Source: China News Network
Xu Peixi: Will the curtain of the digital Cold War be completely opened?
China News Service, Beijing, May 13 Title: Will the curtain of the digital cold war be completely opened?
Du Guodong, a reporter from China News Weekly
In recent years, international competition in cyberspace has intensified, with the United States launching the Clean Network Initiative, China proposing the Global Data Security Initiative, and Europe promoting the implementation of a series of data legislation, which have further integrated digital issues into the scope of the great power game.
What is the focus of cyber competition between China and the United States? How to expand win-win cooperation in the digital field? What are the controversies surrounding international rule-making in cyberspace? China News Service "East and West Question" recently interviewed Professor Xu Peixi, director of the Research Center for Global Governance in Cyberspace of the Communication University of China, to answer the above questions.
Infographic Courtesy of the image
The interview transcript is summarized below:
China News Service: 2020 constitutes the first year of the digital cold war, how will the competition in cyberspace evolve in the future?
Xu Peixi: The risk of the digital Cold War has intensified, mainly reflected in the increasingly unilateral and camped line of the United States, which intends to pull down the digital iron curtain. From the current trend, the risk of a digital cold war is still relatively large. But if the digital Cold War doesn't go down this path, there are at least three reasons.
The first is the uniqueness of cyberspace itself. There is only one Internet in the world, and the Pentagon will use it, Wall Street will use it, and Silicon Valley will use it. The demands of the two major interest groups in the United States, the military and the economy, are not consistent, and there is a fundamental conflict of interest between Silicon Valley and Washington, between Wall Street and the Pentagon. U.S. information technology companies need to gain digital economic benefits through the Internet, to promote global cooperation, and if the Pentagon wants to turn cyberspace into a battlefield to grab the interests of the military industry, it will inevitably encourage confrontation.
Second, technically, the Internet is asymmetrical, and small countries and even individuals can cause great damage to large and powerful countries. The U.S. offensive capability in cyberspace is strong, but its defensive capabilities are not strong. The United States is increasingly finding its critical infrastructure fragile and sometimes unable to maintain political stability. The spear of the United States is incomparably sharp, but the shield is not indestructible.
Third, many countries are reluctant to accept US coercion. France and Germany should pursue strategic autonomy and keep a distance from the United States. In terms of the digital economy, they want to seek autonomy, raise the asking price for the US technology giants, first through antitrust, digital tax and other legal tools, retain money, and then strengthen the digital economy, they can not afford to miss the cost of the digital revolution.
Overall, the launch of the "Clean Network Plan" in the United States in 2020 is a "deadly plan" for the overseas development of Chinese digital enterprises, and it is necessary to prevent our digital economy from going out, which opens the curtain of the digital cold war, but the asymmetry of the Internet and other characteristics may determine that the iron curtain of the digital cold war will not completely come.
China News Service: Is it possible to move towards a digital community in the future?
Xu Peixi: There is still great uncertainty about whether countries around the world can overcome their core differences on cyber issues, move towards a digital community, and replicate their experience of cooperation in the climate field. At present, it is difficult to return to the heavy burden, and it is difficult to go in the opposite direction. At the Munich Security Conference 2019, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf referred to the term "digital community." The European Cyber Regulation document contains the term "global public goods". China's term is "a community of shared destiny in cyberspace."
American hawks have no concept of community, their worldview is preconceived, black and white, and they like to look at other civilizations and cultures from the perspective of confrontation and conflict. Perhaps influenced by a tragic history, Russian strategists also do not value the idea of community. Most of the strategists of the two major military powers of the United States and Russia believe in the law of the jungle and lack the habit of thinking from the community.
For the global information technology industry, if the concept of a community fits perfectly into its globalization strategy, they are happy to support it. Since ancient times, China has had a cultural concept of being responsible for the world, so extending the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind to cyberspace has cultural roots, is natural, and is also responsible for the world.
China News Service: The digital bipolar pattern between China and the United States has been formed, what is the core of the current competition between the two countries in the digital field?
Xu Peixi: In the digital age, the competition between the two countries is competitiveness. From the perspective of national competition, China is the world's second largest digital economy, and the digital economy is the closest to the United States. The United States looks at the problem from the perspective of strength, worrying that China has surpassed the United States in the digital field, and the way of transcendence in the digital age may be exponential, rather than incremental, and the telecommunications equipment is reflected in Huawei's 5G products dominating the world.
In terms of digital services, TikTok, the international version of Douyin, has become a platform company that can compete with Facebook. Zuckerberg's accusations against China at the U.S. congressional hearing were actually motivated by their own interests, not on the basis of the facts, in part in exchange for congressional support to fight competitors.
If considered from the national dimension, future competition is likely to be in the field of emerging technologies such as algorithms and artificial intelligence. Algorithms are classified as core competencies, and China's Ministry of Commerce lists them as core technologies. Neither China nor the United States wants to be left behind in the field of emerging technologies, and whoever occupies the commanding heights can have an advantage in military and economic terms. I think these are some of the core points of competition between the two countries in the digital age.
The U.S.-China flag. Image source: Visual China
China News Service: The differences between China and the United States are obvious, what areas can we achieve win-win cooperation and expand the intersection of interests?
