[governance] Fwd: [JNC - Forum] US-China digital cold war is well and truly under-way
Suresh Ramasubramanian
suresh at hserus.net
Mon Apr 30 03:46:06 EDT 2018
So what do you propose, introducing a narrow and slanted Chinese POV (which does rather smack of propaganda) as some sort of balance?
On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 1:05 PM +0530, "parminder" <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
And it is not old history at all....
Just now I see this call by OECD for a
global dialogue on AI
https://www.oecd-forum.org/users/42484-douglas-frantz/posts/21562-artificial-intelligence-why-a-global-dialogue-is-critical
But reading on one realises that with a
global dialogue, OECD means not a UN based one, where are
countries are equal, but an OECD led dialogue... (which IG
civil society has customarily cheered and participated in, while
condemning any possible UN process)
One squirms to hear so many calls now-a-days
for global dialogues, rules and agreements, just as an example,
Wired carries one such all today "Data
protection standards need to be global" ... There are
others on AI, and so on...
But wait a minute, was it not just
this January of 2018, that the UN WG on Enhanced Cooperation (on
International Internet-related polices) closed without a report
because not only the western countries and the big business but
also the Internet community and much of IG civil society could not
agree there really were Internet/ digital governance issues that
needed global addressing (other than perhaps as they were already
being addressed by the OECD, World Economic Forum and the
such)....
And the only comment one heard was from Milton at the IGP
cheering the failure of the WG on enhanced cooperation! Not
another word on the subject by anyone...
Is there any global civil society in any other area which is so
bereft of ideas, imagination, forward-looking proposals, much less
of accountability and progressive notions like working for the
weakest, social justice, economic rights, and so on.... Could we
yet reassemble and take up our responsibilities...
parminder
On Monday 30 April 2018 12:50 PM,
parminder wrote:
I hardly ever post to these lists now-a-days, because rarely
are substantive issues posted here in any case, but thought of
forwarding this because this refers to my - by now, favourite :)
- issue of pointing to the culpability of civil society actors
in the IG space over the last one decade or so in being partisan
to narrow US led western interests and having considerably
forgotten to promote global public interest, and the interests
of the weakest sections, groups and countries. And, as often
happens in the mid to long term, such partisanship is no longer
serving even western interests that well.
My posting and engagement on
this issue are aimed at proposing and promoting an effort at a
collective rethink and re-orientation among the IG civil society
about its politics and role, as we enter a digital society where
Internet or digital governance is one of the most important
political subjects.
parminder
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:
[JNC - Forum] US-China digital cold war is well and
truly under-way
Date:
Mon, 30 Apr 2018 12:34:50 +0530
From:
parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>
Reply-To:
Internet governance related discussions <forum at justnetcoalition.org>
To:
Forum at Justnetcoalition. Org <forum at justnetcoalition.org>
As in the earlier times, cold war alignments were determined
by, or determined, where a country acquired its armaments
from, in the digital cold war there is going to be a similar
schism in terms of whose digital security equipment you
finally trust and buy, as everything gets underpinned by the
'digital'.... Coupled with the "digital security" based
polarisation will be data flows polarisation -- EU is
determining adequacy tests about where its data can flow to,
the new US CLOUD Act is determining adequacy test about which
countries can access data residing in the US for regulatory
and law enforcement purposes.....
We were headed towards such a polarisation when, over the
last decade or so, we rejected global institutions and
agreements for Internet and digital governance... What is
significant is the role that civil society groups played in
such rejection, and thus must share the blame of the oncoming
digital polarisation which leaves all countries that are not
the US and China at the abject mercy of these digital super
powers ... parminder
internetgovernance.org
A Chinese Perspective on the Growing
High-Tech Cold War
by Jinhe Liu
9-12 minutes
In Chinese online discussions, many people are
using the expression “one sword throat-slashing
strike.” [一剑封喉] This forbidding term refers to the
United States’ seven-year export ban on China’s second-largest telecom
supplier, ZTE, which threatens
its very existence and has put the company “in a state of shock.”
