In a world attracted to convenience, we need to balance our personal freedom between choice and surrender. As technology and society change, we find ourselves rethinking what freedom actually means. This question became tangible during a recent trip to Beijing.
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Disclaimer: it was a short trip, and please keep in mind that this story is based on a personal experience and that I have little to no knowledge of the complex backdrop of the Chinese political landscape.
Armed with scepticism about data privacy, a colleague and I ventured to Beijing to attend a conference. My colleague was well prepared with a clean borrowed phone, a VPN and a special sim card. This way, he wouldn’t need to connect to home services or share any sensitive information. I was lazier: I simply planned to get “off-grid” with a printed guidebook with a handy pocket-size map.
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In the taxi in China. Big brother is watching you...
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Surrender to the super app
We lasted a good few hours, but it soon became clear we weren’t really going to get anywhere without surrendering to the 'super app'. This is a smartphone application that combines most smartphone functions: financial transfers, banking, utility payments, food delivery, social media, urban transit, health care appointments, air travel, biometrics, news, translation services and navigation. Quickly, everything became so much easier, despite the app being largely in Chinese. And the services were excellent. For example, a taxi always arrived in under a minute, and the navigation in the taxi would know exactly how long it takes for the traffic light to change. No wonder the super app is so popular: 90% of people on the street, in the tube, or on the train were glued to their devices.
The super app is very convenient but it also comes with potential danger: it allows large scale government surveillance and social control. The super app can capture a wide range of data that would otherwise be much harder to attain. “Super apps are just cloaked attempts to extract even more data and revenue from more facets of your daily life” (Ongweso, 2023). In a world captivated by the allure of seamless living, the drive for convenience often drowns out the concerns for privacy. It made me wonder: do people actually care about their freedom?
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Everywhere you can rent power banks for a very small fee to stay connected. Being disconnected is not an option.
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How do people actually feel?
People seemingly willingly part with their data in exchange for a more streamlined experience. I knew that was a rather extreme assumption and that the political backdrop is complex. So I set out to ask young people how they felt about this exchange of privacy for services. I met with such lovely and kind people: bachelor and PhD students of various cultural backgrounds, and some European professors now calling China their home.
Everyone was very positive about their government looking after them: the trade-off between data-privacy and safety is fair, the young people stated. Sure, they wouldn’t make political statements on social media platforms, and they had developed some sort of sixth sense about what content to steer clear from – Winnie the Pooh for example.
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The name and images of cartoon character Winnie the Pooh are blocked on social media in China because bloggers have been comparing him to the president.
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Now this is where I got confused. Was I making too much of an issue of this exchange of privacy for services? Has China managed to bridge the trust gap? Revealing the inner workings of governments or corporations does not automatically inspire confidence, but perhaps providing safety and convenience does? Somehow the people seemed to have warmly embraced the Chinese social contract, the give-and-take between citizen and government.
Freedom or security
I continued my conversation with the students from China when I got back to the Netherlands. Luckily, they too know how to circumvent the system with VPN and bespoke sim cards. I received a response worth quoting at length:
“I also feel helpless. Now we use personal information in exchange for not only better services, but even access to some social functions. These are not only gradually formed with electronic payments, but mainly during the epidemic stage, when the health department requires everyone’s detailed itinerary to block the spread of the virus. At that time when we were facing greater life difficulties, the leakage of personal information became a fringe topic. Although many people have been discussing it, the transfer of power will develop into a great threat. But after all these years, I don’t think I have a chance to keep my personal information secret. So much so that I haven't fully thought about the dangers of leaking personal privacy. You reminded me that I might be a little frog in a boiling pot. In fact, I think in China, we don’t talk about freedom much, we talk about security a lot. So, we have less imagination about freedom and more imagination about insecurity. We believe that the growth of wealth is also a guarantee of safety.”
(name withheld, for obvious reasons).
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