Chapter 3: Techno-nationalism in China
3.3 Globalization and Great Power Competition
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national power than on improving the welfare of its citizens.”91
3.3 Globalization and Great Power Competition
That China operates as a realist state attempting to bolster its national power and sovereignty as a means of ensuring national survival is broadly in keeping with the behavior of states throughout the region. These ideas, much as in Korea and Japan, remain in place despite systemic changes in the international economy.
While China is constantly accommodating itself to new economic realities, as Yongnian Zheng and Rongfang Pan point out, its “conscious restructuring of institutions in response to globalization helps maintain equilibrium between the interlocking and complementary goals of strengthening national power and economic prosperity.”92 However, in spite of myriad changes since China embarked on “reform and opening,” security concerns remain closely tied to questions of technology and many centerpiece laws, rules and planning documents released over the past decade contain language widely construed as reflective of techno-nationalist thinking. Substantial integration with the global economy has done little to reformulated China’s holistic and realist approach to national security.
The current period of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-enabled globalization correlates closely with China’s rise as an economic and military great power. Yet, according to Adam Segal,
globalization brings both opportunities and challenges for the ruling CCP.93 International engagement remains essential for economic development while also posing new challenges to one-party rule along a number of inter-related lines. Regime legitimacy remains closely wrapped up in the delivery of continual growth and better material living standards for the general population. Economic growth, in turn, is
contingent upon China’s comparative success integrating its national economy into international production chains. Growth flowing from this successful integration plays an essential role in enhancing both social well-
91 Aaron Friedberg, Rethinking the Economic Dimension of U.S. China Strategy, 2017. 20.
92 Yongnian Zheng and Rongfang Pan. “From Defensive to Aggressive Strategies: The Evolution of Economic Nationalism in China.” Globalization and Economic Nationalism in China. 2013. 85
93 Adam Segal. “Globalization is a Double-edged Sword: Globalization and Chinese National Security.” Globalization and National Security. 2006.
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being and state power.
However, interaction with economic globalization leaves China’s domestic economy exposed to the types of external shocks that run the risk of creating domestic unrest. Economic globalization processes, by
introducing an array of international actors and broader marketization processes into the domestic economy, diminishes and/or challenges state capacity to affect the economy.94 This reconfiguration of state, societal and market forces dynamically challenges some of the traditional mechanisms via which the state exerts control over society. Furthermore, China’s integration within the international economy opens up new sources of dependency.
Increased international linkages not only challenge national security on economic lines however. With the introduction of certain ICT technologies into China, traditional information monopolies enjoyed by the party-state face new challenges. There is a widespread fear in Beijing that the introduction of new mediums of information transmission provide opportunities for foreign ideas capable of undermining CCP authority to gain traction within Chinese society.95
Therefore, China’s national security strategy must attempt an uneasy calibration between harnessing those aspects of international trade and economic globalization enhancing state power while simultaneously insulating itself from those aspects of that undermine party-state authority by disrupting state control in the economic and/or information/ideological space.96 Calibrating between growth (and national strengthening) through international economic integration and the security risks of compromised national sovereignty comes across in the analysis of Nathan and Scobell, who write that, “China came through the reform and opening process with a net strengthening of both the regime’s and the country’s security, but it did so by giving up much of the autonomy it had exercised under Mao.”97
94 Ibid
95 Nathan and Scobell, China’s Search for Security
96 Ibid
97 Ibid.
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As globalization undermines the traditional resonance of national boundaries, clear lines of delineation between domestic/external, traditional/non-traditional and military/economic/ideological security concerns are increasingly blurred. This sentiment is captured in the analysis of Susan Craig: “the potential for
economic warfare to lead to military warfare, or for external instability to fuel internal instability, or for any convergence of traditional and nontraditional crises, is one of the biggest threats perceived by China’s influential elite. Such a perfect storm would threaten not only territorial integrity and sovereignty, it would push back economic and democratic reforms, diminish China’s international stature, and threaten the very survival of the Communist regime.”98
This present a paradox for the modern CCP. International integration and the usage of ICT are critical drivers of China’s ongoing development and shape its interactions with the outside world. At the same time, the opportunities presented by globalization and the adoption of new forms of ICT technology are reconfiguring China’s security challenges in dynamic new ways; with hard to grasp ramifications for technology policy, social stability, and external relations. In this sense, technological change and international integration are both essential catalysts for national development and state strengthening and major points of strategic vulnerability.
