[Senate Prints 116-47]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]





116th Congress  }                                             {   S. Prt.
                            COMMITTEE PRINT                     
2d Session      }                                             {   116-47
_______________________________________________________________________

                                     

 
        THE NEW BIG BROTHER--CHINA AND DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM

                               __________

                        A MINORITY STAFF REPORT

                      PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE

                     COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     One Hundred Sixteenth Congress

                             SECOND SESSION

                             July 21, 2020
                             

                                     
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]




         Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
         
         
         
         
                    Available via World Wide Web:
                       http://www.govinfo.gov
                       
                       
                       
                       
                           ______                      


              U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 42-356  PDF           WASHINGTON : 2020                        
                       


                 COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS        

                JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho, Chairman        
MARCO RUBIO, Florida                 ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin               BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
CORY GARDNER, Colorado               JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
MITT ROMNEY, Utah                    CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina       TOM UDALL, New Mexico
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming               CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio                    TIM KAINE, Virginia
RAND PAUL, Kentucky                  EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
TODD YOUNG, Indiana                  JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
TED CRUZ, Texas                      CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia
                  Christopher M. Socha, Staff Director        
               Jessica Lewis, Democratic Staff Director        
                    John Dutton, Chief Clerk        

                              (ii)        




                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Letter of Transmittal............................................     v

Preface on the Coronavirus.......................................    ix


Executive Summary................................................     1


Chapter 1: Building the Model for Digital Authoritarianism Inside 
  China..........................................................     5

    The Surveillance State: How China Tracks its Citizens........     6

    The Censorship Apparatus: Exploiting and Blocking Digital 
      Content....................................................    13

    The Legal System: China's Implementation of Authoritarian 
      Cyber Laws.................................................    16

    China's Investment in Technologies Predicated on 
      Authoritarian Principles...................................    19


Chapter 2: Exporting Digital Authoritarianism--China on the 
  Global Cyber Stage.............................................    23

    Exporting Technologies and Expanding Digital Authoritarianism    24

        Case Study: Venezuela....................................    29

        Case Study: Central Asia.................................    31

        Case Study: Ecuador......................................    31

        Case Study: Zimbabwe.....................................    33

    A Global Challenge...........................................    33


Chapter 3: Institutionalizing Digital Authoritarianism--China at 
  International Fora.............................................    37

    The United Nations...........................................    38

    World Trade Organization.....................................    40

    World Internet Conference....................................    41

    International Standards-Setting Bodies.......................    43


Chapter 4: Conclusions and Recommendations.......................    47

    Recommendations..............................................    49


 Annex 1: Understanding the Trump Cyberspace Policy..............    53

    National Security Policy Documents...........................    53

    Administration Efforts.......................................    55


Annex 2: The United States and 5G................................    61




                                 (iii)



                         Letter of Transmittal

                              ----------                              

                              United States Senate,
                            Committee on Foreign Relations,
                                     Washington, DC, July 21, 2020.




    Dear Colleagues: The growth and development of the digital 
domain worldwide has fundamentally changed how individuals, 
companies, and nations interact, work, and communicate--and 
with it the structure of global governance. Digitally-enabled 
technologies ranging from the Internet to mobile communications 
to emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are 
accelerating the transmittal and receiving of information, 
enabling greater trade interactions and economic development, 
securing communications for our military and our allies, and 
aiding in the development of even newer, more capable 
technologies, amongst many other benefits. The United States 
has not only played a primary role in developing these new 
technologies, but it has worked to ensure the digital domain 
operates with openness, stability, reliability, 
interoperability, security, and respect for human rights.
    These principles are under threat from authoritarian 
regimes, however, which see the advent of new technologies in a 
far more sinister light: as a means of surveilling and 
controlling populations, stifling the free flow of information, 
ensuring the survival of their governments, and as tools for 
malign influence campaigns worldwide. While multiple 
authoritarian governments have begun to utilize the digital 
domain in this manner, the People's Republic of China is at the 
forefront of developing and expanding a new, different, and 
deeply troubling governance model for the digital domain: 
digital authoritarianism.
    The rise of this new and worrying model of digital 
authoritarianism holds the potential to fundamentally alter the 
character of the digital domain. The People's Republic of China 
is pressing forward--at times with astounding speed and focus--
to build and expand digital authoritarianism through economic, 
political, diplomatic, and coercive means at home and abroad. 
The Chinese Communist Party is fostering digital 
authoritarianism within China's borders by developing an 
intrusive, omnipresent surveillance state that uses emerging 
technologies to track individuals with greater efficiency and 
bolstering its censorship apparatus to ensure information 
considered detrimental to the regime does not reach its 
citizens.




                                  (v)

    The government is shaping a legal system to strengthen the 
Party's manipulation of the tools of digital authoritarianism 
and expending vast sums of money to prop up Chinese companies 
that develop products that enable its authoritarian governance 
model. On the international level, China is exporting digitally 
enabled products and the training and expertise to other 
countries in an attempt to sway other nations to adopt this 
alternative, authoritarian model for the digital domain. As we 
have seem time and time again, with examples ranging from 
Marriott's pull-down menu to the NBA to Zoom's suspension of 
U.S. host accounts, China is seeking to utilize its newfound 
clout to reshape the rules of the road in cyberspace away from 
a free, unfettered, and secure environment to one that 
facilitates the growth of authoritarianism.
    The United States, as the leader of the free world, must 
stand up for the principles and values that animate the 
international community and push back against the expansion of 
digital authoritarianism, using our economic prowess, unmatched 
innovative and scientific spirit, and ability to bring like-
minded countries together. If the United States fails to lead 
the international community in assuring that governance of the 
digital domain is consistent with principles and values that 
benefit all, then it will be China, not the international 
community at large, which will shape the future of the digital 
domain.
    Given the critical importance of this issue for the future 
of global governance--and the clear need for the United States 
to reassert leadership within this space--I directed Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee staffers Michael Schiffer and 
Daniel Ricchetti to conduct a comprehensive study of China's 
effort to build and expand its model for digital 
authoritarianism and lay out recommendations for the U.S. 
government to consider. The report uses primary document 
research, news and subject-matter analysis, and interviews from 
both former government officials and nongovernmental experts. I 
want to thank Doug Levinson, Laura Truitt, Nina Russell, 
Nadhika Ramachandran, Elizabeth Shneider, and the SFRC 
Democratic Staff for their work on this report. I would also 
like to thank Julie Smith, Amy Studdart, and Tommy Ross for 
reviewing this report and the Congressional Research Service 
for their contributions.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The conclusions of the report do not necessarily reflect the 
views of the Congressional Research Service.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The report's comprehensive analysis of China's digital 
authoritarianism describes how the People's Republic of China 
is successfully developing and implementing its malign 
governance model internally and, increasingly, making inroads 
with other countries to also embrace its new digital doctrine. 
It further illustrates how the expansion of digital 
authoritarianism in China and abroad has drastic consequences 
for U.S. and allied security interests, the promotion of human 
rights, and the future stability of cyberspace. Consequently, 
the report calls for a series of both Congressional and 
Executive actions designed to counter China's efforts to expand 
its model of digital authoritarianism; to strengthen U.S. 
technological innovation; and, to reinvigorate our diplomatic 
endeavors around the globe on digital issues. I believe these 
recommendations are readily available for adoption and 
implementation by both Democrats and Republicans. Without 
bipartisan support and the full backing of the United States 
government, the American people will be far less secure in the 
digital domain in the years ahead, see a further breakdown of 
fundamental human rights, and witness the erosion of a free, 
stable, reliable, and secure digital domain while China's 
digital authoritarianism is allowed to flourish. American 
leadership on these issues has been sorely lacking the past 
three years. It is my sincere hope that this report will serve 
as a useful bipartisan rallying point for my colleagues in 
Congress so that we can work together to arrest the erosion of 
our position and to reassert American leadership and values on 
the world stage.
    Sincerely,


                                           Robert Menendez,
                                                    Ranking Member.

                       Preface on the Coronavirus

                              ----------                              

    When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democratic 
Staff was first tasked with drafting this report, a consensus 
was emerging that the January 2018 National Defense Strategy's 
depiction of the ``reemergence of long-term strategic 
competition'' against such great power rivals as Russia and 
China would indeed be the ``central challenge'' to U.S. 
interests and security for the balance of the twenty-first 
century.\2\ The Trump administration's characterization of the 
United States and China entering a ``new era of strategic 
competition'' received broad bipartisan support in the Senate 
as a largely accurate characterization--even if significant 
differences remained about how to structure U.S. national 
security policy accordingly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Summary of the 2018 National 
Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the 
American Military's Competitive Edge, U.S. Department of Defense, Jan. 
2018, at 2.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Moreover, the suites of new and emergent digital 
technologies that are remaking the face of the U.S. and the 
global economies--including 5G infrastructure, social media, 
block-chain, digital surveillance, and genomics and 
biotechnology--are all widely acknowledged as being on the 
cutting edge of this new competition and fundamental for U.S. 
national security in the twenty-first century. Concerns 
regarding these emergent technologies are embedded in questions 
about the different, and competing, governance models for their 
use and control. These differing governance models are shaped 
by the form and nature of democratic and authoritarian states, 
which are continually developing, innovating, and operating in 
the digital space. Areas of competition between democratic and 
authoritarian states therefore encompass concerns about secure 
supply chains, privacy, human rights, standards, and the rules 
of the road for how these technologies would be used by the 
international community, including sharp power practices for 
technologies that shape and negotiate culture, education, and 
the media and are situated at the intersection of diplomacy, 
influence, and technology.
    This report primarily examines how China's repressive 
government is creating a model of digital authoritarianism for 
the digital space and what it is doing to both strengthen the 
model in its own country and expand it internationally. 
However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2019 
has raised a new set of questions about the state and nature of 
security challenges facing the United States in the twenty-
first century, great power competition, and the diffusion and 
distribution of power in the international system. Moreover, 
the COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated




                           (ix)

additional questions about the governance of new and emergent 
digital technologies and the ways in which democratic and 
authoritarian states will seek to use them, for good or ill. 
Due to the fact that research, outside interviews, and the vast 
majority of the drafting of this report occurred before the 
outbreak of COVID-19, this report does not delve into how the 
novel coronavirus is shaping or may shape the future of the 
digital space as it pertains to digital authoritarianism. 
However, the connection between COVID-19 and digital 
authoritarianism is an important subject to examine in the 
future. This preface is intended to signal the significance of 
this topic and provide a brief roadmap for what issues may 
arise moving forward.
    One key issue regarding COVID-19 and the digital space is 
that several democratic states, including South Korea and 
Taiwan, have adopted privacy practices to combat COVID-19 that 
previously were regarded as overbearing, all in the service of 
public health and responsive governance.\3\ Meanwhile, China's 
extensive use of surveillance technologies, both to manage its 
own COVID-19 outbreak and to continue suppressing internal 
dissent and exerting control in Xinjiang and Tibet, has only 
served to exemplify the malign use of these tools in the hands 
of a government that is not answerable to its people. In many 
cases, the underlying technology and platforms used by 
different governments are the same or largely similar; it is 
governance models, political culture, transparency, norms of 
behavior, and the rule of law that separate the public good 
from political oppression. Questions regarding the use of these 
technologies have become only more serious, and the 
implications more clear, in the face of the pandemic.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Anthony Kuhn, ``South Korea's Tracking Of COVID-19 Patients 
Raises Privacy Concerns,'' NPR, May 2, 2020; Milo Hsieh, ``Coronavirus: 
Under surveillance and confined at home in Taiwan,'' BBC, Mar. 24, 
2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Furthermore, these questions are not confined to matters of 
domestic policy. As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed, an 
intense competition for global influence has emerged, with 
China and Russia seeking to use their digital toolkits to 
exploit the debates over the public health challenges the 
pandemic has created in the United States, Europe, and 
elsewhere. The purpose of controlling such a narrative is to 
make democracy look less attractive than a ``capable'' 
authoritarian model and to use the pandemic to attack the 
fabric of the democratic system itself.
    As the COVID-19 pandemic has all too well illustrated, the 
brave new world of digital technological use and misuse is 
already upon us, and policymakers now need to move quickly to 
determine what sort of people--and what sort of governance--we 
will have in it.


                        Executive Summary

                           ----------                              

    In an era in which rising authoritarianism is working to 
undermine the fabric of democratic institutions globally, the 
Internet and connected technologies represent a continually 
evolving domain that will fundamentally shape the future of 
politics, economics, warfare, and culture. Cyberspace remains 
relatively undefined and open to new rulemaking, 
standardization, and development. The United States has been 
and remains the premier digital innovator on the globe, and as 
such the primary entity capable of shaping the future of the 
digital environment. However, China's rapid rise in key fields, 
investment in new digital technologies, efforts abroad, and 
attempts at dominating international rule-making bodies are 
positioning it to erode the United States' leadership on 
technological issues and reconfigure the standards of the 
domain away from free, democratic values.
    China has the largest number of Internet users on the 
planet, with more than 800 million Chinese citizens connected 
to some form of Internet.\4\ Chinese technology companies such 
as Huawei and ZTE are at the forefront of developing and 
implementing fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications 
infrastructure. Chinese patent publications have surged in 
emerging technology fields such as artificial intelligence 
(AI), machine learning, and deep learning.\5\ China's Belt and 
Road Initiative (BRI) contains an effort ``to create a `digital 
Silk Road' that will allow it to shape the future of the global 
Internet--and reinforce the Chinese Communist Party's 
leadership at home for decades to come.''\6\ These endeavors 
underline that China understands the importance of the digital 
domain to its domestic political stability and economic, 
political, and military rise, and wants to lead the globe in 
shaping the future of the digital world. It further 
demonstrates that China is executing a long-term plan to 
dominate the digital space.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ Francois Godement et al., ``The China Dream Goes Digital: 
Technology in the Age of Xi,'' European Council of Foreign Relations, 
Oct. 25, 2018; ``China has 854 mln internet users: report,'' Xinhua, 
Aug. 30, 2019.
    \5\ World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO Technology 
Trends 2019: Artificial Intelligence (Geneva: World Intellectual 
Property Organization, 2019), at 32; Louise Lucas & Richard Waters, 
``China and US Compete to Dominate Big Data,'' Financial Times, May 1, 
2018.
    \6\ Stewart M. Patrick & Ashley Feng, ``Belt and Router: China Aims 
for Tighter Internet Controls with Digital Silk Road,'' The 
Internationalist (blog), Council of Foreign Relations, July 2, 2018, 
https://www.cfr.org/blog/belt-and-router-china-aims-tighter-internet-
controls-digital-silk-road; ``Vision and Actions on Jointly Building 
Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road,'' National 
Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign and Affairs and 
Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, with State 
Council Authorization, March 2015, https://bit.ly/33aU0vJ.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While China's rise in the digital space is concerning to 
the United States in and of itself, an additional pressing 
issue facing not only the United States but the free world at 
large is how China is influencing and reshaping the Internet in 
its own political image. China's government structure can be 
defined as a repressive, authoritarian regime. In its 2020 
Freedom of the World ratings, Freedom House labeled China as 
``not free'' and described the regime as ``increasingly 
repressive in recent years.''\7\ Despite China's authoritarian 
style of governing, the country's rise as a major economic and 
political player in the international sphere is providing the 
communist regime with increased status among other nations. As 
journalist Richard McGregor notes, China is pushing ``the idea 
that authoritarian political systems are not only legitimate 
but can outperform Western democracies.''\8\ China's growing 
influence on the digital sphere is no different, as it enables 
China to promote an alternative model for the digital domain 
based on state control.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ ``Freedom of the World 2020: China,'' Freedom House, https://
freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2020 (last visited May 20, 
2020).
    \8\ Richard McGregor, ``Xi Jinping's Ideological Ambitions,'' The 
Wall Street Journal, Mar. 2, 2018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              ----------                              


                              Definition:

  Digital Authoritarianism--The use of ICT products and 
        services to surveil, repress, and manipulate domestic 
        and foreign populations.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ See, e.g., Alina Polyakova & Chris Meserole, ``Exporting 
Digital Authoritarianism: The Russian and Chinese Models,'' The 
Brookings Institution, Aug. 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              ----------                              



    This model stands in stark contrast to what the United 
States and its allies espouse: a free and open Internet that 
encourages the free flow of information and commerce in ways 
that advance innovation and market-driven economic growth. 
Increasingly, other foreign nations, including Ecuador, Serbia, 
Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan have or are 
looking to acquire Chinese information and communications 
technologies (ICT) and integrate them into their national 
infrastructures, opening up potential opportunities for 
abuse.\10\ China's efforts to advance and proliferate its ICT 
hardware and systems, both in China and overseas, represent not 
only a desire to continually expand its economy, but also a 
push to establish, expand, internationalize, and 
institutionalize a model for digital governance that this 
report describes as ``digital authoritarianism.''\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ Paul Mozur et al., ``Made in China, Exported to the World: The 
Surveillance State,'' The New York Times, Apr. 24, 2019; Abdi Latif 
Dahir, ``China is exporting its digital surveillance methods to African 
countries,'' Quartz Africa, Nov. 1, 2018; Yau Tsz Yan, ``China taking 
Big Brother to Central Asia,'' Eurasianet, Sept. 6, 2019, https://
eurasianet.org/china-taking-big-brother-to-central-asia; ``Chinese 
facial recognition tech installed in nations vulnerable to abuse,'' CBS 
News, Oct. 16, 2019; Justin Sherman, ``U.S. Diplomacy Is a Necessary 
Part of Countering China's Digital Authoritarianism,'' Lawfare, Mar. 
17, 2020, https://www.lawfareblog.com/us-diplomacy-necessary-part-
countering-chinas-digital-authoritarianism.
    \11\ Alina Polyakova & Chris Meserole, ``Exporting Digital 
Authoritarianism: The Russian and Chinese Models,'' The Brookings 
Institution, Aug. 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's rise as a key player in the digital domain that 
uses its influence to promote digital authoritarianism presents 
fundamental security, privacy, and human rights concerns for 
the United States and the international community at large. 
Most troubling, China is working to undermine our democratic 
institutions and values. Due to the fundamental risks 
associated with the rise of China's digital authoritarianism, 
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) Democratic Staff 
examined the subject for the past year in an effort to provide 
a holistic study of the threats posed to the United States, our 
allies, and the international community. As part of its 
analysis, SFRC Democratic Staff reviewed primary source 
materials including reports, studies, and official Chinese 
government releases, as well as news sources, and conducted 
interviews with former U.S. government officials and non-
governmental experts who work in the fields of human rights, 
technology, cybersecurity or China policy.
    The examination conducted by SFRC Democratic Staff offers 
concerning insights about how China is leveraging new 
technologies to assert increased control over its population 
and strengthening its ties with other nations around the globe. 
This report underscores, for example, how China's government 
employs facial recognition technology and big data analysis 
tools to identify, discriminate, incarcerate, and ``re-
educate'' Uyghurs living in Xinjiang, essentially creating a 
police state that flouts basic human rights and civil 
liberties. China is not just using these tools at home; it is 
also working to export its high-tech tools and authoritarian 
principles throughout the globe. While these examples are 
emblematic of the rise of China's digital authoritarianism, the 
fundamental takeaway of this report is that if left unchecked, 
China, not the U.S. and our allies, will write the rules of the 
digital domain, opening the doors for digital authoritarianism 
to govern the Internet and associated technologies.
    This report provides an incisive examination of the key 
aspects of China's digital authoritarianism, the insidious 
nature of its proliferation inside China, the damage it is 
causing around the globe, and proposed legislative solutions 
and other measures the United States could adopt.


    In Chapter 1, the report describes China's internal model 
for digital authoritarianism and how China implements digital 
authoritarianism domestically. The chapter is divided into four 
subsections, with each subsection highlighting a specific 
aspect of China's digital authoritarianism model. The first 
subsection deals with China's ``surveillance state,'' including 
how China utilizes artificial intelligence, facial recognition 
technologies, biometrics, surveillance cameras, and big data 
analytics to profile and categorize individuals quickly, track 
movements, predict activities, and preemptively take action 
against those considered a threat in both the real world and 
online. The second subsection looks into China's digital 
censorship apparatus and the tools that the Chinese government 
uses to control flows of data, such as the use of the ``Great 
Firewall'' to oversee information and block foreign technology 
platforms in China. The third subsection delves into China's 
legal system and how the government is implementing new laws 
that further strengthen the government apparatus that allows 
China's digital authoritarianism to flourish. Lastly, 
subsection four studies China's massive investments in 
companies that develop new technologies that are both 
predicated on and aid China's authoritarian principles.


    Chapter 2 examines how China is exporting its digital 
technologies around the globe as a means of increasing its 
influence in other nations and, more dangerously, expanding the 
technologies and methods used for digital authoritarianism. 
This chapter looks at (1) China's export of underlying digital 
infrastructure technologies and (2) China's global 
proliferation of systems and technologies that run on those 
digital infrastructure technologies, thus advancing China's 
model for social control. Additionally, the chapter provides 
case studies of countries around the globe to demonstrate how 
China is integrating its technologies into these countries and 
how said integration impacts each nation.


    Chapter 3 details China's efforts at strengthening its 
involvement and influence in intergovernmental fora. The 
chapter looks into how China is increasingly using fora such as 
the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), and 
other standards-setting bodies to push a Chinese-centric 
digital domain. China's involvement in these bodies is directly 
impacting the future rules of the road for cyberspace, and at a 
time when the United States seems to be receding from its 
traditional role as leader of the free world, China is filling 
the gap.


    Chapter 4 elucidates the report's conclusions and policy 
recommendations. The recommendations focus on government 
actions, especially by Congress, to address and counter China's 
rise as a technological power and its desire to proliferate its 
model of digital authoritarianism. This section recommends 
legislation that establishes a public-private consortium aimed 
at creating a United States 5G alternative to Chinese 
technologies, legislation which institutes a Digital Rights 
Promotion Fund to help organizations push back against China's 
use and weaponization of mass surveillance, and legislation 
that would found a cyber military service academy. The report 
calls for the President to lead a coalition of countries to 
counter China's digital authoritarianism and push for a free, 
stable, unfettered, and secure digital domain. These 
recommendations stem from the understanding that Congress has a 
special responsibility, as the constitutionally mandated 
lawmaking body of the United States, to develop and institute 
laws that protect against the rise and spread of China and 
digital authoritarianism. Such a role is especially important 
at a time when the executive branch has done little to combat 
digital authoritarianism, leaving the United States, our 
allies, our partners, and the global community at risk from the 
proliferation of digital authoritarianism.


    This report contains two annexes. Annex 1 discusses the 
Trump administration's various cyber efforts and how these 
efforts have been deficient in countering China's continued 
rise as both a global geopolitical player and technological 
rival. Annex 2 provides an explanation of the 5G battle 
occurring between the United States and China. This overview 
highlights how China is attempting to dominate the 5G space and 
the present gaps in U.S. policy regarding this critical issue.



Chapter 1: Building the Model for Digital Authoritarianism Inside China

                              ----------                              

    In his October 18, 2017 opening address to the 19th 
National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, or the 
Party), General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and 
President of the People's Republic of China (PRC) Xi Jinping 
articulated a vision for restrictions in the digital domain. In 
the address, Xi stated:


        We will maintain the right tone in public communication 
        . . . We will provide more and better online content 
        and put in place a system for integrated internet 
        management to ensure a clean cyberspace. We will 
        implement the system of responsibility for ideological 
        work . . . distinguish between matters of political 
        principle, issues of understanding and thinking, and 
        academic viewpoints, but we must oppose and resist 
        various erroneous views with a clear stand.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party 
(CCP) and President of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ``Secure a 
Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All 
Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese 
Characteristics for a New Era,'' Speech Delivered at the 19th National 
Congress of the Communist Party of China, Oct. 28, 2017, http://
www.xinhuanet.com/english/download/Xi--Jinping's--report--at--19th--
CPC--National--Congress.pdf.


