Beijing’s state security concept is not entirely different than the concept national security as it would be understood in Canada. The PRC’s ‘holistic state security’ concept (prominent, but not new under Xi Jinping) combines internal and external security. The social governance process is directed at upholding the Chinese Communist Party’s ruling position: ensuring state security. It also involves agencies such as the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The coercive power of a strong military or powerful public security organs are only part of the social governance system. For the Party leadership, overseeing China’s development requires flexibility to the extent that it is firmly in control of the overall process. Social governance describes a system that is self-managing-one that can automatically adjust itself to help the Party consolidate and expand power. These include: a) fixing and preventing faults b) optimising everyday operations and c) mitigating and responding to potential and actual threats. Technology is seen as having the potential to help strengthen this control process by automating social governance objectives that otherwise consume a large amount of the Party’s resources. The social governance process itself must also be dynamic and capable of addressing often contradictory problems. The social governance process consumes a large amount of the Party’s resources. Stability is the capacity to manage problems and threats so they do not develop beyond the Party’s capacity for control. Stability is not the absolute absence of problems or threats. Social governance requires a constant response to ever changing circumstances, and is designed to enhance stability. The CCP’s “social governance” process, also known as “social management”, is the methodology behind how the Party manages both itself and its relationship with society Footnote 73.
Big data and social credit within the Chinese security strategy
China tracking and scoring citizens software#
Instead, those are best described as upgraded hardware and software components being installed to make the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) political system more effective. Progress in big data and social credit does not create fundamentally new control methodologies. Developments in those fields seek to augment existing processes for social and political control, which are visibly and invisibly hosted through everyday social and economic activity. Big data and social credit do not replace the Party as the central authority. One part of the CCP’s social governance process is the nascent social credit system Footnote 72, which relies on technology to coerce and co-opt individuals to participate in their own management. Their application is also intended to improve the integration, sharing and utilisation of data between and across Party-state entities.
Advances in big data provide the CCP with a greater capacity to forecast, identify and assess risks to Party-state security. The purpose is explicit in the 2017 Action Plan to Promote the Development of Big Data, linking advances in big data to “social governance”, which is the CCP’s pre-emptive process for ensuring state security. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is harnessing modern technology as a means to automate its processes for consolidating and expanding power. China’s big data strategy may improve political control without improving the actual quality of governance.
Data can be collected on companies and individuals abroad, posing a challenge for countries not wishing to be part of a Chinese system of social control. The developing social credit system will make possible comprehensive data collection to measure individual loyalty to the state. Big data is allowing the Party to extend its already extensive control over the lives of Chinese citizens.
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