Recent focus on the regulation and development of the ICT space represents a newly emergent reality:
national security can no longer be meaningfully separated from network security. In this light, the Chinese government prioritizes cyber sovereignty as part and parcel of its broader approach to the promotion of the ICT sector. A report prepared for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce entitled “Preventing Degloblization”
delves closely into the ramifications of China’s ICT development strategy, finding that:
The confluence of the Chinese government’s longstanding, strong desire to develop its domestic ICT industry and its growing emphasis on cybersecurity have been enhanced further by the current
98 Susan Craig, Chinese Perceptions of Traditional and Nontraditional Security Threats, 2007. 20.
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leadership’s broad conception of national security – vividly displayed since key pieces of a new, more comprehensive national security regime began to emerge in late 2014. Deeply embedded in this broad understanding of national security are cybersecurity and control of the internet.99
As Amy Chang writes:
China therefore proposes a distinct method for cyber governance that diverges from Western notions of protective measures, arguing for sovereignty in cyberspace, which would allow China to “control”
Internet traffic within its borders. While the Western notion of cyberspace encompasses an open, free flow of information across borders, China’s language on cyberspace specifically employs the word
“sovereignty,” implying China’s ability to control its own Internet and administer what happens within its own borders.100
ICT raises new and serious challenges to the concept of interdependence sovereignty as defined by Stephen Krasner.101 While interdependence sovereignty concerns the movement of any number of goods, services, technology, capital, information or people across national borders, rapid advances in ICT specifically raises new challenges in the political/ideological sphere. Chinese leadership clearly sees the threat of Western-originated political ideas as a potentially existential threat to the legitimacy of the party-state structure.
Perhaps the starkest evidence of this can be seen in the internal CCP “Document 9” issued in 2013. The memo lays out seven challenges confronting the CCP within the ideological sphere: the promotion of a western-style constitutional democracy, “universal values,” neo-liberalism, independent civil society, independent journalism, historical nihilism, and questioning of China’s “reform and opening” process.102
99 “Preventing Deglobalization.” US Chamber of Commerce. < https://www.uschamber.com/report/preventing-deglobalization-economic-and-security-argument-free-trade-and-investment-ict>
100 Amy Chang. “Warring States: China’s Cybersecurity Strategy.” CNAS. 2014.
101 Stephen Krasner. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. 1999.
102 Document 9: A Chinafile Translation. < http://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation>
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This repeated emphasis on cyber-sovereignty naturally brings policy into alignment with a techno-nationalist approach to ICT, where China favors domestic providers of core network infrastructure. The deterioration in the relationship with the United States – exacerbated by the Edward Snowden revelations in 2014 – is widely considered a critical moment reinforcing the imperative placed on controlling and restricting foreign access to critical cyberspace network infrastructure.103 Fears over efforts at broader Western containment are intermingling with concerns over compromised informational security; driving policy in the direction of prioritizing eventual technical and informational independence.
These concerns over informational/ideological security and regime survival are unique to China’s system of authoritarian governance and intersect with another major point of concern: the bilateral relationship with the United States. While there are an array of competing perspectives and visions within China regarding the current and future state of Sino-American relations, one dominant narrative holds that the United States represents a major threat to the perpetuation of CCP rule, core national interests and the future sustainability of China’s overall economic development.104
Susan Craig argues that Chinese elite-level discussions of American “grand strategy” flows from the
underlying assumption that the US is the international hegemon. As she writes in 2007, “characterization of America as the global hegemon pervades all Chinese perceptions about America today.”105 She posits that this categorization of America as hegemon leads to two primary assumptions on the part of China’s political elite; that the US will move to check and contain any country capable of challenging its position as the dominant international power and that the US will undertake efforts at perpetuating its hegemony by actively interfering in the domestic affairs of other states in hopes of better integrating them into an “American-centric” world order.
