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China ARTICLE 19 Country context State control over China’s internet infrastructure, maintained since the early days of the internet, has been buttressed by technological measures and legal instruments which enable widespread censorship. For many years, China has asserted a vision of internet sovereignty which asserts its exclusive right to govern the internet within its borders and its citizens’ use of that internet; this has only deepened under the country’s leader Xi Jinping.29 Recently, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has also been promoting a vision of ‘internet civilisation’ comprising a ‘clean’ and harmonious internet which reflects and promotes CCP values.30 China imposes extensive blocking and filtering of the internet. Major international tech services are blocked, including social media and messaging services like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Telegram, and Snapchat; search engines like Google and Yahoo; and international news outlets like the BBC, the New York Times, and Reuters.31 Between 2017 and 2021, roughly 55,000 active apps, most of which remained available elsewhere, disappeared from Apple’s App Store in China.32 Filters also operate to block content on sensitive issues, such as by preventing users from posting content with certain keywords or hiding such posts.33 Because China has incorporated censorship tools into its internet infrastructure, it can impose quite targeted internet disruptions and blocks. Accordingly, it relies less than some of its neighbours on full internet shutdowns. For example, China initially and infamously imposed one of the world’s first major internet shutdowns when it blocked internet in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region for 10 months after Uyghur protests in July 2009.34 Since then, however, while internet cuts have remained a problem in the region, China has relied largely on a broader range of tactics, including censorship and detention of developers and IT experts, to censor and ‘erase’ the Uyghur internet.35 It has deployed a similar combination of tactics in Tibet, such as tailored censorship rules, local law enforcement infrastructure focused on monitoring online content, and arbitrary detentions based on online posts. 36 ____________________________________________ S. McKune, The Contestation and Shaping of Cyber Norms Through China’s Internet Sovereignty Agenda, International Journal of Communication, 12 (2018), pp. 3835–3855, p. 3837. 30 China Daily, Official Calls for Advancing Cyber Civilization Progress, 29 August 2022; J. Costigan, Determining the Future of the Internet: The U.S.–China Divergence, Asia Society Policy Institute, 19 January 2023. 31 Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2023: China. 32 J. Nicas, R. Zhong, and D. Wakabayashi, Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for Apple in China, New York Times, 17 May 2021. 33 J.Q. Ng, Tracing the Path of a Censored Weibo Post and Compiling Keywords that Trigger Automatic Review, The Citizen Lab, 10 November 2014. 34 E. Wong, After Long Ban, Western China is Back Online, New York Times, 14 March 2010. 35 M. Borak, The Strange Death of the Uyghur Internet, Wired, 2 November 2022. 36 Human Rights Watch, ‘Prosecute Them with Awesome Power’: China’s Crackdown on Tengdro Monastrery and Restrictions on Communications in Tibet, 6 July 2021. 29 18

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Engaging tech for internet freedom in authoritarian countries

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Information Operation
Internet Restrictions

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Article 19

Date Published: Oct 5, 2024

Abstract: In this report, ARTICLE 19 reviews the human rights context and responsibilities of tech companies operating in 3 authoritarian countries in Asia, namely China, Myanmar, and Vietnam. It focuses on the rights to freedom of expression and privacy, and the manner in which authoritarian states directly or indirectly expect companies to assist them in censoring content, promoting propaganda, accessing user data, and engaging in surveillance. While these are undoubtedly highly challenging contexts, companies have not sufficiently prioritised protecting human rights in their policies and actions. States are the primary duty bearers under international human rights law, but companies also have human rights responsibilities, as outlined in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Even if domestic law or circumstances make it impossible for companies to fully meet their human rights responsibilities, they should take action so as to respect human rights standards to the greatest extent possible. Tech companies should not merely reference local law as an excuse for collaborating in rights violations. They should take steps such as those detailed in this report, like adopting appropriate policies, asking governments to justify content removal requests clearly and specifically, and reporting transparently on their compliance with government demands. For each country, we survey the country context and provide an overview of legal obligations which companies operate under that are problematic from the perspective of international human rights law and that may, as a result, put pressure on companies to become complicit in violations of the rights to freedom of expression and privacy. We then explore how Western tech companies operating in these countries, many of which have explicitly stated their commitment to respecting freedom of expression and privacy, have responded to these legal obligations and to other government expectations that they will cooperate in violations of these rights.

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Engaging tech for internet freedom in authoritarian countries

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