Here is the full report: How the CCP Outsources Surveillance (pdf)
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The effectiveness of China’s online censorship springs not from the party-state’s bureaucratic capacity but from its ability to coopt market forces. What began as the rumored “fifty-cent army” of idle posters has grown into a profit-making industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, as Chinese Communist Party [CCP]committees and government agencies outsource digital surveillance and opinion management to private firms.
These companies detect “sensitive” words, flood platforms with propaganda, and suppress troublesome posts with a technical precision the state lacks on its own—letting some discussion continue while stopping the rest, and heading off “online mass incidents” before they spill into the streets. The arrangement, the author concludes, does not bode well for dissent: Surveillance is becoming more precise and preemptive, and so long as businesses find it profitable to collaborate, society will struggle to find a counterweight to market-enhanced digital repression.
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The reach and prowess of the CCP regime are amply recognized; what is less recognized are the other forces (whether profit-making arms of the state or private firms) that the state mobilizes to penetrate society—online and offline—and shape desirable social behavior.
Judging by the size of the industry that has sprung up, the outsourcing of digital surveillance has been a success. Communism’s ideological sway may be waning, but market incentives remain effective. The party-state can no longer turn out neighborhood elders to persuade communities to follow CCP edicts, but there is money to be made in online-opinion control because the party-state values it and will pay for it.
The outsourcing of digital monitoring does not bode well for dissent in China. Online surveillance is becoming more precise and better at preemption. Outbreaks of social dissent against the CCP regime are being stopped before they can start. If one does happen, as in the white-paper protests, the regime has the precision capabilities (thanks to out-sourcing) to respond to it without needing to choke the entire internet.
So long as businesses are willing to collaborate with the state, it will be hard for society to find a counterweight against market-enhanced digital repression.
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