Courtney Fung is a scholar who researches global governance and international security, with a major focus on the role of China. Currently an associate professor in the Department of Security Studies & Criminology at Macquarie University in Australia, she has previously held academic roles at the University of Hong Kong and carried out postdoctoral research at Harvard University. Fung has a B.Sc. from the London School of Economics, a Master’s degree from George Washington University and a PhD from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. In this lightly edited interview, she discussed China’s concept of cyber sovereignty and its growing influence in multilateral organizations such as the United Nations.

Q: Various Western think tanks and analysts claim that the Chinese government is using data and digital technology to implement a comprehensive global strategy which seeks to increase China’s control and influence over the global digital environment. Do these claims paint an accurate picture? 

A: I can best answer this question by breaking it down into pieces. I really want to focus on this key phrase about a comprehensive global strategy to increase China’s control of and influence over the global digital environment. It’s become clear that China has aspirations and ambitions to help reform the international order, and to reform it in ways that will reflect China’s values and foreign policy vision of a ‘shared future’, which is meant to be an alternate to a Western-led, liberal international order. A shared future puts more emphasis on state-centric solutions for global governance – like strengthening state capacity and an emphasis on social stability – with a lot less concern for human rights or norms like transparency and accountability. This ‘shared future’ vision rests on state sovereignty, and so every state has its own sovereign means to attain development, security and prosperity – again, no need to take on the Western-led, liberal state-building approach with its emphasis on human rights, accountability, equality and the like. 

The way that the cyber discussion fits into this is that China has a clear view that state sovereignty extends into cyberspace. China is one of the states that are proponents of this concept of cyber-sovereignty, which extends traditional state sovereignty over human-created cyberspace, like any other geographic space. So cyberspace is a new state border. Each state can extend its sovereign border into cyberspace and each state has an equal say in cyberspace governance. China has a lot of its foreign policy elite discussing ideas like current cyber governance rule making. The underlying argument is that, with China producing so much technology and a wealth of data, how can it be that China doesn’t have a greater say in setting the rules, norms and institutions that will govern data and the greater cyber sphere? They’ve made the case that a fair and reasonable world requires greater Chinese input; you can’t just have the same Global North setting the rules for everyone else. 

But again, these are the ambitions and aspirations. The real question is whether or not there is such a thing as an actual comprehensive global strategy. China’s strategy is ‘comprehensive’ in the sense that they have a lot of moving pieces, about the need to have information security, about creating awareness on the “informationalization” of warfare, and the need for China to have a greater say in standard setting. But does this mean that it’s fully orchestrated and coordinated action plan? That part I don’t know. 

Would you say that China’s digital strategy represents a threat for Western powers? 

I’m not so sure it represents a threat, but it’s certainly presenting a challenge. Chinese officials have been very resolute about talking about the cyber sovereignty concept we’ve just discussed. Now they talk about moving forward into not just a ‘shared future’ but having a network of a ‘shared future’, which is based on the principle of network sovereignty theory, a conceptual opposite of idealized unlimited sovereignty in the cyber realm.

China is pushing against the need to protect the concept of an open Internet. Recently, [on May 9] 60 states signed the Declaration for the Future of the Internet – among which were EU members, the United States, Israel, Japan, Australia, Canada, Kenya, etc. All 60 nations talked very strongly about the need to preserve an Internet that is open and free, global, interoperable, reliable and secure, while still, most importantly, respecting human rights. 

The Internet itself is no longer just a self-contained issue, it’s become a greater concern in international politics. 

But while 60 nations signed this Declaration, you still have over 130 states that did not, including China, Russia, India, Brazil, and no member of ASEAN. This is concerning, as it means that the challenge is not just dealing with Beijing’s opinions, but a broader challenge of states that are perhaps less interested in this vision of an open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, human-rights-respecting Internet space. So, the challenge really is two-fold. One, that China may have quite different views about the need to manage this ‘sovereign information space’; and two, that China is able to hook in other types of skeptical, like-minded players. The EU and the U.S. might be showing a little bit of movement about how they think about internet management, in ways that at least permit a discursive entry point for China to push the need for cyber sovereignty. 

And how do you think that the EU, the U.S. and their like-minded partners should address the challenge?

There are a few very important things that could be done. First, maintaining a presence at the World Internet Conference, which is led and hosted by China annually. This [may] help [us] understand the shifts in China’s thinking. It allows you to have a better understanding of how China articulates its position in a space curated by Beijing. At the same time, there has to be a very practical approach in terms of capacity-building, training and funding, to give states that may not have the largest financial capacity the option to consider buying into — or learning more about — systems that are more concerned about protecting privacy and human rights. As China is so prepared to help fund technologies through the Digital Silk Road concept, you have to also be ready to play in that market space too. 

