Unveiling of restricted materials and user profiles. The dissemination of government orders. Consequences for disobedience include financial penalties and potential removal from the system. The Select Committee on Foreign intervention via Social Media of the Australian Parliament suggested these and other measures in a new report released on August 1, 2023 to combat the “real, pervasive, and growing threat” of foreign intervention through social media.
The Select Committee on Foreign Interference via Social Media produced a report that expressed specific worry about the Chinese social media platforms WeChat and TikTok, both of which have a sizable user base in Australia. Concerns about these corporations’ lack of openness were exacerbated when WeChat declined to participate at a public hearing on the grounds that it had no local employees in Australia. When questioned by the Committee, a representative from TikTok evaded answering even the most fundamental questions, such as where the company’s headquarters are located and how often Chinese workers have accessed the personal information of Australians.
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The impact that social media platforms operating under Chinese government control can have on Australia’s democracy was evident when in 2020 WeChat censors removed then Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s official response to a doctored image of an Australian solider the Chinese government had posted on Twitter.
Concerns about the activities of Chinese social media businesses abroad, especially in Australia, have been highlighted by Human Rights Watch on many occasions.
The Chinese Communist Party controls all state-owned and privately-owned social media platforms in China. This opens the door for and provides a method for official control, monitoring, and propaganda that impacts not just Chinese users but people everywhere. The National Intelligence Law, passed in China in 2017, mandates that all individuals and organizations provide assistance in intelligence collecting and provide any requested information to the Chinese government.
The Communist Party has a history of coercing both local and international businesses to adhere to party line policies and penalizing those who don’t. ByteDance, the firm that owns TikTok, had their humor app, Neihan Duanzi, taken down in China in 2018 for “vulgar” material. Zhang Yiming, the company’s founder, publicly apologized for straying away from “socialist core values” and vowed to make sure the Communist Party’s “voices are emphatically broadcasted.”
It is the Party’s fault that company CEOs in China have mysteriously vanished or been detained by the government. Alibaba founder and one of China’s most recognizable figures, Jack Ma, vanished for three months beginning in November 2020 after openly criticizing the country’s financial authorities.
Business executives are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of arbitrary incarceration and enforced disappearance, which convey a chilling message that criticizing the Party, or even giving the impression of doing so, may have devastating consequences.
The Australian Parliamentary Committee wisely rejected requests for an outright ban on TikTok and WeChat. Banning an app that millions of Australians use to express themselves, like TikTok, is an excessive action that does not comply with international human rights norms. Given that the Chinese government has effectively banned all major foreign social media and messaging applications within the country, a ban on WeChat may substantially disrupt the communication between the Chinese diaspora and their China-based relatives and friends.
If the Australian government follows the recommendations for openness made by the Committee, social media firms will be compelled to reveal to the public their cooperation with Chinese government censorship and monitoring. The ideal conclusion is for them to cave to public pressure and reject the Communist Party’s demands.
The only way to stop the Chinese government’s involvement and misinformation is to expose it and stop it. To help its residents make educated judgments about their own social media usage, the Australian government should provide instructional materials, including risk warnings, as the Committee rightfully pointed out. The government should also encourage the growth of independent, professional foreign-language media to provide access to unfiltered information for the Chinese diaspora.
If the government follows the Committee’s advice, Australia will be an example for other nations dealing with Chinese Communist Party influence in their social media.
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