From 14 to 18 April China’s leader Xi Jinping will visit Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam to tighten China’s ties with the countries amid escalating trade war with the United States. Ahead of the mission, last week Xi Jinping chaired a meeting of the Central Work Conference on Diplomacy with Neighbouring Countries, where he reiterated calls for deepening regional partnerships. In his speech, he highlighted the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation, and touted ideas of building high-level connectivity networks, enhancing industrial cooperation, advancing security and law enforcement cooperation, and expanding people-to-people exchanges. China is likely to sign a number of agreements as it seeks to deepen ‘all-around cooperation’ with the three Southeast Asian nations. These are likely to include ongoing attention to digital infrastructure, technology, and governance norms-setting under digital cooperation – and risk further entrenching digital repression in the region.
At the 2023 Third Belt and Road Forum, Xi Jinping outlined his ambition for China to lead the development of global digital governance rules and promised that the future of the BRI would be less about big-ticket infrastructure projects and focus instead on smaller, smarter cooperation. As China seeks to strengthen ties with its Southeast Asian neighbours, it is likely to pursue deepening of several existing digital cooperation promises. ARTICLE 19 research on China’s regional digital influence shows how such cooperation has also contributed to rising digital repression. ARTICLE 19 is concerned that Xi Jinping will likely use his trip to promote and enhance current digital infrastructure, technology, and governance cooperation agreements in ways that will contribute to further deterioration of human rights in the region.
The following case studies in digital cooperation between China and Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia illustrate the scale of the issue.
Vietnam
Xi Jinping will visit Vietnam first. The visit follows his last trip in 2023 when the two countries elevated their relations to the highest level of ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’. At the time, they agreed to cooperate on ‘political security, government security, and regime security’, and to strengthen cooperation in cybersecurity and law enforcement cooperation. This week’s visit will likely build on these themes.
Vietnam is emblematic of a digital authoritarian state learning from China’s digital governance norms.
Not long after China launched its White Paper on the Internet, establishing its foundational norm of cyber sovereignty, which contrasts with the universality of human rights law and threatens to proliferate internet fragmentation, in 2012 Vietnam launched a military department focused on, among other things, ‘protecting the national information sovereignty in cyberspace’.
Vietnam’s former Minister of Public Security, Tran Dai Quang (who subsequently served as the country’s president) has advocated for ‘cyber sovereignty’ and made considered Xi Jinping’s speeches to be ‘influential’. In 2022, then-Minister of Public Security Tô Lâm, one of the architects of Vietnam’s Cybersecurity Law (who would go on to become the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam), published a book focused on cyber sovereignty as justification for repressive internet regulations. Both Tran Quang and Tô Lâm have been key figures in influencing the government’s cybersecurity strategy to resemble the PRC’s digital authoritarianism model. Both were involved in the drafting of Vietnam’s Cybersecurity Law, which is closely modelled on China’s regulation. It was adopted in June 2018, a mere year after China’s came into force.
As ARTICLE 19 has examined, there is a great degree of similarity between the two laws, pointing to China’s influence over the development of Vietnam’s digital governance. Both laws define cybersecurity in a manner that diverges from conventional, rights-based approach, conflating technical infrastructure security with information control — resulting in enhanced censorship. Both laws also take a centralised approach to critical information infrastructure and promote centralised censorship of information critical of the regime. They require data localisation, raising serious risks of surveillance, and include a number of concerning obligations on foreign tech companies. Both laws also promote real name registration, which further compromises right to privacy and anonymity protections, adversely impacting freedom of expression online. Finally, Vietnam’s approach to cybersecurity models China’s emphasis on individual and tech companies’ requirements to act as surveillance extensions of the Party-State apparatus. Subsequent decrees in Vietnam have positioned the law even closer to its Chinese predecessor.
Cambodia
Globally, Cambodia ranks second only to Pakistan in the Doublethink Lab’s China Index, making it one of the countries most exposed to China’s influence. China is Cambodia’s largest foreign investor and development partner, and Cambodia is perhaps China’s staunchest ally in Southeast Asia.
