This year, Samantha Hoffman and her colleagues at the Australian think tank and research institute ASPI have published several studies showing how China and its Communist Party have very consciously and strategically expanded their massive data collection worldwide with the aim of securing power for the party.
According to the researchers, the goal of the one-party state of China is to shape, manage and control its global power-exercising environment so that the public's attitude is favorable in relation to the interests of the party.
Controls "digital sites"
This spring, ASPI published an interactive map showing that China controls over 1700 so-called digital locations outside mainland China. It's about 50 or more 5G networks, hundreds of powerful digital cables, over 300 data centers, 125 digital research centers, over 300 telecommunications companies and so on. She has also specially examined technology companies where she shows how the Communist Party governs the companies in detail.
- I am most concerned about the data collection and how it contributes to the Chinese Communist Party's ability to understand, for example, how people make decisions, or understand moods among the public in, say, Sweden and Australia and use that information to shape propaganda.
Tiktok's and other IT companies' face and voice recognition systems are an important part of this, says Samantha Hoffman.
Does not stand for interview
SVT has sent an interview request to Tiktok's Chinese owner Bytedance, which is headquartered in China. Among other things, we want to know how the company uses data from Swedish children and what influence the Chinese state and the Communist Party have over the company. A person named Jane replies that no interview is conducted but that the company does not store user data in China.
"Tiktok's user data is stored in the US with backup in Singapore via industry-leading third parties", is the only company to write in an email.
In a comment to the US media in October, the company wrote that "We are not under the influence of any foreign government, including the Chinese".
The fact that Tiktok or China-owned tech companies do not store user data on mainland China does not, according to Samantha Hoffman, contradict the fact that the Chinese state has control over the company because the companies usually cooperate with and share information with other Chinese companies such as Huawei and Alibaba with its cloud services.
- It is a huge ecosystem of companies that cooperate and I see this repeated over and over, says Samantha Hoffman.
"Must participate in intelligence work"
She also mentions that Chinese laws such as the National Security Act, the National Intelligence Act, the foreign NGO Act and many other laws mean that Chinese individuals and companies are responsible for state security.
- A company must participate in intelligence work if asked. And not only participate, but also hide participation because the companies do not have the legal right to tell the public about intelligence work, says Samantha Hoffman.
In addition, each Chinese company must have a party committee, party meetings and a local party secretary. Which, according to Samantha Hoffman, further shows how the party controls the technology companies.