The Authoritarian Privacy Paradox: The Chinese State as Guardian of Privacy?

• In Event: Accepting Big Brother: Privacy & State Surveillance in China's Digital Sphere

Abstract

Autocracies need surveillance to snuff out regime opponents and learn about societal discontent. But ubiquitous surveillance can chip away regime legitimacy, pushing citizens into performative compliance and inner resistance. The Chinese Communist Party has built the arguably most capable surveillance state in human history. Yet the state does not evade the problem of citizen privacy. It is the only non-OECD country which has enacted a data protection regime classified as strict by international privacy law firms. The state is also running an omnipresent propaganda campaign about privacy threats and data protection. Contradicting expectations about the legitimacy-diminishing effects of intrusive surveillance, recent research has indicated that citizens are rather supportive of state surveillance. However, Chinese citizens have been found to harbour intense privacy concerns toward the business sector. How can we make sense of these seemingly paradoxical observations?

One potential explanation for the divergence of privacy concerns toward state and business actors is that the government has successfully conveyed the narrative that society and the business world are chaotic, and only the state can function as a reliable guarantor of citizen information. Moreover, scholarship has shown that privacy concerns are highly context dependent, and confidence in data protection regimes can ameliorate general concerns about privacy. Thus, a second possible explanation is that citizens are aware of, and have confidence in, the state’s privacy protection regime restraining state surveillance, but less so business sector privacy practices. A third possible explanation is that negative privacy experiences with the business sector are common, while state surveillance rarely becomes salient for citizens. However, the COVID-19 pandemic may have changed such an equilibrium. State health surveillance became a very tangible phenomenon, even giving rise to rare anti-regime protests in late 2022.

This research will test these explanations with original online survey data representative of the Chinese Internet-connected population (N = 2,500), collected in the summer of 2023. The survey elicited data about the extent of privacy concerns toward local and central state agencies, as well as private and state-owned companies, in closed and open questions. To tap into perceptions of social anomie, it uses a newly designed anomie index. The survey further measured data protection regime awareness, and perceptions of its implementation. The questionnaire also included newly developed state and business privacy experience indices. Beyond that, the data contains general privacy concerns, perceptions of pandemic policies, as well as standard variables on political attitudes, political behaviors and media consumption.

The study will provide new evidence to describe the authoritarian privacy paradox in China, and test thus far under-studied explanations for it. It will contribute to scholarly debates about privacy concerns in authoritarian regimes, and provide new insights on the legitimacy of authoritarian information states.

Author

• H. Christoph Steinhardt, University of Vienna