The Chinese Grip

Here’s something interesting: China has concrete plans for taking over the Internet itself. It’s not as if this is news, but it’s a much more explicit statement than we would expect. China is not known for public honesty on much of anything. But lest you think this is just more China-bashing, the CCP’s attitude about the open Internet has long been very clear by how they work internally, and how they interact with international Internet boards and technology forums.

Keep in mind how China operates. It’s not like the abusive muscling of the US, wherein the US tells the rest of the world, “You want this, and we will supply it — at our price.” The price usually comes out being political control and plundering of all resources. The Chinese come in very friendly and simply offer to help fund and build whatever it is the locals actually want. All the Chinese want in return is a cut of the action to repay loans.

Naturally, China is quite willing to loan more than the clients can easily repay. But they are patient and rather kind about it. That’s because their plans are long term. They want the client states beholden to them across multiple generations. At some point, they will use the leverage for things like “helping” the client state with their Internet. And that’s how they gain control of things that really interest them. The Chinese don’t actually want to rule those client states, just certain aspects of how the world at large does things.

In other words, China works like a drug dealer. She gets you hooked and then uses you until you are no longer useful. She does not hesitate to manipulate on the basis of human frailty. You’ve no doubt seen hints of how the Chinese have wormed their way into the US. Every month brings another story of someone caught spying for China, and it always turns out to be a matter of various inducements, whatever it takes to get the spy beholden to China.

Side note: The Russians aren’t as good at espionage as the Chinese. The Russians have too much of their own cultural sense of honor, though it’s different from the Western version. But the Soviets were never as driven as people claimed. However, the Chinese will wallow in anything to get what they want. For them, that is their sense of honor.

The Chinese sense of loyalty is quite different from that of the West. It’s openly tribal, but hard to explain. On the one hand, it’s not that Chinese people cannot be decent to other humans. On the other hand, they don’t hesitate to run over each other without shedding a tear. They have a totally different sense of moral duty. Thus, the CCP makes Machiavelli seem quite friendly. They are frankly better at this game than the most psychopathic Western tyrant. The inherent inefficiencies of this are the only thing that has kept them from owning the whole world. It’s a very low-trust society, and cheating is pervasive, which is bad for business.

But a great many other tyrants in the world admire the Chinese way of controlling the Internet. It gives tyrants everywhere ideas on how to control the public dialog. The Chinese aren’t trying to take over the world; they thrive on competition in the marketplace. They honestly don’t want to rule the world, which gives them an advantage over our delusional Western elite. The Chinese are far more realistic about what’s possible, and don’t long for things they can’t have.

There’s a certain sense of live-and-let-live, but when it comes to anything that interferes with their internal control over their own people, the CCP get very nasty. For them, the openness of the Internet with all these cultural influences that threaten their grip is intolerable. Thus, they are altogether eager to take over the Internet itself, not the rest of the world population. There’s no realistic way to keep the kind of control they want over their own population with an open Internet, so they are quite willing to spoil it for everyone else. This is a critical element in the future Networked Civilization.

To the degree there is a threat to the gospel message on the Net, nothing is a bigger danger to us.