    Xi's statement shows the CCP's broad objective: bolstering 
development of the Internet while mitigating the threats the 
Internet poses to CCP rule. Xi placed particular emphasis on 
the intent to ensure the CCP's control of ideas in cyberspace 
by limiting access to information and ideas that run counter to 
the Party's ideology. The promotion and preservation of CCP 
control of China's own digital domain undergirds the CCP's 
entire digital authoritarianism model. For the CCP to continue 
moving towards its long-term objectives of becoming the 
dominant player in the cyber domain and expanding its influence 
abroad, it must first ensure that it has pacified Chinese 
citizens and purged dissent. In simple terms, China's digital 
authoritarianism starts at home.
    To accomplish this goal, the CCP has developed a unique 
model for digital authoritarianism implemented through a 
combination of technologies, regulations, and policies in four 
areas: (1) surveilling and tracking Chinese citizens, (2) 
exploiting and blocking data and content stored or transmitted 
on the digital domain, (3) implementing authoritarian cyber 
laws, and (4) directing massive investments in new technologies 
to secure the Party's future. The CCP uses these tools in 
concert with one another to shape the Chinese digital domain 
into a repressive, controlled space that stifles dissent, 
controls individual movement, curtails expression, flouts basic 
human rights for Chinese individuals, and helps enable and 
sustain the CCP's authoritarian rule.
The Surveillance State: How China Tracks its Citizens
    The CCP regime has long depended on its ability to track 
and surveil China's population to ensure its survival and 
promulgate its authoritarian rule. The Party has used various 
methods to surveil individuals living in China since the 
inception of the communist regime. Digital tools provide the 
CCP with a range of new options that greatly enhance its 
ability to monitor citizens, turning China into a surveillance 
state. Emerging technologies such as facial recognition, 
biometrics, and other cutting edge tools enable China to 
profile and categorize individuals quickly in massive 
quantities, track movements, and preemptively take action 
against those considered a threat in both the real world and 
online.\13\ The aforementioned technologies are combined with 
repressive regulations and burgeoning, omnipresent monitoring 
tools such as the Social Credit System currently being rolled 
out by the Chinese state.\14\ This combination of technologies, 
tools, and regulations creates a structure where practically 
all citizens are surveilled, and those considered problematic 
to the regime face massive civil and political repression, 
including ``mass arbitrary detention, forced political 
indoctrination, restrictions on movement, and religious 
oppression'' as seen in Xinjiang.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ See, e.g., Paul Mozur, ``One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How 
China is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority,'' The New York Times, Apr. 
14, 2019; Josh Chin & Clement Burge, ``Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How 
China's Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life,'' The Wall Street 
Journal, Dec. 19, 2017.
    \14\ 14 Christina Zhou and Bang Xiao, ``China's Social Credit 
System is pegged to be fully operational by 2020but what will it look 
like?,'' ABC News, Jan. 1, 2020; Hollie Russon Gilman & Daniel Benaim, 
``China's Aggressive Surveillance Technology Will Spread Beyond Its 
Borders,'' New America, Aug. 23, 2018, https://bit.ly/2ISFiSQ; Steve 
Mollman, ``China's new weapon of choice is your face,'' Quartz, Oct. 5, 
2019
    \15\ Maya Wang, China's Algorithms of Repression: Reverse 
Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App, Human Rights 
Watch, at 1 (May 2019); Steve Mollman, ``China's new weapon of choice 
is your face,'' Quartz, Oct. 5, 2019; Hollie Russon Gilman & Daniel 
Benaim, ``China's Aggressive Surveillance Technology Will Spread Beyond 
Its Borders,'' New America, Aug. 23, 2018, https://bit.ly/2ISFiSQ.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Facial recognition technology is a key tool used by the 
Party to monitor citizens. Chinese authorities combine 
traditional video surveillance with innovative big data 
analytics tools to allow the government to monitor its 1.4 
billion citizens.\16\ China is a world leader in the video 
surveillance industry. For example, two Chinese companies, the 
Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company (Hikvision) and 
the Zhejiang Dahua Technology Company (Dahua), together control 
one-third of the global market for video surveillance.\17\ 
Companies such as Hikvision and Dahua have aided the buildout 
of an extensive closed-circuit television (CCTV) infrastructure 
in China.\18\ China currently is deploying more than 200 
million cameras throughout the country, and an estimated 560 
million are expected to be installed by 2021.\19\ The cameras 
themselves are useful to Chinese authorities, but the 
integration of cameras with burgeoning artificial intelligence 
(AI) programs, which allows authorities to churn through 
massive amounts of data and identify individuals more rapidly, 
makes the system far more effective and repressive.\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \16\ World Bank, ``China,'' https://data.worldbank.org/country/
china (last visited Apr. 28, 2020).
    \17\ Editorial, Konzept: 13 Tipping Points in 2018, Deutsche Bank 
Research (January 2018), at 34, https://bit.ly/2UI0QEf.
    \18\ Danielle Cave et al., ``Mapping more of China's tech giants: 
AI and surveillance,'' Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Nov. 28, 
2019, https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-more-chinas-tech-giants; 
Chris Buckley & Paul Mozur, ``How China Uses High-Tech Surveillance to 
Subdue Minorities,'' The New York Times, May 22, 2019; Ben Dooley, 
``Chinese Firms Cash in on Xinjiang's Growing Police State,'' Agence 
France-Presse, June 27, 2018.
    \19\ Amanda Lentino, ``This Chinese Facial Recognition Start-Up Can 
Identify A Person in Seconds,'' CNBC, May 16, 2019; The Economist, 
``China: Facial Recognition and State Control,'' Oct. 24, 2018, https:/
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH2gMNrUuEY (last visited Apr. 28, 2020); 
Thomas Ricker, ``The US, like China, has about one surveillance camera 
for every four people, says report,'' The Verge, Dec. 9, 2019, https://
bit.ly/35LjjGv.
    \20\ Emily Feng, ``How China Is Using Facial Recognition 
Technology,'' NPR, Dec. 16, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China is quickly emerging as a global leader in integrating 
artificial intelligence and facial biometric data to bolster 
surveillance capabilities. Chinese companies, ranging from 
older industry stalwarts such as Hikvision to newer startups 
like Yitu Technology (Yitu) and Megvii Technology Limited 
(Megvii), are using emerging technologies to analyze vast 
troves of images and information processed by cameras to 
strengthen facial recognition programs.\21\ These programs 
support the underlying capabilities used to develop the 
databases that China's government and public security officials 
draw on to identify and monitor individuals. The databases rely 
on machine learning, a process in which ``engineers feed data 
to artificial intelligence systems to train them to recognize 
patterns or traits.''\22\ The technology, however, is still 
imperfect. Accurate hits on recognizing individual faces depend 
on environmental factors, including lighting and the 
positioning of cameras.\23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\ Australian Strategic Policy Institute, ``Yitu,'' (last visited 
June 5, 2020), https://chinatechmap.aspi.org.au/#/company/yitu; 
Australian Strategic Policy Institute, ``Megvii,'' (last visited June 
5, 2020), https://chinatechmap.aspi.org.au/#/company/megvii; Danielle 
Cave et al., ``Mapping more of China's tech giants: AI and 
surveillance,'' Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Nov. 28, 2019, 
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-more-chinas-tech-giants.
    \22\ Paul Mozur, ``One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China is 
Using A.I. to Profile a Minority,'' The New York Times, Apr. 14, 2019.
    \23\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Technical flaws have not dissuaded the Chinese government 
from vastly expanding the scope and use of artificial 
intelligence for policing and surveillance, and the 
technology's efficacy continues to improve. The Chinese 
government aims to have a video surveillance network that is 
``omnipresent, fully networked, always working and fully 
controllable'' by 2020.\24\ Chinese government investment in 
these technologies is also slated to continue growing, with one 
expert stating that China's police is preparing to ``spend an 
additional $30 billion in the coming years on techno-enabled 
snooping.''\25\ As China perfects these tools, it will acquire 
even more invasive capabilities for surveilling its people.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\ Simon Denyer, ``China's Watchful Eye,'' The Washington Post, 
Jan. 7, 2018.
    \25\ Paul Mozur, ``Inside China's Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and 
Lots of Cameras,'' The New York Times, July 8, 2018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The CCP further augments its surveillance system with other 
important techniques that amplify surveillance capabilities. 
Chinese officials throughout the country are collecting and 
collating biometric data, such as DNA samples, fingerprints, 
voice samples, and blood types.\26\ In a report on Xinjiang, 
Human Rights Watch (HRW) wrote that collecting this information 
``is part of the government's drive to form a `multi-modal' 
biometric portrait of individuals and to gather ever more data 
about its citizens.''\27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\ Sigal Samuel, ``China is installing a secret surveillance app 
on tourists' phones,'' Vox, July 3, 2019, https://bit.ly/3pJ2SCu; Sui-
Lee Wee, ``China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the Help of 
American Expertise,'' The New York Times, Feb. 21, 2019; Maya Wang, 
China's Algorithms of Repression: Reverse Engineering a Xinjiang Police 
Mass Surveillance App, Human Rights Watch, at 15 (May 2019); Phoebe 
Zhang, ``China `world's worst' for invasive use of biometric data,'' 
South China Morning Post, Dec. 5, 2019, https://bit.ly/2IXEg7X.
    \27\ Maya Wang, China's Algorithms of Repression: Reverse 
Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App, Human Rights 
Watch, at 15 (May 2019).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Chinese government has also extracted vast amounts of 
private data by using technologies to monitor activities and 
communications conducted over the Internet. For example, 
Chinese authorities force specific mobile applications on 
individuals in or entering Xinjiang.\28\ One of these apps, 
Fengcai, downloads ``all your text messages, contacts, call log 
history, calendar entries, and installed apps . . . this 
sensitive data is then sent, unencrypted, to a local 
server.''\29\ Chinese authorities employ Wi-Fi sniffers, which 
collect unique identifying information of networked devices, 
like laptops and smartphones, and can be used to read people's 
emails.\30\ Each of these new technologies and mechanisms, 
whether cutting-edge facial recognition software or a 
smartphone app, offers Chinese authorities useful information 
to help surveil the population. The consequences of China's 
accelerated development of technologies to strengthen the 
surveillance state are dire.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \28\ Sigal Samuel, ``China is Installing a Secret Surveillance App 
on Tourists' Phones,'' Vox, July 3, 2019; Joseph Cox, ``China Is 
Forcing Tourists to Install Text-Stealing Malware at its Border,'' 
Vice, July 2, 2019, https://bit.ly/2ITTPOy.
    \29\ Sigal Samuel, ``China is Installing a Secret Surveillance App 
on Tourists' Phones,'' Vox, July 3, 2019.
    \30\ Charles Rollet, ``In China's Far West, Companies Cash in on 
Surveillance Program that Targets Muslims,'' Foreign Policy, June 13, 
2018; Human Rights Watch, ``Big Data Fuels Crackdown in Minority 
Region,'' February 26, 2018, https://bit.ly/2Krjy1f.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's authoritarian use of surveillance technology is 
particularly pervasive and intrusive in Xinjiang autonomous 
region in northwest China. Xinjiang is home to 25 million 
people, of which approximately eleven million are Muslim 
Uyghurs.\31\ In this region, China has deployed its 
surveillance apparatus on a massive scale in an effort to track 
the population living there.\32\ While this apparatus affects 
everyone in Xinjiang, it has disproportionately targeted 
Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. Chinese officials believe 
Uyghurs hold ``extremist and separatist ideas.''\33\ China's 
targeting has led to extreme political and religious repression 
against these groups.\34\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\ Michael Hardy, ``In Xinjiang, Tourism Erodes the Last Traces 
of Uyghur Culture,'' Wired, Apr. 4, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/
xinjiang-uyghur-culture-tourism/; Bryan Wood & Brennan Butler, ``What 
is happening with the Uighurs in China,'' PBS News Hour, Oct. 4, 2019.
    \32\ Lindsay Maizland, ``China's Repression of Uighurs in 
Xinjiang,'' Council on Foreign Relations, updated June 30, 2020, 
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-repression-uighurs-xinjiang; 
U.S. Department of State, ``2018 Report on International Religious 
Freedom: China: Xinjiang,'' May 23, 2019, https://bit.ly/2KroAuF (last 
visited July 10, 2020); Sheena Chestnut Greitens et al., 
``Understanding China's `preventive repression' in Xinjiang,'' The 
Brookings Institution, Mar. 4, 2020.
    \33\ Lindsay Maizland, ``China's Repression of Uighurs in 
Xinjiang,'' Council on Foreign Relations, updated June 30, 2020, 
https://on.cfr.org/348zRak.
    \34\ Id.; U.S. Department of State, ``2018 Report on International 
Religious Freedom: China: Xinjiang,'' May 23, 2019, https://bit.ly/
2KroAuF (last visited July 10, 2020); Sheena Chestnut Greitens et al., 
``Understanding China's `preventive repression' in Xinjiang,'' The 
Brookings Institution, Mar. 4, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Since 2014, China has promulgated an extensive surveillance 
ecosystem throughout Xinjiang as part of its ``Strike Hard 
Campaign against Violent Terrorism.''\35\ China has placed a 
large amount of surveillance equipment along streets and 
neighborhoods, including at checkpoints in major metropolitan 
zones. Chinese authorities use them primarily to monitor 
Uyghurs.\36\ By combining the cameras with facial recognition 
technology, Chinese authorities can increasingly track Uyghur 
activity down to the individual level.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \35\ Charles Rollet, ``In China's Far West, Companies Cash in on 
Surveillance Program that Targets Muslims,'' Foreign Policy, June 13, 
2018; Jerome Doyon, ``Counter Extremism in Xinjiang: Understanding 
China's Community-Focused Counter-Terrorism Tactics,'' War on the 
Rocks, Jan. 14, 2019, https://bit.ly/2IXCPH0; Maya Wang et al., 
``Eradicating Ideological Viruses'': China's Campaign of Repression 
Against Xinjiang's Muslims, Human Rights Watch, at 4 (Sept. 2018).
    \36\ Chris Buckley et al., ``How China Turned a City into a 
Prison,'' The New York Times, Apr. 4, 2019; Ben Westcott, ``Chinese 
government loads surveillance app onto phones of visitors to Xinjiang: 
report,'' CNN, July 3, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Omnipresent monitoring has essentially stifled Uyghur 
freedom of movement in the region and eliminated any semblance 
of personal privacy. Simple activities, such as an individual 
tracked by a camera traversing farther than 300 meters from 
designated safe areas (often designated as an individual's home 
or workplace) triggers an alert to police of the individual's 
movement.\37\ At key transit checkpoints, Chinese authorities 
use face scans to determine whether Uyghurs can travel by 
cross-referencing the photo taken at a checkpoint to internal 
databases.\38\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \37\ Adile Ablet & Alim Seytoff, ``Authorities Testing Facial-
Recognition Systems in Uyghur Dominated Xinjiang Region,'' Radio Free 
Asia, Jan. 25, 2018.
    \38\ Darren Byler, ``I researched Uighur society in China for 8 
years and watched how technology opened new opportunities--then became 
a trap,'' The Conversation, Sept. 18, 2019, https://bit.ly/3nCySGo; 
Paul Mozur, ``One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China is Using A.I. to 
Profile a Minority,'' The New York Times, Apr. 14, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Surveillance also negatively affects Uyghurs' ability to 
practice their faith freely. The Agence France-Presse found 
that, in 2018, Hikvision won a contract for its cameras to 
watch 967 mosques in Xinjiang's Moyu county alone, and that 
authorities use these cameras to ``ensure that imams stick to a 
`unified' government script.''\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\ Ben Dooley, ``Chinese Firms Cash in on Xinjiang's Growing 
Police State,'' Agence France-Presse, June 27, 2018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition to video surveillance, Uyghurs must accept 
other repressive controls that impinge on their basic human 
rights in order to not run afoul of authorities. From 2016 to 
2017, Uyghurs were tricked into providing biometric data to 
authorities as part of a misleading government health program 
in Xinjiang labeled ``Physicals for All.''\40\ Tahir Imin, a 
Muslim who participated in the health check, underscored the 
repressive nature of the supposed health screenings, saying 
that authorities told him he did not have the right to ask 
about the test results after they drew his blood, scanned his 
face, recorded his voice, and took his fingerprints.\41\ The 
forced acquisition of Mr. Imin's physical and genetic data 
underlines China's desire to scoop new data from those living 
in Xinjiang and file it for future use.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \40\ Sui-Lee Wee, ``China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the 
Help of American Expertise,'' The New York Times, Feb. 21, 2019.
    \41\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chinese public security authorities also vigorously monitor 
telecommunications devices used by Uyghurs. Various news 
outlets report that the Chinese government mandates Uyghurs 
install an application on electronic devices that allows the 
government to surveil their online activities, a fundamental 
intrusion on online privacy.\42\ The application, called 
JingWang, is specifically ``built with no safeguards in place 
to protect the private, personally identifying information of 
its users'' and capable of scanning and sending information 
stored on a device to a remote server.\43\ While Chinese 
authorities state that the purpose of the application is to 
detect what authorities deem to be illegal terroristic or 
religious material, Sophie Richardson, the China Director of 
Human Rights Watch, rightly asserts that the application is 
simply a new technical mechanism for gathering vast quantities 
of data on people.\44\ The total effect of these systems is a 
repressive, authoritarian regime designed to deprive Uyghurs 
and other ethnic minorities of their rights, turning cities 
such as Urumqi and Kashgar into veritable prison cities.\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\ Joseph Cox, ``Chinese Government Forces Residents To Install 
Surveillance App With Awful Security,'' Vice, Apr. 9, 2018, https://
bit.ly/3kN8ecb
    \43\ Id.
    \44\ Joseph Cox, ``Chinese Government Forces Residents To Install 
Surveillance App With Awful Security,'' Vice, Apr. 9, 2019, https://
www.vice.com/en--us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-app-no-encryption-china-
force-install-urumqi-xinjiang; Yi Shu Ng, ``China forces its Muslim 
minority to install spyware on their phones,'' Mashable, July 21, 2017, 
https://mashable.com/2017/07/21/china-spyware-xinjiang/#p2--q.Fw.DOqd.
    \45\ See Chris Buckley et al., ``How China Turned a City into a 
Prison,'' The New York Times, Apr. 4, 2019; Josh Chin & Clement Burge, 
``Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China's Surveillance State Overwhelms 
Daily Life,'' The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 19, 2017.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The various elements of the surveillance apparatus in 
Xinjiang on their own provide important data to Chinese 
authorities, but it is the centralization and rapid recall of 
the collected data that gives the authoritarian system 
increasing control and power. This ability exists thanks in 
large part to the digital nature of the surveillance system, in 
which masses of data about individuals in Xinjiang are 
collected into central databases and rendered quickly 
retrievable by authorities, allowing them to uncover supposedly 
concerning behavior or respond swiftly to a situation.
    China uses this digital process in Xinjiang, with police 
accessing information located on centralized servers from a 
mobile application.\46\ The Integrated Joint Operations 
Platform (IJOP) is a central system developed by a subsidiary 
of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), a 
major state-owned defense technology company in China. It 
integrates information from different ``sources or machine 
sensors,'' such as video surveillance cameras or stolen 
Internet data, into ``a massive dataset of personal 
information, and of police behavior and movements in 
Xinjiang.''\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \46\ Maya Wang, China's Algorithms of Repression: Reverse 
Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App, Human Rights 
Watch, at 21 (May 2019); Human Rights Watch, ``How Mass Surveillance 
Works in Xinjiang, China,'' May 2, 2019, https://bit.ly/2IXsLxV (last 
visited July 10, 2020).
    \47\ Maya Wang, China's Algorithms of Repression: Reverse 
Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App, Human Rights 
Watch, at 20 (May 2019).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The centralized IJOP database syncs with the IJOP app, 
which authorities can access on a mobile device.\48\ IJOP 
subsequently analyzes the data, although it is important to 
note that the level in which big data analytics plays a role in 
dissecting the data is unknown, and uses them to identify and 
predict patterns of behavior and, when necessary, notify police 
of people whom the data system categorizes as requiring 
investigation or even detention.\49\ The IJOP app is the 
mechanism authorities use to communicate with the central 
information system and supplements the information going into 
the IJOP system, providing what Human Rights Watch (HRW) China 
Senior Researcher Maya Wang describes as ``three broad 
functions: [the app] collects data, reports on suspicious 
activities or circumstances, and prompts investigative 
missions.''\50\ The IJOP sends alerts to police or government 
authorities to investigate suspicious activity, and through the 
app, authorities can send new information back to the IJOP, 
providing even more data to the system.\51\ It is through this 
cyclical, data-driven process that authorities in Xinjiang can 
truly implement digital authoritarianism in the region, as the 
sheer amount of information collected by authorities and the 
ability to understand that information in detail offer the 
Chinese government ``the possibility of real-time, all-
encompassing surveillance'' that flouts basic human rights to 
privacy.\52\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\ Human Rights Watch, ``How Mass Surveillance Works in Xinjiang, 
China,'' May 2, 2019, https://bit.ly/2IXsLxV (last visited July 10, 
2020).
    \49\ Maya Wang, China's Algorithms of Repression: Reverse 
Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App, Human Rights 
Watch, at 1, 19, 21, 22, 29 (May 2019).
    \50\ Nazish Dholakia, Media Desk Officer, Human Rights Watch, 
Interview with Maya Wang, ``Interview: China's `Big Brother' App,'' 
Human Rights Watch, May 1, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/01/
interview-chinas-big-brother-app.
    \51\ Nazish Dholakia & Maya Wang, ``Interview: China's `Big 
Brother' App--Unprecedented View into Mass Surveillance of Xinjiang's 
Muslims,'' Human Rights Watch, May 1, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/
2019/05/01/interview-chinas-big-brother-app.
    \52\ Nazish Dholakia & Maya Wang, ``Interview: China's `Big 
Brother' App--Unprecedented View into Mass Surveillance of Xinjiang's 
Muslims,'' Human Rights Watch, May 1, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/
2019/05/01/interview-chinas-big-brother-app; United Nations, UN 
Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations, 3rd Session, (Dec. 10, 
1948), https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR--Translations/
eng.pdf. Article 12 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights states that 
``No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, 
family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and 
reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against 
such interference or attacks.'' Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The surveillance system in Xinjiang has aided in the 
detention of possibly more than 2 million Uyghurs, ethnic 
Kazakhs, and members of other Muslim groups in Xinjiang, 
according to the U.S. State Department.\53\ Chinese officials 
have labeled these detention facilities as ``vocational skills 
training centers'' to ``deradicalize'' those suspected of 
extremism.\54\ However, these centers are little more than 
arbitrary prison camps designed for political indoctrination. 
Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities imprisoned in internment 
camps are subject to abuse, squalid and unsanitary living 
conditions, lack of sleep and food, and forced political 
indoctrination.\55\ In her account to CNN, Sayragul Sauytbay, a 
former employee at one of the detention facilities in Xinjiang 
who fled to Kazakhstan, recalls a CCP official telling her the 
primary objective of the detention system was to ``turn the 
best of them [Uyghurs and other minorities] into Hans, while 
repressing and destroying the bad.''\56\ Sauytbay further 
describes that she suspected numerous human rights abuses, 
including sexual violence against female inmates and injections 
for non-compliant individuals.\57\ Child separation due to 
forced detentions or exile is also a regular occurrence. 
Researcher Adrian Zenz highlights this separation process, 
writing that ``[a]ccounts of Xinjiang Turkic Muslims in exile, 
including former detainees and their relatives, indicated that 
children as young as 2 years, with both parents in either 
internment or exile, were put into state welfare institutions 
or kept full-time in educational boarding facilities.''\58\ 
These accounts underline how China's surveillance state in 
Xinjiang abets the CCP's overt attempts to forcefully 
assimilate its ethnic minority populations into complying with 
the authoritarian government model proffered by Beijing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \53\ U.S. Department of State, ``2018 Report on International 
Religious Freedom: China: Xinjiang,'' May 23, 2019. https://bit.ly/
2KroAuF (last visited July 10, 2020).
    \54\ Eva Dou, ``China Acknowledges Re-Education Centers for 
Uighurs,'' The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 10, 2018.
    \55\ Matt Rivers & Lily Lee, ``Former Xinjiang Teacher Claims 
Brainwashing and Abuse Inside Mass Detention Centers,'' CNN, May 9, 
2019.
    \56\ Id.
    \57\ Id.
    \58\ Adrian Zenz, ``Break Their Roots: Evidence for China's Parent-
Child Separation Campaign in Xinjiang,'' The Journal of Political Risk, 
Vol. 7, No. 7 (July 2019), https://bit.ly/39eorVV.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the authoritarian nature of the Chinese government's 
operations--especially against Uyghurs--in Xinjiang is alarming 
by itself, a second disturbing trend is the fact that China is 
supporting the development and use of technologies that conduct 
surveillance along racial and ethnic lines. Experts cited by 
The New York Times described China's usage of facial 
recognition to track Uyghurs as ``the first known example of a 
government intentionally using artificial intelligence for 
racial profiling.''\59\ China accomplishes racial 
classification by instructing facial recognition AI to 
categorize individuals based on social definitions of race or 
ethnicity.\60\ While Beijing argues that sorting individuals 
via race or ethnicity is necessary to combat terrorism or quell 
``ethnic violence'' in Xinjiang, China's use of emerging 
technologies and big data for racial profiling sets a 
terrifying precedent for how to effectively repress vulnerable 
populations and serves as a potential model for other 
authoritarians around the globe.\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \59\ Paul Mozur, ``One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China is 
Using A.I. to Profile a Minority,'' The New York Times, Apr. 14, 2019.
    \60\ Id.
    \61\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In Xinjiang, Chinese government and police authorities 
retain what amounts to near absolute control of the entire ICT 
domain, and, through that control, have been able to repress 
and subjugate Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the 
region. It is important to note that, while all of China 
experiences some form of surveillance due to the CCP's 
authoritarian principles, the severity of controls in Xinjiang 
are not yet fully present throughout the rest of China. 
However, Xinjiang is the proving ground for China's digital 
authoritarianism model, and it serves as a clear example of how 
the CCP plans to use the digital domain to maintain and 
strengthen its authoritarian hold over the entire country. This 
plan may start to come into focus as early as 2020, as the 
Chinese government begins to implement a unified Social Credit 
System that captures all 1.4 billion citizens.\62\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \62\ Interview of Georgette Kerr, Vice President of Plurus 
Strategies, Aug. 16, 2019; World Bank, ``China'' https://
data.worldbank.org/country/china (last visited Apr. 28, 2020).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's Social Credit System is an intrusive tool used by 
all levels of the Chinese government to regulate corporate and 
citizen behavior. Various entities at the local or city level, 
such as police departments or health bureaus, gather swaths of 
behavioral information and data on individuals.\63\ This data, 
which can range from jaywalking to donating blood, is then 
submitted to local databases.\64\ Relevant information 
collected on individuals is also sent to the national level via 
the National Credit Information Sharing Platform (NCISP), in 
which the central government maintains a master database that 
other state agencies can access.\65\ With this information on 
hand and a whole-of-government approach, the Social Credit 
System allows China to more robustly manage individual behavior 
and punish those deemed problematic by placing them on 
blacklists or no-fly lists.\66\ Although presented in a more 
sanitized manner to entire Chinese populace, the Social Credit 
System opens up greater opportunities for the Chinese 
government to oppress all citizens in a manner similar to what 
the people in Xinjiang face, and the rapidity with which the 
government is moving forward in implementing these new 
authoritarian models of surveillance shows how important the 
issue is to the CCP.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \63\ Kendra Schaefer & Ether Yin, Understanding China's Social 
Credit System, Trivium China, at 24 (Sept. 23, 2019), https://bit.ly/
334rADz.
    \64\ Id.
    \65\ Id.at 3, 24.
    \66\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Censorship Apparatus: Exploiting and Blocking
   Digital Content
    China's burgeoning surveillance state offers CCP 
authorities the ability to observe and maintain social control 
over its citizens and represents a fundamental component of its 
digital authoritarianism model. A second, equally identifiable 
aspect of China's internal digital authoritarianism is the 
CCP's efforts at controlling flows of data. The CCP has spent 
decades building tools, mechanisms, and the infrastructure 
needed to cultivate a system for direct control of the content 
accessed by those in China. China's control over content has 
stunted political movements and silenced public criticism 
domestically by stifling access to a free Internet and 
tailoring CCP propaganda so that it efficiently targets the 
Chinese population.\67\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \67\ See, e.g., Michael Anti, ``Behind the Great Firewall of 
China,'' TedGlobal2012 (video), TED, June 2012, https://bit.ly/332QNhY; 
Kenneth Roth, ``China's Global Threat to Human Rights,'' Human Rights 
Watch Global Report, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One of the fundamental fears of China's leadership when 
Internet access first arose in China in the 1990s was the 
technology's potential to introduce uncontrolled sources of 
information that could undermine CCP control by providing 
Chinese citizens with greater access to uncensored information 
and easier, more rapid communication.\68\ To combat the 
possibility of the Internet operating as a democratizing force 
in China, China's Ministry of Public Security initiated the 
Golden Shield Project and debuted it in 2000.\69\ Also known as 
the Great Firewall, it is central to the CCP's censorship 
efforts and uses a set of Internet traffic screening tools to 
filter out websites and content deemed inappropriate for 
China's Internet.\70\ These tools span technical mechanisms, 
such as DNS poisoning, blocking the use of virtual private 
networks (VPN), and blocking IP addresses, to more human-based 
oversight, including monitors employed by the Ministry of 
Public Security.\71\ Since its inception, the Great Firewall in 
China has developed into a complex censorship apparatus, 
essentially creating an entirely separate version of the 
Internet.\72\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \68\ See, e.g., Ping Punyakumpol, ``The Great Firewall of China: 
Background,'' Torfox (A Stanford Project), Stanford University, June 1, 
2011, https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/
FreedomOfInformationChina/the-great-firewall-of-china-background/
index.html; Nina Hachigian, ``China's Cyber-Strategy,'' Foreign Affairs 
(Mar./Apr. 2001).
    \69\ Ping Punyakumpol, ``The Great Firewall of China: Background,'' 
Torfox (A Stanford Project), Stanford University, June 1, 2011.
    \70\ Id.
    \71\ Oliver Farnan et al., ``Poisoning the Well--Exploring the 
Great Firewall's Poisoned DNS Responses,'' WPES '16: Proceedings of the 
2016 ACM on Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, Oct. 2016, 
at 95, https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2994620.2994636; Cate Cadell, 
``Amid VPN crackdown, China eyes upgrades to Great Firewall,'' Reuters, 
July 20, 2017; Robert McMahon & Isabella Bennett, ``U.S. Internet 
Providers and the `Great Firewall of China,''' Council on Foreign 
Relations, Feb. 23, 2011; Marty Hu, ``The Great Firewall: a technical 
perspective,'' Torfox (A Stanford Project), Stanford University, May 
30, 2011, https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-
11/FreedomOfInformationChina/author/martyhu/index.html.
    \72\ See, e.g., ``China Media Bulletin: 2019 internet freedom 
trends, Shutterstock censorship, Huawei ``safe cities'' (No. 140),'' 
Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/china-media-bulletin/
2020/china-media-bulletin-2019-internet-freedom-trends-shutterstock 
(last visited July 10, 2020).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    More recently, Chinese companies have begun implementing 
emerging technologies, such as AI, to strengthen these 
censorship capabilities further through the automation of its 
monitoring and censorship processes.\73\ China has also 
developed a culture of self-censorship.\74\ The Chinese 
government requires Chinese firms to self-regulate content on 
their servers and platforms. For example, the New York Times 
noted in 2010 that major technology companies such as Baidu 
``employ throngs of so-called Web administrators to screen 
their search engines, chat rooms, blogs and other content for 
material that flouts propaganda directives.''\75\ A Chinese 
state media report said in 2013 that the government then 
employed approximately two million civilians who monitor social 
media and other Internet traffic to prevent social unrest and 
criticism of the government.\76\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\ Yuan Yang, ``Artificial intelligence takes jobs from Chinese 
web censors,'' Financial Times, May 22, 2018.
    \74\ Ping Punyakumpol, ``The Great Firewall of China: Background,'' 
Torfox (A Stanford Project), Stanford University, June 1, 2011, https:/
/cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/
FreedomOfInformationChina/the-great-firewall-of-china-background/
index.html
    \75\ Michael Wines et al., ``China's Censors Tackle and Trip Over 
the Internet,'' The New York Times, Apr. 7, 2010.
    \76\ Katie Hunt & CY Xu, ``China `employs 2 million to police 
internet,''' CNN, Oct. 7, 2013; Google Translate: ``Internet public 
opinion analyst: It's note about deleting posts,'' Beijing News, Oct. 
3, 2013, http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2013-10/03/content--
469152.htm?div=-1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The consequences of China's government enforcing tight 
censorship include (1) a population that is unaware of, or 
unable to acquire, accurate information about its government's 
policies and actions; and (2) continued consolidation of CCP 
rule. The Great Firewall has blocked digital news media content 
created by major international outlets not approved by the 
CCP.\77\ According to Freedom House's analysis of Chinese 
censorship directives, China heavily censors news ranging from 
health and safety to ``taboo subjects'' such as the Cultural 
Revolution and Tiananmen Square.\78\ Freedom House states that 
censorship against international news outlets is so prevalent 
that:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\ Gerry Shih, ``China adds Washington Post, Guardian to `Great 
Firewall' blacklist,'' The Washington Post, June 8, 2019.
    \78\ ``Freedom on the Net 2019: China,'' Freedom House, https://
freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-net/2019 (last visited May 15, 
2020); Sarah Cook, ``The News China Didn't Want Reported in 2017,'' The 
Diplomat, Jan. 27, 2018.


