Beijing’s digital tyranny could expand to other countries through Chinese apps and platforms that collect and transmit user data to China, experts warn.
The Chinese Communist Party’s digital tools and data manipulation enable it to conduct transnational repression, according to several experts recently interviewed by The Epoch Times.
Transnational repression occurs “when foreign governments reach beyond their borders to intimidate, silence, coerce, harass, or harm members of their diaspora and exile communities in the United States,” according to the FBI.
CCP Monitors Big Data
For years, Chen Ende, a native of Zhengzhou city in Henan Province, worked on various technology projects, including the data backend of Alibaba Cainiao Technology and the government affairs platform of Tianque Technology.
In 2018, Chen joined Cainiao Network Technology, the logistics arm of Alibaba, China’s leading e-commerce giant that operates various businesses worldwide.
His job was to collect and organize user logistics information and sell it to domestic express delivery companies.
Chen said he was surprised that the company’s internal system could access a complete set of user information, including purchase records, product details, recipient names, phone numbers, and addresses.
He noted that Alibaba has a political branch, or a committee tied to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which ensures the company adheres to the Party’s ideology, and that data can be provided to CCP authorities upon request.
“As long as the government wants to target someone, all this information can be reported immediately, and no one will refuse [the authorities’ request],” Chen told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times.
At the end of 2019, Chen joined Tianque Technology, headquartered in Hangzhou. The company provides digital services to government agencies.
In Zhejiang Province, the company is responsible for the Chinese regime’s grid management system, which divides communities into smaller and manageable units, or grids, to monitor the population, housing, and social activities.
This system can report individuals behaving in a manner deemed “unusual” by the authorities in real-time and monitor them, Chen said. The system is known to track dissidents and critics of the CCP.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chen’s project team worked on Alibaba’s health code system. They monitored the statistical data daily and found discrepancies between the number of infections and the number of new cases.
“There were new cases every day, but it was shown as zero,” he said.
By Alex Wu