In the Chinese language, the “one sword
throat-slashing strike” means that in battle a
master swiftly strikes a death blow before the
victim has a chance to resist. Chinese use of this
idiom with high frequency in the context of the
Sino-US trade war shows that there is both a feeling
of helplessness and a fighting atmosphere dispersing
though the Chinese society.
In January this year, the United States blocked
Chinese tech company Alibaba’s acquisition of
American remittance company MoneyGram; also in the
name of national security it forced AT&T to end
cooperation with Huawei. At the same time, the Trump
administration ordered high tariffs on imported
steel and aluminum and threatened several rounds of
tariffs on China. On March 22nd, Trump signed the
presidential memorandum and announced the Section
301 investigation of China, which was widely
regarded as the focus of the outbreak of trade
disputes between China and the United States. In
April 16th, the United States launched its
“throat-slashing strike” on ZTE. While some analysts
are still discussing whether a Sino-US trade war
will happen, on the other side of the Pacific the
war fire has already begun to burn, as a sense of
economic conflict develops between the two largest
economies in the world. The New
York Times Chinese version
characterized the Sino-US dispute over technology
and trade as a “New Cold War Era.”
After the news of the US sanctions on ZTE came
on April 16, all of China is engaged in a big
discussion of this event. A large number of articles
about it emerge in the mainstream media and social
media platforms every day. The strength of the
reaction have probably exceeded the expectations of
American society, and even China’s own. On the
whole, Chinese society has discovered that its
high-tech industry is weak and unable to resist the
US punch, especially because of its dependence on US
semiconductors. It has been pointed out that none of
the 20 top semiconductor companies in the world is
in mainland China (see the table below, which shows
only the top 10). Civil society, academia, industry,
and even the government are contemplating the
fragility of China’s industrial development and
trying to provide effective solutions. The fact that
ZTE violated American law has not been evaded in
China. But China fears that just as a few days ago
America launched a precise strike against Syria, the
United States is now launching an accurate and fatal
strike to Chinese national enterprises.
After ZTE’s violation of the embargo two years
ago, it has paid 892 million US dollars for its
mistakes and has reached a settlement agreement with
the US government. Because this strong penalty
against ZTE was closely followed by the fierce
Sino-US tariff war, Chinese people do not believe
that America’s main concern is just ZTE’s violation
of the sanctions. According to the Wall
Street Journal, the US Trade
Representative Office (USTR) is considering actions
against the business of Alibaba Cloud
in the US. A US congressional
report also accuses other
Chinese companies, such as Huawei and Lenovo, of
facilitating commercial espionage. The latest news
shows that the US Justice Department has launched an
investigation into whether Huawei
breaks the Iran embargo. This series of actions make
the Chinese worry that ZTE is just the first step in
a bigger war.
Americans may not realize that these actions
can be counterproductive. They provoke nationalistic
sentiment in Chinese society. In history, whenever
China has encountered damaging and perceived unfair
treatment from outside, there was always a strong
nationalistic reaction. Signs of this familiar
pattern are appearing again. On April 6, China’s
central news agency used very tough words and
phrases after the extra tariff on China’s $100
billion exports to the US was announced, such as
“the Chinese will struggle resolutely! And do not
blame us for not having forewarned you!” [勿谓言之不预！]
These words are generally used for the announcement
of a war in Chinese diplomatic rhetoric. The ZTE
chairman said that “we have the support of 1.3
billion (Chinese) people, and we have the ability
and determination to tide over this difficulty,”
after Hou Weigui, the founder of ZTE, retired and at
76 years old, rushed to the United States to plead
but without any fruit, which aroused huge empathy by
a picture spread
widely in WeChat, the biggest social media in China
. Then ZTE further issued a statement that
the sanction was “unacceptable.” Subsequently, a
spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce also made
a strong statement, saying that China is “ready to
take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate
rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.”
