AMERICANS ARE HAVING AN argument about whether the federal government should (try to) ban TikTok. Oddly enough, Chinese government officials have waded into this debate.
Shortly before the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on a bill to ban the app, a CCP spokeswoman demanded that the American government “provide an open, fair, and nondiscriminatory environment for foreign companies in the US.” The following month, when TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress, another CCP official gloated that the hearing showed how “paranoid . . . some US lawmakers are.” As the New York Times reports, “Twitter accounts from Chinese diplomats and state media outlets posted nearly 200 tweets about TikTok in the week around [Chew’s] congressional hearing on March 23.”
All of this is pretty rich, to put it mildly. The Chinese market is notoriously difficult for foreign firms to enter. Our social media companies, in particular, have been shut out of the country, replaced by state-controlled copies. And it is impossible to imagine American government flacks taunting the CCP on a social media platform in China.
As for paranoia, no one tops Beijing. Late last year, in the dying days of China’s zero-Covid policy, I wrote:
Many of China’s millions of street cameras now feature facial-recognition software. The CCP closely monitors social media, and it uses smartphone data to track its citizens’ movements. State surveillance in China was widespread even before Covid-19, and it has expanded during the pandemic. . . . After attending a protest, one student learned that he was stalked, via his phone data, by the police. The authorities ordered him to write an account of why he had been in the area. Another student was questioned by police after he shared on social media his intention to leave blank pieces of paper in public restrooms. As the Wall Street Journal explains, “protesters have held up blank sheets of paper at demonstrations to express opposition to censorship.”
That it’s dangerous to wave white paper around in China is, quite obviously, a grave indictment of that nation’s governing regime.
You’ve seen the viral Mitchell and Webb sketch. “Hans, are we the baddies?” one Nazi asks another, citing the fact that they have skulls on their hats. Well, if you and your comrades in the governing regime are afraid of people waving white paper in the air, you’re the baddies.
America is divided and confused. We seem to be losing faith in ourselves. This is a little strange, given how much better we have it than, say, the average Chinese person. Our economic system continues to thrive. By contrast, China’s economic success is largely illusory. “Corruption is intrinsic to the system,” Frank Dikötter observes, and “some 600 million people have to manage on less than $140 a month.” Our commitment to free speech remains so strong that we probably can’t ban TikTok: any attempt to do so is likely to fail in court. The CCP, meanwhile, is bidding to make Nineteen Eighty-Four a reality. As Dikötter says: “A small army of censors not only monitor[s] the internet, but also flood[s] chatrooms with online comments supporting the government.” (These quotes are from Dikötter’s China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower—which I cannot recommend enough.)
We should call the CCP what it is: a claque of tyrants. LeBron James and John Cena might be afraid to say so—but it is. Some old-fashioned patriotism is not out of place on this one. For all America’s flaws, our government and China’s are not equivalent. Indeed, they are opposites. Lately, I’ve been seeking to underscore the distinctions:
America, China, and the Spirit of Enterprise, City Journal (Dec. 2022). Discusses the divergent fates of Jack Ma (laid low by the CCP for saying that “innovation mainly comes from the marketplace”) and Jeff Bezos (freely owns a newspaper that criticizes the government almost every day). Remarks the link between economic rights and political rights. Urges us to learn from the ongoing failures of central planning in China. Concludes that “some important lessons are coming out of China these days,” the most important of which is that “state power remains the greatest threat to freedom.”
The China Syndrome, City Journal (Feb. 2023). Touches on some of the past sins of the CCP—famine, forced abortion, struggle sessions. Questions how much the Party truly “reformed” after the Cultural Revolution. Notes the regime’s continuing commitment to Marxism. Examines the Party’s plan to use “digitized surveillance and social control . . . to engineer the human soul.” Concludes that “maintaining an open society . . . should serve us well in an age of uncertainty,” whereas “creeping toward Mao Zedong Thought”—as some on the left are doing—“most assuredly will not.”
Tech Policy Podcast #337: China and Domestic Surveillance (Feb. 2023). Guest: Liza Lin, reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Liza and I discuss her book Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control. We begin with the CCP’s persecution of Uighurs in China’s western Xinjiang province. From the book: “The Communist Party’s offensive in Xinjiang ranks among the most unsettling political developments of the twenty-first century. Chinese leaders have revived totalitarian techniques of the past and blended them with futuristic technologies in an effort not to eradicate a religious minority but to reengineer it.”
Tech Policy Podcast #343: China and National Security (April 2023). Guest: Jimmy Quinn, national security correspondent for National Review. Jimmy and I cover the TikTok controversy, the new House Select Committee on the CCP, and Sino-American tech competition. Also: Jimmy summarizes his reporting on the CCP’s efforts to silence Chinese dissidents in the United States.
Originally posted at Corbin’s Substack, Policy & Palimpsests.