WASHINGTON, D.C. Aug. 8 (DPI) – A nuanced op-ed by a Chinese-American lawyer affiliated with Yale Law School declared that Communist China’s views on privacy should be considered and respected as the internet grows in the years ahead – a view that was met with suspicion and derision from American readers.

In The Washington Post yesterday Tiffany Li attempted to explain that China’s centuries of “communitarian” culture and mistrust of foreigners legitimized the ruling Communist Party’s approach to “privacy” – a massive state-control program that includes face recognition of individuals, monitoring all online activity and banning foreign web sites.

Li declared that the Chinese “may be more willing to accept facial recognition technology as an instrumental tool to enforce social norms,” a vague and culturally-loaded comment that set off many American readers. Though the op-ed spurred barely 30 comments, nearly all of them dismissed Li’s remarks as either misguided, or blatantly pandering to the Chinese regime, or simply ignorant of freedom and individual liberties that are the basis of life in the west.  “I don’t think she understands the difference between privacy and personal freedom,” wrote one.

Readers snapped back in the comment section yesterday:

Not falling for this. This isn’t about cultural difference, it’s about control.

The West must realize that China’s privacy policies have nothing to do with either privacy or the public good.  They are a tool for a totalitarian dictatorship to maintain an unquestioned hold on power.  To adapt our views of privacy to be in any way consistent with China’s is to turn our back on democracy and human rights and take the shortcut path to dictatorship.

I travel to China multiple times a year.  Almost everything and anything is monitored.  I think Tiffany Li is confusing the kind of privacy there is in China or failed to understand what privacy means.  If you are trying to hide yourself from the Chinese government intrusion, you absolutely cannot do that  There is no such thing.  My friends try using virtual ISPs, so they don’t get blocked or sanctioned for using certain words and so on.  China has an extremely controlled environment.  I think Tiffany has failed to distinguish the difference between what is available here in the US and China.  The US government spies on you.  The Chinese government controls you, every aspect of your digital life.  That is a fact.  Going to Yale, and writing something as a Yale fellow is not going to help you, if you do not understand what privacy means.  Yes, I understand China perfectly.  Almost every US commercial website is blocked in China.  A Chinese cannot purchase anything from US online retailers.  You can only access Chinese sites.  There is a fundamental differences between China and US.  US does not block anyone.  There is freedom here.  China has zero tolerance and zero freedom.  You only see what they want to and allow you to see.  There is no such thing as PRIVACY in China.  It never existed, and it will never exist as long as they have a communist government.  Here in the US, we do have to worry about privacy.  In China it does not exist.

“This is not to say that Chinese people do not care about privacy — they do. But, they value different types of privacy and use different factors to judge the costs and benefits of privacy tradeoffs.”
Are they really given a choice though? If the choice is: speak out and get sent to labor camp / house arrest / destroyed life or quietly accept your fate, that’s not a choice. We saw how even non-gov related protests like #MeToo are being shut down on Chinese social media and who knows what is happening to those who were involved…
“Privacy in China focuses more on shielding one’s reputation in the community and less on the individual ownership of private information.”
The thing is, those two things are just 2 sides of the same coin. Protecting one’s reputation requires either privacy or complete compliance with whatever norms and rules are applicable at the local and national level. Since the latter is increasingly hard based on latest developments in these rules in China, people should view these are interchangable.
Likewise, no privacy from the Gov means that one is always at risk of being sullied in some ways for political purposes. And with digital tech, that could even be fake information. And of course, it’s rather easy for inconvenient digital proof to disappear when we’re talking about people with power, meaning that the system in China will be rigged against regular citizens.
“Chinese companies do not need the European market, so they do not need to change their practices to align with European privacy laws.”
I strongly disagree. While they might not NEED to, it’s been clear that Chinese companies are very much interested in growing in the US and EU markets. Efforts by ZTE, Huawei, TCL (smart TVs, a privacy nightmare), etc. are making moves in these markets and furthermore often push their own China-based services as alternatives for those based in the US and EU (see the type of pre-loaded apps and inability to uninstall them on some phones).