China’s Grand Strategy for Global Data Dominance: A CGSP Report | Hoover Institution

April 18, 2023
Hoover Institution | Stanford University

The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power invites you to China’s Grand Strategy for Global Data Dominance: A CGSP Report on Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 10:00 - 11:15 AM PT.

China is engaged in a bid to shape how digitized information – data – will be distributed and controlled around the world for the foreseeable future. Xi Jinping’s Party-state is building a massive institutional architecture to maximally exploit data as the fundamental resource of the future global economy and governance system. In his new report, "China's Grand Strategy for Global Data Dominance," Matt Johnson proposes robust policy solutions to arrest the exposure of huge swaths of the world’s population to the CCP's data accumulation, espionage, and manipulation.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Matthew Johnson is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and research director at Garnaut Global. His expertise covers China’s contemporary elite politics, strategic thinking, and political control over the financial sector and private economy. Johnson was previously a lecturer in the history and politics of modern China at the University of Oxford, and researcher with the China’s War with Japan program. His academic publications have focused on propaganda, Chinese Communist Party ideology, cultural security, state-society relations, and the Cold War.

Glenn Tiffert is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. He co-chairs the Hoover project on China’s Global Sharp Power and works closely with government and civil society partners to document and build resilience against authoritarian interference with democratic institutions. Most recently, he co-authored Eyes Wide Open: Ethical Risks in Research Collaboration with China (2021).

[avocadotoast]

At 37:20, why should i worry about my data on tiktok when Facebook also has them? I rather Facebook doesn't have my data.

[TheWhitehiker]

Another less than dynamic Hoover presentation--you're online, present your ideas in a compelling way;
still, a good topic.

[gnukkignukk]

This is not meant as a rude comment, but please tell whoever is responsible for the audio to see if it is in some way possible to improve the quality.

[HardballAlpha]

I wish someone would explain the PLA's "Omni-Directional Warfare" theory to the masses... data warfare is merely one aspect of their global strategy.

[briankepner]

It's the electronic monitoring rings around our military bases that make me paranoid. Why is China allowed to have independently owned Wi-Fi or other observation towers in the United States at all even on private land or leased.

[animarkaryan]

So we have an opposing statement : data is not oil but land - we do whatever we decide with it and DEFEND it.

[sb]

Collecting lots of data to optimize a large system seems benign. However if the goal is to make a more robust command control for the entire Chinese economy that can survive
an economic event designed to destabilise the western economic system, the the Chinese goal of collecting all possible data seems more threatening.
I'd worry a lot more about the narrow data collection used to find and counter military secrets. The rest seems like its just China trying to get many small advantages in dealing with the west by knowing more than their counter-parties.
Fortunately they aren't likely up to the task, I think they will drown in the data, and end up with a lousy version of chatGPT that can mimic XiPingThought. But one must go with intuition and not give away the store, decouple from Chinese companies before storing your data overseas.

[elados]

It's not China it's the oligarchy

[kinngrimm]

33:47 "Why is europe seeing the USA more as a threat than China"
gully, yeah would that be ^^. Lets leave aside the military and underlaying economical power and just look at some divergences.

Starting with 1989 the america first and american exceptionalism thinkers thought of a new american century. Leaving the UDSSR behind in the dust and being quite giddy about the fact that now Capitalism the the unchallanged system. In strategic meetings which are/were available on c-span(at least one practise which brings us closer in thought) quite like what happens here, intelligent people, experts of their field came together and talked about the future. One stream of thought when presented identified radical Islam, Europe and China as the main future adversaries. Now noone will ever know if that was a selffullfilling prophecy for sure, but in terms of Islam and how later administrations followed that line of thought it surely bite back, had some blockback as the CIA told upfront to George W. and the abyss of religious fanatecism was looking back into US society and found vertile grounds. But i am drifting of topic there, europe was identified as a possible enemy. This alone should have made europeans a bit anxious, but no the soldiered on the loayl allies they are. Some even followed into an unjust war(iraq) and got domesticly burned because of it.
Then came a US caused financial crisis the verberated around the world, still no real blame was put on the US and its superior capitalist vision, instead banks got bailouts and people had to pay for it, not just in the USA. Which brings us to the latest and dawn of selfreliance caused by Mr. Trump who actually thought of cancling NATO, which still is in all of our minds in europe just as we see the current election cycle looming over all of us. Have that paired with a constant and never ending espionage by CIA/NSA that targets every european citizen equally on a digital level and every company and university so that when new breakthroughs saw the light of say there always was a chance that the CIA just quickly made a company in the US founding a company that somehow made the exact samet thing as in these european inventions. Then seeing how on current events in Ukrain, the US is hesitant, foreshadowing even more reluctance should the republican party come into office and overall showing a lack of leadership and the Biden words "we are back" kind of sound empty.

Now that all was mostly looking back onto events most of US representatives had never even acknowledged and partially sure are colored by my own opinions, like i find american exceptionalism as i found it presented in many ways arrogant and a prelude to fascism. The barrage of patriotism and constant angst politics of George W. with the patriot act and torture, didn't really help your case either.

China on the other hand made us money, had strict rules sure, but it didn't change constantly its approach. It was our(the wests) own greed we have to blame for that China came to be this powerfull. Companies looking at the huge market potential, not realizing that the market is the bases for the military and therefor building up a future adversary with very different world views. I think europe has realized by now that the USs confrontational course with China will cost them all their investments and that the US is not really in this sense offering any alternatives, but just dictating a course without giving us europeans any options how to mitigate, besides if there would be a war with China you my personal insecurity lets me ask if we are then not fucked anyways. I am already majorly pissed at russia, not just for yet another war, but we have bigger fish to fry like climate change and a not unlikely upcoming AGI appocalypse caused from our friends the USA and then we also should just follow and accept whatever the US maybe does with China with good intent, but maybe out of paranoia or america first bullshit? If this speaker is percieving that europe sees the USA as a threat, there are a bunch of reasons i haven't even gone into yet. Europe but also sees that our systems partly drifting appart, due to fascim(Bannon didn't help comming to europe and stir the pot) and tries and partly fails, nation by nation realizing the threat and in the US 40ish % of the population due to Fox propaganda still thinks there were no WMDs in russia and Jan 6th was done by antifa ^^ while cheering on their next emporer. I mean come on. Who wouldn't get slightly nervous at least ^^.

[ZGoddessLola]

Our government is doing the same on both national and international levels😅

[ideastshoa]

While most western countries seek to coexist peacefully, or even beneficial mutually with one another, CCP has a very different mindset. People who understand Chinese culture well know China's concept of "under the heaven/天下". That concept is deeply ingrained into Chinese perception of the world. It also reflects in how China calls itself in Chinese -- 中國 --, which means Central Kingdom. When that name was translated into English, it was downcasted into "Middle Kingdom", as if it's merely a reference to geological position. But it really means Central Kingdom -- a nation that possesses centralized control and dominance over all other nations under heaven.

Knowing the essential perception of China on the world will help western people understand why CCP thinks and behaves in such an agressive manner. CCP won't stop trying to dominate the world until China becomes the Central Kingdom in reality again. And alarmingly, the government after CCP likely will follow the same path unless China goes through a paradigm shift in its view of itself and the world.

Keep this in mind and act correspondingly then we may have a better chance to manage a peaceful coexistence with China, now and in the future.