The Dangers of the Global Spread of China's Digital Authoritarianism

_Watch the [hearing](https://www.uscc.gov/hearings/rule-law-chinas-increasingly-global-legal-reach) on "Rule by Law: China’s Increasingly Global Legal Reach", held by the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission._

## I. China’s Digital Authoritarianism

Chairman Bartholomew, Vice Chairman Wong, Commissioner Goodwin, Commissioner Helberg, and distinguished Commission members, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the important topic of the Chinese Communist Party’s increasingly global legal reach.

China is pioneering a new brand of digital authoritarianism at home and abroad, which poses a profound threat to global freedoms. The United States must work with other democratic nations to push back on these illiberal uses of technology and develop an alternative vision for using digital technologies that preserves personal privacy and individual freedom.

The Chinese Communist Party is using technology to build a dense web of digital and physical surveillance to track and monitor its citizens.[1](https://www.cnas.org/publications/congressional-testimony/the-dangers-of-the-global-spread-of-chinas-digital-authoritarianism#fn1) Over half of the world’s one billion surveillance cameras are in China.[2](https://www.cnas.org/publications/congressional-testimony/the-dangers-of-the-global-spread-of-chinas-digital-authoritarianism#fn2) Elements of this technology-enhanced authoritarianism in China include:

- Artificial intelligence tools such as facial, voice, and gait recognition;
- Biometric databases consisting of fingerprints, blood samples, voiceprints, iris scans, facial images, and DNA;
- Facial recognition scanners in airports, hotels, banks, train stations, subways, factories, apartment complexes, and public toilets;
- Physical security checkpoints that include searching cell phones for unauthorized content;
- Wi-Fi “sniffers” to gather data from nearby phones and computers;
- License plate readers to identify and track vehicles;
- Police cloud computing centers to churn through data;
- Police software that tracks individuals’ movements, car and cell phone use, gas station and electricity use, and package delivery;
- “Minority identification” facial recognition systems that deliberately target minority groups, specifically China’s Uighur population; and
- A national “social credit system” consisting of a series of different databases, scores, and blacklists to enhance social and political control over Chinese citizens.[3](https://www.cnas.org/publications/congressional-testimony/the-dangers-of-the-global-spread-of-chinas-digital-authoritarianism#fn3)

The most extreme version of this techno-authoritarianism exists in Xinjiang, where the Chinese Communist Party is carrying out a brutal campaign of genocide and repression against the ethnic Uighur population. However, many of these tools are used nationwide. COVID-related measures have further enhanced the Chinese Communist Party’s control over citizen movements.

Unlike in t

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