Information as Politics
Tea, Opium, and the Future of Information Politics
By Anijo Mathew
Head of Department of Art and Design/American University of Sharjah + Founder/Vamonde
1840. The Politics of Geography
Tea, as everyone knows, is a quintessential part of British culture today. In fact, over 60 billion cups of tea are consumed by Britons every year. The British had their first taste of tea towards the end of the 17th century. By the late 18th century, the British were completely intoxicated by the drink and its demand grew manifold. There was just one problem. Tea came mostly from China. And China was not interested in trading with Britain.
In the 18th century, China was the world’s largest economy, a global superpower. There was very little that Britain could offer China in exchange. Much of the tea that came into Britain came in from Dutch traders, not through British traders. But the British soon figured out that the Chinese had a liking for a drug called opium which they used for both medicinal and recreational purposes. Coincidentally, the British had recently acquired some new real estate in the region — India. In the province of Bengal, the company had virtually established a monopoly on the growth of opium. The British began to use the eastern trade routes to smuggle opium into China in exchange for silk, tea, and porcelain which then made its way back to the island and to the colonies.
By the 19th century, this informal triangle trade relationship between Britain, India, and China flourished and an entire generation of Chinese became addicted to opium. After a letter to the Queen asking her to halt the smuggling went unanswered, the Qing emperor began to systematically defuse the source of the problem by blocking the opium routes into China. His emissary literally threw all of Britain’s opium, all 1400 tons, into the Pearl River. Britain reciprocated by sending in sixteen warships to Guangzhou, China. Thus, began the first Opium War in 1840.
The Chinese were largely powerless against the technologically advanced British forces. China lost the war. In 1842, the Chinese were forced to sign the treaty of Nanqing. The British afforded the Chinese no leverage at all. Instead, China had to pay huge indemnities to the British and re-establish Britain as a trade partner. Most importantly, China was forced to give up the strategically located Hong Kong island to Britain, ceded “in perpetuity” to the Queen.
The first Opium war was the beginning of the decline of China as a global superpower into what the Chinese call “a century of humiliation.” The lessons learnt from these “unequal treaties” defined Chinese mistrust of western economics and would shape trade relations centuries into the future.
2010. The Politics of Information
Nearly two centuries later, we are back in China. Two empires are once again at war again except it’s not a fight for geographic supremacy. Google and Baidu. One, born in the United States, built on ideals of democracy-defined free-market capitalism. The other aligned its technology with the government-controlled capitalism of new China. The prize? Nearly 2 billion users with growing expendable income and a new addiction — information.
By 2010, China had a GDP of over $6 trillion; it was no longer the technologically powerless country it was in 1840. Technology use was growing in China and with over 300 million web users, China had become the playground for technology-led capitalism. However, companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco and even the BBC faced significant hurdles when they tried to enter the Chinese market. China wanted strict editorship of the content on websites. In 2005, Microsoft in an attempt to woo the Chinese government agreed to censor content on its blogging platform. In the same year, Yahoo was accused of supplying information to the Chinese Government which led to the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist. This was a new China. And you had to play by their rules now.
On the other hand, Baidu, a Chinese origin search engine, was able to work with the Chinese government. The company, founded by Robin Li, two years before Google (Baidu was founded in 1996, Google in 1998), understood the Chinese version of capitalism. A leak of internal documentation at Baidu showed files with censorship guidelines, specific lists of topics and words to be censored and blocked, guidelines of how to search, information which needs to be banned. Baidu’s willingness to work with the government allowed China to place strong restrictions on non-Chinese companies. Baidu played by the rules of the game and became the second-largest search engine in the world. They had over 76% market share in China’s search engine market and annual revenue of $11 billion. Baidu has become a veritable empire of its own.
Even though Google had officially launched in China in 2004, it too started to feel the pressure of Chinese editorship. In 2006, the Chinese government did two things to change the course of events: 1) it launched the Golden Shield Project (otherwise known as the Great Chinese Firewall) and 2) it officially blocked YouTube in response to a video of Chinese officials beating Tibetian monks. By the end of the year, Google’s China chief, Kai-Fu Lee left the company quite unexpectedly. Then in March of 2010, Google took a stand that no other company had done. It pulled out of China.
The battle for Chinese supremacy was over. Google moved all its servers to the free port of Hong Kong where it ran an uncensored version of its search engine. In a blogpost, David Drummond, SVP of Corporate Development, announced that all Google.cn were redirected to Google.com.hk. From its side, China accused Google of breaking a promise made when it launched in the country. Once again the free port of Hong Kong became an unwitting player in this new battle for information supremacy.
2018. The Politics Collide
On December 1, 2018, Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive at the Chinese company Huawei, was arrested and detained by Canadian authorities on the behest of the United States on counts of fraud to evade sanctions against Iran.