103 Mirren Gidda, “China’s New Cybersecurity Law Could Cost Foreign Companies Their Ideas.” Newsweek. May 31, 2017.
104 David Shambaugh, China’s Future, 2016.
105 Craig, Chinese Perceptions of Traditional and Nontraditional Security Threats
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This security imperative shapes how technology is conceptualized by senior political elite in Beijing, leading to fears over sovereignty and interdependence resulting from technological integration and reliance. As Naughton and Segal put it, “the desire to be a modern, powerful country is deeply rooted, and the mastery of technology is a key symbol of success. No matter how closely Chinese technology policy comes to resemble that of its neighbors, it continues to reveal a historically rooted concern with technological autonomy.
Chinese technonationalism remains regionally distinct because the Chinese are so concerned about dependence on the United States.”106
Harry Harding writes that, “the U.S.-China relationship has, in recent decades, been perceived in both
countries as having become more competitive, in the economic, normative, and security spheres.”107 This is, according to Harding, in no small part due to the fact that China is rapidly moving into a competitive
position in high-tech industries, reducing traditional complementarities between the two national economies.
As a result, technology, security and developmental imperatives are blending together against the backdrop of deteriorating Sino-American relations. As Harding writes:
Increasingly, however, observers in both China and the U.S. are complaining that economic
competition is not only intensifying, but is also unfair, and, additionally, inadequately regulated. Some Chinese believe that their country is the target of discriminatory treatment by the U.S., particularly when proposed Chinese investment projects in the U.S. are scrutinized and blocked on the grounds that they involve access to advanced technology or ownership of critical infrastructure. Beijing also
complains about continuing American controls on the export of advanced technologies to China…”108
106 Naughton and Segal, 164
107 Harry Harding, “American Visions of the Future of U.S.-China Relations” in Tangled Titans: The United States and China, 405.
108 Ibid, 393
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This is reinforced by the analysis of Dieter Ernst, who writes in the context of Chinese ICT:
There is a widespread concern among China’s leadership, especially in the military and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), that China is exposed to nontraditional and asymmetric threats to national security. Information technology is viewed as a double edged sword. China’s resurgence both as an economic and military power challenges incumbent global and regional leaders. China’s leadership believes that Western IT systems use product backdoors, system loopholes, and Trojan horses to steal China’s national secrets and slow down China’s rise as a global economic power.
China’s leaders also fear that persistent leadership in IT provides ample opportunities for Western powers to use export controls, control over technical standards, and high licensing fees to stifle China’s development and force reliance on Western technology.109
In accordance with the development and mass-scale adoption of new forms of ICT, China’s concerns regarding national security increasingly encompass the arena of cyberspace. The ongoing ICT revolution prompted the embrace of a national development strategy predicated on the concept of “informatization,”
defined by Amy Chang as “a holistic framework that aims to modernize and transform an industrial society into an information society through the development of information and communication technology (ICT) industries and applications.”110
By integrating new forms of smart technology into virtually every facet of the Chinese economy, informatization presents new opportunities for both comprehensive national development and further
military modernization.111 At the same time, the increasingly digitized nature of the Chinese economy poses
109 Dieter Ernst. “From Catching Up to Forging Ahead: China's Policies for Semiconductors.” East-West Center. 2015.
110 Chang, “Warring States.” CNAS
111 Ibid
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new risks to the state actors in terms of both controlling the flow of information within society and ensuring
“network security” in the face of both internal and external security threats. As Graham Webster wrote recently in assessing Chinese IT policy: “efforts to secure and exercise sovereignty over the internet at home are well aligned with a goal to develop leading high-tech industries at home.”112