China releases draft case for national digital ID, raising fears of tighter social control

China is planning the launch of a national digital ID, and in a sense it is surprising that it has taken this long. Beijing’s tight control on the media and robust public surveillance state are no secret. Beyond the notorious Great Firewall, Chinese internet users already have to provide an ID and phone number to register for popular platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. While the government says a digital identity system would protect online privacy, there are many who believe digital ID would only tighten and centralize the government’s control over people and their data.

Coverage in the New York Times, the Financial Times and the South China Morning Post all highlight these concerns.

Constant ubiquitous surveillance could suffocate online behavior

The NYT says the implementation of a national digital ID would see the government take over the job of identity verification from third parties. It reports that the proposal is for the system to be voluntary and that the government is taking public comments until the end of August (through www.moj.gov.cn and www.chinalaw.gov.cn). But academics and legal experts fear it will be used as a tool for social control.

The piece quotes Rose Luqiu, an assistant professor of journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University, who says “with this internet ID, your every move online, all your digital traces, will be monitored by the regulators. That will definitely impact people’s behavior.”

The Financial Times notes that draft regulations for the cyberspace ID initiative have been issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), alongside the country’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS). It quotes Tom Nunlist, associate director at China-focused consultancy Trivium, who believes a centralized national ID would mean a trade-off between compromises to privacy, in that it would be harder for companies to track customer behavior, but easier for police to monitor the same.

Data privacy concerns grow after Shanghai police data breach

Some argue that police cannot be trusted to protect a huge honeypot of personal information, pointing to a massive data breach in 2022 in which hackers stole “a huge trove of personal data” that Shanghai police had left exposed online. Nunlist notes that the Chinese populace is increasingly concerned about data protection. “There is a mistaken view that Chinese people care less about their privacy and state intrusion than other places,” he says. “The apprehension over this rule change is a pretty powerful demonstration that this isn’t the case.”

SCMP reports that the draft “National Network Identity Authentication Public Service Management Measures” has sixteen articles and describes two forms of digital ID that would be made available through a national authentication app.

It quotes Shen Kui, a law professor at Peking University, who says a unified network identity could simplify authentication for online transactions and cut down on misuse of personal information. “The fewer entities that collect actual personal identity information, the smaller the possibility of being asked to provide personal information beyond the necessary scope,” he says.

But, in a separate article published on the WeChat account of the university’s Centre for Constitutional and Administrative Law, Shen notes that unified, centralized national surveillance programs understandably tend to make people nervous. As such, the national digital ID could have a chilling effect on online freedom, due to fears of total surveillance by the state. “The vibrancy of the digital economy and internet society relies on a multi-centred system rather than centralized monopolies,” he writes.

Shen also doubts that the voluntary digital ID program would remain voluntary for long.

For its part, Xinhua, the state news agency, says the draft “clearly establishes the principle of ‘minimum and necessity’ for personal information collected by the cyberspace ID public service platform, and specifies the obligations of the platform in terms of explanation, notification and data protection when handling users’ personal information.”

How China national digital ID compares with Aadhaar

Coverage in CSO Online goes a bit deeper on the two forms of ID: one is “a series of letters and numbers” and the other an online credential, “with both corresponding to an individual’s real-life identity, but excluding any plaintext information.” It features analysis from Manish Jain, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group, who compares the draft Chinese proposal with India’s Aadhaar system.

“China is proposing a national digital ID in three forms: an alphanumeric identifier, an ID certificate, and online credentials,” says Jain. “This approach is similar to other countries like Estonia, which uses eID, Smart ID and Mobile ID. However, it differs slightly from India’s system, which was built for a similar population size, where Aadhaar serves as a numeric identifier and a card. For online transactions, Aadhaar relies on one-time passwords sent to registered cellphones, enhancing its security.”

He also notes that India has established a separate statutory authority under the provisions of the Aadhaar Act 2016 to govern digital ID, which reduces the risk of centralized data control by the government in power.

Article Topics

China  |  Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC)  |  cyberspace ID  |  data privacy  |  data protection  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  regulation  |  surveillance