        Many international news outlets, especially those with 
        Chinese-language websites, are blocked. For example, 
        the New York Times, Reuters, and the Wall Street 
        Journal have been censored for years, while the 
        websites of the Washington Post and the Guardian were 
        newly blocked in June 2019, likely as part of the 
        government's efforts to tighten its grip on the flow of 
        information surrounding the 30th anniversary of the 
        Tiananmen Square crackdown.\79\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \79\ ``Freedom on the Net 2019: China,'' Freedom House, https://
freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-net/2019 (last visited May 15, 
2020); Gerry Shih, ``China adds Washington Post, Guardian to `Great 
Firewall' blacklist,'' The Washington Post, June 8, 2019.


    This censorship has aided the CCP's efforts to ensure that 
those living in China only receive information approved by the 
Party, a fundamental aspect of maintaining its status in 
China's public domain.
    U.S. social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, 
Twitter, WhatsApp, Pinterest, and YouTube have also been 
blocked entirely from China's servers.\80\ While censorship of 
these platforms has had the intended effect of barring many of 
those living in China from accessing information that would be 
deemed offensive to the Party, this censorship has also 
generated a second critical outcome. Foreign technology 
platforms are restricted from operating in China, allowing 
Chinese platforms that offer similar services to thrive and 
expand into new markets.\81\ Thanks to this market 
inefficiency, China now retains some of the most valuable 
Internet companies in the world by market capitalization, 
including Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu.\82\ These companies 
essentially provide the panoply of Internet services wanted in 
China. Alibaba offers e-commerce services, and Tencent delivers 
social media, entertainment, and gaming, negating the need for 
other platforms where information flows freely.\83\ The 
consequences of this are a Chinese population that is reliant 
on platforms that further cement the CCP's control of the 
digital domain.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \80\ ``Freedom on the Net 2019: China,'' Freedom House, https://
freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-net/2019 (last accessed May 15, 
2020); Sherisse Pham, ``China adds Pinterest to list of banned sites,'' 
CNN, Mar. 17, 2017; GreatFire.Org, ``Censorship of Alexa Top 1000 
Domains in China,'' https://en.greatfire.org/search/alexa-top-1000-
domains (last visited June 26, 2020).
    \81\ See, e.g., Tim Wu, ``China's Online Censorship Stifles Trade, 
Too,'' The New York Times, Feb. 4, 2019.
    \82\ J. Clement, ``Market value of the largest internet companies 
worldwide 2019,'' Statista, June 3, 2020, https://www.statista.com/
statistics/277483/market-value-of-the-largest-internet-companies-
worldwide/; Tim Wu, ``China's Online Censorship Stifles Trade, Too,'' 
The New York Times, Feb. 4, 2019; Simon Denyer, ``China's Scary Lesson 
to the World: Censoring the Internet Works,'' The Washington Post, May 
23, 2016.
    \83\ Australian Strategic Policy Institute, ``Tencent,'' https://
chinatechmap.aspi.org.au/#/company/tencent (last visited June 5, 2020); 
Australian Strategic Policy Institute, ``Alibaba,'' https://
chinatechmap.aspi.org.au/#/company/alibaba (last visited June 5, 2020).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's censorship extends beyond simply separating China's 
Internet from outside information. China's censors are using 
offensive tools and aggressive tactics that reach far beyond 
scrubbing and blocking data to ensure robust censorship. 
Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the 
University of Toronto, asserts that the Chinese government used 
an attack tool, which they label the ``Great Cannon,'' to 
extend the reach of China's censorship.\84\ The Great Cannon, 
while co-located within the Great Firewall, is a ``separate 
offensive system'' that ``hijacks traffic to (or presumably 
from) individual IP addresses, and can arbitrarily replace 
unencrypted content as a man-in-the-middle.''\85\ China used 
the Great Cannon to conduct Distributed Denial of Service 
(DDoS) attacks on servers rented by GreatFire.org, an advocacy 
nonprofit that challenges China's Great Firewall, and GitHub 
pages run by GreatFire.org in 2015.\86\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \84\ Bill Marczak et al., China's Great Cannon, The Citizen Lab, 
Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto 
(Apr. 10, 2015), https://citizenlab.ca/2015/04/chinas-great-cannon/.
    \85\ Id.
    \86\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's use of an offensive cyber tool for censorship 
purposes is revelatory because it shows China taking action 
beyond its borders to ensure censorship within its borders. 
China is also cracking down on tools that ordinary Chinese 
citizens use to overcome the Great Firewall, such as virtual 
private networks.\87\ In January 2019, the Financial Times 
showed how China is cracking down on individual use of VPN 
tools. The Financial Times highlighted how a Chinese man, Zhu 
Yunfeng, received a significant fine for accessing foreign 
websites and using the VPN Lantern, as well as how another 
individual, Pan Xidian, received a jail sentence for VPN use 
and composing ``inappropriate'' Twitter posts.\88\ Providers of 
these tools are receiving even stiffer sentences, such as Wu 
Xiangyang, who in 2017 received a five and a half year jail 
sentence and 500,000 yuan fine (approximately $70,650) for 
selling software that circumvented China's Internet censorship 
controls.\89\ The result of these efforts is a censorship 
system that can rely on a variety of continually evolving tools 
to ensure that online and social media users can be targeted if 
they post comments that the government and Party deem 
politically sensitive. Everyday citizens consequently retain 
fewer avenues to acquire non-CCP approved information.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \87\ Cisco, ``What Is a VPN? - Virtual Private Network,'' https://
www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/vpn-endpoint-security-clients/
what-is-vpn.html (last visited June 7, 2019). A virtual private 
network, or VPN, is an encrypted connection over the Internet from a 
device to a network. The encrypted connection helps ensure that 
sensitive data is safely transmitted. It prevents unauthorized people 
from eavesdropping on the traffic and allows the user to conduct work 
remotely. Id.
    \88\ Yuan Yang, ``China Turns Up Heat on Individual Users of 
Foreign Websites,'' Financial Times, Jan. 7, 2019.
    \89\ Benjamin Haas, ``Man in China Sentenced to Five Years' Jail 
for Running VPN,'' The Guardian, Dec. 21, 2017.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Legal System: China's Implementation
   of Authoritarian Cyber Laws
    In a position paper titled ``China's Digital Rise--
Challenges for Europe,'' authors Kristin Shi-Kupfer and Mareike 
Ohlberg of the Mercator Institute for China Studies note that, 
when developing new technologies, an unofficial Chinese 
government slogan is ``first develop, then regulate.''\90\ This 
unofficial slogan demonstrates that the government has 
prioritized the maturation of its emerging digital technologies 
and then, as they are integrated into society, regulates their 
use as needed. With China's continued rise in this domain, the 
Chinese government now is increasingly implementing stringent 
rules and regulations to ensure that the cyber domain remains 
compliant with Party strictures. The regulations China has 
implemented recently expand government control over cyberspace 
at the legal level, making its myriad authoritarian actions to 
quell dissent and promote Chinese propaganda seem lawful.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \90\ Kristin Shi-Kupfer & Mareike Ohlberg, China's Digital Rise: 
Challenges for Europe, Mercator Institute for China Studies, Vol. 7, at 
9 (Apr. 2019), https://www.merics.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/
MPOC--No.7--ChinasDigitalRise--web--3.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In November 2016, the 24th Session of the Standing 
Committee of the 12th National People's Congress passed the 
Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China, 
fundamentally altering the cyber landscape in China.\91\ Coming 
into effect on June 1, 2017, and enforced by the Cyberspace 
Administration of China (CAC) and other related ministries, the 
law affords government entities broad authority to regulate and 
control the digital environment in China.\92\ In addition to 
the Cybersecurity Law, the Chinese government is layering 
various regulations on top of it to give the law both more 
clarity and teeth.\93\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \91\ IT Advisory KPMG China, ``Overview of China's Cybersecurity 
Law,'' KPMG, Feb. 
2017, at 4, https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/cn/pdf/en/2017/02/
overview-of-cybersecurity-law.pdf; Samuel Stolton, ``Chinese 
cybersecurity law is a `loaded weapon,' senior US official says,'' 
Euractiv, Feb. 27, 2019, https://www.euractiv.com/section/
cybersecurity/news/chinese-cybersecurity-law-is-a-loaded-weapon-senior-
us-official-says/.
    \92\ Interview of Georgette Kerr, Vice President of Plurus 
Strategies, Aug. 16, 2019; Samm Sacks, ``China's Cybersecurity Law 
Takes Effect: What to Expect,'' Lawfare, June 1, 2017, https://
www.lawfareblog.com/chinas-cybersecurity-law-takes-effect-what-expect.
    \93\ Samm Sacks, ``China's Cybersecurity Law Takes Effect: What to 
Expect,'' Lawfare, 
June 1, 2017, https://www.lawfareblog.com/chinas-cybersecurity-law-
takes-effect-what-expect; Samm Sacks et al., ``China's Cybersecurity 
Reviews for 'Critical' Systems Add Focus on Supply Chain, Foreign 
Control (Translation),'' New America, May 24, 2019, https://bit.ly/
2HkSaAT.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the Cybersecurity Law and relevant additional 
regulations put forth a variety of new stipulations on 
individuals and companies, there are a few provisions of the 
law and related regulations that are especially emblematic of 
China's effort at increasing social and political control of 
the digital domain. One of these is the repeated vague 
references in the Cybersecurity Law to national security needs, 
opening individuals and organizations to intrusive and 
potentially abusive reviews of cyber activity.\94\ According to 
Georgette Kerr, a cyber-expert at Plurus Strategies, ``the law 
and associated directives have compelled network operators to 
cooperate with law enforcement in addressing vaguely defined 
threats to national security [and] established intrusive 
national security reviews,'' seen in clauses such as Article 
28.\95\ Article 28 states that ``network operators shall 
provide technical support and assistance to public security 
organs and national security organs that are safeguarding 
national security and investigating criminal activities in 
accordance with the law.''\96\ The law in effect uses national 
security as a legal mechanism to assert its authoritarian 
control over data flows in China in new ways. The law 
additionally affords the government even more dystopian powers 
in special circumstances dictated by the State Council. Under 
Article 58 of the law, authorities can ``take temporary 
measures regarding network communications in a specially 
designated region, such as limiting such communications,'' 
further underscoring how the 2017 law fully empowers the 
Chinese government to control the digital domain anytime the 
government claims such control is necessary.\97\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \94\ Interview of Georgette Kerr, Vice President of Plurus 
Strategies, Aug. 16, 2019.
    \95\ Id.
    \96\ Rogier Creemers et al., ``Translation: Cybersecurity Law of 
the People's Republic of China [Effective June 1, 2017],'' New America, 
June 29, 2019, https://bit.ly/3nFqKVO.
    \97\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The implementation of the Cybersecurity Law also imposes 
serious controls and restrictions on foreign companies 
operating in China. Jack Wagner, an Asia analyst at PGI 
Intelligence writing in The Diplomat, notes that ``several of 
the provisions . . . have become a cause for concern among 
foreign companies.''\98\ For example, Wagner highlights data 
localization rules in the law, under which foreign companies 
would need to store data on Chinese servers.\99\ Due to data 
localization laws, firms would either need to ``invest in new 
data servers in China which would be subject to government 
spot-checks, or incur new costs to hire a local server 
provider, such as Huawei, Tencent, or Alibaba, which have spent 
billions in recent years establishing domestic data centers as 
part of Beijing's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).''\100\ 
Neither of these options are positive for companies looking to 
operate in China, as they open up sensitive information to 
intrusive snooping by Chinese authorities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \98\ Jack Wagner, ``China's Cybersecurity Law: What You Need to 
Know,'' The Diplomat, June 1, 2017.
    \99\ Id.
    \100\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Another key issue stemming from China's burgeoning legal 
structures pertaining to the digital domain is the continued 
erosion of online anonymity. Samm Sacks and Paul Triolo, 
writing in Lawfare, describe how the CAC added four regulations 
in August and September of 2017 regarding online activity that 
effectively reduce online anonymity. These four regulations are 
1) the Internet Forum Service Management Regulation, 2) the 
Internet Threat Comments Service Management Regulation, 3) the 
Internet User Public Account Information Services Management 
Regulation, and 4) the Management Rules of Internet Group 
Information Services.\101\ The regulations disallow online 
anonymity by requiring ``foreground voluntary name, background 
real name.'' This requirement means that users can choose a 
screen name or appear anonymous, but their actual identity 
information will still be stored with the Ministry of Public 
Security.\102\ Sacks and Triolo note that, by reducing 
anonymity online, Chinese authorities receive more real data to 
add to their burgeoning databases on citizen behavior such as 
the Social Credit System, and by extension, further their 
oversight of the population.\103\ Similarly, in November 2018, 
the government implemented new regulations granting ``the 
Ministry of Public Security (MPS) broad powers over the 
computer networks of companies in China.''\104\ The rule, 
labeled ``Regulations on Internet Security Supervision and 
Inspection by Public Security Organs,'' provides MPS with new 
opportunities to conduct on site and remote site inspections of 
company computers, copy user information, have police backup 
during inspections to ensure company compliance, and monitor 
company adherence to censorship laws.\105\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\ Samm Sacks & Paul Triolo, ``Shrinking Anonymity in Chinese 
Cyberspace,'' Lawfare, Sept. 25, 2017, https://www.lawfareblog.com/
shrinking-anonymity-chinese-cyberspace.
    \102\ Id.
    \103\ Id.
    \104\ Insikt Group, ``China's New Cybersecurity Measures Allow 
State Police to Remotely Access Company Systems,'' Recorded Future, 
Feb. 8, 2019, https://www.recordedfuture.com/china-cybersecurity-
measures/.
    \105\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Although the Chinese government may be reacting to some 
valid cybersecurity concerns in building and growing the legal 
frameworks surrounding cyber activity, it is no accident that 
this framework simultaneously provides legitimacy to China's 
authoritarian actions in the digital domain. As seen above, the 
various laws and regulations implemented by the Chinese 
government provide censors, law enforcement, intelligence 
agencies, and other entities with legal cover to impinge on 
privacy rights and conduct undue searches and seizures of 
information contained or passed in cyberspace. The 
ramifications of the promulgation of China's digital laws 
include the establishment of an Internet governance framework 
that ensures, at the most fundamental level, CCP regime 
survival and operates as a direct contrast to the systems and 
laws promulgated by the U.S. and its allies.
China's Investment in Technologies Predicated
   on Authoritarian Principles
    China's growing promotion of digital authoritarianism has 
coincided with its rise as a technological leader. These 
technologies, as demonstrated above, make surveillance and 
censorship both easier and stronger than ever before for CCP 
authorities. As such, the rise of digital authoritarianism in 
China is facilitated by the continued development of new 
technologies consistent with authoritarian principles. 
Consequently, the CCP continues to emphasize investment and 
innovation in new technologies, which will further strengthen 
its ability to exercise authoritarian rule in China.\106\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\ See, e.g., Sophia Yan, ``Chinese surveillance grows stronger 
with technology that can recognise people from how they walk,'' 
Telegraph, Nov. 6, 2018; Statement of William Carter, Deputy Director 
and Fellow, Technology Policy Program, Chinese Advances in Emerging 
Technologies and their Implications for U.S. National Security, Hearing 
before the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Jan. 
9, 2018, at 2, 6.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's focus on investing in cyber and digital 
technologies comes from the highest echelons of CCP leadership, 
who have advocated new technologies as critical to China's rise 
as a global power. The Made in China 2025 initiative was a 
state-led industrial policy intended ``to make China dominant 
in global high-tech manufacturing'' by using ``government 
subsidies, mobiliz[ing] state-owned enterprises, and pursu[ing] 
intellectual property acquisition to catch up with--and then 
surpass--Western technological prowess in advanced 
industries.''\107\ The policy prioritizes ten major sectors, of 
which one is new information technology.\108\ Made in China 
2025 operated as a ten-year plan driving China's industrial 
development, and its prioritization of the technologies within 
the digital domain accentuates the CCP's desire to strengthen 
Chinese-made ICT products and services. Additionally, China's 
Internet Plus policy, also unveiled in 2015, ``aims to 
capitalize on China's huge online consumer market by building 
up the country's domestic mobile Internet, cloud computing, 
massive amounts of data (big data), and the Internet of Things 
sectors.''\109\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \107\ James McBride & Andrew Chatzky, ``Is `Made in China 2025' a 
Threat to Global Trade?'' Council on Foreign Relations, May 13, 2019. 
See also Emily Crawford, ``Made in China 2025: The Industrial Plan that 
China Doesn't Want Anyone Talking About,'' PBS, May 7, 2019.
    \108\ Press Release, State Council of the People's Republic of 
China, ``Made in China 2025,'' May 19, 2015, https://bit.ly/2Wa6hNf.
    \109\ Meia Nouwens & Helena Legarda, Emerging technology dominance: 
what China's pursuit of advanced dual-use technologies means for the 
future of Europe's economy and defence innovation, China Security 
Project at MERICS and The International Institute for Strategic 
Studies, at 5 (Dec. 2018); Press Release, State Council of the People's 
Republic of China, ``China unveils Internet Plus action plan to fuel 
growth,'' July 4, 2015, http://english.www.gov.cn/policies/latest--
releases/2015/07/04/content--281475140165588.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    CCP leaders have also delivered statements further backing 
China's emphasis on developing its cyber capabilities. General 
Secretary Xi, in an October 9, 2016 Politburo meeting on cyber 
and IT issues, asserted that China ``must accelerate the 
advancement of domestic production, indigenous and controllable 
substitution plans, and the building of secure and controllable 
information technology systems.''\110\ Wang Huning, a member of 
the Standing Committee of the Politburo, relayed Xi's stance on 
information technology development in December 2017, saying 
``[CCP] General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the need to . . 
. deepen Internet and information technology, build a cyber 
superpower, and advance society through a digital China; and to 
advance Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, and data 
economy, etc.''\111\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \110\ Michael Martina, ``Xi Says China Must Speed Up Plans for 
Domestic Network Technology,'' Reuters, Oct. 9, 2016. See also ``The 
Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of 
China Conducted the 36th Collective Study on the Implementation of the 
Cyber Power Strategy,'' Xinhua News Agency, Oct. 9, 2016, http://
www.gov.cn/xinwen/2016-10/09/content--5116444.htm (translated from 
Chinese).
    \111\ Graham Webster et al., ``Wang Huning's Speech at the 4th 
World Internet Conference in Wuzhen,'' New America, Dec. 13, 2017, 
https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/digichina/blog/
wang-hunings-speech-4th-world-internet-conference-wuzhen/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition to highlighting China's desire to strengthen 
information technologies, CCP leaders' statements often denote 
the need for sanitizing cyberspace from what the Party believes 
to be toxic content. Chen Yixin, the Secretary-General of the 
CCP's Legal Affairs Commission, highlighted this priority in 
January 2019, stating that a ``small incident can form into a 
vortex of public opinion'' on the Internet.\112\ Zhuang 
Rongwen, Vice Minister of the Central Propaganda Department, 
and Director of the Central Cybersecurity and Informatization 
Office and State Internet Information Office, provided 
additional context to China's desire to control the digital 
domain in September 2018 with the assertion that:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \112\ Chris Buckley, ``2019 Is a Sensitive Year for China. Xi is 
Nervous,'' The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2019.


