Exclusive: At UN, China seeks greater state control over internet

China has revved up its diplomatic campaign at the United Nations to promote greater state control over the internet, advocating the need to prioritize national sovereignty and security in a freewheeling digital world, while straining to secure access to advanced Western technology and chip away at human rights protections for civil society, according to internal U.N. diplomatic negotiating documents reviewed by Devex. The Chinese effort is unfolding in closed-door negotiations over a U.N. declaration on a Global Digital Compact, a U.N. initiative aimed at harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to eliminate poverty, inequality, and other global ills, and setting the rules of the road for the future of digital communications. The final declaration is supposed to be approved by government leaders at the U.N. Summit of the Future in New York in September, on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly debate. The deliberations at U.N. headquarters have exposed the deepening geopolitical rift between an informal Chinese-led bloc of authoritarian countries seeking international cover for reining in powerful social media companies and ratcheting up state control over social media, and the United States and its Western partners seeking to protect the intellectual property rights of major tech companies, while championing a more open digital ecosystem, where governments, the private sector, academics, and civil society have a say. The two sides have framed their respective campaigns as efforts to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, a series of U.N. targets to end poverty and inequality and protect the environment by 2030. “Governments should not be permitted to use security concerns as a pretext for violations of human rights online or offline.” --— Anna Bacciarelli, associate technology director, Human Rights Watch In one of a series of proposed amendments, China highlighted the need to safeguard state security, urging governments to “urgently eliminate and prevent” online crimes and “other misbehaviors, including the dissemination of information that endangers national security” and promotion of “terrorism,” “separatism,” “extremism,” and a range of other alleged threats. China has used similar language in the past to justify mass human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority. The Chinese mission to the U.N. did not respond to a request for comment. “AI has become the latest flashpoint for geopolitical control of technology,” Anna Bacciarelli, associate technology director at Human Rights Watch, told Devex. “As with all technology governance, it’s essential that international human rights law, including free expression and privacy, be at the center of all U.N. discussions about the future of the digital space.” “Security is obviously important and secure communications are essential for human rights,” she added. But “governments should not be permitted to use security concerns as a pretext for violations of human rights online or offline.” A world without sanctions The Chinese amendments, like those of numerous other countries, must go through a tedious process of intergovernmental negotiations that require consensus and may not ultimately survive. Early this month, the two facilitators of the negotiations, Rwanda and Sweden, circulated a draft declaration that excluded many of China’s amendments, though they are likely to resurface when governments resume talks in June. Still, the Chinese proposals provide insight into China’s long-standing aspirations to play a more dominant role in shaping international agreements that it believes have traditionally advanced the interests of the West, according to U.N. observers and diplomats. They also highlight China’s effort to push back on U.S. sanctions policy — which includes a ban on U.S. exports of AI chips to China — urging states to “refrain from abusing unilateral coercive measures that undermine other States’ capabilities to develop [the] digital economy and improve people’s livelihood, which poses consistent and systemic violation of human rights.” China aims to scale back the U.S. and other Western nations' efforts to enshrine the observance of political and civil rights in the final document, proposing that economic development be recognized as the “primary and basic human right.” It has also put forward a provision that would commit states to refrain “from politicizing human rights issues, or interfering in others’ domestic affairs and challenging others’ judicial sovereignty under the excuse of protecting online human rights,” according to a 76-page compilation of government amendments to the draft declaration under negotiation. Along with Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, China has proposed deleting a provision in the negotiating draft that calls on U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to outline a plan for a U.N. Digital Human Rights Advisory Service to provide states with “practical guidance on human rights and technology issues.” Japan, a close U.S. ally that has questioned the need for new AI institutions, has also recommended eliminating the advisory service. The U.S. has indicated it is open to the creation of the advisory service. Collision course The U.N. negotiations come as the U.S. and China sent senior delegations to Geneva to open preliminary discussions on the uses of AI, reflecting mutual concern about the possible military misuse of the relatively nascent technology. Following the meeting, Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said Washington highlighted “the importance of ensuring AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy in order to realize these benefits of AI, and of continuing to build global consensus on that basis.” “The United States also raised concerns over the misuse of AI, including by the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” she added. Beijing countered that it had “expressed a stern stance on the U.S. restrictions and pressure in the field of artificial intelligence” against China. The New York talks are primarily focused on the nonmilitary uses of AI. Beijing is seeking to secure a central role for the U.N. in the governance of AI, putting it on a collision course with the Biden administration, which