis of 
decisionmakers.
    14.  Expand information-sharing. Much of China's commercial 
diplomacy is conducted bilaterally and opaquely, which maximizes its 
negotiating power, limits outside scrutiny, and prevents its partners 
from sharing information with each other. The United States should 
encourage countries to adopt laws that require publishing government 
contracts and create opportunities for developing countries to share 
information and lessons learned with each other.
    15.  Cement first-mover advantages. China is attempting to match 
and surpass U.S. digital capabilities, but it remains behind in cloud 
computing, LEO broadband, and other important areas. Even as U.S. 
policymakers address areas where the United States lags (e.g., 5G), 
they must help U.S. workers and companies press these existing 
advantages through policies that support innovating, expanding into 
foreign markets, and striking long-term partnership agreements.

Endnotes:

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                                 ______
                                 

                Prepared Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley

    Good morning. Today's hearing of the Congressional-Executive 
Commission on China on ``Techno-Authoritarianism: Platform for 
Repression in China and Abroad'' will come to order.
    This hearing will explore China's role in embracing technology-
enhanced authoritarianism and promoting its spread around the world. In 
China and around the globe, we are seeing that the same technology that 
drives the global economy, facilitates communication, enables financial 
flows, and provides the conveniences of modern life can also be used 
for repression. Without proper guardrails to protect privacy and basic 
human rights, technology can control populations, trample freedom of 
expression, and undermine institutions of democratic governance.
    For the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party, it starts 
at home. Over many years, the Commission has documented the development 
of what has become the most pervasive surveillance state the world has 
ever seen. Authorities embrace technologies such as artificial 
intelligence, blockchain, and cloud computing--the building blocks of 
the modern economy--to impose political and social control of targeted 
populations. These technologies offer the government an unprecedented 
degree of control, enabled by the collection of massive amounts of data 
from cell phones, personal computers, DNA, security cameras, and more.
    Nowhere do we see this more tragically than in the Xinjiang Uyghur 
Autonomous Region. Today we will hear testimony outlining the extent of 
the surveillance in Xinjiang, as well as the heart-wrenching toll on 
individuals and their communities. We will also hear from expert 
witnesses who will shed light on the use of technology in mainland 
China and abroad, both for legitimate purposes of government efficiency 
and digital connectivity but also to spread the web of repressive 
control to cities across China, regions across China, the developing 
world, and even the Chinese diaspora community in the United States.
    This adds up to a complex picture. The technologies we will hear 
about have dual-use potential to be used for good or for ill. Many 
countries to which China exports surveillance systems and elements of 
the so-called ``safe cities'' model embrace these technologies out of a 
desire to combat crime or reduce traffic or provide municipal services. 
Yet these technologies, this high-tech authoritarianism, can be used to 
strip rights and dignity from millions of people across the planet.
    Acting to defend freedom and to defend democracy will require the 
establishment of norms for the proper use and boundaries of this 
technology, but we can't stop there. We have to work with defenders of 
freedom across the globe to develop attractive and affordable 
alternatives.
    This won't be easy. That's why Co-chair McGovern and I have 
convened this hearing. We need to hear from experts on how Congress, 
the United States Government, and the international community can 
address these difficult challenges. Just as the United States confronts 
limitations in its ability to shape the behavior of the Chinese 
government, so too will we face limitations in shaping the rest of the 
world, especially when it comes to technology that empowers everyday 
life. That's why we need smart action in concert with a coalition of 
partners.
    I look forward to the testimony today to help us work to identify 
the approaches that can harness technology in a way that respects 
rather than endangers fundamental human rights.
                                 ______
                                 

              Prepared Statement of Hon. James P. McGovern

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing on the Chinese 
government's use of technology and digital platforms to expand and 
export its repressive policies.
    Where there was once optimism that the internet and new 
technologies would create a more open, democratized global commons, 
there is now a cloud of darkness. Anti-democratic and authoritarian 
governments have learned to harness such technology as a means to 
assert social control.
    This is no longer just about human rights abuses suffered by people 
over there. It is about the risks we now face from the phones in our 
pockets.
    Take TikTok. It is immensely popular in the United States and can 
be a lot of fun, or so my kids tell me. It was developed by a Chinese 
company. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But we hear 
reports that videos on topics sensitive to its government are blocked 
or disappear. Americans deserve to know whether China's censorship 
regime is intruding on their daily lives.
    This concern is why the Commission, under my chairmanship in the 
last Congress, expanded its reporting to include ``Human Rights 
Violations in the United States and Globally.''
    Our soon-to-be-released annual report will document how the Chinese 
government silences criticism, chills the expression of political 
views, and undermines international norms. The Commission's next 
hearing will look at the economic coercion aspect of this trend.
    We cannot forget that the Chinese government's techno-
authoritarianism is felt most gravely by the Uyghurs and other Turkic 
Muslims. The surveillance regime they have set up in Xinjiang is the 
most advanced and enveloping in the world. Is this the model for the 
rest of China and the world? This is the key question we hope today's 
witnesses will address.
    How can the United States ensure that its exports do not abet the 
spread of the surveillance state? Can we harness international 
partners? How do individuals make sound consumer choices?
    We are addressing an immensely complicated and technical set of 
issues. I'm pleased that our witnesses bring a breadth of expertise to 
these evolving challenges. I hope you will continue to share your 
research with us.

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                          Witness Biographies

    Geoffrey Cain, foreign correspondent, author, technologist, and 
scholar of East and Central Asia

    Geoffrey Cain has written for The Economist, the Wall Street 
Journal, Time, Foreign Policy, The New Republic and The Nation and is a 
contributing editor at The Mekong Review. He is a frequent guest on 
CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and Bloomberg. He is the author, most recently, of 
``The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's 
Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future.''

    Samantha Hoffman, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy 
Institute

    Samantha Hoffman's work explores the domestic and global 
implications of the Chinese Communist Party's approach to state 
security. It offers new ways of thinking about understanding and 
responding to China's pursuit of artificial intelligence and big data-
enabled capabilities to augment political and social control. Dr. 
Hoffman's analysis is widely sought after by governments across the 
world and media. She has publicly testified in the United States 
Congress, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, and the European 
Parliament.

    Yaqiu Wang, Senior Researcher on China at Human Rights Watch

    Yaqiu Wang works on issues including internet censorship, freedom 
of expression, protection of civil society and human rights defenders, 
and women's rights. Her articles have appeared in Foreign Policy, The 
Atlantic, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She has provided 
commentary to the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and others. Prior to 
joining Human Rights Watch, Wang worked for the Committee to Protect 
Journalists.

    Jonathan Hillman, Senior Fellow with the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies

    Jonathan Hillman is the director of the Reconnecting Asia Project, 
one of the most extensive open-source databases tracking China's Belt 
and Road Initiative (BRI). Prior to joining CSIS, Hillman served as a 
policy adviser at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, where he 
contributed to the 2015 U.S. National Security Strategy and the 
President's Trade Agenda and directed the research and writing process 
for essays, speeches, and other material explaining U.S. trade and 
investment policy. Hillman is the author, most recently, of ``The 
Digital Silk Road: China's Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future'' 
(HarperCollins, 2021).
      

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