        The Internet has become a main battlefield, main 
        battleground, and most forward position in propaganda 
        and public opinion work. To grasp leadership authority 
        in online ideological work, we must not only give full 
        rein to the main force role of Party members, cadres, 
        and mainstream media editors, pushing the main forces 
        onto the main battlefield; we must also give full rein 
        to the dominant role of the majority of Internet users, 
        and fight a people's war for the governance of the 
        online environment.\113\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \113\ Rogier Creemers et al., ``Translation: China's New Top 
Internet Official Lays Out Agenda for Party Control Online,'' New 
America, Sept. 24, 2018, https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-
initiative/digichina/blog/translation-chinas-new-top-internet-official-
lays-out-agenda-for-party-control-online/.


    To CCP leadership, the digital domain is a space that must 
be controlled by the Party. As such, development of new 
digitally enabled technologies must operate in line with Party 
principles. Without such control, CCP leaders fear these 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
technologies could weaken the CCP's hold over its citizens.


    The CCP has implemented industrial policies with massive 
investments in technology and lucrative conditions for Chinese 
firms operating in digital fields. China's research and 
development spending grew by more than 17% each year from 2010 
to 2017 and in 2018 hit a record high of 2.19 percent of 
GDP.\114\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \114\ ``China's spending on R&D rises to historic high,'' Xinhua 
News, Sept. 7, 2019, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-09/07/c--
138373248.htm; Niall McCarthy, ``China Is Closing The Gap With The U.S. 
In R&D Expenditure,'' Forbes, Jan. 20, 2020; Zhang Jun, ``Will China Be 
the Next Tech Powerhouse? Maybe with the Next 20 Years of Sustained 
Investment,'' South China Morning Post, Aug. 1, 2018, https://
www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2157728/
will-china-be-next-tech-powerhouse-maybe-next.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These investments have only continued to accelerate. China 
has spent incredible amounts of resources bolstering startups 
working in the surveillance field. The New York Times reported 
that, in May 2018, ``the upstart A.I. company SenseTime raised 
$620 million, giving it a valuation of about $4.5 billion. Yitu 
raised $200 million [in June 2018]. Another rival, Megvii, 
raised $460 million from investors that included a state-backed 
fund created by China's top leadership.''\115\ The European 
Union Chamber of Commerce in China, in its ``China 
Manufacturing 2025'' report, tells a similar story of how China 
is boosting its domestic telecommunications industry. The 
report notes that:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \115\ Paul Mozur, ``Inside China's Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame 
and Lots of Cameras,'' The New York Times, July 8, 2018.


        The Chinese Government has used a variety of policy 
        instruments to support the development of its domestic 
        telecommunications equipment industry. One of the most 
        prominent has been the use of catalogues of domestic 
        high-technology products, as well as an equivalent list 
        for exports. Firms whose products are included in these 
        catalogues receive benefits, such as preferential tax 
        rates and low-interest loans from state-owned 
        banks.\116\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \116\ China Manufacturing 2025, European Union Chamber of Commerce 
in China, at 26 (2017), http://docs.dpaq.de/12007-european--chamber--
cm2025-en.pdf.


    China's firms have found that operating in zones that 
promulgate digital authoritarianism in China is an extremely 
profitable business. In Xinjiang, Hikvision received 
approximately $290 million for security related contracts, 
including a ``social prevention and control system'' and a 
program implementing facial-recognition surveillance in and 
around mosques.\117\ Combined with Dahua's own contracts in 
Xinjiang, Hikvision and Dahua have won ``at least $1.2 billion 
in government contracts for 11 separate, large-scale 
surveillance projects across Xinjiang.''\118\ The fact that 
Chinese firms are receiving such strong returns for working in 
fields that fundamentally promote authoritarian rule in China 
highlight Chinese leadership's willingness to invest in 
technologies that enable greater social and digital control.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \117\ Ben Dooley, ``Chinese Firms Cash in on Xinjiang's Growing 
Police State,'' Agence France-Presse, June 27, 2018. See also Chris 
Buckley & Paul Mozur, ``How China Uses High-Tech Surveillance to Subdue 
Minorities,'' The New York Times, May 22, 2019.
    \118\ Charles Rollet, ``In China's Far West, Companies Cash in on 
Surveillance Program that Targets Muslims,'' Foreign Policy, June 13, 
2018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's leadership firmly believes that the country is on a 
path towards becoming a global power capable of exerting 
influence practically anywhere, and that a core aspect of 
achieving this goal is dominance in the digital domain. For 
China's government, this dominance starts at home, and its 
current policies and investments underscore the CCP's focus on 
strengthening the domestic base for information technologies.



  Chapter 2: Exporting Digital Authoritarianism--China on the Global 
                              Cyber Stage

                              ----------                              

    China's leadership is increasingly confident that its 
governing model for the digital space represents the future of 
the domain and is doing its best to convince governments around 
the world that this is the case. Digital authoritarianism in 
China is enabling the CCP to impose considerable control over 
its population and the information accessible to those in the 
country, providing the regime with increased security from 
democratizing forces and further opportunities for economic and 
technological growth. As China continues to perfect the tools 
that comprise its model of digital authoritarianism, its 
leaders have become more aware of the geopolitical and economic 
benefits of exporting both the technologies and the methods of 
digital authoritarianism to perpetuate its model of extensive 
censorship and automated surveillance.\119\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \119\ Adrian Shahbaz, Freedom of the Net 2018: The Rise of Digital 
Authoritarianism, Freedom House (Oct. 31, 2018), https://bit.ly/
2IYJkJE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chinese leaders are using information and communications 
technology (ICT) and digital media to increase their power 
abroad as well as at home, including by building on the Belt 
and Road Initiative's (BRI) infrastructure, trade, training, 
and investment links between China and more than 60 other 
countries.\120\ At the first BRI forum in May 2017, Chinese 
President Xi Jinping announced that China would integrate big 
data into the multi-billion dollar BRI enterprise to create the 
``digital silk road of the 21st century.''\121\ China has also 
begun to install fiber optic networks across the globe, setting 
the stage to assert its presence in the ICT sector and 
facilitate the export of digital authoritarianism.\122\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \120\ Andrew Chatzky & James McBride, ``China's Massive Belt and 
Road Initiative,'' Council on Foreign Relations, last updated Jan. 28, 
2020, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-
initiative; Adrian Shahbaz, Freedom of the Net 2018: The Rise of 
Digital Authoritarianism, Freedom House (Oct. 31, 2018), https://
freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism.
    \121\ Xi Jinping, CCP General Secretary, Remarks at ``Work Together 
to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk 
Road,'' Beijing, May 14, 2017; Andrew Chatzky & James McBride, 
``China's Massive Belt and Road Initiative,'' Council on Foreign 
Relations, last updated Jan. 28, 2020, https://www.cfr.org/
backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative.
    \122\ Adrian Shahbaz, Freedom of the Net 2018: The Rise of Digital 
Authoritarianism, Freedom House (Oct. 31, 2018), https://bit.ly/
2IYJkJE; Susan Crawford, ``China Will Likely Corner the 5G Market--and 
the US Has No Plan,'' Wired, Feb. 20, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    When examining China's digital efforts abroad, a subtle yet 
important distinction between China's fundamentally economic 
activities and its more subversive and damaging endeavors that 
aid in the expansion of digital authoritarianism must be made. 
While China's attempts to gain a larger market in the digital 
domain and to outcompete the United States in certain 
technological spaces represent a significant concern for U.S. 
economic interests, those efforts within a free international 
market do not necessarily represent a national security 
concern. What does raise critical national security concerns is 
when China's digital efforts erode democratic values and enable 
the rise of digital authoritarianism around the world. At best, 
China is selling digital technology that has remarkable 
capacity for surveillance and control to authoritarian or 
authoritarian-leaning countries with no second thought for the 
consequences. At worst, China is pairing its economic 
investment with aggressive outreach and training on Internet 
governance and domestic regulations to further inculcate 
authoritarian values and methods of social control.
Exporting Technologies and Expanding Digital
   Authoritarianism
    The Digital Silk Road announcement only formalized efforts 
already underway by China to expand into foreign markets. For 
example, in 2015, China's third-largest telecom company, China 
Telecom Group (CTG), announced the creation of its Africa and 
Middle East headquarters, having already expanded its network 
capabilities in the UAE, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, and 
Nigeria.\123\ It planned to continue growing its network 
through deals with local companies such as the Wananchi Group, 
East Africa's leading telecommunications operator.\124\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \123\ Rudradeep Biswas, ``Global: China Telecom Global Expands 
Footprint in Africa and Middle East,'' Telecom Talk, June 9, 2015, 
https://telecomtalk.info/global-china-telecom-global-expands-in-africa-
and-middle-east/137520/.
    \124\ Id.; ``CTG Signs Deal with Wananchi Group for Major Fiber 
Infrastructure Construction Project,'' China Telecom Group, Mar. 18, 
2015, https://www.chinatelecomglobal.com/data/file/2016/
20160509171658535.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The CTG announcement marks just one of the steps China and 
Chinese businesses have taken to extend into the developing 
world, efforts met with increasing success. Not only has China 
been willing to go into smaller, under-served markets, Chinese 
companies have been able to offer more cost-effective equipment 
than Western companies, as well as financial support that comes 
directly from the Chinese government.\125\ According to Mark 
Natkin, founder and managing director of the Beijing-based 
consultancy Marbridge, Chinese telecom vendors ``identified 
opportunities in developing nations'' where they could 
``leverage their price advantage to develop relationships that 
vendors from rich countries [couldn't] be bothered with.''\126\ 
He goes on to describe China's approach as a long-term strategy 
based on building the core network and banking on the 
likelihood that doing so gives its companies a foothold to win 
follow-on contracts for upgrades and expansions.\127\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \125\ Executive Research Associates, China in Africa: A Strategic 
Overview, at 51 (Oct. 2009), https://www.ide.go.jp/library/English/
Data/Africa--file/Manualreport/pdf/china--all.pdf
    \126\ Marbridge Consulting, ``Management,'' https://
www.marbridgeconsulting.com/management.html (last visited June 1, 
2020); Executive Research Associates, China in Africa: A Strategic 
Overview, at 50 (Oct. 2009).
    \127\ Executive Research Associates, China in Africa: A Strategic 
Overview, at 50 (Oct. 2009).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Huawei, the subject of many headlines during the past few 
years, is a prime example. In 1996, the Chinese government gave 
Huawei the status of ``national champion'' and ensured it would 
have easy access to financing and high levels of government 
subsidies--$222 million in government grants in 2018.\128\ 
Government support has enabled Huawei to offer prices for its 
network equipment that are below other companies' prices, 
allowing Huawei to quickly gain market advantage. In the 
Netherlands, for example, Huawei undercut its competitor, the 
Swedish firm Ericsson, by underbidding for a contract to 
provide network equipment for the Dutch national 5G network by 
60 percent.\129\ Two industry officials who spoke to The 
Washington Post on the condition of anonymity held that 
Huawei's price was so low that, absent the subsidies the 
company had been provided, Huawei would have been unable to 
even produce the necessary network parts.\130\ Some countries 
also receive low-interest loans from Chinese state-owned banks 
to use Huawei equipment.\131\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \128\ Lindsay Maizland & Andrew Chatzky, ``Huawei: China's 
Controversial Tech Giant,'' Council on Foreign Relations, June 12, 
2019; Ellen Nakashima, ``U.S. pushes hard for a ban on Huawei in 
Europe, but the firm's 5G prices are nearly irresistible,'' The 
Washington Post, May 29, 2019; Jeffrey Melnik, ``China's `National 
Champions' Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei,'' Education About Asia, Vol. 
24, Fall 2019, https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/chinas-
national-champions-alibaba-tencent-and-huawei.pdf.
    \129\ Lindsay Maizland & Andrew Chatzky, ``Huawei: China's 
Controversial Tech Giant,'' Council on Foreign Relations, June 12, 
2019; Ellen Nakashima, ``U.S. pushes hard for a ban on Huawei in 
Europe, but the firm's 5G prices are nearly irresistible,'' The 
Washington Post, May 29, 2019.
    \130\ Ellen Nakashima, ``U.S. pushes hard for a ban on Huawei in 
Europe, but the firm's 5G prices are nearly irresistible,'' The 
Washington Post, May 29, 2019.
    \131\ Lindsay Maizland & Andrew Chatzky, ``Huawei: China's 
Controversial Tech Giant,'' Council on Foreign Relations, June 12, 
2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The result has been near-complete dominance in some 
regions. For example, in Africa Huawei has built about 70 
percent of the 4G networks, and in cases such as Zambia, it is 
developing the country's entire telecommunications 
infrastructure.\132\ More broadly, Chinese technology now 
serves as the ``backbone of network infrastructure'' in several 
African countries, and Chinese firms like Huawei, ZTE, and 
China Telecom are the major players in erecting the 
infrastructure needed for next generation technologies across 
the African continent.\133\ In Kenya alone, Huawei has built 
more than 3,500 mobile base stations (the antennas that receive 
and transmit radio frequencies which make mobile communications 
possible) and installed 4,000 kilometers of fiber optic 
cable.\134\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \132\ Amy Mackinnon, ``For Africa, Chinese-Built Internet Is Better 
Than No Internet at All,'' Foreign Policy, Mar. 19, 2019; Wesley Rahn, 
``Will China's 5G `Digital Silk Road' Lead to an Authoritarian Future 
for the Internet?,'' DW, Apr. 26, 2019.
    \133\ Chiponda Chimbelu, ``Investing in Africa's tech 
infrastructure. Has China won already?,'' DW, May 3, 2019.
    \134\ Huawei, Huawei Kenya Sustainability Report 2018, (2018), at 
8, https://www.huawei.com/minisite/explore-kenya/pdf/huawei--kenya--
csd--report--v2.pdf; ``Huawei Kenya launches first Sustainability 
Report Highlighting Efforts to Expand Broadband Nationwide and 
Solutions to Drive Kenya's Digital Transformation,'' Huawei, Sept. 7, 
2019, https://www.huawei.com/ke/press-events/news/ke/2019/huawei-kenya-
launches-first-sustainability-report; Ericsson, ``Base stations and 
networks,'' https://www.ericsson.com/en/about-us/sustainability-and-
corporate-responsibility/responsible-business/radio-waves-and-health/
base-stations-and-networks (last visited June 30, 2020). As a note, 
there are different numbers provided regarding the number of mobile 
base stations built by Huawei from these two citations. The 2018 report 
states that the number of stations built is 3,500, while the press 
release gives the number 3,5000. This report assumes that the number 
3,5000 is a typographical error and uses the number of 3,500.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Today, Huawei operates in more than 170 countries and is 
the second-largest smartphone seller in the world, just behind 
Samsung, but ahead of Apple.\135\ Robert Atkinson, President of 
the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a 
U.S. think tank, states that Huawei's research and development 
investments surpass any other company worldwide.\136\ Beyond 
consumer electronics, Huawei offers telecommunications 
equipment and cloud services.\137\ Furthermore, Huawei owns 
more patents for 5G infrastructure than any of its 
competitors.\138\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \135\ Huawei, ``About Huawei,'' https://www.huawei.com/us/about-
huawei (last visited June 1, 2020); Jusy Hong, ``Global smartphone 
shipments fall for seventh consecutive quarter in Q2, even with limited 
impact from US Huawei ban,'' Informa, Aug. 5, 2019, https://
technology.informa.com/616273/global-smartphone-shipments-fall-for-
seventh-consecutive-quarter-in-q2-even-with-limited-impact-from-us-
huawei-ban; Counterpoint, ``Global Smartphone Market Share: By 
Quarter,'' https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-
share/ (last visited June 30, 2020).
    \136\ Wesley Rahn, ``Will China's 5G `Digital Silk Road' Lead to an 
Authoritarian Future for the Internet?,'' DW, Apr. 26, 2019; 
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, ``Robert D. Atkinson,'' 
https://itif.org/person/robert-d-atkinson (last visited June 1, 2020).
    \137\ Lindsay Maizland & Andrew Chatzky, ``Huawei: China's 
Controversial Tech Giant,'' Council on Foreign Relations, June 12, 
2019; Huawei, ``About Huawei Cloud,'' https://www.huaweicloud.com/en-
us/about/about--us.html (last visited June 30, 2020).
    \138\ Lindsay Maizland & Andrew Chatzky, ``Huawei: China's 
Controversial Tech Giant,'' Council on Foreign Relations, June 12, 
2019; Who is leading the 5G patent race, IPlytics, at 4 and 5 (Nov. 
2019), https://www.iplytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Who-Leads-
the-5G-Patent-Race--2019.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Huawei's investments in research and development have 
positioned it to build the next-generation 5G infrastructure in 
Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Alarmingly, even governments 
close to the United States are weighing whether to integrate 
Huawei technologies into their infrastructure despite security 
concerns. For example, the ruling party of Germany in early 
2020 backed a position paper that pushed for more stringent 
regulation of foreign technologies in its 5G networks but did 
not ban the use of Huawei components.\139\ Furthermore, 
Germany's three primary telecommunications firms, while 
deciding to remove Huawei from its core networks, will continue 
to utilize Huawei technologies on peripheral radio access 
networks.\140\ Brazil, another U.S. partner, faces an upcoming 
decision on whether Huawei should be further involved in 
Brazil's infrastructure as Brazil prepares to auction spectrum 
for 5G in late 2020.\141\ In July 2019, Brazil's Vice President 
Hamilton Mourao told reporters that the country would not 
restrict Huawei on 5G, extending a decade-long 
relationship.\142\ In an example of that relationship, Huawei 
supports an Internet of Things laboratory in Sao Paulo state 
and is looking to build a smartphone assembly plant.\143\ While 
security concerns have been raised by Eduardo Bolsonaro, a 
lawmaker and son of Brazil's president, it remains to be seen 
how Brazil manages Huawei's involvement in its domestic 5G 
moving forward, especially in light of Foreign Minister Ernesto 
Araujo reportedly arguing for a Huawei 5G ban to President 
Bolsonaro.\144\ Meanwhile, Mexico and Argentina plan to start 
Latin America's first 5G networks in 2020 and are considering 
allowing Huawei participation.\145\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \139\ Andreas Rinke, ``Merkel's conservatives stop short of Huawei 
5G ban in Germany,'' Reuters, Feb. 11, 2020.
    \140\ Douglas Busvine & Thomas Seythal, ``Telefonica Deutschland 
picks Ericsson for 5G core network,'' Reuters, June 2, 2020.
    \141\ Anthony Boadle, ``Huawei role in Brazil 5G up to national 
security chief: regulator,'' Reuters, Feb. 18, 2020.
    \142\ ``Defying US, Brazil Allows Huawei to Move Forward with 5G 
Network,'' Al Jazeera, July 15, 2019.
    \143\ Oliver Stuenkel, ``Huawei Heads South: The Battle over 5G 
Comes to Latin America,'' Foreign Affairs, May 10, 2019.
    \144\ Anthony Boadle, ``Huawei role in Brazil 5G up to national 
security chief: regulator,'' Reuters, Feb. 18, 2020; Eduardo Baptista, 
``China-Brazil trade on track, but Huawei tension may be threat to 
relations,'' South China Morning Post, June 21, 2020, https://
www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3089903/china-brazil-trade-track-
huawei-tension-may-be-threat-relations.
    \145\ Oliver Stuenkel, ``Huawei Heads South: The Battle over 5G 
Comes to Latin America,'' Foreign Affairs, May 10, 2019; Andres 
Schipani et al., ``Latin America resists US pressure to exclude 
Huawei,'' Financial Times, June 9, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Huawei's 5G push continues to see success in other 
countries, especially ones in China's Belt and Road Initiative, 
highlighting the company's ability to dominate the 5G space by 
providing networks for prices estimated to be 30 percent less 
than its competitors.\146\ For example:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \146\ Lindsay Maizland & Andrew Chatzky, ``Huawei: China's 
Controversial Tech Giant,'' Council on Foreign Relations, June 12, 
2019.


   Malaysia is not barring Huawei from spectrum bids relating 
        to its 5G rollout, saying that security decisions will 
        be made by its ``own safety standards'';\147\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \147\ Joseph Sipalan & Krishna N. Das, ``Malaysia to choose 5G 
partners based on own security standards,'' Reuters, Feb. 17, 2020.

   In Thailand, Huawei offered to build a tech training center 
        in Bangkok as a means of enticing Thailand to allow 
        Huawei to build its 5G network;\148\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \148\ Apornrath Phoonphongphiphat, ``Huawei sweetens 5G offer in 
Thailand with tech training center,'' Nikkei Asian Review, November 18, 
2019, https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/5G-networks/Huawei-sweetens-5G-
offer-in-Thailand-with-tech-training-center; Takashi Kawakami, ``China 
closes in on 70% of world's 5G subscribers,'' Nikkei Asian Review, May 
12, 2020, https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/5G-networks/China-closes-
in-on-70-of-world-s-5G-subscribers.

   In Italy, Huawei offered to provide cloud computing 
        services that would link Italian hospitals both with 
        each other and with hospitals in Wuhan in response to 
        the COVID-19 pandemic;\149\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \149\ Theresa Fallon, ``China, Italy, and Coronavirus: Geopolitics 
and Propaganda,'' The Diplomat, Mar. 20, 2020.

