– China’s citizens become “transparent chess pieces”
All Internet users in China are to receive a digital identification number. The Chinese are used to controls – but for many this still goes too far.
Lea Sahay aus Peking
Published: 13.08.2024, 21:04
China’s leadership plans to introduce an online ID: Gamers in an Internet cafe in Beijing.
Foto: Keystone
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Chinese people are used to digital surveillance that is unheard of anywhere else in the world: Anyone who uses the Internet has to register with online services using their cell phone number. SIM cards can only be purchased with an ID and a face scan. Critical posts are deleted by tens of thousands of censors and all messages on messenger services are monitored. After critical comments, the police are at the door. And now the controls could even be expanded.
Until now, responsibility for verification has been with companies and platforms. It is difficult for the authorities to see which platforms a user is active on. This is now set to change: According to a draft law, users will in future be required to register on all platforms with a unique identification number. According to the draft, this will initially be voluntary, although it is unclear whether it will remain so.
Using the number, all of a user’s digital traces can be accessed immediately, including their search engine history. Although the law has not yet been passed, platforms such as WeChat are already offering test versions for logging in using an online ID.
Comparison with “health app” during Corona
According to the Ministry for State Security, the aim is not surveillance, but rather the protection of citizens. The authorities are advertising the number in the state media, saying that users can use it to verify themselves without passing on unnecessary data to online services.
Because the new regulation seems to promise more security, the initiative is also supported by some Chinese people. Many apps in China are real data octopuses, collecting more information than necessary. This is already illegal: in recent years, regulatory authorities have fined more than a hundred companies for excessive data collection.
The public is invited to submit comments on the draft law until the end of August. However, those who tried to do so in the past few days did not get very far. For example, the post by lawyer Lao Dongyan disappeared from the debate platform Weibo. The professor from Tsinghua University compared the online ID to the “health app” that was part of everyday life in China during the Corona crisis.
Critic accounts will be blocked immediately
At that time, people had to register everywhere for contact tracing purposes, whether in a restaurant, train station, city park or their own apartment block. In at least one case, local authorities used the app to prevent citizens from protesting. Lao explained that both applications shared the same “philosophy of control”. Her account was subsequently frozen and she cannot post anything for 90 days.
A similar fate befell half a dozen other experts. Her colleague Huang Yusheng warned that a nation that tries to turn its citizens into “glass chess pieces” will never become a vibrant and creative nation. His account was permanently blocked. Numerous search terms on the topic are now censored online, including the term “online identification number” itself.
Control and censorship in China
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