China: The Greatest Enemy To Our Liberties
By: Joe Brown
Tags: Threat, Europe, Human Rights, USA, China

Why Is China Dangerous

The list of crimes against humanity committed by China in the 21st century is growing. More than ever, it’s becoming evident that its culture is incompatible with the ideals of the Western world, namely individual freedom. The violations of human rights in China are indicative of a culture that is lagging behind the well-established norms of equality and social justice, privileges that we, Westerns, too often take for granted. While we indulge in our liberties to speak and act freely, express ourselves, support minorities and deprivileged groups of people through inclusion, and have a fundamental right to influence our political system through the democratic process, communist systems like China flip things around and prioritize the common good over individual’s life.

Communist systems, like the one in China, or the former Soviet Union, even former Yugoslavia, feed on the idea that people want to be taken care of. Here comes the idea of the state guarantees: the government will take care of you in exchange for your freedom. You become a (modern-era) slave to a system that feeds off of your hard labor.

In theory, socialism is a lovely idea. Collective work will produce enough resources that can be equally distributed among people, to each according to their needs. In practice, this transforms into communism, which depletes hardworking citizens of their personal achievements, which now become achievements of the state. Competition, in communism, is impossible, as those who are better and more valuable in the job market will ultimately fall short in gaining recognition for their skills, talent, and hard work.

It doesn’t take much for people to realize they are being exploited, and revolt against a tyrannical government is imminent. The only way the government can prevent that is by selectively exposing the information to people, limiting the external influence, and punishing dissidents. We see all of this happening right now, as we speak, in China. And this is what the communist system in this country is guilty of.

Western Consumerism Fuels Communist Machine

I had a Huawei phone before the brand expanded to a ubiquitous provider of smartphones and network devices. There was a site called PandaWill (unfortunately it seems like their e-commerce business no longer exists), which provided us with cheap smartphones and other electronics from Chinese manufacturers.

And it was perfect for us, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, in one of the second world countries in the EU, as we looked at smartphones as “simple commodities”, buying cheaper alternatives to Samsung and Nexus Android devices, or especially overpriced Apple hardware, seemed like a great idea at the time. After all, you were paying for the same hardware.

Today, I see this as the beginnings of China’s success in the global market, especially in emerging economies and second/third world countries, Chinese smartphones brought exactly the same products for fraction of the price. China mastered the art of stealing intellectual property, modifying it, and with the help of cheap (exploited) labor, they managed to massively manufacture their devices.

In the case of US or EU companies, you did pay a higher price, but you paid the price of innovation. Look at the technological advances that the American big tech companies brought us with IBM, Google, Apple, Oracle, …

Now, look at China. Formally Huawei, nowadays Xiaomi, you have a surge of highly performant mobile devices for a fraction of a price you would otherwise pay, same hardware, same software, only different brand. You’re buying a Xiaomi device because it’s cheaper than a Pixel. And this is how western consumerism fuels the communist machine.

Am I blaming China for that? Of course not, that’s how we, consumers, were lured into their ecosystem of cheaper, equally performant hardware and software, which is known to expose our information to the Chinese government. If Huawei runs our internet infrastructure, you can be positive that the information is not kept private from the prying eyes of their country. This has been proved multiple times.

On the other hand of the aisle, you have American big tech companies, like Google and Facebook, paying enormous fines for their malpractices. Personally, I condone their behavior and believe the fines were largely justified. But the same, if not even worse, should happen to China as well. In 2019, President Donald Trump has opened up the conversation about that by placing Huawei on something called an Entity List. This government action prohibits all US companies, including Google, from collaborating with Huawei. This forced Huawei to develop their own operating system, application store, and they had to invest large amounts of money into marketing campaigns that attempted to mitigate the effects of a negative image painted about them. This cost the company, and consequently China, lots of resources. It temporarily pushed them back, but the question is for how long.

Information Control Is Warfare At Its Finest

“The Great Firewall” is the finest example of information control in modern human history. Chinese attempts to censor information containing “anti-government propaganda” are becoming meticulous and technically sophisticated. As per Wikipedia, the firewall is technically operated by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which is the entity in charge of translating the Communist Party of China’s will into technical specifications.

Many young people in China have little idea about the existence of American and European tech companies. Because they cannot access their services without tools such as VPN, which is by the way prohibited in China, their notion of the “internet” is much different than ours.

Reading through an article published in The Independent in 2018 was truly mind-blowing. Here’s a little excerpt from it:

Two economists from Peking University and Stanford University concluded this year, after an 18-month survey, that Chinese college students were indifferent about having access to uncensored, politically sensitive information. They had given nearly 1,000 students at two Beijing universities free tools to bypass censorship but found that nearly half the students did not use them. Among those who did, almost none spent time browsing foreign news websites that were blocked.

“Our findings suggest that censorship in China is effective, not only because the regime makes it difficult to access sensitive information, but also because it fosters an environment in which citizens do not demand such information in the first place,” the scholars wrote.

Indeed, the Chinese misinformation project is working. By counting on people’s gullibility, one can brainwash them into the illusion that the filtered information is enough. Consequently, people do not object or be inquisitive enough to explore the world outside of the boundaries.

Conclusions

A much more sinister outcome is a society that does not question the regime, does not object to it, and isn’t aware of the same concept of freedom as we are. For them, freedom is fulfilling duties to the communist party and being taken care of by the second-largest economy in the world. This is why communism is so appealing to the Chinese people.

It’s exploitation under the slogan of “working for the common good”, stripping people of their individual freedom and brainwashing them into believing no such freedom is necessary for a comfortable and sustainable life. Of course, China can allow themselves to do so when their machine is powered by Western consumerism and their omnipresent appearance in the world economy.