   Unnamed sources reported in March 2020 that as part of its 
        5G rollout, France's cybersecurity agency, ANSSI, will 
        allow Huawei equipment to be used for non-core elements 
        of France's network;\150\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \150\ Mathieu Rosemain & Gwenaelle Barzic, ``Exclusive: France to 
allow some Huawei gear in its 5G network--sources,'' Reuters, Mar. 12, 
2020.

   Russia is building out its 5G network with Huawei's 
        help;\151\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \151\ Zak Doffman, ``Huawei Just Launched 5G In Russia With Putin's 
Support: 'Hello Splinternet','' Forbes, Sept. 1, 2019.

   The Washington Post reported that Huawei is building out 
        North Korea's wireless network.\152\ Huawei stated that 
        it does not have a business presence in North Korea, 
        but did not dispute the reporting done by The 
        Washington Post;\153\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \152\ Ellen Nakashima et al., ``Leaked documents reveal Huawei's 
secret operations to build North Korea's wireless network,'' The 
Washington Post, July 22, 2019; Emily Stewart, ``A New Reason to Worry 
About Huawei: It's Been Building North Korea's Wireless Networks,'' 
Vox, July 22, 2019, https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/7/22/20704196/
huawei-north-korea-washington-post-sanctions-panda.
    \153\ Ellen Nakashima et al., ``Leaked documents reveal Huawei's 
secret operations to build North Korea's wireless network,'' The 
Washington Post, July 22, 2019.

   Even some small U.S. rural telecom companies have used 
        Huawei equipment.\154\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \154\ Jeanne Whalen, ``Huawei helped bring Internet to small-town 
America. Now its equipment has to go,'' The Washington Post, Oct. 10, 
2019.


    By building out so much of the digital infrastructure in 
the developing world, China could end up dominating a large 
portion of the global communications market, positioning it to 
potentially pressure other governments or conduct 
espionage.\155\ Indeed, multiple governments that purchase or 
rely on Chinese technologies also enact tough restraints on 
free speech or engage in illiberal activities, such as spying 
on political opponents, and there have been suspicious data 
transfers from Chinese-built IT systems.\156\ For example, in 
2017, technicians working at the African Union headquarters in 
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, discovered that servers in the building, 
built by a Chinese company with Chinese funding, had for years 
been transmitting massive quantities of data to China, making 
even the most sensitive material vulnerable to Chinese 
exploitation.\157\ Despite these incidents and diplomatic 
warnings, however, many countries--both developing and 
developed--calculate that access to low-cost, good-quality data 
networks and hardware outweighs the potential risks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \155\ See, e.g., Zak Doffman, ``CIA Claims It Has Proof Huawei Has 
Been Funded By China's Military and Intelligence,'' Forbes, Apr. 20, 
2019; Isobel Asher Hamilton, ``Researchers Studied 25,000 Leaked Huawei 
Resumes and Found Troubling Links to the Government and Spies,'' 
Business Insider, July 8, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-
study-finds-connections-between-staff-and-chinese-intelligence-2019-7.
    \156\ Steven Feldstein, ``When it Comes to Digital 
Authoritarianism, China is a Challenge--But Not the Only Challenge,'' 
War on the Rocks, Feb. 12, 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/02/
when-it-comes-to-digital-authoritarianism-china-is-a-challenge-but-not-
the-only-challenge/; Josh Chin, ``The Internet, Divided Between the 
U.S. and China, Has Become a Battleground,'' The Wall Street Journal, 
Feb. 9, 2019.
    \157\ Joan Tilouine & Ghalia Kadiri, ``A Addis-Abeba, le siege de 
l'Union africaine espionne par Pekin,'' Le Monde, Jan. 26, 2018, 
https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2018/01/26/a-addis-abeba-le-
siege-de-l-union-africaine-espionne-par-les-chinois--5247521--
3212.html; Mailyn Fidler, ``African Union Bugged by China: Cyber 
Espionage as Evidence of Strategic Shifts,'' Council on Foreign 
Relations, Mar. 7, 2018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As noted above, China's export and infrastructure efforts 
around the globe represent an economic concern for the United 
States. However, China's export of digital technology in and of 
itself is not the key issue, as it is only the groundwork upon 
which digital authoritarianism can flourish. What really 
advances this censorship and surveillance system is China 
providing countries with social control systems that run on 
exported digital technologies, including relevant training and 
expertise.
    In its report, Freedom on the Net 2018, Freedom House 
highlights how, during 2018, the Chinese government hosted 
media officials from dozens of countries for seminars on its 
system of censorship and surveillance.\158\ Outside experts 
have little visibility into the details of these trainings, but 
governments who participate frequently return home to pass 
cybersecurity laws very similar to those in China.\159\ 
Furthermore, Chinese companies have supplied many governments--
at least some of which have poor human rights records or a 
tendency towards autocracy--with advanced facial recognition 
technology and data analytics tools that can be easily 
exploited by repressive governments and intelligence 
services.\160\ For example:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \158\ Adrian Shahbaz, Freedom on the Net 2018: The Rise of Digital 
Authoritarianism, Freedom House (Oct. 31, 2018), https://bit.ly/
2IYJkJE.
    \159\ Id.. Vietnam, Uganda, and Tanzania all introduced 
cybersecurity laws resembling China's following such seminars. Id. See 
Also Abdi Latif Dahir, ``China is Exporting its Digital Surveillance 
Methods to African Countries,'' Quartz Africa, Nov. 1, 2018; Josh Chin, 
``The Internet, Divided Between the U.S. and China, Has Become a 
Battleground,'' The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 9, 2019.
    \160\ Daniel Benaim and Hollie Russon Gilman, ``China's Aggressive 
Surveillance Technology Will Spread Beyond Its Borders,'' Slate, Aug. 
9, 2018.


   The Chinese startup CloudWalk is partnering with the 
        Zimbabwean government on a mass facial recognition 
        program in Zimbabwe;\161\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \161\ Shan Jie, ``China exports facial ID technology to Zimbabwe,'' 
Global Times, Apr. 12, 2018, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/
1097747.shtml; Abdi Latif Dahir, ``China is Exporting its Digital 
Surveillance Methods to African Countries,'' Quartz Africa, Nov. 1, 
2018.

   Huawei is advising Kenya on its information and 
        communication technology (ICT) Master Plan and Vision 
        2030;\162\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \162\ Abdi Latif Dahir, ``China is Exporting its Digital 
Surveillance Methods to African Countries,'' Quartz Africa, Nov. 1, 
2018; Huawei, ``Kenya,'' https://www.huawei.com/us/about-huawei/
sustainability/win-win-development/social-contribution/seeds-for-the-
future/kenya (last visited June 7, 2020).

   In Mauritius, Huawei is installing 4,000 cameras;\163\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \163\ Sheridan Prasso, ``China's Digital Silk Road is Looking More 
Like an Iron Curtain, Bloomberg, Jan. 10, 2019.

   Zambia is spending $1 billion on Chinese-made 
        telecommunications, broadcasting, and surveillance 
        technology;\164\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \164\ Id.

   Chinese start-up Yitu bid for a contract for facial 
        recognition cameras in Singapore and opened its first 
        international office in Singapore in January 2019.\165\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \165\ Anna Gross et al., ``Chinese tech groups shaping UN facial 
recognition standards,'' Financial Times, Dec. 1, 2019; Amanda Lentino, 
``This Chinese facial recognition start-up can identify a person in 
seconds,'' CNBC, May 16, 2019.


    These examples highlight a few Chinese efforts to expand 
digital authoritarianism. To more fully show how China's 
approach of economic advancement and authoritarian outreach is 
extending digital authoritarianism to new countries, this 
report delves into four case studies that underscore China's 
efforts to not only provide technologies to other nations, but 
also to work with these countries to perfect methods of social 
control that imitate China's own patterns of digital 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
authoritarianism.

                              ----------                              


                         Case Study: Venezuela

    The regime of disputed Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro 
takes full advantage of Chinese hardware and services in its 
effort to control Venezuelan citizens. Venezuela has Internet 
and mobile networking equipment, intelligent monitoring 
systems, and facial recognition technology developed and 
installed by Chinese companies, and regime officials have 
traveled to China to participate in seminars on information 
management.\166\ The regime uses these technologies to censor 
and control its critics by blocking social media platforms and 
political content, using pro-regime commentators to manipulate 
online discussions, stifling content critical of Maduro, 
increasing surveillance of citizens, tracking and detaining 
government critics, and accessing the data of human rights 
organizations.\167\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \166\ Angus Berwick, ``How ZTE Helps Venezuela Create China-Style 
Social Control,'' Reuters Investigates, Nov. 14, 2018; Paul Mozur et 
al., ``Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State,'' 
The New York Times, Apr. 24, 2019.
    \167\ ``Venezuela / Protests: UN and IACHR Rapporteurs condemn 
censorship, arrests and attacks on journalists,'' UN Human Rights--
Office of the High Commissioner, Apr. 26, 2017, https://www.ohchr.org/
en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21535&LangID=E; Angus 
Berwick, ``How ZTE Helps Venezuela Create China-Style Social Control,'' 
Reuters Investigates, Nov. 14, 2018; ``Freedom on the Net 2019: 
Venezuela,'' Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/country/venezuela/
freedom-net/2019 (last visited July 10, 2020); Moises Rendon & Arianna 
Kohan, ``The Internet: Venezuela's Lifeline,'' Center for Strategic and 
International Studies, Dec. 4, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ZTE helped the regime create Venezuela's Carnet de la 
Patria (Fatherland Card). Critics have labeled the card as a 
new option for the Maduro regime to exert increased social 
control over its population (such as determining who receives 
subsidized food or health services), especially against those 
the regime considers political opponents.\168\ The initial idea 
began more than a decade ago as a standardized ID for voting or 
opening a bank account.\169\ However, as Venezuela's economic 
and political crisis deepened, the regime used it to track 
Comites Locales de Abastecimiento y Produccion (Local 
Committees for Supply and Production, or CLAP) boxes, the 
subsidized food packages the government began distributing in 
2016.\170\ ZTE in 2017 also received an undisclosed portion of 
$70 million to build out a centralized database and mobile 
payment system for the card in an effort to bolster ``national 
security.''\171\ By late 2018, a team of ZTE employees was 
embedded in a special unit of Venezuela's state 
telecommunications company that oversees the management of the 
database.\172\ According to employees of the entity that 
manages the card system, the database stores birthdays, family 
information, employment and income, property owned, medical 
history, state benefits received, presence on social media, 
political party membership, and voting records.\173\ To 
encourage people to sign up for the card, the Maduro regime has 
granted ``cash prizes to cardholders for performing civic 
duties, like rallying voters.''\174\ However, the regime also 
made it mandatory for anyone wanting to receive public benefits 
such as medicine, subsidized fuel, and pensions.\175\ Once the 
card became the way to sign up for much-needed services, its 
adoption was generally assured, and the Maduro regime claims 
that over half of the population retains a Fatherland 
Card.\176\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \168\ Laura Vidal, ``Venezuelans fear 'Fatherland Card' may be a 
new form of social control,'' The World, Dec. 28, 2018, https://
www.pri.org/stories/2018-12-28/venezuelans-fear-fatherland-card-may-be-
new-form-social-control.
    \169\ Angus Berwick, ``How ZTE Helps Venezuela Create China-Style 
Social Control,'' Reuters Investigates, Nov. 14, 2018.
    \170\ Jim Wyss & Cody Weddle, ``Venezuela's Maduro aims to turn 
empty stomachs into full ballot boxes,'' Miami Herald, May 16, 2018. 
See also Press Release, U.S. Department of Treasury, ``Treasury 
Disrupts Corruption Network Stealing From Venezuela's Food Distribution 
Program, CLAP,'' July 25, 2019.
    \171\ Angus Berwick, ``How ZTE Helps Venezuela Create China-Style 
Social Control,'' Reuters Investigates, Nov. 14, 2018.
    \172\ Id.
    \173\ Id.
    \174\ Id.
    \175\ Id.
    \176\ Id.; Jim Wyss & Cody Weddle, ``Venezuela's Maduro aims to 
turn empty stomachs into full ballot boxes,'' Miami Herald, May 16, 
2018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Using information gathered through enrollment and card 
transactions, the regime is creating and growing a database 
that could be a powerful tool for identifying, harassing, and 
silencing Maudro's critics. Current and former employees of 
Cantv, Venezuela's state telephone and Internet provider, told 
Reuters that the card still only records if a person voted--not 
how they voted--but there is evidence that government agencies 
are tracking whether government employees are voting.\177\ ZTE 
is also supporting the Maduro regime by taking on projects that 
government-owned enterprises can no longer manage. As of 2015, 
ZTE was helping build six emergency response centers monitoring 
Venezuela's major cities, and since 2016 it has been working to 
centralize the government's video surveillance.\178\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \177\ Angus Berwick, ``How ZTE Helps Venezuela Create China-Style 
Social Control,'' Reuters Investigates, Nov. 14, 2018.
    \178\ Id.

                              ----------                              


                        Case Study: Central Asia

    In April 2019, the Uzbek government signed a $1 billion 
deal with Huawei to expand surveillance operations in the 
country.\179\ At the time, the capital city of Tashkent had 883 
cameras that authorities used to record and analyze movements 
while automatically reporting road violations such as 
speeding.\180\ Under the new agreement, Huawei will upgrade the 
cameras to ``digitally manage political affairs.''\181\ 
Similarly, Huawei aided the implementation of Tajikistan's 
``safe city'' project in Dushanbe in 2013, providing $22 
million (primarily a $20.91 million loan) for the installation 
of cameras along roads and overseeing monuments and parks.\182\ 
China also owns TK mobile, one of the five telecommunications 
providers in Tajikistan, and Huawei is the main technology 
supplier for Kyrgyzstan's top telecommunication providers.\183\ 
Although the Kyrgyz government withdrew from Huawei's $60 
million ``safe cities'' project in March 2018, it later chose a 
Russian company, Vega, to implement the first phase of a 
similar traffic monitoring system in November 2018.\184\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \179\ ``Huawei and CITIC Guoan invest over US$1 billion to develop 
Uzbekistan's digital infrastructure,'' Xiangshi Xinwen Wang (Detailed 
News) via Silu Xin Guancha (Silk Road New Observer), Apr. 26, 2019, 
http://web.siluxgc.com/UZ/20190426/16656.html (translated from 
Chinese); Yau Tsz Yan, ``Smart Cities or Surveillance? Huawei in 
Central Asia,'' The Diplomat, Aug. 7, 2019.
    \180\ Yau Tsz Yan, ``Smart Cities or Surveillance? Huawei in 
Central Asia,'' The Diplomat, Aug. 7, 2019.
    \181\ Id.
    \182\ Id.; Liu Ruowei, ``Millions of Roads, Safety First: The 
Central Asian `Safe City' project is here!,'' Silu Xin Guangcha (Silk 
Road New Observer) on WeChat, Feb. 13, 2019, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/
s/z3l--UHX40W8OIJi61HaomA (translated from Chinese).
    \183\ Yau Tsz Yan, ``Smart Cities or Surveillance? Huawei in 
Central Asia,'' The Diplomat, Aug. 7, 2019; ``Announcement on providing 
guarantee for holding subsidiaries,'' ZTE Corporation, May 11, 2019, 
https://bit.ly/3a7lbMb.
    \184\ Yau Tsz Yan, ``Smart Cities or Surveillance? Huawei in 
Central Asia,'' The Diplomat, Aug. 7, 2019; ``The Kyrgyz government 
suddenly announced the termination of the ``smart city'' project, 
China's Huawei has not yet responded,'' Kabar, Mar. 18, 2015, http://
cn.kabar.kg/news/2-8/ (translated from Chinese); ``Vega successfully 
completes first round of Safe City program in Bishkek,'' Vega, May 20, 
2019, https://www.vega.su/press-room/?ELEMENT--ID=2216 (translated from 
Russian).

                              ----------                              


                          Case Study: Ecuador

    The Ecuador example illustrates how, even if democratic 
institutions prevail, vestiges of China's influence persist. 
Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, the autocratic 
leftist and ally of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, 
left office in 2017 but the surveillance system he installed 
remains in use.\185\ Correa learned of China's surveillance 
technology after Ecuadorian officials visiting Beijing for the 
2008 Olympics received a tour of Beijing's surveillance 
system.\186\ Three years later, the Ecuadorian government began 
installing a system of high-powered cameras throughout the 
country for the stated purpose of reducing crime.\187\ This 
system sends images to 16 monitoring centers that employ more 
than 3,000 people.\188\ China guaranteed state funding and 
loans for the project, and in return, Ecuador committed to 
exporting ``large portions of its oil reserves'' to China, 
underscoring another key point: China's utilization of 
predatory lending and technological knowledge to receive other 
benefits.\189\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \185\ ``Ecuador 'rejects unlimited election terms', blocking Correa 
return,'' BBC, Feb. 5, 2018.
    \186\ Paul Mozur et al., ``Made in China, Exported to the World: 
The Surveillance State,'' The New York Times, Apr. 24, 2019.
    \187\ Id.
    \188\ Id.
    \189\ Id.; Clifford Krauss & Keith Bradsher, ``China's Global 
Ambitions, Cash and Strings Attached,'' The New York Times, July 24, 
2015.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Two Chinese companies, Huawei and China National 
Electronics Import & Export Corporation (CEIEC), primarily 
built Ecuador's surveillance system.\190\ In addition to 
recording events, the monitoring system offers Ecuadorian 
authorities the ability to track phones and, according to the 
New York Times, may be equipped with facial-recognition 
capabilities in the future.\191\ As part of the process of 
fully integrating these technologies into Ecuador's 
infrastructure, China engaged in a training operation in which 
Ecuadorian officials visited China and Chinese engineers 
educated Ecuadorian engineers on how to manage the system.\192\ 
The Ecuador project created a toehold in the region: Ecuador's 
decision to install the equipment prompted the Venezuelan and 
Bolivian governments to follow suit, and soon after, Venezuela 
installed a larger version that aimed to include 30,000 
cameras.\193\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \190\ Paul Mozur et al., ``Made in China, Exported to the World: 
The Surveillance State,'' The New York Times, Apr. 24, 2019.
    \191\ Id.
    \192\ Id.
    \193\ Id.; ``Venezuela will replicate the Ecuadorian model of the 
Integrated Security System Ecu-911,'' National Service for Risk and 
Emergency Management of Ecuador, Dec. 25, 2013, https://
www.gestionderiesgos.gob.ec/venezuela-replicara-modelo-ecuatoriano-del-
sistema-integrado-de-seguridad-ecu-911/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Although Correa's successor, President Lenin Moreno, has 
worked to reverse many of Correa's autocratic policies, the 
surveillance system is still operational and holds the 
potential for abuse. When New York Times reporters had the 
opportunity to see in person the 800-camera operation in Quito, 
there were only 30 police officers available to check camera 
footage, and anecdotal reports suggest crimes continue to take 
place in plain view of cameras.\194\ Moreover, the recordings 
are also available to Ecuador's domestic intelligence agency, 
the National Intelligence Secretariat (SENAIN), which has a 
history of harassing and tracking political opponents.\195\ 
Indeed, given the small number of police available to monitor 
crime-prone locations, the system is probably better suited to 
spying on individuals than fending off criminality.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \194\ Paul Mozur et al., ``Made in China, Exported to the World: 
The Surveillance State,'' The New York Times, Apr. 24, 2019.
    \195\ Id.

                              ----------                              


                          Case Study: Zimbabwe

    China is also leveraging the deployment of surveillance 
technology overseas to improve its products' functionality. 
Studies have shown that facial recognition systems developed in 
Western nations tend to perform better on Caucasian faces and 
those developed in East Asian nations tend to perform better on 
their respective populations.\196\ While Western technology 
companies are grappling with how to teach machines about race, 
their Chinese counterparts are using their customer base in 
Africa to help develop advanced capabilities that differentiate 
by race.\197\ For example, in March 2018, the Zimbabwean 
government agreed to a partnership to develop facial 
recognition programs in the country with CloudWalk Technology, 
a startup located in Guangzhou.\198\ Additionally, Zimbabwe 
entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Hikvision in 
which the Chinese company would donate facial recognition 
cameras and software for use at border posts, airports, and 
state entry points in Zimbabwe.\199\ Partnerships such as these 
provide Chinese companies with the opportunity to develop and 
refine their databases with different ethnicities and 
demographics, in Zimbabwe's case a majority-Black population, 
while enticing the country with technological 
modernization.\200\ A key consequence of such partnerships, 
according to Quartz reporter Lynsey Chutel, is Chinese 
companies ``getting ahead of US and European developers'' on 
facial recognition.\201\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \196\ P. Jonathon Phillips et al., An Other-Race Effect for Face 
Recognition Algorithms, Association for Computing Machinery (Feb. 
2011), https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1870076.1870082; Steve Lohr, 
``Facial Recognition is Accurate, if You're a White Guy,'' The New York 
Times, Feb. 9, 2018; Clare Garvie & Jonathan Frankle, ``Facial-
Recognition Software Might Have a Racial Bias Problem,'' The Atlantic, 
Apr. 7, 2016.
    \197\ Lynsey Chutel, ``China is Exporting Facial Recognition 
Software to Africa, Expanding its Vast Database,'' Quartz Africa, May 
25, 2018.
    \198\ Id.; Zhang Hongpei, ``Chinese Facial ID Tech to Land in 
Africa,'' Global Times, May 17, 2018, http://www.globaltimes.cn/
content/1102797.shtml; Shan Jie, ``China exports facial ID technology 
to Zimbabwe,'' Global Times, April 12, 2018, http://www.globaltimes.cn/
content/1097747.shtml.
    \199\ Farai Mudzingwa, ``Government Acknowledges Facial Recognition 
System In The Works,'' TechZim, June 13, 2018, https://
www.techzim.co.zw/2018/06/government-acknowledges-facial-recognition-
system-in-the-works/.
    \200\ Lynsey Chutel, ``China is Exporting Facial Recognition 
Software to Africa, Expanding its Vast Database,'' Quartz Africa, May 
25, 2018.
    \201\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Global Challenge

    The situations described above are key examples of how 
China is using economic and, more importantly, geopolitical and 
outreach tools to stimulate the growth of digital 
authoritarianism in new markets and nations. Although most 
China tech-watchers agree that the use of Chinese surveillance 
and censorship systems around the world is growing, they differ 
on how many are in use, and, given the proliferation of 
Chinese-built telecommunications equipment, how widely their 
use may ultimately reach. According to Steven Feldstein, former 
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State at the Bureau for 
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, ``Huawei alone is 
responsible for providing AI [artificial intelligence] 
surveillance technology to at least fifty countries 
worldwide.''\202\ When Huawei's efforts are combined with 
Hikvision, Dahua, and ZTE's efforts, Chinese companies supply 
AI surveillance technology in sixty-three countries, thirty-six 
of which are part of BRI.\203\ Experts are still trying to 
assess the long-term consequences of China's technological 
expansion; Feldstein also notes that China is exporting AI-
equipped surveillance technology to governments ranging from 
closed authoritarian systems to flawed democracies.\204\ In an 
article on the proliferation of Chinese-made surveillance 
systems, Foreign Policy cites a Huawei study, which has been 
removed from the company's website, in which ``the company 
boasted that it had already deployed its `Safe City' system in 
230 cities around the world, for more than 90 national or 
regional governments.''\205\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \202\ Steven Feldstein, ``The Global Expansion of AI 
Surveillance,'' Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Sept. 17, 
2019.
    \203\ Id.
    \204\ Id.; Steven Feldstein, ``China is Exporting AI Surveillance 
Technology to Countries Around the World,'' Newsweek, Apr. 23, 2019.
    \205\ Bojan Stojkovski, ``Big Brother Comes to Belgrade,'' Foreign 
Policy, June 18, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Due to China's efforts at proliferating the technologies 
and methodologies of digital authoritarianism, the United 
States finds itself in an intensifying battle over the global 
ICT sector. China's export of ICT infrastructure, its ability 
to deliver lower-priced, reliable access to telecommunications 
network technology, and its competitive edge in 5G combine to 
mount a strong challenge to the U.S. to become the biggest 
provider of 5G services to the world. Not only do these efforts 
provide China with a competitive edge both commercially and, in 
a potential conflict, militarily, they also offer even greater 
leverage to push client countries to adopt the Chinese approach 
to the Internet and the regulation of speech. Consequently, the 
United States must proactively defend a free, democratic model 
for the digital domain and Internet governance and push back 
against China's malign activities abroad.
    However, it is not enough for the United States to take a 
purely defensive posture against China's digital 
authoritarianism. It is critical that the United States 
government stimulate technological innovation in the United 
States by increasing government research and development 
funding, adopting a more extensive industrial policy, 
developing and attracting superior talent to the United States' 
technology sector, strengthening bilateral and multilateral 
technology initiatives with like-minded allies and partners, 
and ensuring a competitive advantage for domestic companies in 
overseas markets. By doing so, the United States and its allies 
can open up more opportunities to create and deploy emerging 
technologies that can outcompete Chinese products and services 
and thereby undercut its ability to export digital 
authoritarianism. If the United States does not develop and 
implement an all-encompassing strategy for combatting China and 
its cyber efforts, the United States will cede the global cyber 
domain to our Pacific adversary and open up a future in which 
digital authoritarianism becomes the global norm, leaving the 
United States and its allies vulnerable and placing countless 
more individuals under the thumb of digital authoritarianism.



