Outline
Presented February 10, 2006 at the
7th Annual Privacy and Security Conference
Victoria Conference Center , Victoria , B.C.,
1. Introduction
2. Self Intro
3. Area of concern
4. Do three things:
A.) Discuss root Chinese values RE privacy and security
B.) -Discuss present state of affairs with regard to Chinese people
-Foreigners working in China or with Chinese people
C.) Make suggestions for coping with problems presented by the first two.
I. Root or core Chinese values.
Describe social system:
Extremely hierarchical
High authority actors accept responsibility for behavior of low authority actors.
Paraphrase statement by Confucius: "If a high authority person calls upon a low authority person to do something, he goes and does it."
Low authority persons accept this state of affairs as natural and even "good."
Provides stability and continuity in a precariously balanced economic system constantly on verge of collapse.
Collapses characteristically catastrophic
Foreign visitors 18 th century talked about traveling for days and seeing all bark gnawed off trees as high as a human being could reach.
One social institution was to trade your child, who would certainly die of malnutrition with your neighbor's child, equally doomed. Each family ate the other family's child, hoping to save older children so families might somehow survive.
As late as 1958 millions died in famine.
This system also had great internal mobility
Largely meritocratic within limits dictated by socioeconomic resources which were distributed very inequitably.
But decade after decade, century after century finest minds and most ambitious personalities aspired to compete in national exams to become high authority.
System also self-balancing and self-replicating to incredible degree.
Top of system was hereditary artistocracy which was given tremendous power and freedom in all thing in return for accepting responsibility for central direction and control, ideally continually advised by the meritocrats who had advanced to the top of the system.
Above all this system was an incredibly successful machine for governing very large populations engaged in intensive agriculture that demanded a high degree of cooperation and stability.
So successful that it was deliberately emulated by nearly all of its neighbors who altered it to fit own cultures and histories but basically accepted it.
This system, of course, was Chinese Confucianism.
Core values in China , Vietnam , Japan , and Korea for well over thousand years.
Best preserved on Taiwan until recently.
Thought to be extinct in homeland, main land China , however simply not true.
Many so-called Communist practices are thinly veiled Confucian practices
Communist cadre very like Confucian scholar
About same percentage of population rises into bureaucracy.
Both intellectual academic traditions
Both meritocratic and extremely competitive
Coming back with a vengeance.
Recently announced would create one hundred “Confucian Colleges” to research and by implication, inculcate, Confucian knowledge.
Not a coincidence: same core need: security and stability, are the same and the system has evolved to meet them.
Present state of affairs: what are coping mechanisms? Not solutions…there are none…
China was always a surveillance society.
-Taken for granted that individuality, freedom, spontaneity, essentially inimical to social order.
-It was the responsibility of high authority individuals to constantly monitor and supervise knowledge and transmission of information.
Today system works in much same way as it always did except media have changed, and so have some elements of core organizational practices.
All telephone messages and many apartments are bugged with audio-listening devices as common and accepted practice.
This can actually work to your advantage once you know it is being carried on.
Provides a separate and deniable channel of communication to those above you.
Recently got a nice raise by telling wife and daughter that could not afford to come back to my job in China next year.
My son once learned to manipulate the dinner menu in our apartment by lauding or complaining loudly about certain dishes at dinner table.
Once you recognize that your bedroom is bugged it can either be inhibiting or rather stimulating
Chinese figure all foreigners are over-sexed---act out and you will be surprised at the new friends you make…
All digital packets traveling over common carriers are potentially vulnerable to highly systematic and sophisticated surveillance.
Not always or even often read, but potential is always there.
Usual practice is to let individuals go until they come to attention of state then repress them with deliberately heavy hand. "Killing the Chicken to Frighten the Monkeys."
Now clear that Western search engines and large companies will cooperate in this process: recent case ob Chinese blogger Zhao Jing (AKA Michael An Ti) Microsoft shut down his web site at request of Chinese Government.
Certain amount of surveillance always present.
Chatrooms monitored by "Big Momma"---editors who can alter text, block access, or ban participation.
International communications monitored by Carnivore like devices, computers which search for text or data strings that might be associated with political commentary: names of leaders, policies, etc.
If at any point you draw attention to yourself your IP will feed your data into dedicated machine that will copy, scan, and delay all communications.
But most common form of monitoring is, as always, self-monitoring.
Potential offenses are not clearly spelled out necessitating constant self-processing that makes for very inhibited and repressive communications.
Most common communications are about food, fashion, personal relationships.
Thinly veiled social commentary sometimes dared but always elliptical and never suggests actions.
As in old society, to not report deviant behavior is itself a sort of deviance.
Anytime two people talk, each must worry that other will report, making each examine wisdom of reporting first...
However, one really important social role, only egalitarian one, has always been friendship and family ties.
When family and friendship are involved, nobody expects collective social values to be dominant.
One period when this was not true was Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution—it should be noted itself largely an attack on Confucian culture---and it is universally regarded today as a terrible, tragic era which must never be repeated, even if it requires terrible repression to prevent it, as at Tiananmen in 1989.
-So what do Chinese people and foreigners dealing with them do?
-As is increasingly true all over the world, assume that your communications are or might be monitored.
Clearly more likely to be so in China than almost anyplace else except the United States
Americans apparently have equal desire to monitor and greatly superior ability to do so.
Somewhat more restrained by law than is the Chinese state, but that may be changing.
But Chinese have additional desire to monitor commercial information.
Nothing mission critical can be exposed.
Couriers, etc.
-Do not put Chinese friends or employees at hazard by placing them in position where they may feel pressure to report before somebody else does.
i. Never ever be critical of party or practices in front of groups larger than one.
-Constantly monitor your communications flows to:
Make sure that critical messages are in fact getting out and being received.
Triple redundancy is not too much…three messages to three different boxes at three different servers.
Work out devices for signaling sequence and number of messages.
Periodically exchange lists of messages sent and messages received.
A sort of organizational back-up.
Not sure that encryption is much of a defense
Likely to cause trouble at both ends as it passes through firewalls in China and other country.
At least will cause delays.
Berglund Center studying this issue at present.
Conclusion: Above all, always assume that everybody knows everything that you are doing and saying. Do not fool yourself into thinking that you have somehow eluded surveillance. No social practices or technological approaches are proof against determined opponent with unlimited resources.
This may seem a very depressing message. It need not be. I have worked in China , Vietnam or Taiwan since 1965. Been in residence, living in one or other for more than six years. Two of three children spoke Chinese before English. I really like and enjoy the culture, and moreover, find that as it steadily improves, my own country steadily deteriorates. Cross-over point probably not in my lifetime, but reasonably certain my children will see it.