Repression In China Both A Political Imperative And A Profitable Business: Report

(MENAFN- IANS) New Delhi, Sep 20 (IANS) Leaked documents from two Chinese firms - infrastructure builder Geedge Networks and AI company GoLaxy -- have revealed how repression in China is both a political imperative and a profitable business - illustrating that the country is not only perfecting digital authoritarianism at home but also packaging it for export, according to a report in The Diplomat.

The leaked internal files from Geedge Networks“laid bare how Geedge sold itself as a cybersecurity company while actually building censorship and surveillance infrastructure,” the report mentioned.

GoLaxy was exposed when researchers at Vanderbilt University uncovered nearly 400 pages of internal planning documents. It is a Beijing-based company that has emerged as a major player in deploying AI tools that monitor, influence and manipulate narratives online.

“Together. these leaks have provided an unprecedented window into the mechanics of China's censorship and propaganda apparatus,” the report added.

It further stated that the products they sell differ, though they complement each other within the larger control system.

“Geedge is an infrastructure builder. Its flagship product, the Tiangou Secure Gateway, is essentially a turnkey firewall in a box. It performs deep packet inspection, blocks VPNs and other circumvention tools, fingerprints devices, analyzes metadata, and even offers prototype 'reputation'-based access controls,” according to the report.

GoLaxy systems ingest open-source social media data, map relationships among political actors and influencers, and use artificial intelligence to generate content for orchestrated campaigns.

“Dashboards allow operators to monitor discourse around sensitive topics – Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, U.S. politics – and plan interventions by seeding narratives or amplifying favoured voices. Where Geedge builds the pipes for information control, GoLaxy provides the tools to flood those pipes with content aligned to government priorities,” the Diplomat report explained.

Geedge has even reached abroad, marketing its“Great Firewall in a box” to regimes that want Chinese-style control. Reports show deployments in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Myanmar.

“Unlike Geedge, GoLaxy does not yet appear to export its tools widely to foreign regimes; instead, it focuses on strengthening the CCP's domestic propaganda system and building the capacity for global influence campaigns,” said the report.

The report further stated that these client patterns reveal how both firms embody the party-state's dual strategy - to perfect control at home and to promote its model abroad.

Both companies also maintain close ties to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China's premier research institution. This makes clear that China has turned repression into an export industry, the report stressed.

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