   Chapter 3: Institutionalizing Digital Authoritarianism--China at 
                           International Fora

                              ----------                              

    In addition to using heavily-subsidized technology to 
purchase political influence in countries around the world, 
China continues to use diplomacy and various international 
domains to further its authoritarian goals. Its objective: to 
set the rules and norms around the governance of digital 
technologies. From the United Nations (UN) to the World Trade 
Organization (WTO), China has used its political and economic 
muscle to shape the international standards surrounding the 
digital domain in favor of a more authoritarian view of the 
world.
    Since General Secretary Xi came into power in 2012, the 
cyber realm has become an increasingly important strategic 
domain.\206\ Adam Segal of the Council on Foreign Relations 
wrote that, since then, the CCP's goals have been threefold: 
``limit the threat that the Internet and the flow of 
information may pose to domestic stability and regime 
legitimacy; shape cyberspace to extend Beijing's political, 
military, and economic influence; and counter US advantages in 
cyberspace while increasing China's room to maneuver.''\207\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \206\ See, e.g., James A. Lewis & Simon Hansen, China's 
Cyberpower--International and domestic priorities, Australian Strategic 
Policy Institute, at 1 (Nov. 2014), https://bit.ly/2UTtZMQ.
    \207\ Adam Segal ``Chinese Cyber Diplomacy in a New Era of 
Uncertainty,'' Hoover Institution, June 2017, https://hvr.co/374oSiA.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    According to a report prepared for the United States-China 
Economic and Security Review Commission in 2018, China uses:


        [A] comprehensive techno-nationalist strategy that 
        coordinates Chinese efforts to gain leading roles in 
        international standards organizations while also using 
        state funding to allow Chinese companies to undersell 
        their competitors in developed economies and win 
        infrastructure contracts in developing markets, 
        ensuring that its indigenously-developed technologies 
        and standards become widely adopted with or without 
        international recognition.\208\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \208\ John Chen et al., China's Internet of Things, Research Report 
Prepared on Behalf of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review 
Commission, by SOS International (SOSi), at 69 (Oct. 2018).


    Above all else, China is heavily focused on ensuring its 
digital sovereignty, as indicated by its presence as the second 
``principle'' (following ``peace'' as the first) in their 2017 
International Strategy of Cooperation on Cyberspace.\209\ In 
the strategy, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and 
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs argues for digital sovereignty 
and states that ``[n]o country should pursue cyber 
hegemony.''\210\ It appears, as evidenced by its efforts in a 
number of different international forums, that China's idea of 
not pursuing ``cyber hegemony'' applies to every country other 
than China.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \209\ Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of 
China, ``International Strategy of Cooperation on Cyberspace--March 
2017,'' Mar. 1, 2017, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa--eng/wjb--663304/
zzjg--663340/jks--665232/kjlc--665236/qtwt--665250/t1442390.shtml.
    \210\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              ----------                              


                              Definition:

  Digital Sovereignty--At the Opening Ceremony of the 
        International Workshop on Information and Cyber 
        Security in June 2014, Vice Foreign Minister Li Baodang 
        stated that sovereignty in cyberspace, which this 
        report refers to as digital sovereignty, comprises the 
        following factors: ``states['] own jurisdiction over 
        the ICT infrastructure and activities within their 
        territories; national governments are entitled to 
        making public policies for the Internet based on their 
        national conditions; no country shall use the Internet 
        to interfere in other countries' internal affairs or 
        undermine other countries' interests.''\211\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \211\ Press Release, Vice Foreign Minister Li Baodong, ``Address by 
Vice Foreign Minister Li Baodong at the Opening Ceremony of the 
International Workshop on Information and Cyber Security,'' June 5, 
2014, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa--eng/wjbxw/t1162458.shtml.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              ----------                              


The United Nations
    At the United Nations, China has played a counterproductive 
role in efforts to build consensus on a free and fair future of 
cyberspace. China's behavior echoes its consistent undermining 
of UN efforts that could highlight its own poor human rights 
record.\212\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \212\ See, e.g., Lindsay Maizland, ``Is China Undermining Human 
Rights at the United Nations?'' Council on Foreign Relations, July 9, 
2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In 2011, China--along with Russia, Tajikistan, and 
Uzbekistan--submitted a draft resolution on an international 
code of conduct for information security to the 2011 United 
Nations General Assembly.\213\ The resolution, which was later 
enhanced and resubmitted in 2015 by a slightly larger group of 
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries, 
emphasizes the sovereignty and stability of individual states 
within the digital space to the extent that it raises 
significant human rights concerns, detailed below.\214\ The 
resolution explicitly says it aims to ``push forward the 
international debate on international norms on information 
security, and help forge an early consensus on this 
issue.''\215\ In other words, the resolution is China's attempt 
to make itself the leader on these norms.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \213\ Letter Dated 12 September 2011 from the Permanent 
Representatives of China, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, and 
Uzbekistan to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General 
(93), U.N. General Assembly, 66th Session, Sept. 14, 2011, https://
undocs.org/A/66/359.
    \214\ Letter Dated 9 January 2015 from the Permanent 
Representatives of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian 
Federation, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the United Nations Addressed 
to the Secretary-General (91), U.N. General Assembly, 69th Session, 
Jan. 13, 2015, https://undocs.org/A/69/723; see, e.g., Sarah McKune, 
``An Analysis of the International Code of Conduct for Information 
Security,'' The Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public 
Policy, University of Toronto, Sept. 28, 2015, https://citizenlab.ca/
2015/09/international-code-of-conduct/.
    \215\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Both the 2011 and 2015 versions of the draft resolution 
commit the signatories to ``curbing the dissemination of 
information that incites terrorism, secessionism or extremism 
or that undermines other countries' political, economic, and 
social stability, as well as their spiritual and cultural 
environment.''\216\ According to Milton Mueller of the Internet 
Governance Project at the Georgia Institute of Technology 
School of Public Policy, this section would:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \216\ Letter Dated 12 September 2011 from the Permanent 
Representatives of China, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, and 
Uzbekistan to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General 
(93), U.N. General Assembly, 66th Session, Sept. 14, 2011, https://
undocs.org/A/66/359. See also Letter Dated 9 January 2015 from the 
Permanent Representatives of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian 
Federation, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the United Nations Addressed 
to the Secretary-General (91), U.N. General Assembly, 69th Session, 
Jan. 13, 2015, https://undocs.org/A/69/723.


        [G]ive any state the right to censor or block 
        international communications for almost any reason. 
        Such as . . . Facebook mobilizations against dictators, 
        dissident blogs, etc. ``Undermining the spiritual and 
        cultural environment'' in particular could be used to 
        filter out any views a government didn't like, and 
        could even be used for trade protectionism in cultural 
        industries.\217\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \217\ Milton Mueller, ``Russia & China propose UN General Assembly 
Resolution on `information security,' '' Internet Governance Project--
Georgia Tech University, Sept. 20, 2011, https://
www.internetgovernance.org/2011/09/20/russia-china-propose-un-general-
assembly-resolution-on-information-security/.


    The significant revisions between the 2011 Code of Conduct 
and the 2015 Code of Conduct involve several references to a 
report by the 2012 UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE), 
Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications 
in the Context of International Security.\218\ The GGEs, which 
fall under the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs 
and consist of selected member states, have initiated six 
separate working groups since 2004 to ``examine[] existing and 
potential threats in the cyber-sphere and possible cooperative 
measures to address them,'' with each group's work intended to 
build upon the last.\219\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \218\ See Letter Dated 12 September 2011 from the Permanent 
Representatives of China, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, and 
Uzbekistan to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General 
(93), U.N. General Assembly, 66th Session,] Sept. 14, 2011, https://
undocs.org/A/66/359; Letter Dated 9 January 2015 from the Permanent 
Representatives of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian 
Federation, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the United Nations Addressed 
to the Secretary-General (91), U.N. General Assembly, 69th Session, 
Jan. 13, 2015, https://undocs.org/A/69/723; U.N. General Assembly, 
Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of 
Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International 
Security--Note by the Secretary-General, 68th Session, Agenda item 94 
(June. 24, 2013), https://undocs.org/A/68/98.
    \219\ United Nations, ``Developments in the Field of Information 
and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security--
December 2018,'' https://www.un.org/disarmament/ict-security/ (last 
visited July 15, 2020). See also United Nations Office for Disarmament 
Affairs (UNODA), ``Fact Sheet: Developments In the Field of Information 
and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security,'' Jul. 
2019, https://unoda-web.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/
Information-Security-Fact-Sheet-July-2019.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The GGEs have been viewed as the best tool to achieve 
success--albeit incremental--at the UN on democratic digital 
standards.\220\ However, contrary to that view, the report by 
the GGE established in 2012 was favorably referenced by the 
China-led SCO's Code of Conduct resolution several times in 
2015.\221\ According to Sarah McKune, Senior Legal Advisor at 
the Citizen Lab, SCO states looked favorably on that GGE's 
report because of the ``recognition of sovereignty and 
territoriality in the digital space.''\222\ The SCO's newfound 
appreciation for the 2012-13 GGE in their resolution may have 
led to the increased disputes in a later GGE--the 2016-2017 
GGE--that collapsed discussions and prevented the Group from 
issuing a consensus report at its conclusion.\223\ Following 
the 2016-17 GGE dissipation, the United States led a resolution 
to authorize the creation of a new 2019-21 GGE, which continues 
to meet periodically and is expected to conclude in May 
2021.\224\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \220\ See, e.g., John Sullivan, Deputy Secretary of State, Remarks 
at the ``Second Ministerial Meeting on Advancing Responsible State 
Behavior in Cyberspace,'' New York, New York, Sept. 23, 2019.
    \221\ ``Letter Dated 9 January 2015 from the Permanent 
Representatives of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian 
Federation, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the United Nations Addressed 
to the Secretary-General (91)'' U.N. General Assembly, 69th Session, 
Jan. 13, 2015, https://undocs.org/A/69/723; See, e,g,. Sarah McKune, 
``An Analysis of the International Code of Conduct for Information 
Security,'' The Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public 
Policy, University of Toronto, Sept. 28, 2015, https://citizenlab.ca/
2015/09/international-code-of-conduct/.
    \222\ Sarah McKune, ``An Analysis of the International Code of 
Conduct for Information Security,'' The Citizen Lab, Munk School of 
Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, Sept. 28, 
2015, https://citizenlab.ca/2015/09/international-code-of-conduct/.
    \223\ Elaine Korzak, ``UN GGE on Cybersecurity: The End of an 
Era?,'' The Diplomat, July 21, 2017.
    \224\ United Nations, ``Group of Government Experts,'' Dec. 2018, 
https://www.un.org/disarmament/group-of-governmental-experts/; Alex 
Grigsby, ``The United Nations Doubles Its Workload on Cyber Norms, and 
Not Everyone Is Pleased,'' Council on Foreign Relations, Nov. 15, 2018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition to the GGEs, China may find another short-term 
mechanism to push its agenda of digital authoritarianism in the 
Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG). In December 2018, the UN 
General Assembly adopted the formation of the Internet-focused 
OEWG that Russia proposed.\225\ The OEWG was supposedly 
convened ``with a view to making the United Nations negotiation 
process on security in the use of information and 
communications technologies more democratic, inclusive and 
transparent.''\226\ To some, the establishment of the OEWG 
could be an avenue whereby China, Russia, and their SCO allies 
can challenge the progress made by the GGEs and attempt to 
influence the United Nations in favor of their more 
authoritarian digital policies.\227\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \225\ Alex Grigsby, ``The United Nations Doubles Its Workload on 
Cyber Norms, and Not Everyone Is Pleased,'' Council on Foreign 
Relations, Nov. 15, 2018; Elaine Korzak, ``What's Ahead in the Cyber 
Norms Debate?,'' Lawfare, Mar. 16, 2020, https://www.lawfareblog.com/
whats-ahead-cyber-norms-debate.
    \226\ U.N. General Assembly, Resolution Adopted by the General 
Assembly on 5 December 2018 (96), 73rd Session, Agenda item 96 (Dec. 
11, 2018), https://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view--doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/
73/27.
    \227\ Emilio Iasiello, ``OEWG or GGE--Which Has the Best Shot of 
Succeeding?'' Technative, Dec. 5, 2019, https://www.technative.io/oewg-
or-gge-which-has-the-best-shot-of-succeeding/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
World Trade Organization
    In addition to leveraging its global influence to shape 
international cyberspace guidelines at the UN, China also seeks 
to use its influence to subvert World Trade Organization 
regulations and norms on digital commerce. In contrast to the 
United States' focus on addressing digital trade issues, China 
appears unwilling to come to an agreement at the WTO over what 
digital trade agreements should look like, intending to halt 
decisions that, if enacted, could encroach on its domestic 
digital governance.\228\ China prefers that data flows and data 
storage be subjects for exploratory discussions, rather than 
commitments.\229\ Further, as Nigel Cory at the Information 
Technology and Innovation Foundation argued, ``China's approach 
to digital trade is largely focused on applying existing WTO 
rules (which are increasingly irrelevant) and a few narrow, 
non-binding technical provisions.''\230\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \228\ See, e.g., Nigel Cory, Why China Should be Disqualified from 
Participating in WTO Negotiations on Digital Trade Rules, Information 
Technology and Innovation Foundation (Mar. 2019), https://itif.org/
publications/2019/05/09/why-china-should-be-disqualified-participating-
wto-negotiations-digital.
    \229\ Congressional Research Service, Internet Regimes and WTO E-
Commerce Negotiations, at 35, Jan. 28, 2020.
    \230\ Nigel Cory, Why China Should be Disqualified from 
Participating in WTO Negotiations on Digital Trade Rules, Information 
Technology and Innovation Foundation (Mar. 2019), https://itif.org/
publications/2019/05/09/why-china-should-be-disqualified-participating-
wto-negotiations-digital.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Most existing rules related to digital trade have not been 
updated since the United Nations Commission on International 
Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Electronic Commerce in 1996, 
almost 25 years ago.\231\ The Chinese government employs the 
current, broad rules to its advantage. One example of this is 
China's heavy emphasis on data localization, which governments 
can use to increase control of, and capture more value from, 
data produced within national borders.\232\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \231\ Id.; United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, 
UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce (1996) with additional 
article 5 bis as adopted in 1998, https://uncitral.un.org/en/texts/
ecommerce/modellaw/electronic--commerce (last visited June 15, 2020).
    \232\ See, e.g., ``Data Governance Part One: Emerging Data 
Governance Practices,'' Foreign Policy, May 13, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The effects of China's protectionism on global trade are 
concerning because, as Daniel Castro and Alan McQuinn at the 
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation wrote in 2015, 
data protectionism like what is practiced by China threatens:


        [N]ot just the productivity, innovation, and 
        competiveness of tech companies, but all companies with 
        an international presence. In today's global economy, 
        it is common for businesses to process data from 
        customers, suppliers, and employees outside the 
        company's home country. Data protectionism makes such 
        data processing much more difficult, if not 
        impossible.\233\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \233\ Daniel Castro & Alan McQuinn, Cross-Border Data Flows Enable 
Growth in All Industries, Information Technology & Innovation 
Foundation, at 9 (Feb. 2015), http://www2.itif.org/2015-cross-border-
data-flows.pdf. See also Matthieu Pelissie du Rausas et al., ``Internet 
matters: The Net's sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity,'' 
McKinsey and Company, May 2011, http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high--
tech--telecoms--internet/internet--matters.

World Internet Conference
    Eager to establish its technical prowess on the world 
stage, China decided to launch its own global digital 
technology conference in 2014, which was hosted by the 
Cyberspace Administration of China.\234\ Titled the ``World 
Internet Conference,'' its goal was to ``help build a 
cyberspace community with a consensual shared destiny and an 
ethic of respecting differences.''\235\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \234\ World Internet Conference, ``2014 WIC Overview,'' Nov. 12, 
2015, http://www.wuzhenwic.org/2015-11/12/c--46284.htm.
    \235\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One of the Chinese government's goals in this first 
conference was to have attendees sign the ``Wuzhen 
Declaration,'' a nine-point document that echoed several 
official Chinese government goals, which they hoped would 
become the consensus of the attendees.\236\ However, events did 
not go according to plan. As reported by the Wall Street 
Journal, the draft:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \236\ Catherine Shu, ``China Tried To Get World Internet Conference 
Attendees To Ratify This Ridiculous Draft Declaration,'' TechCrunch, 
Nov. 21, 2014, https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/20/
worldinternetconference-declaration/;World Internet Conference, ``Draft 
Wuzhen Declaration,'' Nov. 21 2014, https://www.scribd.com/document/
247566581/World-Internet-Conference-Draft-Declaration.


        [W]as slipped around the midnight hour Friday under the 
        hotel room doors of attendees. It appeared to largely 
        reflect a singular view: the watchful language used by 
        Chinese President Xi Jinping. Chinese officials had 
        argued at the two-day meeting of Chinese officials and 
        local and foreign Internet executives that Beijing 
        should have sovereignty over the Internet in China and 
        must keep it under tight control.\237\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \237\ James T. Arredy, ``China Delivers Midnight Internet 
Declaration Offline,'' The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 21, 2014.


    The plan to push an agreement through at the last minute 
was not successful, and the Wall Street Journal reported that 
at the end of the conference, the Wuzhen Declaration ``was left 
unmentioned in the final speeches.''\238\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \238\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The next year, President Xi attended the second World 
Internet Conference in person.\239\ There, Xi used his opening 
remarks to lament the failures of the current system of 
Internet governance and argue that the world should ``respect 
the right of individual countries to independently choose their 
own path of cyber development, model of cyber regulation and 
Internet public policies, and participate in international 
cyberspace governance on an equal footing.''\240\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \239\ Adam Segal, ``China's Internet Conference: Xi Jinping's 
Message to Washington,'' Council on Foreign Relations, Dec. 16, 2015.
    \240\ Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China, 
Remarks at the ``Opening Ceremony of the Second World Internet 
Conference,'' Wuzhen, China, Dec. 16, 2015, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/
mfa--eng/wjdt--665385/zyjh--665391/t1327570.shtml; See also Adam Segal, 
``Chinese Cyber Diplomacy in a New Era of Uncertainty,'' Hoover 
Institution, June 2017, at 9, https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/
files/research/docs/segal--chinese--cyber--diplomacy.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The participation of international technology companies at 
the World Internet Conference has also been a key aspect of 
China's efforts within this fora, although companies' 
involvement in the conference has been controversial. According 
to the World Internet Conference's official website, 
``prominent Internet figures from nearly 100 countries'' have 
attended the conferences, including representatives from 
technology companies.\241\ Such participation drew criticism 
from Roseann Rife, the East Asia Research Director at Amnesty 
International, who has long called for technology companies to 
reject China's Internet rules, stating that ``Chinese 
authorities are trying to rewrite the rules of the internet so 
censorship and surveillance become the norm everywhere.''\242\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \241\ World Internet Conference, ``World Internet Conference 
Overview of WIC,'' Nov. 10, 2015, http://www.wuzhenwic.org/2015-11/10/
c--46113.htm (last visited July 10, 2020). See also Adam Segal, 
``Chinese Cyber Diplomacy in a New Era of Uncertainty,'' Hoover 
Institution, June 2017, at 10, https://hvr.co/374oSiA.
    \242\ Amnesty International, Asia and the Pacific, Internet and 
Social Media, ``Tech Companies Must Reject China's Repressive Internet 
Rules,'' Dec. 15, 2015, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/12/
tech-companies-must-reject-china-repressive-internet-rules/ (last 
visited July 10, 2020).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Fortunately for the defenders of a free and open Internet, 
China has not achieved its goals through the World Internet 
Conference. According to Adam Segal, ``[d]espite a significant 
investment of time, money, and political capital, the reach and 
influence of the World Internet Conference remain limited to 
China's friends. Most of the heads of government that have 
attended are from small states or the SCO.''\243\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \243\ Adam Segal, ``Chinese Cyber Diplomacy in a New Era of 
Uncertainty,'' Hoover Institution, June 2017, at 1, https://
www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/segal--chinese--
cyber--diplomacy.pdf. SCO referenced in the quote is the Shanghai 
Cooperation Organization.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    But China does not appear deterred. The 7th World Internet 
Conference, tentatively scheduled for the fourth quarter of 
2020, is titled the ``Light of Internet'' Expo.\244\ The press 
release announcing the conference says it is ``expected to be a 
grand event for showcasing the latest technologies, products 
and applications around the world.''\245\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \244\ World Internet Conference, ``Fore-Notice on The Light of 
Internet Expo in the 7th World Internet Conference,'' Apr. 08 2020, 
http://www.wuzhenwic.org/2020-04/08/c--469136.htm.
    \245\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Standards-Setting Bodies
    Another realm that China seeks to influence, along with the 
major multilateral institutions, is global ICT standards-
setting bodies. Global ICT rules of the road are set by several 
organizations, one of which is the 3rd Generation Partnership 
Project (3GPP), a private sector partnership composed of seven 
telecommunications standards development organizations.\246\ 
3GPP examines the range of technologies that make up mobile 
telecommunications, including radio access, core networks, 
cellular technologies, and services.\247\ According to the 
U.S.-China Commission, ``[t]he number of Chinese 
representatives serving in chair or vice chair leadership 
positions [in the 3GPP] rose from 9 of the 53 available 
positions in December 2012 to 11 of the 58 available positions 
in December 2017.''\248\ Due to this prominence in the 
organization's leadership, China has the capacity to influence 
the 3GPP to its advantage.\249\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \246\ 3GPP, ``About 3GPP,'' https://www.3gpp.org/about-3gpp (last 
visited July 6, 2020).
    \247\ Id.
    \248\ U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2018 
Annual Report to Congress, at 455 (Nov. 2018).
    \249\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Another entity heavily influenced by the Chinese is the 
International Telecommunications Union (ITU). According to its 
website, ITU ``help[s] shape the future ICT policy and 
regulatory environment, global standards, and best practices to 
help spread access to ICT services.''\250\ Since 2014, the 
Secretary-General of the ITU has been Houlin Zhao, a former 
delegate at the Designing Institute of the Ministry of Posts 
and Telecommunications of China.\251\ In addition to a former 
Chinese official being at the head of the ITU, Chinese firms 
and government research institutes held the largest number of 
chair and vice chair positions in the ITU's 5G-related 
standards-setting bodies, with eight of the 39 available 
leadership positions as of September 2018.\252\ According to 
Michael O'Rielly of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, 
the Chinese ``have loaded up the voting to try to get their 
particular candidates on board, and their particular 
standards.''\253\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \250\ International Telecommunication Union, ``About International 
Telecommunication Union (ITU),'' Feb. 19, 2020, https://www.itu.int/en/
about/Pages/default.aspx.
    \251\ International Telecommunications Union, ``Biography--Houlin 
Zhao,'' (last visited July 6, 2020), https://www.itu.int/en/osg/Pages/
biography-zhao.aspx.
    \252\ U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2018 
Annual Report to Congress, at 454 (Nov. 2018).
    \253\ Todd Shields & Alyza Sebenius, ``Huawei's Clout Is So Strong 
It's Helping Shape Global 5G Rules,'' Bloomberg, Feb. 1, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Furthermore, it appears that as the head of the ITU, 
Secretary-General Zhao has used his position to strengthen 
China's digital influence around the world. The ITU-China 
agreement on aiding countries with communications networks 
resulted in ITU-China specific projects such as research and 
training centers for ICT in Afghanistan, a Trans-Eurasian 
Information Superhighway, and research and construction 
projects in Africa.\254\ Secretary-General Zhao told China 
Daily that it is ``highly likely'' that he would sign another 
deal with the Export-Import Bank of China, and that working 
with China is critical for the ITU.\255\ Finally, he added that 
China's Belt and Road is the perfect platform ``to deliver 
services and help with ICT development around the globe by 
cooperating with China through the Initiative.''\256\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \254\ Kong Wenzheng, ``ITU Vows to Join Hands with China,'' China 
Daily, May 24, 2019, www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/24/
WS5cbfbb1aa3104842260b7f2f.html.
    \255\ Id.
    \256\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Zhao Yonghong, Director-General of the Department of 
International Cooperation in the Ministry of Industry and 
Information Technology of the People's Republic of China, 
offered additional context on China's role in the ITU in 
September 2018. Zhao stated that the ITU should focus on 
``[s]trengthen[ing] the leading role of ITU in ICT technical 
standardization and further enhanc[ing] its influence in the 
field of global standardization of emerging ICT 
technologies.''\257\ In fact, in 2012, China--along with other 
authoritarian regimes, like Russia and Saudi Arabia--introduced 
a proposal at the World Conference on International 
Telecommunications making ITU jurisdiction over the Internet 
more powerful.\258\ Given China's leadership at the ITU, this 
proposal could strengthen China's control of the Internet.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \257\ ``Top Contributors: Why China Supports ITU,'' ITU News, Sept. 
20 2018, news.itu.int/top-contributors-why-china-supports-itu/.
    \258\ Chris Welch, ``Russia, China, and Other Nations Draft 
Proposal to Give ITU Greater Influence Over the Internet,'' The Verge, 
Dec. 9 2012; Adi Robertson, ``New World Order: is the UN about to take 
control of the internet?,'' The Verge, Nov. 29, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's strategy of using multilateral institutions to its 
advantage appears to have paid off at the ITU. Evidence of this 
success includes not only Zhao's support of Huawei, which in 
2019 he defended against the United States' 5G security 
concerns by calling them driven by politics rather than 
evidence, but also China's ushering in of the proposed ``New 
Internet Protocol'' (New IP).\259\ Some nations, including the 
United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States, have raised 
concerns that China's New IP plan, if enacted, would fracture 
the global Internet and give state-run Internet Service 
Providers too much control.\260\ The Financial Times reports 
that Huawei and other co-developers of New IP plan to promote 
the proposal at an ITU telecommunication conference in India in 
November 2020.\261\ Zhao, as the head of the ITU, could 
influence whether the New IP is ratified.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \259\ Tom Miles, ``Huawei Allegations Driven by Politics Not 
Evidence: U.N. Telecoms Chief,'' Reuters, Apr. 5 2019; Anna Gross & 
Madhumita Murgia, ``China and Huawei Propose Reinvention of the 
Internet,'' Financial Times, Mar. 27 2020.
    \260\ Anna Gross & Madhumita Murgia, ``China and Huawei Propose 
Reinvention of the Internet,'' Financial Times, Mar. 27 2020.
    \261\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    However, there does appear to be some hope for democracies 
in the global battleground over control of international 
standards-setting bodies. In March 2020, the World Intellectual 
Property Organization--the United Nations organization created 
to lead the development of a balanced and effective 
international IP system--announced that Daren Tang, a Singapore 
national, won the nomination to become the new Director 
General.\262\ Tang, who had the backing of the United States, 
was congratulated upon his election by Secretary Pompeo, who 
described him as ``an effective advocate for protecting 
intellectual property [and] a vocal proponent of transparency 
and institutional integrity.''\263\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \262\ Nick Cummings-Bruce, ``U.S.-Backed Candidate for Global Tech 
Post Beats China's Nominee,'' The New York Times, Mar. 4, 2020. See 
also The World Intellectual Property Organization, ``What Is WIPO?'' 
www.wipo.int/about-wipo/en/ (Last Visited May 21, 2020).
    \263\ Press Statement, U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, 
``Election of Daren Tang of Singapore as Director General of the World 
Intellectual Property Organization,'' Mar. 4 2020; Nick Cummings-Bruce, 
``U.S.-Backed Candidate for Global Tech Post Beats China's Nominee,'' 
The New York Times, Mar. 4, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The contest between Tang and his main opponent, the China-
backed candidate Wang Binying, was a battle in the global 
digital arena between the United States and China.\264\ In this 
case, and in what many hope will be an indication of future 
outcomes in the global competition between freedom and 
surveillance, the ideals of transparency and international 
cooperation won the day.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \264\ Nick Cumming-Bruce, ``U.S.-Backed Candidate for Global Tech 
Post Beats China's Nominee,'' The New York Times, Mar. 4. 2020.



