On the surface, these are isolated events.

What relationship, in fact, between a measure taken by China, Monday, December 27, to limit foreign investment in Chinese tech start-ups, Chinese boats that have regularly disappeared from radar for more than a month and Didi, the competitor Chinese Uber, pushed in early December by Beijing to leave the New York Stock Exchange?

In fact, there is a common thread: the Chinese Communist Party's obsession with controlling the flow of economic data deemed sensitive.

“The Chinese economy has always been a big black box for outside observers, but it has become even more opaque”, notes Stephen Nagy, specialist in trade in Asia at the International Christian University of Tokyo, interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for a long survey on the growing opacity of the Chinese economy at the end of the year, published in early December.

The “mystery” of the disappearing Chinese ships

Thus, the decision of December 27 to no longer allow foreign investors to use certain complicated financial arrangements to enter the capital of Chinese tech start-ups without Beijing's agreement should allow the authorities “to know more precisely what kind of data foreign investors can have access, ”notes the Financial Times.

Ditto for the “mystery” of Chinese ships which “disappear from radar”, as the American channel CNN explained on December 2.

Since the beginning of November, "there has been a 90% drop in the number of Chinese ships that have sent signals to geolocate them," noted VesselsValue, a shipping data analysis company.

Here again, it is for Beijing to regain control of the circulation of geolocation data.

Pressure from the Chinese Communist Party on Didi, a big holder of geolocation data, to leave the New York Stock Exchange just six months after joining it “really shows how defensive Chinese regulators are to protect data considered important ”, assures Rebecca Arcesati, analyst for the Mercator institute for Chinese studies (Merics, a research institute based in Berlin), contacted by France 24.

In the context of the trade conflict with the United States and the degraded diplomatic relations with part of the West, “a major fear in Beijing is that an adversary of China could get hold of data deemed sensitive which could have an impact. impact on Chinese national interests, in particular national security ”, adds this expert.

China until recently did not have really effective tools to protect this information.

But that changed on November 1, with the entry into force of data protection regulations.

These laws were first presented as a sort of enhanced Chinese-style GDPR, with reference to the European regulation on the protection of personal data.

And it is true that there is now a plethora of measures in China to protect consumers and citizens from the possible greed of large internet platforms to commercially exploit their personal data.

Do too much rather than not enough

But the regulator took the opportunity to introduce other rules to strengthen the security of sensitive data, and limit who can access it. “While we first focused on the consumer protection aspect, we now realize to what extent this aspect of the reform is a powerful tool of economic control in the hands of the Chinese regime”, underlines Zeno Leoni, specialist in Sino-American relations at King's College London, contacted by France 24.

First, because of the vagueness surrounding the definition of “sensitive data”.

“For the moment, it is a very broad category, which has led to a great deal of confusion within Chinese and foreign companies”, underlines Rebecca Arcesati.

It also allows the regime to change its conception of the “national interests” to be protected according to its needs.

But above all, "as the field of 'national security' has considerably widened under Xi Jinping, there is a tendency [of regulators and companies, editor's note] to adopt a very broad interpretation of the information and data to be protected", recognizes the Merics specialist.

No one in China wants to appear to take national security issues more lightly than Xi Jinping.

We are thus perhaps witnessing an overreaction from Chinese regulators who prefer to do too much rather than not enough.

Ships, for example, could end up appearing on radar again when the contours of the new law are better defined at the top of the state.

In the meantime, this all-round data protection plays into the hands of Chinese power.

"It is completely in line with Xi Jinping's long-term objective of separating the Chinese economy from the rest of the Western world and reaffirming more political control over the productive apparatus," said Zeno Leoni.

Economic fog of war

By making the Chinese “black box” even more opaque, the Chinese authorities are creating a kind of economic fog of war for foreign groups.

Especially in so-called priority sectors such as the Internet and disruptive technologies (artificial intelligence, autonomous cars, etc.) “They do not have access to the same information as their local competitors, which handicaps them on the Chinese market”, details Zeno Leoni.

For this expert, it is the best way for the authorities “to avoid having foreign competition, which leaves them free to control the direction in which the sectors considered to be priorities are going”.

This game of hide and seek with economic data is, however, not without risk for China.

Chinese groups still listed in New York - like the Baidu internet portal, and e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com - have all lost between 10% and 20% of their market value in a month.

Blame it on the mistrust of investors who wonder if another group will suffer the same fate as Didi.

“It is clear that in the short term, there will be damage and missed opportunities because of the very political use of this data protection law,” said Zeno Leoni.

This demonstrates, in any case, how much Xi Jinping is willing to sacrifice on the altar of his vision of a Chinese economy that is more self-sufficient in the long term and free from foreign influence in key sectors.

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