The case, however, is more complex than it appears. Forbes suggests that Huawei is a symbol of the [technological] ascent of Asia and particularly China in the broad transformation of the post-American world. Huawei is the largest telecom company in the world, the second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones (after Samsung, Apple is only third), and a global leader in 5G network technology. 5G represents a massive change in telecom technology ushering in data speeds 100-to-250-times faster than 4G and will serve as the foundation for a new global digital network. Counterposed against Asia’s ascendance is an America in retreat…China’s pivot to high-technology is now an existential threat for the US.
Why is the US afraid of China’s ascent?
In all prior human economies — hunting, agriculture, and industry, if I made something and gave it to you, I no longer have that something. These economies were built on scarcity. Rules of engagement were structured around transactions of demand and supply. Vast geography meant that you had the means to control production, supply, and transaction of material goods. Consumers were different from producers and so hoarding became key to economic success.
In an economy of scarcity, controlling geography meant controlling commerce. So entire jurisdictions were built on geography — drawing borders and drafting nautical charts. Governments became the single source of authority and trust. my identity, for example, is based on my physical footprint. My government-issued passport tells everyone that I was born in India and am able to travel and transact globally.
The information economy is different. If I have information and give it to you, both you and I have that information. This information has the potential to be better because it is now in more hands. Consumers of information are also producers of information and sharing is key to economic success. This is an economy of surplus.
Governments are no longer the single source of authority, networks are. In an economy of surplus, controlling the flow of information means controlling trust. We saw this in the US in 2016 and India in 2019, control over information shaped traditional politics on the ground. My identity, my ability to travel and transact is no longer defined purely by my passport. It is defined as much by my digital footprint — what type of person I am, who I know, and what types of information I transact online.
China is ahead in the game. They have the technology and now they are experimenting with a national social credit system built on online and offline reputation. This is control at scales hitherto unheard of. The system has been much maligned in the west for its totalitarian and dystopian outlook. However, as Wired explains some of this fear is misplaced; the phrase “social credit,” has different connotations in English that it does in Chinese. In Chinese, the term is more closely associated with a phrase like “public trust.” For many of my Chinese students, the system represents a technological upgrade of the community-based trust networks that already exist in China (and other Asian countries). Data is collected from an individual’s finances, social media, credit history, health records, online purchases, tax payments, legal matters, and even people you associate with. You are also tracked by the nearly 200 million surveillance cameras and facial recognition software all around the country. If you default on a loan, you get negative points. If you are a mother who takes care of her kids, you get positive points. If you cheat the system, you will be disowned by the network. If you demonstrate positive communal values, you will be supported by the network. For a western observer, this may seem like a chapter out of Orwell’s 1984 (I highly recommend the Black Mirror episode Nosedive, for a critical read on the impact of social scoring on society). For most Chinese, this sort of “public” scoring is no different (and arguably better) than the free market scoring used for FICO Credit Scores in the US. It is simply the evolution of information as politics in a state-controlled capitalistic society.
We have to wait and watch what happens to China’s social credit system. Emerging blockchain technologies are creating new distributed trust networks that can serve as a counter to China’s single source trust network. Today they are relegated to business transactions (Bitcoin, Ether) but startups are working on blockchain for identity, governance, travel, transportation. Western capitalism may still have a chance.
1840 and 2010. One was a battle for geographic supremacy; the other a battle for information supremacy. Once China blocked Britain’s plan to enter into the mainland (through opium), Britain went to war. Once China blocked the US’s plan to enter the mainland (through Google), the US is now on the offensive. It is using geographic politics to undermine China’s superiority, cautioning trade partners against using Chinese technology to build networks. The battles mirror each other, a result of differing ideologies each time, separated by centuries.
This time, China has the upper hand. Just last month, the UK, in what many consider a direct slap on the face of the US, voted not to ban telcom companies from using Huawei technologies in their new high-speed 5G wireless network. Google is plotting to return to China and agree to the government’s demands of a censured search. China is just too big to ignore any more.
So I sit in my living room, sipping tea, writing this article on an information platform that connects to a distributed trust network. As I blissfully ignore (or accepting) of the surveillance that my governments have placed on me, one thing is certain. While the politics of geography may never go away, we must prepare for a completely new world order built on the politics of information. New information-based jurisdictions and jurisprudence like that of China’s social credit system will be the norm, not the anomaly; we just have to figure out which version works best for us.
Some of the information in this article comes from engaging informed debates and conversations with Shilpi Kumar at Khoj Lab, Dev Bharel at Spaceman ID, Patrick Whitney, Hugh Musick at IIT Institute of Design, and others.