               Chapter 4: Conclusions and Recommendations

                              ----------                              

    China's new model of digital authoritarianism, its 
international efforts to assert economic dominance in the 
digital domain, and its promotion of the adoption of a Chinese-
inspired model of digital governance abroad, show its desire to 
alter and control the future of the digital domain. As 
described in Chapter 1, China is altering and controlling the 
digital domain domestically. It has developed and employed 
emerging technologies and techniques, ranging from blocking 
online content to utilizing facial recognition technologies 
that strengthen its surveillance systems, in order to suppress 
populations, individuals, and entities not aligned with the 
Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
    While the CCP's use of the digital domain to maintain 
social control is problematic for those suffering in China, 
China's growing digital influence on the global stage creates a 
broader problem for the international community as China 
proliferates its technologies at a rapid rate around the globe, 
and in countries that span the spectrum of governance. As shown 
in Chapter 2, even countries that are staunch U.S. allies and 
stand for similar democratic and human rights values are 
entertaining the integration of Chinese technologies into their 
own digital infrastructures, such as 5G telecommunications, due 
to low costs, lack of viable alternatives, uncertainty about 
the future direction of the United States, and China's robust 
economic and diplomatic efforts.\265\ As demonstrated in 
Chapter 3, China is leveraging its newfound influence to shape 
the rules of the road for the digital domain in ways that cater 
to digital authoritarianism and is antithetical to the United 
States' vision of how the Internet and cyber-enabled 
technologies should be used.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \265\ Heather Stewart & Dan Sabbagh, ``UK Huawei Decision Appears 
to Avert Row with US,'' The Guardian, Jan. 28, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Indeed, three and a half years into the Trump 
administration, the United States is now on the precipice of 
losing the future of the cyber domain to China. If China 
continues to perfect the tools of digital authoritarianism and 
is able to effectively implement them both domestically and 
abroad, then China, not the United States and its allies, will 
shape the digital environment in which most of the world 
operates. Additionally, if the United States continues to cede 
its traditional role of diplomatic and technological 
leadership, the global growth of China's digital 
authoritarianism model presents a sinister future for the 
digital domain. At the grand strategic scale, if digital 
authoritarianism flourishes, China's importance on both the 
digital and global stages will continue to grow, allowing China 
to surpass the United States in the digital space and 
empowering China to create the future rules for digital 
governance.\266\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \266\ See, e.g., John Chen et al., China's Internet of Things, 
Research Report Prepared on Behalf of the U.S.-China Economic and 
Security Review Commission, by SOS International (SOSi), at 69 (Oct. 
2018).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The spread of digital authoritarianism may also affect the 
United States' relationships with other countries as they 
determine how to balance their relationships with China, 
especially in the face of growing pressure to mirror China's 
authoritarian behavior in the digital domain. Furthermore, the 
basic human rights of individuals around the world, including 
U.S. citizens, could be negatively affected by a cyber domain 
that is reliant on Chinese technologies and values. As seen in 
places such as Xinjiang, personal privacy and civil liberties 
are threatened by China's digital authoritarianism model.\267\ 
The global proliferation of China's digital authoritarianism 
model, if unchecked, will see even more individuals fall under 
the control of authoritarians who use these technologies and 
techniques.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \267\ See, e.g., Lindsay Maizland, ``China's Repression of Uighurs 
in Xinjiang,'' Council on Foreign Relations, updated June 30, 2020, 
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-repression-uighurs-xinjiang; 
U.S. Department of State, 2018 Report on International Religious 
Freedom: China: Xinjiang, May 23, 2019, available at https://
www.state.gov/reports/2018-report-on-international-religious-freedom/
china-includes-tibet-xinjiang-hong-kong-and-macau/xinjiang/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite China's various gains within the digital domain, 
such as its emerging technical capabilities and growing 
economic strength, there is still significant opportunity for 
the United States to adopt a genuinely competitive strategy and 
approach to China, to remain the global leader on cyberspace 
governance, and to reassert its leadership in areas where the 
technological gap between the United States and China has 
shrunk or disappeared. Accomplishing these goals will mark an 
important step in competing with China's digital 
authoritarianism, as opposed to merely denouncing it. Achieving 
the goal of securing a free digital domain and mitigating the 
threat of digital authoritarianism, however, will require a 
whole-of-government approach that leverages all aspects of the 
U.S. government, the private sector, and, critically, genuine 
partnerships with our partners and allies on the world stage. 
The Administration's current policy, which is detailed in Annex 
1 of this report, is insufficient to combat China's digital 
authoritarianism, and its alienation of allies has further 
stunted the United States' ability to influence other countries 
away from China's digital authoritarianism model.
=======================================================================


                            Recommendations

    This report offers the following recommendations for more 
effective U.S. action to counter China's digital 
authoritarianism.


  Develop and Deploy Alternatives to Chinese 5G Technology with 
        U.S. Allies: The United States lags behind China in 
        developing and deploying cutting-edge 5G technologies, 
        both domestically and abroad.\268\ To provide an 
        alternative, the U.S. should:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \268\ Stu Woo, ``In the Race to Dominate 5G, China Sprints Ahead,'' 
The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 7, 2019.

   Establish a Federally Funded Research and Development 
        Center (FFRDC) on 5G: Congress should pass legislation 
        to establish an FFRDC that will examine how the United 
        States can surpass China in the 5G development space. 
        The FFRDC should examine U.S. technological strengths 
        and weaknesses, as well as areas for immediate 
        telecommunications development to provide an 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        alternative to Chinese platforms and technologies.

   Create an Industry Consortium on 5G: Congress should create 
        a consortium comprised of leading U.S. 
        telecommunications and technology companies that would 
        be mandated to create the American 5G 
        telecommunications alternative, exploring both cost-
        effective hardware and software solutions.

   Invest in Radio Access Network (RAN) Technologies: Congress 
        should provide new appropriations for RAN 
        technologies.\269\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \269\ ``What are Radio Access Networks and 5G RAN?,'' Verizon, Feb. 
2, 2020, https://www.verizon.com/about/our-company/5g/5g-radio-access-
networks (last visited July 10, 2020). According to Verizon, ``[c]ell 
phones use radio waves to communicate by converting your voice and data 
into digital signals to send through as radio waves. In order for your 
cell phone to connect to a network or the internet, it connects first 
through a radio access network (RAN). Radio access networks utilize 
radio transceivers to connect you to the cloud. Most base stations (aka 
transceivers) are primarily connected via fiber backhaul to the mobile 
core network.'' Id.

   Establish a 5G Policy Coordinator within the White House: 
        The President should establish the position of a 5G 
        Policy Coordinator tasked with coordinating the U.S. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        government's domestic and international 5G strategy.

  Limit the Spread of Malign Chinese Surveillance Technologies 
        and Digital Authori-tarianism: China is a leading 
        developer and exporter of surveillance technologies, 
        and continues to integrate new technologies that 
        provide increasingly intrusive surveillance 
        capabilities that can be misused by China or other 
        state actors.

   Establish a Digital Rights Promotion Fund: Congress should 
        establish and authorize a Digital Rights Promotion 
        Fund, which will provide grants and investments 
        directly to entities that support the promotion of a 
        free, secure, stable, and open digital domain and fight 
        against the authoritarian use of information and 
        communications technologies. The fund will provide 
        these groups, especially those existing in countries 
        experiencing undue surveillance or other forms of 
        digital authoritarianism, the resources needed to 
        better push back against the spread of digital 
        authoritarianism. Groups able to receive money would 
        include:

     Local activist organizations  promoting a free 
            digital domain and working to counter oppressive 
            surveillance regimes in countries where digital 
            authoritarianism is apparent or on the rise.
     Nonprofit organizations  that advocate for the 
            adoption of international governance standards for 
            the digital domain based on openness, transparency, 
            and the rule of law, including the protection of 
            human rights.

     Think tanks and other institutional bodies  
            that provide scholarship and policy recommendations 
            for best paths forward to protect against the rise 
            of authoritarian surveillance.

   Establish an International Digital Infrastructure 
        Corporation:  Congress should establish an independent, 
        non-profit corporation with a clear and specific 
        mandate to provide foreign countries with low-interest 
        loans, grants, and other financing opportunities to 
        purchase and implement U.S.-made digital 
        infrastructure.

   Authorize the Open Technology Fund:  Congress should fully 
        authorize funds for the Open Technology Fund by passing 
        S. 3820, the Open Technology Fund Authorization Act 
        sponsored by Senators Robert Menendez, Marsha 
        Blackburn, Ron Wyden, and Rick Scott.

  Strengthen the U.S. Digital Workforce:  In order to compete 
        and lead the digital space in the future, the United 
        States will need an adaptable, innovative, and capable 
        cyber workforce.

   Establish a Cyber Service Academy:  Through legislative 
        action, Congress should establish a new federal service 
        academy similar to our other military service 
        academies, with the specific aim of developing the 
        future of our technology force. In addition to 
        providing students a four year undergraduate education, 
        the academy shall prepare students to become future 
        military leaders in key digital and emerging technology 
        fields, including robotics, artificial intelligence 
        (AI), and cybersecurity.

   Boost funding for STEM programs:  Congress should 
        significantly increase federal spending on STEM 
        programs, including Department of Defense (DoD) funding 
        in the National Defense Education program, funding for 
        the National Science Foundation, and funding for the 
        Minority Science and Engineering Improvement program 
        within the Department of Education.

  Reinvigorate U.S. Diplomatic Leadership and Alliances, and 
        Take a More Robust Role on the International Stage:  
        China has made a concerted effort to change norms and 
        practices to strengthen its position in various 
        international fora regarding the digital domain.\270\ 
        China has additionally pushed economic development 
        relating to technology in critical regions throughout 
        the world.\271\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \270\ John Chen et al., China's Internet of Things, Research Report 
Prepared on Behalf of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review 
Commission, by SOS International (SOSi), at 69 (Oct. 2018).
    \271\ Id.

   Build a Coalition of Likeminded Allies on Critical 
        Technology Issues:  The President should lead an 
        international effort, in coordination with our allies 
        and partners, to counter Chinese efforts to develop and 
        proliferate digital domain products, technologies, and 
        services that are not predicated on free, democratic 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        values.

   Establish Mutual Cyber Defense Agreements:  The United 
        States should approach likeminded nations to develop 
        and establish mutual cyber defense and cooperation 
        agreements that ensure national critical 
        infrastructure, secure communications, trade 
        relationships, and civil liberties are protected 
        against cyber-attacks.
   Reassert U.S. Leadership in International Fora:  The 
        President should establish a strategy for ensuring the 
        United States holds chairmanships, serves as a leading 
        voice, and operates as a key player in international 
        fora such as the International Telecommunications Union 
        or UN Group of Governmental Experts.

   Establish and Empower New Cyber Leadership within the State 
        Department:  Congress should pass the Cyber Diplomacy 
        Act of 2019, or similar legislation, that establishes a 
        new office or bureau of cyber issues at the State 
        Department, which shall report to the Under Secretary 
        for Political Affairs.


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




                   Annex 1: Understanding the Trump 
                           Cyberspace Policy

                              ----------                              

    The United States is at a crossroads in regards to 
countering the implementation and growth of digital 
authoritarianism led by the regime in China. China's efforts to 
bring about the rise of digital authoritarianism hold the 
potential to fundamentally alter the landscape of information 
and communications technologies, as well as the legal and 
institutional underpinnings of these digital technologies, in 
ways that are incongruent with U.S. values and detrimental to 
U.S. and allied economic and security interests. Issues ranging 
from Chinese domination of the global information 
infrastructure and taking advantage of communications 
vulnerabilities, to using new technologies to assault basic 
human rights, to inhibiting U.S. economic and business 
opportunities abroad because of unreliable and exposed digital 
networks are all on the table if digital authoritarianism 
continues to proliferate unfettered.
    It is imperative for the United States to perform its role 
as the leading force in developing, sustaining, and 
promulgating a global digital order based on openness, 
transparency, and the rule of law, including the protection of 
human rights. If the United States and other democratic 
countries are unable or unwilling to work to reverse the 
concerning trend of China's rising digital authoritarianism, we 
will cede the future of the global digital order to China and 
other authoritarian regimes. This annex examines President 
Trump and his Administration's efforts and policies, as well as 
recent Congressional actions, regarding cyberspace and whether 
these actions effectively curb China's digital 
authoritarianism.
National Security Policy Documents
    In September 2018, the Trump administration released its 
National Cyber Strategy (NCS). As a foundational policy 
document for the Administration, the NCS sets the stage for how 
the United States views the current climate within the cyber 
domain and how, broadly, they tackle issues that arise. The 
Trump administration frames the cyber domain as one where the 
United States is ``in a continuous competition against 
strategic adversaries, rogue states, and terrorist and criminal 
networks.''\272\ Such a characterization builds upon the 
labeling in the Trump administration's National Security 
Strategy (NSS), which describes China's exploitation of data 
and its alleged attempts to spread features of its 
authoritarian system, including corruption and the use of 
surveillance technology.\273\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \272\ President Donald J. Trump, National Cyber Strategy of the 
United States of America, The White House, Sept. 2018, at 2.
    \273\ Congressional Research Service, Research Conducted for 
Committee Staff, Sept. 30, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    By framing China and the cyber domain this way, the Trump 
administration fits the issues contained in cyberspace within 
one of the principal characteristics of its national security 
strategy: that the United States is in a great-power 
competition with key adversaries. The NCS proceeds to 
specifically label China as one of the entities that is 
challenging the United States within the cyber domain.\274\ 
While the document falls short of directly identifying the 
Chinese Communist Party's use of digital authoritarianism as a 
national security threat, the NCS articulates a need to defend 
against authoritarian states utilizing security or terrorism 
concerns to erode a free and secure Internet.\275\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \274\ President Donald J. Trump, National Cyber Strategy of the 
United States of America, The White House, Sept. 2018, at 2.
    \275\ Id., at 24.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The NCS breaks U.S. cyber strategy into four pillars. These 
pillars are:


 1. Protect the American People, the Homeland, and the American 
        Way of Life--involving issues such as protecting U.S. 
        networks, critical infrastructure, and data, combatting 
        crime, and pushing government innovation;

 2. Promote American Prosperity--including promoting America's 
        advantage in the digital economy, maintaining U.S. 
        leadership on cyber issues, and strengthening the U.S. 
        workforce;

 3. Preserve Peace through Strength--featuring deterring malign 
        cyber activities and enhancing norms of state behavior;

 4. Advance American Influence--containing extending a free and 
        interoperable Internet globally and building 
        international cyber capacity.\276\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \276\ President Donald J. Trump, National Cyber Strategy of the 
United States of America, The White House, Sept. 2018, at 6, 8, 10, 14, 
16, 17, 20, 21, 24, 25, and 26; Congressional Research Service, 
Research Conducted for Committee Staff, Sept. 30, 2019.


    From these four platforms flow priority actions meant to 
target certain issues, ranging from building a proposed cyber 
deterrence initiative, to ``promot[ing] and maintain[ing] 
markets for United States ingenuity worldwide,'' to maintaining 
United States leadership in emerging technologies.\277\ Due to 
China's continued growth within the cyber domain, many of these 
priority actions in effect target digital authoritarianism in 
some way. For example, the NCS outlines a need to broadly 
engage global partners, international organizations, and civil 
society to protect Internet freedom and improve international 
cyber capacity.\278\ Critical to this effort is the need for 
the U.S. to reinforce the openness, interoperability, and 
reliability of the Internet.\279\ The plan calls for investment 
in the communications infrastructure and cybersecurity 
capacities of partner states to not only enhance the Cyber 
Deterrence Initiative, but also to ensure their Internet 
capabilities align with U.S. interests and standards of 
Internet freedom.\280\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \277\ President Donald J. Trump, National Cyber Strategy of the 
United States of America, The White House, Sept. 2018, at 15, 21, 25.
    \278\ Id., at 25 and 26. According the National Cyber Strategy, 
cyber capacity building involves ``the United States build[ing] 
strategic partnerships that promote cybersecurity best practices 
through a common vision of an open, interoperable, reliable, and secure 
Internet that encourages investment and opens new economic markets. In 
addition, capacity building allows for additional opportunities to 
share cyber threat information, enabling the United States Government 
and our partners to better defend domestic critical infrastructure and 
global supply chains, as well as focus whole-of government cyber 
engagements.'' Id.
    \279\ Id., at 24.
    \280\ Id., at 21 and 26. Espoused in the Administration's 2018 
National Cyber Strategy, the Cyber Deterrence Initiative is an effort 
``to build such a coalition and develop tailored strategies to ensure 
adversaries understand the consequences of their malicious cyber 
behavior.'' To achieve this goal, ``the United States will work with 
like-minded states to coordinate and support each other's responses to 
significant malicious cyber incidents, including through intelligence 
sharing, buttressing of attribution claims, public statements of 
support for responsive actions taken, and joint imposition of 
consequences against malign actors.'' Id. at 21.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    There are other mechanisms espoused in the NCS that could 
play a role in combatting China's digital authoritarianism that 
are not explicitly linked to the topic. One such example is how 
a primary objective of ``promoting American prosperity'' in the 
NCS is to ``preserve U.S. influence in the technological 
ecosystem and the development of cyberspace as an open engine 
of economic growth, innovation, and efficiency.''\281\ The 
purpose of this objective is to ``foster a vibrant and 
resilient digital economy'' through prioritizing innovation and 
maintaining U.S. leadership in emerging technologies.\282\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \281\ Id., at 14.
    \282\ Id., at 14-15; Congressional Research Service, Research 
Conducted for Committee Staff, Sept. 30, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Another key issue put forth by the NCS to help the United 
States better compete in the digital marketplace and fight back 
against digital authoritarianism is strengthening its 
leadership on innovation and developing emerging 
technologies.\283\ One of the primary aspects for driving U.S. 
technological development leadership is to promote the free 
flow of data across borders that push against authoritarian 
governments' attempts to localize data under the guise of 
national security, and, along that vein, the NCS asserts that 
the Administration will promote ``open, industry driven 
standards, innovative products, and approaches that permit 
global innovation and the free flow of data while meeting the 
legitimate security needs of the U.S.''\284\ Additionally, the 
NCS aims to ensure the United States counters behavior that 
acts against U.S. interests, saying in its third pillar that 
the administration would use ``all appropriate tools of 
national power to expose and counter the flood of online malign 
influence and information campaigns and non-state propaganda 
and disinformation.''\285\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \283\ Congressional Research Service, Research Conducted for 
Committee Staff, Sept. 30, 2019.
    \284\ Id.; President Donald J. Trump, National Cyber Strategy of 
the United States of America, The White House, Sept. 2018, at 14.
    \285\ Congressional Research Service, Research Conducted for 
Committee Staff, Sept. 30, 2019; President Donald J. Trump, National 
Cyber Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, Sept. 
2018, at 21.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Administration Efforts
    China continues to rapidly expand its digital 
authoritarianism model and make gains on the United States in 
becoming the dominant player on a range of critical 
technologies, placing U.S. leadership on cyber issues at risk. 
In response to the gains in Chinese technological development, 
the Trump administration has turned to punitive measures, using 
sanctions as a weapon against China. As China's technology 
sector begins to achieve global significance, several of its 
players have found themselves on the front lines of the U.S.-
China trade war and atop U.S. sanctions lists.\286\  Most 
notably, one of China's largest companies, Huawei, has been the 
target of U.S. sanctions and restrictions as the U.S. seeks to 
pre-empt potential cyber threats.\287\ The Trump administration 
has referred to Huawei as a national security threat, cited the 
telecommunications giant's close ties to the Chinese 
government, its repeated intellectual property theft, and its 
violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran as reasons for Huawei to 
be excluded from U.S. markets, and encouraged others to take 
similar steps.\288\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \286\ Kiran Stacey et al., ``US blacklists 28 Chinese entities in 
trade war escalation,'' Financial Times, October 8, 2019; Ana Swanson, 
``U.S. Delivers Another Blow to Huawei With New Tech Restrictions,'' 
The New York Times, May 15, 2020.
    \287\ Ana Swanson, ``U.S. Delivers Another Blow to Huawei With New 
Tech Restrictions,'' The New York Times, May 15, 2020; Associated 
Press, ``US Adds New Sanction on Chinese Tech Giant Huawei,'' US News 
and World Report, May 16, 2020.
    \288\ Ana Swanson, ``U.S. Delivers Another Blow to Huawei With New 
Tech Restrictions,'' The New York Times, May 15, 2020; David Goldman, 
``What Did Huawei do to Land in Such Hot Water with the US?'' CNN, May 
20, 2019; Federal Communications Commission, ``FCC Bars Use of 
Universal Service Funding for Equipment and Services Posing National 
Security Risks,'' Nov. 22, 2019; Protecting Against National Security 
Threats to the Communications Supply Chain Through FCC Programs; Huawei 
Designation; ZTE Designation, 85 Fed. Reg. 27610, Jan. 3, 2020; Dan 
Strumpf & Patricia Kowsmann, ``U.S. Prosecutors Probe Huawei on New 
Allegations of Technology Theft,'' The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 29, 
2019; Julian E. Barnes and Adam Satariano, ``U.S. Campaign to Ban 
Huawei Overseas Stumbles as Allies Resist,'' The New York Times, Mar. 
17, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Although U.S. suspicions of Huawei can be traced as far 
back as 2012, recent actions are supposedly meant to 
demonstrate a more aggressive U.S. posture towards the company 
and the Chinese technology sector as a whole.\289\ In May 2018, 
the Pentagon banned the sale of Huawei and ZTE phones on U.S. 
military bases.\290\ Later that year, Huawei's CFO (and 
daughter of its founder), Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada 
at the United States' request for allegedly violating U.S. 
sanctions on Iran.\291\ On May 15, 2019, President Trump issued 
Executive Order 13873 on Securing the Information and 
Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain, which 
declared:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \289\ Sean Keane, ``Huawei ban timeline: Uber rival hits AppGallery 
store as it moves towards self-sufficiency,'' CNET, June 25, 2020; Pam 
Benson, ``Congressional report: U.S. should 'view with suspicion' two 
Chinese companies,'' CNN, Oct. 8, 2012.
    \290\ Sean Keane, ``Huawei ban timeline: Uber rival hits AppGallery 
store as it moves towards self-sufficiency,'' CNET, June 25, 2020; 
Katie Collins, ``Pentagon bans sale of Huawei, ZTE phones on US 
military bases,'' CNET, May 2, 2018.
    \291\ Press Release, U.S. Department of Justice, ``Chinese 
Telecommunications Conglomerate Huawei and Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng 
Charged with Financial Fraud,'' January 28, 2019; Dan Bilefsky, 
``Extradition Hearings Begin for Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Officer Held in 
Canada,'' The New York Times, Jan. 20, 2020.


