WASHINGTON – China and the United States once acted as opposites when it came to governing the Internet.
Beijing imposed a heavy state hand. It blocked large foreign websites, protected Chinese tech companies because they were developing alternatives to Western rivals and kept a tight grip on what people were saying online. The United States stood for a global openness that helped a generation of internet Goliaths dominate worldwide.
But when President Trump issued executive orders that could lead to a U.S. ban on two of the world’s most popular Chinese-made apps, TikTok and WeChat, next month, the White House signaled a new willingness to exclude tactics from To adopt Beijing. Mr. Trump went ahead Friday and ordered ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to disclose its U.S. assets and all data that TikTok had collected in the United States.
On Monday, the administration also further blamed Huawei by limiting the Chinese tech giant’s ability to purchase computer chips produced overseas using American technology. That follows a White House initiative this month to begin cleaning up Chinese apps and telecom companies from U.S. networks, saying they pose a security threat.
Together, the movements provide a new, more invasive American philosophy of technological regulation, one that hopes closer to the protectionist one of China, albeit without the goals of censoring content and controlling the population. The shift could affect US internet giants such as Facebook and Google, which have benefited greatly from the borderless digital terroir outside China, as well as Chinese internet giants such as Tencent and Alibaba, which have sought to expand in the West.
As more countries follow Mr Trump through digital controls based on diplomatic alliances, protectionist goals or new concerns about the security of their citizens, the internet could become more of a patchwork of five as varied as the visa policy that fragments world travel.
“A wholesale ban will undoubtedly take revenge and may contribute to the kind of Internet fracture we have witnessed in recent years, favoring authoritarian governments,” said Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab research group at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
China and the United States have different starting points when it comes to governing high-tech industry. The Communist Party has no tolerance for its citizens who speak out against them online or organize outside their sphere of control. It also made no secret of its ambitions to cultivate the expertise of Chinese companies in advanced technologies, which foreign competitors say sometimes leads the authorities to give local companies unfair advantages.
The White House’s mandates over TikTok and WeChat, expected to take effect on September 20, were framed as measures to defend U.S. citizens against the threat of data collection by Beijing. They also seem to stem from the idea that China should be punished in kind for violating democratic norms. This principle of reciprocity has led to the Trump administration’s recent confrontations with Beijing over trade, industrial policy and the news media.
However, when applied to Internet governance, reciprocity could carry a heavy price for the United States. While few countries fully embrace China’s walled approach to cyberspace, many governments are uneasy with the dominance of American giants such as Facebook, Google and Amazon within their borders, and are considering new taxes and restrictions on their operations.
As the Trump administration descends on TikTok and WeChat, other nations may begin to view their dependence on U.S. technology providers in a different light.
Already, Vietnam and Turkey have strengthened control over American social media. In much of the developing world, Chinese software and social media companies have a good shot at defeating Westerners, Mr Deibert said. China has worked for years to expand its influence in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, and Chinese smartphone and telecom makers have already gained ground there by concentrating on delivering the lowest cost-effective gear.
A White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement that the administration “was committed to protecting the American people from all cyber-related threats to critical infrastructure, public health and security, and our economic and national security.”
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, this month called Mr Trump’s executive orders “nothing less than bullying.”
Mr. Wang did not address China’s own restrictions on U.S. websites, saying only that other countries may begin using national security as an excuse to act against U.S. companies. “The United States should not open Pandora’s coffers, or it will have consequences,” he said.
China’s digital divide dates back to the late 1990s, when it began building the Great Firewall, a sophisticated set of Internet controls. The Internet in China is seen as a matter of national sovereignty, Beijing heavily censored online content, and over time blocked Google searches, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and news websites including The New York Times.
Behind that wall, Chinese Internet companies such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, the maker of WeChat, flourished in a huge prison market. But China tried to play it both ways as well, as these companies began to expand into regions such as Southeast Asia and Europe.
Within China, citizens live on an Internet with Chinese only using homegrown search engines, e-commerce sites and social media sites. Many younger Chinese have never heard of Google, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
While U.S. politicians cited Chinese censorship, they did not take much action to punish China for its bans. Former presidents – both Democrats and Republicans – have argued that the United States was so large and powerful that it could deliver by example as it sought to spread principles of openness and democracy.
Over the years, China’s economic growth and sharper security threats erode that confidence. Enter Mr. Trump, who has ushered in a new era of scoring and tit-for-tat action.
Mr. Trump has chastised other countries for paying less than the United States to fund groups such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or for paying higher rates than the United States does. Its administration is now working on an initiative that may still be the biggest pressure for reciprocity: It intends to demand that other members of the World Trade Organization lower their tariffs, otherwise the United States will raise its own tariffs, people with knowledge of the discussion said.
In a speech on May 29 in the Rose Garden, Mr. Trump criticized China for stealing American intellectual property, violating its promises to the World Trade Organization, and attacking American factories. But he said he “never just blamed China” for those actions.
“They could get away with a theft like no one before could get away because of politicians from the past and, honestly, presidents from the past,” he said. ‘But unlike those who came earlier, my board negotiated and fought for what was good. It is called fair and reciprocal treatment. ”
Mr. Trump has also seen calls for Chinese-style policies in other areas. He praised China’s leader Xi Jinping for extending his own term limits. He restricted access to Chinese journalists and researchers in the United States, reflecting Beijing’s restrictions on the media. The advisers to Mr Trump and others in Congress have also pointed to Chinese industrial policy as proof that the United States needs to place more funding for its high-tech sectors.
Matt Perault, a professor at Duke University’s Center on Science and Technology Policy, said it was “disturbing to see the United States participating in a trade war using China’s practices.” Before, he said, American policy was meant to provide the world with an alternative model for China.
He added that Chinese companies operating in the United States are now forced to adopt strategies similar to those that US companies have long taken in China to reduce regulatory risk. The movements include distribution of assets, restricting themselves to minority interests in new investments and adjusting where they store customer data.
Elsewhere, the Trump administration is still pushing for a more open Internet and fighting for the interests of its tech giants through the efforts of other countries to regulate their digital economies.
This includes an offensive against new and proposed taxes for digital services in countries including France, Britain, Italy and India, which would fall heavily on Google and Amazon. The administration has also objected to European efforts to address privacy concerns by blocking the flow of consumer data to the United States.
In its executive orders restricting WeChat and TikTok, the White House pointed to a recent move by India to ban the two apps. To some in Washington, this seems like a bizarre reasoning, given the infamous United States criticism of India’s use of protectionist policies in other areas.
Clete Willems, a partner at Akin Gump and a former trade administration official in the Trump administration, said the executive orders were motivated by concerns about national security, not reciprocity.
“Many people have asked, ‘Should China be angry?’ Twitter is already banned. Google is already banned. How angry can China be? “But we are not just copying their game book,” Mr Willems said. “The administration is trying to respond to what it sees as a legitimate threat to national security.”
Others said that from time to time prohibited, if not accompanied by more meaningful regulation, could even prove addiction.
“There’s a strong argument to be made that China’s Great Firewall was the first salvo in this battle,” said Samm Sacks, a fellow in the think tank in New America. ‘My response to that is: Is showing the Chinese government’s approach the right way? Will that make us even safer? ”
Ana Swanson reported from Washington, and Paul Mozur and Raymond Zhong from Taipei, Taiwan.