has shown skepticism about the virtue of establishing new U.N. entities to govern the uses of AI. The Biden administration has sought to steer the debate on AI, sponsoring a landmark U.N. General Assembly resolution that calls for bridging the digital divide between technological powerhouses, like the U.S., and lower-income countries. Washington advocates a big tent — or multistakeholder — approach to AI governance, underscoring the need to involve the private sector, academia, civil society, and technology experts in discussions on the fate of the technology. It also highlights the importance of ensuring that AI developments are in line with international human rights norms, and that the intellectual property rights of tech companies are protected. “The United States looks forward to continuing to shape future initiatives to make sure AI is safe, secure, and trustworthy around the world, that it is deployed in ways that help achieve the sustainable development goals, and uphold the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law,” a State Department spokesperson told Devex by email. China, meanwhile, has circulated a competing draft General Assembly resolution that seeks to put its own imprint on the debate, underscoring the need to apply the principles of “sovereign equality” and “non-interference in internal affairs” of nations to the field of AI, according to a draft reviewed by Devex. It expresses the importance of fostering an AI environment in which wealthy countries increase capital investment in modernizing digital technologies in low-income countries and tech companies respect “the sovereignty of other States and their national legislation when providing AI products and services to them.” It also expresses “deep concern” about the practice of imposing “unilateral coercive measures,” or sanctions, and calls upon countries to refrain from “unilateral economic, financial or trade measures” that could hinder AI innovations. The draft does not include a single reference to human rights. Asked to comment on the Chinese draft, the State Department spokesperson said that the U.S. has also “placed importance on capacity building and bridging the digital divide. That’s why the U.S. worked to fully address these issues in the consensus resolution that was passed by the GA [the U.N. General Assembly] in March, including emphasizing the importance of human rights, and how rights-respecting AI systems can help achieve the sustainable development goals.” Harnessing the UN China’s draft also calls on the U.N. “to play a central role in shaping a broadly agreed and action-oriented cooperation framework for AI capacity-building and ensuring the participation of developing countries in the process of global governance of AI.” China had hoped to put the resolution for a vote later this month, but diplomats told Devex the negotiations are likely to continue into the summer. The success of China’s initiative hinges on its ability to rally broad support from the global south, where fears of being left behind in the race for AI domination are powerful and resentment over the U.S. promiscuous application of sanctions on countries is palpable. China — which often caucuses in negotiations with a coalition of more than 130 developing countries, known as the Group of 77 — has positioned itself as a champion of the global south. For instance, its draft resolution notes “with deep concern that current development of AI is extremely unbalanced.” China has framed the debate as a contest between monopolistic Western tech corporations seeking profits and dominance at the expense of lower-income countries, which are subject to increasing inequality, according to observers. China’s argument goes something like this, according to one independent observer: “The West, and especially the U.S., is only interested in ensuring the current system continues to perpetuate U.S. technological hegemony: the U.S. is not interested in sharing the benefits, versus China, which stress inclusivity at every turn,” Kenton Thibaut, senior resident China fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, or DFRLab, told Devex. China is seeking to press for technology sharing, a proposal popular with lower-income countries, but also reflects its frustration with a U.S. ban on the export of advanced AI chips and other technologies. It proposed language that encourages states to “scale up the use of open-source AI technologies in a safe, culturally and linguistically diverse, and reliable manner … and facilitate the sharing of relevant technologies through developing and expanding access to scientific and digital public goods.” “The science and technology, digital and AI divides between the North and the South continue widening … and developing countries in general lack capacities of AI governance and face the risk of further marginalization,” the resolution adds. “It is music to the ears of the global south,” said Fernando Marani, program director of inequality and exclusion at New York University’s Center for International Cooperation. China is seeking to establish a “platform on global governance that will allow them to advance their interests,” Marani said. “They see the modern model of global governance puts power in the hands of the north. China sees the U.N. as an opportunity to balance that and to have a bigger role in global governance of the digital world. For that, China needs to be a champion of the global south.” In closed-door negotiations last week, China sought to assure delegates that its push for a resolution is aimed at complementing the wider negotiations on a digital compact, not to undermine them. But the draft faced pushback from the U.S. and European delegations, which faulted China for presenting an “unbalanced” document that failed to underscore the importance of defending human rights. The U.S. also made clear that it opposed a central role for the U.N. in internet governance and that it would oppose the inclusion of any language challenging its right to impose sanctions on another country. The dueling resolutions have proven an irritant to many other delegations, which see it as a bid by the world’s two biggest powers to enforce their visions on the rest of the membership, and effectively prejudging the outcome of wider negotiations among the U.N.’s 193 member states on the digital compact.