        The threat of foreign adversaries to U.S. ICT 
        technologies--through creating and exploiting 
        vulnerabilities in technology and services, and ``the 
        unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of 
        information and communications technology or services, 
        designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by 
        persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the 
        jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries''--
        constitutes an ``unusual and extraordinary threat to 
        the national security, foreign policy, and economy of 
        the United States.''\292\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \292\ Congressional Research Service, Research Conducted for 
Committee Staff, Sept. 30, 2019; President Donald J. Trump, Executive 
Order on Securing the Information and Communications Technology and 
Services Supply Chain, The White House, May 15, 2018; U.S. Department 
of Commerce--Securing the Information and Communications Technology and 
Services Supply Chain, 84 Fed. Reg. 65316, Nov. 27, 2019.


    Following the Executive Order issuance, the United States 
in May 2019 placed Huawei and 68 of its affiliates on the 
Bureau of Industry and Security's Entity List via authorities 
in the Export Control Reform Act of 2018's Export 
Administration Regulations, and subsequently in August added 46 
additional entities, in an effort to restrict their access to 
U.S. markets.\293\ In May 2020, the administration unveiled new 
rules requiring foreign semiconductor makers to obtain a U.S. 
license to ship Huawei-designed semiconductors produced using 
U.S. technology to Huawei.\294\ More broadly, the United States 
has sought to mount pressure on allies and partners such as 
Germany and the UK to restrict Huawei equipment in their 5G 
infrastructure plans due to security concerns.\295\ These 
efforts, however, have produced mixed results at best, and may 
well have been counterproductive, at least in the short-term, 
as seen in Chapter 2 of this report.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \293\ Addition of Certain Entities to the Entity List and Revision 
of Entries on the Entity List, 84 Fed. Reg. 43493, Aug. 21, 2019; 
Addition of Entities to the Entity List, 84 Fed. Reg. 22961, May 21, 
2019.
    \294\ Frank Bajak, ``US adds new sanction on Chinese tech giant 
Huawei,'' Associated Press, May 16, 2020.
    \295\ Julian E. Barnes & Adam Satariano, ``U.S. Campaign to Ban 
Huawei Overseas Stumbles as Allies Resist,'' The New York Times, March 
17, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Unfortunately, contradictory U.S. policy implementation has 
hampered the impact of punitive measures to change China's 
behavior. This contradiction can be seen in the Commerce 
Department's provision of temporary licenses to Huawei despite 
the administration's stated need and previous actions for 
increasing scrutiny of Huawei transactions.\296\ The Commerce 
Department unveiled that the:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \296\ Congressional Research Service, Research Conducted for 
Committee Staff, Sept. 30, 2019; Addition of Entities to the Entity 
List, 84 Fed. Reg. 22961, May 21, 2019.


        Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a 90-day 
        Temporary General License to allow for the completion 
        by August 19th of contracts entered into before May 
        16th. On August 15th, BIS issued an additional General 
        License to allow for some engagement with Huawei and 
        its affiliates to continue.\297\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \297\ Congressional Research Service, Research Conducted for 
Committee Staff, Sept. 30, 2019; Temporary General License: Extension 
of Validity, Clarifications to Authorized Transactions, and Changes to 
Certification Statement Requirements, 84 Fed. Reg. 43487, August 21, 
2019; Addition of Certain Entities to the Entity List and Revision of 
Entries on the Entity List, 84 Fed. Reg. 43493, Aug. 21, 2019.


    While a variety of factors enter into how BIS decides 
whether a company should receive certain export or transfer 
waivers, the provision of multiple waivers to Huawei and other 
entities fundamentally conflicts with the Administration's 
stated desire to mitigate the risks associated with increased 
proliferation of Huawei technologies. Consequently, episodes 
such as this one highlight how the Administration's policy and 
actions are not in sync, damaging the United States' ability to 
push back on essential levers of China's digital 
authoritarianism system.
    For its part, Huawei has loudly decried U.S. actions taken 
against the company, through both legal challenges and public 
statements. For example, the company filed a suit against the 
FCC for a ruling in November 2019 blocking the use of federal 
funds to purchase Huawei products, saying ``it fails to offer 
Huawei required due process protections.''\298\ The company has 
questioned the United States' motives for targeting Huawei, 
asserting that the United States ``is leveraging its own 
technological strengths to crush companies outside its own 
borders. This will only serve to undermine the trust 
international companies place in US technology and supply 
chains.''\299\ Huawei has even accused the U.S. of illegal 
behavior such as hacking its systems and threatening its 
employees.\300\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \298\ Norman Pearlstine et al., ``The War Against Huawei,'' Los 
Angeles Times, Dec. 19, 2019; Colin Lecher, ``The FCC votes to block 
Huawei from billions in federal aid,'' The Verge, Nov. 22, 2019.
    \299\ Eileen Yu, ``Huawei rebukes US attempts to stymie foreign 
competition with chip rule,'' ZDNet, May 18, 2020.
    \300\ Dan Strumpf & Chuin-Wei Yap, ``Huawei Accuses the U.S. of 
Cyberattacks and Staff Threats,'' The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 3, 
2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In response to the growing threats posed by digital 
authoritarianism, the federal government has taken steps 
towards improving U.S. cybersecurity capabilities. In 2018, 
President Trump signed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure 
Security Agency Act into law, establishing the Cybersecurity 
and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department 
of Homeland Security (DHS).\301\ CISA's mission is to ``lead 
the National effort to understand and manage cyber and physical 
risk to our critical infrastructure.\302\ The agency's 
formation is a step toward securing U.S. domestic cyber 
infrastructure; however, as an agency within DHS, its mandate 
does not extend into the international realm, and therefore is 
unlikely to be able to play a role in pushing back against 
China's spread of digital authoritarianism around the globe.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \301\ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, ``About 
CISA,'' https://www.cisa.gov/about-cisa (last visited May 10, 2020).
    \302\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The State Department, which oversees international 
diplomatic efforts regarding the cyber domain, does not 
currently have the structure needed to effectively tackle 
China's growing influence in the digital sphere. In 2018, the 
State Department released proposals to establish a Bureau of 
Cyberspace Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET), which 
would consolidate and strengthen U.S. diplomatic efforts to 
secure cyberspace and digitally enabled technologies, reduce 
risks of cyber conflict, and boost America's cyber 
competitiveness.\303\ In the proposal, the Bureau would operate 
under the office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and 
International Security Affairs.\304\ However, the rollout was 
stalled in Congress due to negotiations over the bureau's 
placement and a lack of clarity over its mandate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \303\ Sean Lyngaas, ``State Department Proposes New $20.8 million 
Cybersecurity Bureau,'' Cyberscoop, June 5, 2019, https://
www.cyberscoop.com/state-department-proposes-new-20-8-million-
cybersecurity-bureau/.
    \304\ U.S. Department of State, Congressional Budget Justification 
Appendix 1: Department of State Diplomatic Engagement, Fiscal Year 
2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One alternative to CSET--the Cyber Diplomacy Act of 2019--
was introduced in Congress by Representatives McCaul (R-TX-10) 
and Engel (D-NY-16) in January 2019.\305\ The Cyber Diplomacy 
Act would create an Office of International Cyberspace Policy 
(OICP), operating under the State Department's Under Secretary 
of Political Affairs. In addition to advising the State 
Department on cyberspace policy, the office would engage in 
diplomatic efforts to reinforce international cybersecurity, 
promote Internet access and freedom, and counter international 
cyber threats. The bill directly calls out China for promoting 
international norms of Internet behavior that restrict critical 
freedoms. In addition, the bill requires the OICP to produce 
annual country reports on human rights practices relating to 
the Internet, particularly emphasizing online censorship and 
political repression.\306\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \305\ Cyber Diplomacy Act of 2019, H.R. 739 (116th Congress, 
introduced Jan. 24, 2019).
    \306\ Id.



                   Annex 2: The United States and 5G

                              ----------                              

    One of the most prominent and pressing issues facing the 
United States regarding the future of the digital domain is the 
development and deployment of 5G telecommunications 
technologies. 5G technologies, following on fourth generation 
(4G) and LTE technologies, provide a number of improvements to 
the capabilities of previous generations, including increased 
data transfer rates in a fixed period of time, also known as 
bandwidth, and enhanced connectivity capabilities, such as 
ultra-low latency (the delay between when data is sent from one 
device on a network and received by another).\307\ 5G 
technologies are deployed in new ways compared to their 
predecessors: while previous generations used large cell towers 
to transmit signals, 5G can also use small cells (radio access 
points) that are about the size of a picnic cooler or mini 
fridge, creating greater cellular density and faster 
deployment.\308\ 5G networks are also critical to enabling the 
proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices.\309\ 
Such enhanced capabilities will not only reshape cellular 
communications and facilitate the development of emerging 
technologies, but will also fundamentally alter how industries 
and societies that rely on connectivity to data sources 
operate.\310\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \307\ Qualcomm, ``Everything You Need to Know about 5G,'' https://
www.qualcomm.com/invention/5g/what-is-5g (last visited May 13, 2020); 
Congressional Research Service, Fifth Generation (5G) 
Telecommunications Technologies: Issues for Congress, Jan. 30, 2019, at 
1.
    \308\ ``What is Small Cell Technology?,'' Verizon, Aug. 8, 2018, 
https://www.verizon.com/about/our-company/5g/what-small-cell-technology 
(last visited May 14, 2020); ``Why 5G Can't Succeed Without a Small 
Cell Revolution,'' PwC, https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industry/tmt/assets/
5g-small-cell-revolution.pdf (last visited May 13, 2020).
    \309\ Murali Venkatesh, ``How 5G Networking Will Unleash the Full 
Potential of IoT,'' Oracle, Feb. 4, 2019, https://blogs.oracle.com/iot/
how-5g-networking-will-unleash-the-full-potential-of-iot.
    \310\ Dan Patterson & Anisha Nandi, ``5G explained: How it works, 
who it will impact, and when we'll have it,'' CBS News, Feb. 21, 2019; 
PwC, ``Why 5G Can't Succeed Without a Small Cell Revolution,'' https://
www.pwc.com/us/en/industry/tmt/assets/5g-small-cell-revolution.pdf 
(last visited May 13, 2020).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the spread of 5G technologies will provide many 
positive impacts for society and industry, China is pursuing 
avenues to manipulate the capabilities endowed by these new 
technologies. As noted earlier in the report, China has made 
significant inroads in the development and deployment of 5G. 
China's efforts, as a number of former military leaders 
elucidate in an April 3, 2019, letter, present ``grave 
concerns'' to the United States, our allies, and our 
partners.\311\ The letter states that a widely adopted Chinese-
developed 5G network ``provide[s] near-persistent data transfer 
back to China,'' would mean U.S. reliance on Chinese 
technologies for critical military communications, and will 
``advance a pernicious high-tech authoritarianism.''\312\ These 
comments underscore that a 5G infrastructure built on Chinese 
technologies will promote digital authoritarianism around the 
globe, and consequently, why the United States must pursue 
mechanisms to mitigate China's influence in this digital 
sphere.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \311\ Letter from Adm. James Stavridis et al., ``Statement by 
Former U.S. Military Leaders,'' Apr. 3, 2019, https://
www.lawfareblog.com/document-former-military-and-intelligence-
officials-letter-5g-risks.
    \312\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As 5G technology moves closer to global deployment, the 
U.S. has some technological disadvantages that have both 
commercial and security implications. The development of 5G 
networks will boost the rate of implementation for new and 
transformative technologies ranging from autonomous vehicles to 
smart cities to virtual reality.\313\ There is much to gain 
from leading the pack in the global telecommunications race--
and much to lose by lagging behind.\314\ Although Europe 
dominated the development and implementation of 2G 
technologies, and Japan led on the deployment and adoption of 
3G technologies, beginning in about 2016 the United States 
pulled ahead and led on the development and adoption of 
4G.\315\ Through a first-mover advantage provided by its 
innovation and implementation of 4G and LTE, and complemented 
by its competitive mobile device technologies, the United 
States was able to shape the global 4G ecosystem.\316\ U.S. 
companies took advantage of the enhanced capabilities of the 
new network, developing devices, apps, and services that would 
dominate global markets.\317\ This success led to a 70% growth 
of the U.S. telecommunications industry between 2011 and 2014, 
increasing industry jobs by 80% and boosting GDP.\318\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \313\ Randal Kenworthy, ``The 5G and IoT Revolution is Coming: 
Here's What to Expect,'' Forbes Technology Council, Nov. 18, 2019.
    \314\ Statement of Peter Harrell, Center for a New American 
Security, 5G: National Security Concerns, Intellectual Property Issues, 
and the Impact on Competition and Innovation, Hearing before the United 
States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, May 14, 2019, at 2, https://
s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/Harrell-Judiciary-Testimony-
May-14-2019.pdf?mtime=20190515171307.
    \315\ Recon Analytics, How America's Leading Position in 4G 
Propelled the Economy, at 6 (Apr. 16, 2018), https://api.ctia.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/04/Recon-Analytics--How-Americas-4G-Leadership-
Propelled-US-Economy--2018.pdf.
    \316\ Milo Medin & Gilman Louie, The 5G Ecosystem: Risks and 
Opportunities for DoD, Defense Innovation Board, at 6 (Apr. 2019).
    \317\ Statement of Peter Harrell, Center for a New American 
Security, 5G: National Security Concerns, Intellectual Property Issues, 
and the Impact on Competition and Innovation, Hearing before the United 
States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, May 14, 2019, at 2, https://
s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/Harrell-Judiciary-Testimony-
May-14-2019.pdf?mtime=20190515171307.
    \318\ Milo Medin & Gilman Louie, The 5G Ecosystem: Risks and 
Opportunities for DoD, Defense Innovation Board, at 7 (Apr. 2019); 
Recon Analytics, How America's Leading Position in 4G Propelled the 
Economy, at 6 (Apr. 16, 2018).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yet whatever advantages the U.S. had in the innovation 
deployment of 4G and LTE networks are beginning to narrow in 
the new age of wireless development. A 2019 report by the 
Defense Innovation Board suggests that, due to several critical 
shortcomings in U.S. 5G development, it is unlikely the US will 
win the race to 5G.\319\ A critical differentiator between 4G 
and 5G technologies is that 5G will leverage various segments 
of the electromagnetic spectrum: from the low to mid-band 
spectrum, or ``sub-6'', to the high-band spectrum, or 
``mmWave.''\320\ As the spectrum bands are the fundamental 
layers upon which the entire 5G network and infrastructure is 
built, the decision to develop technologies based on lower or 
higher frequencies is one of the most critical near-term 
choices for policy-makers and involves different levels of 
costs and investments.\321\ For example, mmWave technologies 
are capable of faster and more secure data transmission, but 
require far greater infrastructure and monetary investments to 
set up, while the sub-6 band can cover broader areas with less 
risk of interruption and is able to ``leverage existing 4G 
infrastructure.''\322\ Currently, the advantages of the sub-6 
band, especially on costs and broad coverage, make it the most 
likely near-term outcome for propagating a 5G ecosystem.\323\ 
However, in the United States, portions of the sub-6 bands are 
owned by the government, somewhat limiting civilian and 
commercial use of that spectrum.\324\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \319\ Milo Medin & Gilman Louie, The 5G Ecosystem: Risks and 
Opportunities for DoD, Defense Innovation Board, at 7 (Apr. 2019).
    \320\ Id. at 8-11.
    \321\ Dave Andersen, ``5G FAQ series: What's the difference between 
mmWave and sub-6 GHz spectrum?,'' RootMetrics by IHS Markit, Oct. 28, 
2019, https://rootmetrics.com/en-GB/content/5g-faq-series-whats-the-
difference-between-mmwave-and-sub-6-ghz-spectrum; Gabriel Brown, White 
Paper: Exploring the Potential of mmWave for 5G Mobile Access, Heavy 
Reading, at 3, 8, 10 (June 2016), https://www.qualcomm.com/media/
documents/files/heavy-reading-whitepaper-exploring-the-potential-of-
mmwave-for-5g-mobile-access.pdf.
    \322\ Milo Medin & Gilman Louie, The 5G Ecosystem: Risks and 
Opportunities for DoD, Defense Innovation Board, at 8, 10 (Apr. 2019).
    \323\ Id., at 10; Dave Andersen, ``5G FAQ series: What's the 
difference between mmWave and sub-6 GHz spectrum?,'' RootMetrics by IHS 
Markit, Oct. 28, 2019, https://rootmetrics.com/en-GB/content/5g-faq-
series-whats-the-difference-between-mmwave-and-sub-6-ghz-spectrum
    \324\ Milo Medin & Gilman Louie, The 5G Ecosystem: Risks and 
Opportunities for DoD, Defense Innovation Board, at 10 (Apr. 2019). It 
is important to note that while the government holds large portions of 
the sub-6GHz spectrum, there have been certain initiatives aimed at 
freeing up some of this spectrum, such as S. 19, the MOBILE Now Act 
introduced by Senators John Thune (R-ND) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) during 
the 115th Congress in 2018. Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The limits on spectrum have posed a number of problems to 
US near-term competitiveness in the 5G global ecosystem, not 
least of which is that Chinese companies have managed to 
outpace the U.S. in development and export of its 5G 
infrastructure. China has pursued infrastructure buildout based 
on the sub-6 spectrum band, and with its head start in the 
global deployment of its 5G infrastructure, has been able to 
attract a growing share of the global market with its promises 
of a high quality and low cost network.\325\ Given the current 
higher costs and lower density of the mmWave spectrum range, 
many global players--including key U.S. allies and partners--
have chosen to follow China's lead.\326\ The consequences of 
China leading the buildout of the global 5G ecosystem are 
severe, and could include creating overseas security risks for 
Department of Defense operations and eroding competitive supply 
chains for the United States.\327\ It is critically important 
to note, however, that the United States could find a future 
advantage by leading on mmWave technologies, since 1) this band 
is the spectrum where ultra-fast innovations may arise and 2) a 
fully actualized 5G network will see devices seamlessly utilize 
and transition between both the sub-6 and mmWave bands.\328\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \325\ Id., at 12, 21; Press Release, U.S. Department of Justice, 
``Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers the Keynote Address at the 
Department of Justice's China Initiative Conference,'' February 6, 
2020.
    \326\ Milo Medin & Gilman Louie, The 5G Ecosystem: Risks and 
Opportunities for DoD, Defense Innovation Board, at 15 (Apr. 2019).
    \327\ Id. at 4.
    \328\ Monica Alleven, ``SK Telecom, Ericsson demonstrate 5G 
connected BMW at 28 GHz,'' Fierce Wireless, Nov. 15, 2016, https://
www.fiercewireless.com/tech/sk-telecom-ericsson-demonstrate-5g-
connected-bmw-at-28-ghz; Bevin Fletcher, ``New Samsung 5G phones can 
tap both sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave spectrum,'' Fierce Wireless, 
Feb. 12, 2020, https://www.fiercewireless.com/devices/new-samsung-5g-
phones-can-tap-both-sub-6-ghz-and-millimeter-wave-spectrum.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Another reason the United States finds itself in greater 
competition with China on 5G deployment is that China has spent 
more on 5G development, implementing 198,000 5G-operable base 
stations domestically, with 500,000 more planned, and rapidly 
deploying 5G equipment and infrastructure around the 
world.\329\ In Europe in particular, Huawei and ZTE have 
partnered with many countries to build their 5G networks 
despite US protests over security concerns, and Chinese-built 
network infrastructure continues to spread across the 
continent.\330\ Within Congress and the Administration there is 
a bipartisan understanding of the threats posed by Chinese 
firms building the base layers of radio equipment and other 
telecommunications infrastructure upon which 5G operates. 
Unfortunately, there is a major gap in the United States 
government between rhetorical complaints about Chinese efforts 
to dominate the 5G domain and actual, tangible steps to counter 
China's government and industry on the issue.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \329\ Jason Murdock, ``China Planning 500,000 New 5G Base Stations 
as State Officials Say Construction Has 'Entered the Fast Lane','' 
Newsweek, Feb. 24, 2020; Milo Medin & Gilman Louie, The 5G Ecosystem: 
Risks and Opportunities for DoD, Defense Innovation Board, at 13 (Apr. 
2019).
    \330\ Milo Medin & Gilman Louie, The 5G Ecosystem: Risks and 
Opportunities for DoD, Defense Innovation Board, at 13 (Apr. 2019).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, the United States currently does not have a 
domestic 5G supplier for the equipment that makes up the Radio 
Access Network (RAN) for 5G.\331\ Instead, countries seeking 
viable alternatives to Chinese 5G RAN infrastructure rely on 
companies such as Swedish company Ericsson, South Korea-based 
Samsung, or Finnish firm Nokia to build out core components of 
their layer of the 5G infrastructure.\332\ While these 
companies do provide alternatives to Huawei, Chinese government 
subsidies to Huawei allow the company to sell products at far 
lower prices and offer low-cost financing, undercutting the 
competitiveness of other firms.\333\ This combination of a lack 
of a U.S. domestic 5G alternative and China's monetary 
subsidies is leading to a 5G environment that lacks stable, 
secure U.S. infrastructure and products, and is increasingly 
problematic for U.S. security. To maintain U.S. security, it is 
therefore imperative that the United States find, develop, and 
pursue policies that open up pathways for United States 
industry to become a leading player in all facets of the 5G 
domain in the future.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \331\ Tom Wheeler, ``5G in Five (not so) Easy Pieces,'' The 
Brookings Institution, July 9, 2019; ``What are Radio Access Networks 
and 5G RAN?,'' Verizon, Feb. 2, 2020, https://www.verizon.com/about/
our-company/5g/5g-radio-access-networks (last accessed July 10, 2020).
    \332\ Tom Wheeler, ``5G in Five (not so) Easy Pieces,'' The 
Brookings Institution, July 9, 2019.
    \333\ Id.