Chinese netizens even began to discuss whether the
country should take corresponding measures on Apple,
widely quoting an article in Forbes
which suggests that if China retaliates against
Apple, it will cause massive layoffs and crash in
its stock price.
The US moves have also encouraged high-level
political leaders in China to push for abandoning
American products and developing their own high-tech
industries. Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed on
April 21st that “core
technology is the pillar of the country” at the
national network security and information
conference. And the Premier Li Keqiang also spoke at
the Executive meeting of the State Council to
promote a national innovation system aiming at
science and technology development. In fact, Chinese
are concerned not only about the economic losses of
the US sanctions, but also about inadequate
self-protection, and, what is more, about the future
of international trade.
In a more profound context, these actions of
China and the United States are not only solutions
to the trade deficit, but an abandonment of
globalization. Since the end of the US-Soviet Cold
War, the world entered a golden age of “neoliberal”
globalization. International trade promoted the
growth of the world economy. According to the statistics of the
World Bank, whereas the average
growth rate of world trade in goods was 1.5 times
that of the world’s GDP since the end of World War
II, and in the 1990s trade grew more than twice as
fast as GDP. Trade exchanges between China and the
United States have brought great benefits to both
sides. The low-cost manufacturing industry in China
provides a continuous supply for the high
consumption society of the United States. The huge
demand and advanced industrial technology of the
United States have brought a strong pull to the
Chinese economy. While the order of economic
globalization was established by the United States,
it is now the United States who destroys it. Today’s
trading system is so closely intertwined that it is
not all beneficial for the US to undermine the order
it built. The share prices of ZTE’s U.S. suppliers
fell on the news of the ZTE ban. Research by Brookings also
points out that China’s proposed tariffs would
affect about 2.1 million jobs spread across 2,783 US
counties.
The damage wrought to the Sino-US economy and
the global economy by a trade war will be huge, but
it is even more worrying that the global free trade
order is being disrupted. On the Boao Asia Forum on
April 10th, Xi Jinping announced
further opening up of the
Chinese market and strengthening the protection of
intellectual property to integrate China deeper into
the world trade system. But the Trump administration
seems to ignore this deliberately. As mentioned
above, Chinese society is worried mainly about the
prospect of its national development in the context
of the times. Therefore, if more trade wars happen,
it is not only likely to lead to China’s aggressive
self-protection measures but also is likely to have
a far-reaching impact on how Chinese understand
international rules. Solving the impartiality of
trade rules is a process that requires stakeholders
to sit down and negotiate. A direct blockade might
well backfire.
If we look at the Sino-US trade dispute from
the perspective of Internet governance, it can be
found that the Internet seems to be splitting up. A
one-world Internet should be interconnected across
the borders of states, but now territorial
governments are trying to strengthen their control
by aligning the Internet with national
jurisdictions. China has selectively rejected the
products of some American Internet giants, and now,
the United States has also begun to block China’s
products. The United States is
becoming Chinese. The state has
labeled Internet equipment one by one and excludes
it from its own territory in the name of national
security or the protection of its own industries.
Some commentaries assert that the actions by the
United States against Huawei and ZTE are trying to
keep the US the leading position in the 5G
technology. But the establishment of walls to
exclude competition deviates from liberalism. The
United States is a strong advocate of the freedom of
the Internet. It developed the multi-stakeholder
model, advocated bottom-up technical autonomy and
open industrial competition; it has resisted giving
governments too much control of the Internet. But
now, on the contrary, the government of the world’s
most powerful Internet country is holding high the
banner of national security to expel market actors
who place it at a competitive disadvantage.
When the advocates of rules break the rules,
global confidence is badly damaged. But it is still
hopeful that United States Secretary of the Treasury
Mnuchin is on his way to China to negotiate. So the
rule of free trade and Internet openness has not
been completely abandoned yet.
---
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