In early 2022, Cambodia launched its Cambodian Digital Government Policy 2022– 2035, which referred to China as a positive case study in successful digital government, raising concerns about internet freedom in the country. We are likely to see further tightening of this relationship through additional cooperation agreements and memoranda of understanding.
Cambodia’s digital development has progressed in large part through major input from China and its ‘national tech champions’, including Huawei, which established market dominance over competitors like Ericsson and Nokia. This was, in part, a result of undisclosed subsidies from Chinese state institutions, including Silk Road Investment Fund and the Bank of China. Huawei is the largest Chinese technology company operating in Cambodia. Its dominance in 5G has accelerated especially since 2019 following an agreement with the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications.
The starkest example of China’s malicious influence over Cambodia’s digital infrastructure and governance space is in the National Internet Gateway (NIG). In February 2021 Cambodia enacted the NIG Sub-Decree, establishing the country’s version of the Great Firewall of China. Article 6 of the Sub-Decree requires telecommunications companies and service providers to route internet traffic through government-controlled and monitored servers ‘to prevent and disconnect all network connections that affect national income, security, social order, morality, culture, traditions, and customs’. Articles 14 and 16 allow government officials to retain traffic data for a year and issue overbroad penalties for non-compliance. Sopheap Chak, former executive director of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, has observed that ‘the proposed NIG mirrors that of the Chinese internet gateway’.
Even though the legal framework is in place, Cambodia lacks the technical capacity to develop a China style firewall. While the government has not disclosed who has been contracted to construct the NIG, experts in Cambodian civil society believe it is Huawei or ZTE. The lack of transparency is alarming, especially as cooperation between Cambodia and China is now under way to revamp data centres and fibreoptic landing stations to handle greater data flows all physical layer upgrades needed for a development of NIG.
Malaysia
Malaysia is home to the second-largest Chinese overseas community in the world, after Thailand. It is also among the top 10 global recipients of BRI support; relations with China and digital cooperation are common elements of Malaysian politics. In early 2023, China’s ambassador to Malaysia, Ouyang Yujing, remarked that ‘Malaysia–China relations have been at the forefront of ASEAN–China relations’ and called for deeper cooperation to accelerate technological innovation, connectivity and the digital economy.
One area where cooperation between China and Malaysia has raised human rights concerns is around partnerships on high-risk Chinese surveillance and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, last year ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, promised to invest some USD 2,13 billion to develop an AI hub in Malaysia.
Cooperation with sanctioned tech companies has also taken place. In 2019 Malaysia signed an agreement to develop a USD 500 million AI park with SenseTime. The MOU, signed between G3 Global Berhad, Malaysia’s leading AI company, and SenseTime lapsed in 2022 but the Malaysian partner has expressed continued interest in the partnership. Partnership with SenseTime raises concerns in light of the company’s documented cooperation with the Chinese police to enhance facial recognition surveillance capabilities, and the fact that it has supplied facial recognition technology for the purpose of surveillance and mass internment of Uyghurs and other minorities in China. SenseTime maintains an office in Malaysia.
In 2018 the Auxiliary Force Sdn Bhd, a company that trains auxiliary police officers, announced a partnershipwith another Chinese AI company, Yitu Technology. Yitu would provide body-worn cameras with facial recognition technology, with dataset of faces provided by the Malaysian police. Partnerships with Yitu Technology for law enforcement is concerning in light of the company’s role in ‘human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups’ in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Both SenseTime and Yitu Technology are listed on the United States Federal Register of prohibited entities.
One of the stated objectives outlined the recent Central Work Conference on Diplomacy with Neighbouring Countries has been to expand law enforcement cooperation. This is likely to be among the priorities of Xi Jinping’s trip, and we should expect further discussion on these points in Malaysia. Cooperation on expanding partnership in new and emerging technologies, especially around AI, are likely to also be a focus of the upcoming delegation, as China seeks to both elevate its global norms setting role and further dislodge the United States as a leader in AI technology.
For more information
Michael Caster, Head of Global China Programme, [email protected]