Xu Peixi: First of all, in the financial field, Wall Street interest groups are actually willing to make some rules with us. For example, if there is a cyber war, do not attack banks, do not attack financial infrastructure, hackers cannot tamper with financial data, etc. The U.S. think tank has made recommendations to the G20 to ensure the security of financial data and called on the two major powers of China and the United States to cooperate first.
Second, in critical infrastructure areas, such as power grids, natural gas pipelines, oil pipelines, telecommunications facilities, etc., the United States is gradually realizing its vulnerability in these areas and wants to make rules to protect them, so it may have room for cooperation with China.
Third, in terms of digital trade, the United States is no longer dominant in the field of traditional manufacturing, but it is still strong in the cultural field, and Hollywood blockbusters, Disney, and Universal Studios are still attractive. China's cultural self-confidence is getting stronger and stronger, and it is not afraid of the infiltration of foreign cultural products, and it is no longer regarded as a flood beast, which may become an area of future dialogue and reciprocal trade between China and the United States.
Infographic: Universal Studios Beijing. Image source: ICphoto
China News Service: In recent years, digital issues have been continuously included in the scope of the great power game, what are the main trends in the future?
Xu Peixi: I call the future trend an arms race between the two armies. The first is the cyberwar arms race, which is a race provoked by the United States. There are more than fifty countries in the world that have cyber militaries with the ability to launch cyberattacks, even some emerging countries such as India and South Africa.
The United Nations has been discussing international rule-making in cyberspace. The United States wants to set the rules for cyberwarfare, such as if you launched a cyberattack on me, and I can respond with missiles or even nuclear weapons, and some of the language has reached the point of being unbelievable. We fear that such discussions will legitimize cyberwarfare and militarize cyberspace.
The second is the arms race in cyberspace legislation, which is a race provoked by Europe. They have the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and, more recently, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Marketplace Act. Europe, as the leader in this legislative race, poses a huge challenge to the U.S. digital industry. Europe is aware of the crisis that Germany's traditional advantages such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and other car companies are being overtaken by Tesla, Didi Chuxing and other companies in the digital age.
China's cyber legislation is becoming more and more sophisticated. After nearly a decade of legal reserves, it has been fully committed to the implementation of network security and data security regulations. The Didi incident is the first time china has used online legal tools to deal with cross-border data flows. Although China's law enforcement actions with international influence are late, there is a lot of relevant legislative work. China's situation is different from Europe's, and it should be benchmarked against the United States, not Europe. Don't push too hard, otherwise it will hurt China's digital competitiveness.
The U.S. approach is that when Europe challenges it, it challenges China; when every country challenges the United States, it still challenges China. The United States needs an imaginary enemy to divert Europe's attention, so it ignores the basic fact that the Digital Economies are both market-driven and fully intertwined in terms of capital, and concentrate on advocating ideological differences. The European factor is also a major reason for the increased risk of the digital cold war between China and the United States. As the number one power in cyberspace, the United States is facing pressure from countries around the world to surpass China's current sense of crisis.
China News Service: China's media system, Internet governance model, and Internet information policy constitute the core areas of smear by Western politicians, hard-line think tanks, media, and social platforms. How should China respond?
Xu Peixi: First of all, we must understand the real situation of Internet governance models, media systems, and Internet information policies in various countries.
The United States likes to promote the Cold War mentality of the last century, "Four Theories of the Press", which divides the media systems of various countries in the world into four categories: liberalism, social responsibility, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism. Whatever is good, such as the first two, is American and Western; whatever is bad, such as the latter two, is a non-Western country such as the Soviet Union. This is a typical refraction of cold war thinking in the field of media and communication ideas.
In the digital age, they copied and pasted the same ideas into cyberspace, giving China a hat of "digital authoritarianism." In fact, even according to the Western definition, it cannot be so categorized, because China's major digital platform companies are privately owned, no different from the United States.
Why do Western think tanks and politicians prefer this concept? Because they feel that the so-called "Chinese hacker threat theory" and other statements lack ideological color, lack strength, and cannot rise to the institutional level, it is not as good as the hat of "digital authoritarianism", which not only attacks China's digital enterprises and digital technologies, but also attacks China's Internet information policy and political system.
In fact, the Internet governance practices of various countries have both authoritarian and liberal components. The United States only mentions its own liberal aspects, namely Silicon Valley and Wall Street, but in fact the Pentagon and NATO represent the most authoritarian and totalitarian components of cyberspace. The Statue of Liberty is not the main symbol of cyberspace, Snowden is.
There are Confucians and Taoists in China, Confucianism emphasizes order, Taoism emphasizes freedom; Confucianism emphasizes official, and Taoism emphasizes folk. This is a thought that china has not been able to break for thousands of years. In fact, these ideas are also fully reflected in China's Internet governance practice, and can also guide the global Internet governance practice. China needs to make this clear, rather than being subject to the Western discourse system. (End)
Respondent Profiles:
Xu Peixi, Professor, PhD Supervisor, Director of the Research Center for Global Governance in Cyberspace, Communication University of China, member of the Expert Advisory Committee on Cyber Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, member of the Multi-Party Advisory Committee of the China Internet Governance Forum, and member of the Expert Committee on Network Communication, teaches courses including communication, international communication, network society and communication, etc., and his main research areas are Internet governance, network security, and international communication. Global Governance in Cyberspace: The Origin, Divergence and Trend of International Rules (Social Science Literature Press), etc.