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Chinese authorities learn tricks from Russia as cracks in online censorship start to show

China's internet censors are employing 'authoritarian learning' from Russia, polluting parts of the information space they are no longer able to control

It has been hard to escape the footage of brave protesters calling for the overthrow of the Chinese state on social media. The videos and images seem so ubiquitous that it’s likely that it’s hard to avoid them in person, too.

That such footage is seeping out of such a highly controlled country as China is testament to the strength of the opposition to Xi Jinping’s dictatorship. The Chinese internet is ringed by a carefully controlled set of IT called the Great Firewall.

The theory is that Chinese censors can monitor whatever comes out, and prevent much Western content going in, because all the data passes through network access points under its control.

“It’s a relationship Chinese internet users have had with the firewall since it was set up,” says Tanya Lokot. “But the fact we’re able to see these widespread protests is perhaps an escalation.”

The ability for Western social media users to see footage of protests calling for the end of Xi’s rule suggests that cracks are starting to show in the thick metaphorical walls that encircle the Chinese internet. But at the same time, China is trying to exert its control.

“We’ve seen a concerted effort to block as many circumvention options as possible,” says Ms Lokot. “The citizens aren’t just the only ones putting the firewall to the test. The Chinese state is putting citizens’ circumvention abilities to the test.”

The massed, country-wide protests are stretching the Chinese state’s control over its internet to the limit. “The Chinese government has such a grip over the internet and what it can be used for that trying to use social media within China is going to be risky for those users,” says Alan Woodward, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey.

“Everything said in China on their ‘permitted’ social media is visible to the government and if you are seen as a dissenter, worse still an organiser of protests, you are likely to have a knock on the door in the early hours.”

A woman delivers food to a residential compound that is under lockdown as outbreaks of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue in Beijing, China November 28, 2022. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
A woman delivers food to a residential compound that is under lockdown as outbreaks of Covid continue in China (Photo: Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Instead, protesters are likely to turn to proxies and virtual private networks, or VPNs, which can subvert the Great Firewall and the crushing government censorship regime.

Professor Woodward suggests that some may also use mesh networks, which allows people to connect directly using Bluetooth and avoid traditional internet connections that are snooped on by the state, to try to organise their protests.

The mesh network method is already popular in Hong Kong, where an app called Bridgefy allows people to communicate away from the state apparatus. A message sent to someone within 100 metres is simply sent via Bluetooth; if you’re looking to chat to someone further away, then it uses other people’s phones to hop along a line and reach its intended recipient.

However, Professor Woodward still believes that method of contact isn’t as secure as protesters may want it to be. “The mobile devices in China are so insecure it won’t take the authorities long to catch up,” he says.

They’ve already tried to – in a most inelegant way. Struggling to stifle news of the dissent on social media, Chinese state censors have instead taken a different tack: try to drown it out.

Chinese-linked accounts on Twitter have been flooding the social network with nonsense tagged with the names of key cities where protests are taking place in an attempt to smother news of the protests out of existence.

More on China

“This is evidence of what we call authoritarian learning,” says Ms Lokot. “All of them are different, but learn from each other. They take lessons from others. Just as we’ve seen in Russia, when they know censorship isn’t working on its own, they start to pollute the information space, China is doing this.

The Chinese state realises just relying on technological censorship is not enough. They will also try to influence the information space – especially once that content makes it into the information space.”

Yet the fact that we’re still able to learn about what’s going on in China suggests that the system as designed isn’t working. Of course, just because we’re seeing and cheering on those standing up to unjust, unfair rule on our social media, it doesn’t mean that the Chinese people bravely taking to the streets in defiance of a decades-old hegemony can see us. “The majority of people in China can’t see what we’re posting here on Twitter,” says Ms Lokot.

Still, there remain glimmers of hope, she says. “They’re seeing whatever exists on WeChat, on Weibo, and other apps that are mainstream in China. There, those internal censorship mechanisms are working – but they’re also faltering.”

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