Surveying the course of China’s censorship over the years, Alina Polyakova and Christopher Walker conclude that the technology available today is “propelling the CCP’s capabilities for suppressing speech to an entirely new level, both within and beyond China’s borders” (The Diplomat, March 18, 2026).
An anaconda
A quarter century ago, the Chinese government followed a so-called “anaconda in the chandelier” approach. “Even when the anaconda was not actively aggressive, its mere presence typically would be sufficient to create a climate of fear—a ‘psychological control system’—to induce self-imposed restraints not only among Chinese citizens, but also among foreigners who did business with Beijing.”
That was all prologue. The Chinese government is still an anaconda, but:
In the period since, Beijing’s projection of censorship has expanded, influencing the education and research sectors, entertainment industry, major professional sports, and any number of other powerful institutions—outside China’s borders….
Today, the global expansion of digital platforms affords far more opportunities for censorship innovation, a development with massive implications for free speech globally. China’s leaders, like Russia’s, are viscerally hostile to independent thought and expression. In their hands, new digital tools present global risks that would have been unthinkable a generation ago….
Rather than relying on selective repression tactics for punishment as a deterrent…the CCP now has a toolkit for more comprehensive forms of manipulation and control.
The first key element is surveillance. In 2013, Xi Jinping remarked that “whoever controls data has the upper hand” and over the past decade Beijing has kicked into high gear the flow of data to the party through a range of sources, from mobile chat or payment apps to facial recognition cameras and other forms of biometric surveillance. China’s rapidly developing compute capabilities allow the CCP not only to collect massive amounts of data but to compile, analyze, and attribute personal information at an exponential speed. These methods have yet to hit peak moment as AI capabilities continue to produce new breakthroughs.
Elements of Beijing’s censorship and surveillance regime “are being exported globally and are indeed in high demand.” The interested buyers are other repressive governments—like that of Iran. The authors don’t mention that much of its censorship and surveillance technology was imported by Beijing, provided by the expertise of Western tech firms, before being exported.
“Finally, the CCP can use globally popular platforms owned by China-based companies, such as TikTok or Deep Seek, to gather massive amounts of data, place curated limits on information available to the public, and shape global discourse. These mechanisms—many of which create dependencies by other governments on Chinese vendors—both provide other governments with instruments to control speech that displeases them, and create levers the CCP can use to suppress its own critics on a global scale.”
What to do
Sounds unstoppable. But the authors suggest that the effort required to sustain such “extraordinary speech-suppressing practices” is driven by fear and provides only a “veneer of stability” that conceals “deepening social erosion.” The Chinese government is not as invulnerable as it sometimes looks.
To help the Chinese and ourselves, the democracies must provide an unambiguous, principled alternative: defend individuals within the borders of own countries who are targeted by Beijing, support “circumvention technologies and independent media that shine some light through the cracks in the Great Firewall,” and require that internationally operating platforms linked to China be transparent and accountable.
Tall orders, especially since many in the West emulate and admire rather than seek to counter the repressive policies of the Chinese Communist Party.
Also see:
Big Picture Originals: How China’s Censorship Inspired the West
Associated Press: “Silicon Valley enabled brutal mass detention and surveillance in China, internal documents show”
“ ‘Prevent problems before they happen,’ IBM promised Chinese officials. In an August 2009 pamphlet, IBM cited the Xinjiang riots and said its technology could help the government ‘ensure urban safety and stability.’ ”