There are other practical things that need to be done. For example, maintaining staffing levels at all of the key standard-setting, electronic, technical organizations in ways that allow countries to understand what China is doing and how they’re doing it. The last thing is that states that believe that a multi-stakeholder-led global governance system for the Internet is something they want to support, then these states actually have to support diverse stakeholders getting into these discussions. This means making sure that states back civil society groups, academics and business groups so they can be part of the discussions and engage. That [would help] maintain diversity of views, especially as so many of these forums have moved online or into hybrid formats. Engagement is the way to go. 

What is your view on the relationship between China’s role in crafting global governance and its digital strategy?

China has made it very clear that it wants to help to reform the international order. Chinese elites think about international order as a U.N.-led order, that is bound by rules, norms, U.N. institutions, and international law. This is different from a world order that is led by the United States. An international order which doesn’t give China enough space or recognition for its foreign policy rise also [in Beijing’s view] needs to be reformed, and this is in part why China is willing to invest so much energy and resources into working through the United Nations system. I’m not saying China only works through the U.N. system but there’s a priority placed on utilizing the U.N. space. 

When we think about how China is working within the U.N. system to try and support funding and to try and deploy key personnel, we can see again that there is an approach of very much engaging with U.N.-led spaces [that deal] with cyber. We can see that China has become interested in securing leadership posts within the U.N. system, some of which are explicitly dealing with questions of digital governance. We can see, for example, that China’s candidate [Zhao Houlin] has led the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for two leadership cycles; under his watch the ITU has moved much more into dealing with questions of cyber. Chinese delegates are deeply involved in the ITU. This is a very important space because it’s not enough for China to have reformed its domestic systems, regarding concerns about data access or the control and use of data within Chinese territory, but they also now want to find a way to export these concepts about cyber sovereignty internationally. In order to try and promote these norms at home, you also have to be able to promote these norms abroad. The internet itself is no longer just a self-contained issue, it’s become a greater concern in international politics. 

How is China growing its presence in the UN and other multilateral bodies that govern technology and the digital world? 

The United Nations is a very important component of the international order, according to China, because the U.N. is a state-led group and also China has a plum role, as a permanent member with a veto at the U.N. Security Council. We can see a concerted push by Beijing over the last couple of decades to lead these U.N. agencies, such as the World Health Organization, which a Chinese official headed in 2006, or the ITU, which is now led by a Chinese official. If you take on an executive leadership role, you can manage the day-to-day operations of your specialized agency, and you also get to set the strategic vision of the organization, which is crucial for shaping global governance as we move forward. In this sense China has been working concertedly, like any other player who’s willing to invest in the system, taking the opportunity to utilize the rules of the game to their favor. As China has come to understand how the administrative procedures work, they have been able to modify the agenda of the U.N. to tilt it towards supporting the Belt and Road Initiative as they relate to the [Sustainable Development Goals] SDGs, for example. These types of approaches have in the past been used to their advantage by Western states, in terms of helping to control and organize a multilateral system with the U.N. at its core, and now China is working its way to do the same, through a very strong presence at the ITU and in other specialized agencies. 

My point is that Beijing is in a much better position now than it was twenty or even ten years ago vis-a-vis the U.N. But I don’t think a discussion of the future of the internet is over yet, and I don’t think China’s presence through these multilateral forums — simply by funding more and staffing more — guarantees that China’s position comes through right away. But we have to remember that China is not the only state with this view of cyber sovereignty. If we think about the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, if only 60 states signed it, then we have a balance of around 130 other states that perhaps, at best, aren’t quite sure what their opinions are. There is a legitimate question being asked about how sovereignty applies. Developing states in the Global South, who have had their sovereignty abused before, are going to be using this discursive framework to be cautious about how they approach their digital sovereignty. And in a U.N. system, each state has a vote with plenty of players for China to work with.

…in China’s view, being a cyber superpower isn’t just about technical know-how and capacity; these things are necessary but insufficient.

I believe the only way forward is to try and find means to engage, because the fear of having a fractured Internet is frankly a lot worse, but that’s my personal view. 

How does China shape global information in regard to cyber-sovereignty norms and information technology?

China has a very particular position regarding cyber sovereignty. It sees an extension of state sovereignty into cyberspace, so that information access and content will all be managed as part of a ‘sovereign information space’. The second component of this view of cyber sovereignty is that you have to re-orient Internet governance away from multi stakeholder platforms — those that involve civil society, business groups or other interested parties, other NGOs, academics etc — and towards multilateral fora where you have ‘one state, one vote’; and again they do prefer to run this through the U.N. system. 

At its heart, this cyber sovereignty view sees the state as the key actor in establishing cyber norms and the state itself is the key object that needs to be protected. A lot of this is seen as opposing the need to protect an open internet, this ideal of having a free-flowing, permissive Internet space. 

Onto your question directly — how does China go about shaping the global information order — it’s actually using a variety of methods, scaled to the very ambitious task at hand. First, this is achieved through working with like-minded partners through regional organizations, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. At the same time, they are also working on the second stream of efforts through the U.N., through all of these different bodies like the ITU, the U.N. group of governmental experts for cyber, the U.N. open-ended working group for cyber. We can see on a more tactical level that by having Chinese officials leading the ITU there has been a slight shift. This translates into pushing forward more PRC personnel and more Chinese teams into meetings, so that they can maintain discussions about Chinese ideas for the future of 6G — ideas that are less about concerns over the privacy of individual data users and their actual data. Another angle that’s been very important is that China has been able to establish a growing presence in other complementary forums, like the International Electrotechnical Commission, which deals with concerns about electronic goods. There are 88 states there, and China has had an increased presence. The same can be said for the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), with its 164 state members, where China has now taken a much larger delegation. 

They’ve also been working to establish their own talking shops, like the World Internet Conference, that brings in like-minded and less like-minded states, along with other types of stakeholders (i.e., approved businesses have been involved, like Alibaba and Google). This gives a real sheen, a real ‘prestige factor’ that the techno future can be dominated by and determined by China, by establishing this annual conference. All this is against a much broader backdrop of increased Chinese funding along what has now been termed the Digital Silk Road. 

Can you tell us something about your current research in this area?

While working through this project, I’ve really come to realize that, at least in China’s view, being a cyber superpower isn’t just about technical know-how and capacity; these things are necessary but insufficient. China has real ambition and in order for it to become a cyber superpower it sees that it has to gather greater recognition, to gain success in being able to set order, meaning the rules and norms, the institutions that help regulate cyber — whether it comes down to standards, whether it comes down to data management, data localization, the ‘informationalization’ of economic growth. 

…China is modifying norms by reinterpreting the meaning of their content, adapting what we think the norm is about.

Another arena in which China wants to be able to lead and develop is global governance, in ways that better suit China’s very particular views about cyber sovereignty. Now that I have that realization, the work I’m doing is trying to figure out how China actually does this. At the end of the day, states still have to agree on something. So, it is up to the Chinese elites to figure out how they’re going to get the 10,000-foot norm of cyber sovereignty down to a scale with which they can actually negotiate individual norms. One of my interim findings about how this is being done, is that China is using specific language as part of its process. For example, the 2021 Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) explicitly refers to state sovereignty as it applies to state conduct of ICT-related activities and jurisdiction over ICT infrastructure. Beijing took the language of state sovereignty turning up vis-à-vis ICT as a clear win. Another interim finding is that China is modifying norms by reinterpreting the meaning of their content, adapting what we think the norm is about. For example, protection of the public core of the internet is less approached as a norm to promote infrastructure security as it is a norm to promote state security. 

Do you think that China’s increasing presence in tech and cyberspace is symptomatic of its projection of power on the international stage?

It’s very much symptomatic of its projection of power on the international stage, but there’s two parts to this. The first part is that it is an undeniable fact if you compare where China was 20 years ago in terms of funding and staffing U.N. bodies, and in terms of winning premier posts like the head of the ITU, China didn’t have many of these successes. But we have moved forward now to a time when China is very willing to invest in the multilateral system in ways that other players are not willing to or are unable to put in the same amounts of money or the same numbers of staff or the same type of energy. The backdrop of Western decline very much suits the Chinese worldview that we are moving into a time of multi-polarity, into a time of U.S. decline and increasing Western irrelevance, in terms of helping to lead, organize and run the international order. This suits China’s argument that China has now arrived. If China is able to help steer the direction of cyberspace, which is going to be one of the most important domains in our lifetime, then certainly this is representative of China’s ascendancy; but I think all of this has to be taken with a very massive grain of salt. We’re now only at the opening phase of China’s active engagement. As I noted earlier, the uptick of concern about what China is doing in these multilateral spaces is indicative of real concern and redirected attention towards the United Nations. In a lot of ways, this increased attention will make it a lot more complicated for China to reshape multilateral politics in its vision.

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