The CCP has turned the internet, designed as a tool of freedom, into the ultimate tool of control.

By John Moolenaar, Chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party | Published by Newsweek

When General Secretary Xi Jinping was in San Francisco last fall, he declared that America and China “must not erect barriers” between one another. He can be true to his word by tearing down the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Great Firewall. The Great Firewall is a dystopian censorship regime designed to advance near-total societal control over the Chinese people. With an army of censors boosted by artificial intelligence and the assistance of cutting-edge technology, it monitors all information and expression within China, enabling the CCP to rapidly stamp out unapproved speech, while referring violations to the police.

Summary

On Tuesday, July 23, the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will hold a hearing on “The Great Firewall and the CCP’s Export of its Techno-Authoritarian Surveillance State”.

Committee chair, John Moolenaar, in this opinion piece for Newsweek invokes the legacy of former president Ronald Reagan and his stance against the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain as a parallel to the ongoing censorship and surveillance experienced by the citizens of China under the CCP.

Mr. Moolenaar calls on President Xi to make good on promises made during his visit to San Francisco last fall. He further urges Xi to heed Reagan’s advice to former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall in his speech at Brandenburg Gate, West Germany, on June 12, 1987:

“This wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”

“What was true of walls of concrete and barbed wire,” writes Mr. Moolenaar, “will be true of walls of code.”

Read the full-text of this commentary at the publisher’s website here

**********************************************************

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party

“The Great Firewall and the CCP’s Export of its Techno-Authoritarian Surveillance State”

The witnesses for the hearing will be: 

• Mr. Nat Kretchun, Senior Vice President for Programs, Open Technology Fund
• Dr. Zack Cooper, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
• Mr. Xiao Qiang, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, China Digital Times

When: Tuesday, July 23rd, 9:30 AM E.T.

Where: HVC-210, U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.

The event will be live-streamed on the Select Committee’s website and social media.