China will embed police in internet company offices. But what will that mean?

Last Tuesday, