China has the most advanced internet control and digital surveillance system in the world. That is why the Dutch Olympians are better off leaving their own laptop and telephone at home. A risk assessment of digital dangers for elite athletes in Beijing.
Secure Connection – Negligible Risk
Foreigners who go online in their Chinese hotel room enjoy lightning-fast internet. That is, if they like Chinese websites, because foreign websites load at a snail’s pace. If they can be seen at all: the Great Firewall, the filters and blocks with which China censors the internet, blocks many tens of thousands of Chinese and foreign sites, temporarily or permanently.
Although the Chinese government denies censorship, the Chinese Internet is a state-controlled intranet. It is connected to the rest of the online world via nodes that are tightened either firmly or loosely depending on the situation. During political meetings, the filters are sometimes so tight that even emailing is difficult until ‘the special circumstances’ are over.
Virtual private networks (VPNs) offer a solution. These are banned for Chinese, who since 2009 can receive up to seven years in prison for ‘providing programs or tools to illegally penetrate computer systems’. The Chinese did not care much about this, since 2018 the fear has been set in due to a specific ban on VPNs and higher fines. For companies, the penalty can be up to almost 70 thousand euros, and according to the American medium Radio Free Asia fines for private individuals vary between 70 and 1,380 euros. Where a dissident who shares login details with others is dealt with harder than an ordinary curious Chinese.
Foreigners are not bothered by this. Companies and organizations can be exempted from the VPN ban, and China likes to create the illusion of a free internet for foreign visitors. Visitors to the Wuzhen Internet Conference, an annual meeting of China’s cyberspace authorities, were spoiled in 2016 with access to Twitter and Facebook, social media inaccessible outside the conference site.
The tropical island of Hainan went a step further with its promise of a “visa-free holiday destination for foreigners,” complete with free internet. Beijing 2022 envisions a bubble where internet censorship will be turned off. Hence, a VPN on an athlete’s phone is the least cybersecurity concern.
Computer trespass – Big risk
Whether it’s mini fans you plug into a USB port, free memory cards, super-fast cell phone charging points, or the brand-new smartphone that would be waiting for athletes in Beijing as a welcome gift, anything that can be connected to laptops and phones brought along is a potential risk.
Those who pass up free gadgets should continue to watch out for data-sniffing Chinese apps. Safe apps don’t exist in app-addicted China. ‘The programs are so poorly written that even apps that don’t have the goal of extracting passwords and other privacy-sensitive information, almost all have that effect. If not now, they can still be used for it later,’ says Rogier Creemers, a sinologist at Leiden University who specializes in Chinese cyber issues.
Olympians are required to download a health app, and communication with Chinese people, such as volunteers, almost always goes through WeChat, a super app that, like all other Chinese tech, is subordinate to the interest of national security.
For press conferences of the organizing Olympic committee in Beijing, China correspondent Leen Vervaeke has to install Zhumu, the Chinese version of video meeting app Zoom. Zhumu can be activated remotely to turn on the video camera without the user noticing. Other Chinese apps also exhibit this ‘glitch’.
At Hitch, the platform for private drivers of taxi service Didi, the sound is automatically recorded via the driver’s smartphone during journeys from 30 kilometers away. This system, introduced in 2018 after two murders of female passengers by Hitch drivers, starts automatically once you agree to the terms of use.
Of course, Didi promises that only the police will have access to the recordings, until they are automatically deleted after seven days. But whether that really happens is the question, because the Chinese police and security services use the vacuum cleaner method. That is, the security device tries to gain as much access to as many devices as possible from as many people as possible. The idea is that it is better to have too much useless information than to overlook one anti-Chinese statement. Moreover, data that is harmless today can become sensitive in the near future: handy to suck such a computer system empty now, in order to take targeted action on it later.
That does not mean that all athletes are actively spied on all the time, but Chinese police and security services are intensifying their activities on and around foreign social media, and are increasingly monitoring who is saying something negative about China there. This makes the phone of an athlete who once tweeted about, for example, the human rights situation in Xinjiang a target: who knows, there may be traces of support from Uyghurs in it. An athlete hardly notices this digital fishing, except that his mobile phone performs less. The consequences are for Uyghur activists and their families in China.
Legislation – Present risk
The most shocking thing about the national security law introduced in Hong Kong in 2020 was that it applies to everyone, anywhere in the world. And anyone suspected of violations can be sentenced to a maximum of life in Hong Kong.
That is why, in October 2021, Interpol China and Interpol Hong Kong jointly asked the Danish police to investigate the contact between two Danish parliamentarians and a Hong Kong democratic politician. The message: anyone who gets involved with ‘anti-Chinese forces’ on Hong Kong could have this law against them.
Because of that law and recent case law, absurd situations are not inconceivable. Encouraging Hong Kong athletes with ‘Hup Hong Kong’ is risky, as the Hong Kong authorities have identified that cry as a threat to national security.
Mainland China has a law on insulting martyrs and heroes that is also used for “slander” against political leadership, especially when it comes to President Xi Jinping. The maximum prison sentence of three years provided for by this law gives a completely different meaning to, for example, a joke in the Olympic village with a shirt with Winnie the Pooh on it, taboo in China because of the alleged resemblance to Xi.
Athletes, however, are not immediately put in shackles with an appeal to safety legislation, Creemers expects. ‘That goes the old-fashioned way: through personal pressure on the chief of the mission, to make sure his athletes have a good time.’
Hurting Chinese people – Not punishable, but difficult
The Chinese are easily hurt in their national pride. For example, because a German car brand quotes the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama on a billboard. Or when an Italian fashion house lets a Chinese fashion model struggle through a portion of spaghetti with chopsticks. A skin cream manufacturer, the proud sponsor of a Hong Kong singer, dropped her as she took part in anti-Chinese demonstrations.
In particular, Western companies that provoke the wrath of Chinese nationalists out of ignorance, latent racism, or a misguided sense of humor can only soothe such a riot over the “humiliation of China” in one way. To avoid consumer boycotts, they apologize by distancing themselves from the public face of such an offending statement. Maybe good to know for athletes, who take a selfie in the canteen in their sponsor’s shirt with the theme ‘that crazy Chinese food’. That spontaneity can put the athlete in a precarious situation with his sponsors.