During a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) questioned witnesses about Chinese surveillance tech and resulting global influence.
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00:00Representative Whitman.
00:01Representative Whitman.
00:02Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank our witnesses for joining us.
00:08Mr. Crutchen, I wanted to get your perspective. The depth and breadth of what China is doing
00:15around the world many times is facilitated by American companies. In fact, many times
00:20they get co-opted or they feel like they have to be compelled by the CCP because of the
00:251.4 billion people in China. Would you agree that those technology companies have been
00:31co-opted and that they are actually enabling in many ways the key enforcers of the Chinese
00:37Communist Party's surveillance state? And if you do agree with that, what should we
00:43do to hold these companies accountable or to make sure there are consequences for them
00:47enabling the CCP?
00:49Mr. Crutchen. Yes, absolutely. At the very least, we see that they are, at this point,
00:53not cross-pressured. They are feeling CCP pressure to remove the kinds of Internet
00:58freedom apps that OTF funds to help develop and basically taking the tools out of Chinese
01:05citizens' hands that would allow them to get around censorship and surveillance. It is
01:11a huge problem. And beyond that, we haven't found good ways to compel them to help better
01:17support the development of Internet freedom technologies or the funding of those technologies
01:22because, at the end of the day, a lot of the tools that those are built on point back to
01:28some big American companies who, at this point, are profiting from them.
01:33And in terms of what we should be doing, I think Dr. Cooper has some fabulous recommendations
01:38for ensuring that, at the very least, disclosure happens when these kind of companies aid and
01:44abet censorship and surveillance efforts in the CCP. But in a better world, they wouldn't
01:50be engaged in those behaviors at all.
01:52Very good. Thank you. Dr. Cooper, let me go to you, and I want to follow up on Ranking
01:56Member Krishnamoorthi's assertion about the exportation of this technology. We know that
02:03China, the Chinese Communist Party, is one of the most advanced states as far as how
02:09they prosecute advanced technologies for surveillance and really repression of their own people.
02:16They look to export that because they don't believe in the rule of law. They like to enable
02:20other governments that operate the same way that they do.
02:24But let me ask this. Give me a sense of your priority where we should look at. That is
02:29the most immediate threat of places where this technology is being exported. And then
02:36what should we do to respond to this exportation? We talked a little bit about that. Mr. Kretchen
02:41talked a little bit about it. But I want to know what's the most immediate threat, and
02:44then what can we do as a nation, policy-wise and as a Congress, to most immediately impact
02:50that?
02:51Well, thanks for that. I think this is absolutely crucial. And I would say you could think of
02:56sort of a tiered approach to different countries that adopt Chinese surveillance and censorship
03:01technology. There's a hard core of highly autocratic countries, your Venezuelas, your
03:07Cubas. Frankly, I don't think we've got a lot of leverage in most of those countries.
03:11We can use sanctions to try and limit their ability to gain access to Chinese systems.
03:16But at the end of the day, they're probably going to be able to circumvent those.
03:19We've then got an outer layer, which is countries that are maybe leaning in an autocratic direction
03:25or have some leaders who are highly corrupt who would prefer to have the censorship technology.
03:30I think in those places, we can actually be quite effective when we're focused on intervening
03:34with those countries early on in the process. I'd say there's also a third layer, which
03:39includes some close democratic allies of the United States. You know, China's safe cities
03:44approach is something that's gotten traction in France. So I would start there at the outer
03:51layer and work our way in over time. I think if we can explain and make transparent what
03:57the Communist Party has done with these tools, that a lot of people in those countries will
04:01think that those tools shouldn't be able to be used either by their governments or by
04:05companies in their countries.
04:07Thank you, Dr. Cooper. Mr. Zhao, I want to ask, we see as this digital authoritarianism
04:14is expanded around the world that I think there's some opportunities for us to point
04:21out where the weaknesses are in those systems. And the only way that that happens is through
04:27the people in those countries or, as we also heard, examples of people within China that
04:32are speaking out and pushing back against this. How can the United States either enable
04:39those folks that are speaking out or undermine the use of these digital tools of authoritarianism?
04:47There are several aspects to answer this question. But let me actually start from the voices
04:55of Chinese people, even under the repression, that they use the coded language, they use
05:02satires. But also there are, let me just give you an example, that what kind of the voices
05:08on Chinese internet and being censored and reappear outside of China, such as the China
05:13Geo Times and my website.
05:16Well, let's start from this. Even back to your first question, why grey firewall is
05:22so important for the Chinese Communist Party, right? Because as an autocratic system, it
05:30has the common feature, which is few rules many, but in the name of many, the people
05:38cannot tell Chinese people the truth. They say, oh, we do this for you, for Chinese people.
05:45Think about this. In the dynasties, the next legitimacy of the emperor is because of the
05:52bloodline. But today's dynasty cannot do that. North Korea, inherent by the blood, but it's
06:00called Democratic People's Republic of Korea. And China called People's Republic of China.
06:05It's not people's, it's not public. And here the quote, that online went viral in China
06:11and being thoroughly deleted. And what does this post say? It says, oh, those peoples
06:17are a miracle. The people's daily, which people do not read. People's grey hall, where people
06:23do not meet. People's government, where people do not rule. People's court, where people
06:27see no justice.
06:30These kind of voices are common knowledges in China, but without alternative, that they're
06:36being repressed by this digital authoritarianism and actually the, and also being confined
06:44in a cyberspace by the grey firewall. Now, the effective ways to respond to this, including
06:52a technology piece. If the Chinese regime seems the grey firewall is so critical to
07:02it, it's invested so much resources and technology to it, even to undermine that effort to getting
07:10the Chinese internet users to access more freedom of information, it requires much larger
07:18budget and resources to build up a counter technology. I'm naming one, not just VPNs.
07:28Decentralized generative AI tools. The new AI tools that actually is another threat to
07:36the Chinese government control of ideology and online contents. But if, right now these
07:42generative AI tools are in the big U.S. companies' hand. There's a Chinese company doing that,
07:48but they have to censor their content. Again, their result will not really meet the demand
07:56of the Chinese population, if there are alternative decentralized AI tool could be made.
08:02Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.