Transnational State-Corporate Symbiosis of Public Security: China’s Exports of Surveillance Technologies

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the emerging Chinese Party-state has used commercial ties with North American and European providers of surveillance technologies to grow national prowess of public security, fostering a transnational state-corporate symbiosis. The exports of surveillance technologies from the Global North to China started in the late 1970s, and now Chinese technology companies are competing with and replacing those suppliers in the globalized neoliberal market. This research explores the two-way dynamic of China’s state and private surveillance capacity underscored by international companies’ profit-seeking behaviors and domestic technological and economic growth. Four case studies of companies from Canada, China, and the US are used to highlight the changing dynamics in the global circulation of surveillance technologies. Particular attention is paid to the cyclical nature of such technologies through which unresolved issues of global governance continue to emerge and, accordingly, support the growth of technology-powered authoritarianism worldwide.

Governing Chinese technologies: TikTok, foreign interference, and technological sovereignty

“…The AUKUS and EU examples show that TikTok raises similar national security, foreign interference, and privacy concerns in each jurisdiction we consider in this article. Since 2020, TikTok's representatives have evoked the language of "technological neutrality" and in doing so attempted to evade transparent communication about TikTok's data collection, access and use, a tactic that has historically been used by both Chinese and non-Chinese technology companies (Bernot, 2022). Tik-Tok's reluctance to provide transparent answers about data governance has not been well received due to China's authoritarian nature, and the absence of trust, particularly among Australia, the UK, and the US, which stems from broader and historical geopolitical tensions.…”

“…Chinese companies that internationalise often face dual pressure to comply with Chinese regulations domestically and national data protection scrutiny in other countries (Jia & Ruan, 2020). However, the growth of Chinese companies internationally is often linked with national security risks that can also mask national economic interests, especially when they challenge US hegemony with geopolitical consequences (Bernot, 2022;Gray, 2021). The surveillance capabilities of Chinese technologies and service providers have contributed to the complexity of this dynamic.…”

FRT in ‘Bloom’

“…It is only now that Chinese technology companies are found competing with and replacing those suppliers in a globalised market. 67 The current status of FRT developed in China with known human rights and privacy violations is not adequately restricted by regulatory frameworks in Europe and the United States. 68 To better disentangle use-cases requires not only a more through mapping of globally entangled and technical supply-chains, whether through critical research or in the building of oversight capabilities such as independent risk assessments, compliance audits, or technical red-teaming in the light of such swiftly evolving material properties.…”