The Voice of America on Friday quoted a source familiar with the matter as saying that the Chinese Communist Party is assisting the Burmese military in building a cyber firewall to complement the military government’s efforts to implement a proposed cybersecurity law as soon as possible. Although the rumors have not been confirmed by other sources, many Burmese people have been demonstrating outside the Chinese Embassy in recent days. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party’s export of social surveillance and censorship systems to countries around the world is nothing new.
The Voice of America quoted a cybersecurity expert in Yangon, Burma’s largest city, as saying that Chinese information technology personnel and hardware equipment have arrived there at the request of the Burmese military government, and that the firewall equipment was recently sent to Burma’s network and telecommunications operators and was required to be operational by next Monday.
Burmese people question Chinese goods
Due to the lack of conclusive evidence, this station has not been able to independently confirm the reliability of this news. In recent days, however, a document has been circulating wildly among Burmese netizens on social media platforms. The document states that five cargo planes from Kunming, China, arrived at Yangon International Airport on Tuesday after Myanmar shut down international flights. Some local people have questioned whether the Chinese Communist Party has sent some technicians to Myanmar to help the military government build a cyber firewall.
Chen Kuaid, executive chairman of the Princeton China Society, noted that the Chinese Communist Party’s ambiguous attitude toward the matter has been widely questioned in the wake of the military coup in Burma, and that Beijing authorities may indeed be helping the Tatmadaw consolidate power in power.
“Although the Chinese Communist Party does not currently verbally admit to providing firewall equipment to the Burmese military, I think it is certainly possible that the Chinese Communist Party is actually supporting the Tatmadaw and could indeed be doing something like this.”
At almost the same Time, the Burmese military prepared a cybersecurity bill. Citing a copy it obtained, Reuters said the bill would require network operators to prevent or remove the distribution of content deemed to “provoke hatred and harm unity and harmony,” and specifically mentions “false news or rumors” and “Content that is “inappropriate to Burmese Culture. In a statement, more than 150 Burmese civil society organizations said the bill includes provisions that violate human rights, democratic principles such as freedom of expression, data protection and privacy, and civil rights.
As a result, mass demonstrations have erupted outside the Chinese Communist Party’s embassy in Burma for several days urging China to support the Burmese people rather than the coup army.
While it has not been confirmed that the Chinese Communist Party is helping the Burmese military government “build a wall,” there is ample evidence that the Communist Party has exported surveillance technology and equipment to many developing countries in recent years and is helping them build their own cyber-censorship systems.
Burmese people gathered in front of the Chinese embassy on February 11 to demonstrate and question the Chinese Communist Party’s assistance to the Burmese military in controlling the Internet.
Chinese Communist Surveillance Technology Goes Global
Sheena Chestnut Greitens, a visiting senior fellow at the Center for East Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, reported last April that her team had combed through publicly available information and found that at least 80 countries had adopted Chinese Communist Party surveillance and public security technologies since 2008, and that this number had increased significantly over the past five years. . The report shows that these technologies have been used in the vast majority of countries in Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South America, as well as in parts of Africa and Europe.
In his book “The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet,” CNN correspondent James Griffiths says, “The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet. (The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet), writes that China’s Internet model has gone beyond its borders, and that Beijing’s censorship authorities are actively cooperating with Russia, Uganda and other countries to help them build Internet surveillance systems and suppress dissenting voices online.
Hu Jia, a Beijing-based rights activist, argues that the Chinese Communist Party has exported these authoritarian tools while capturing both economic and geopolitical benefits.
“How much economic benefit, there is no clear figure for this, but I think it should be there. On the other hand, by technically supporting these authoritarian governments, the CCP has effectively enlisted a group with a poor human rights record.”
Looking back at media reports in recent years, it’s not hard to find examples of CCP surveillance technology going abroad. in 2019, the New York Times published a lengthy report that the Ecuadorian government had adopted a surveillance system made by two Chinese companies. By monitoring thousands of cameras across the country in real time, they could quickly get a handle on crime. But an investigation by the same media outlet found that the system was also used to monitor political opponents and activists of the country’s leaders.
A Bloomberg report published the same year focused on the emerging African democracy of Zambia, noting that huawei led the manufacture of the first national data center there, and that Huawei and ZTE also provided the Zambian government with network surveillance and shielding equipment. The report’s authors argue that the CCP’s attempt to create another information camp outside the Western landscape will spawn a digital iron curtain.
This export of the Chinese Communist Party model would exacerbate the global political divide, said Chen Kuaid.
“It would exacerbate the already serious state-to-state hostility around the world, especially between democracies and non-democracies, and that front would appear increasingly stark.”
He added that the CCP hopes to use this to consolidate authoritarian regimes around the world, prompting them to become a counterweight to join forces against Western democracies.
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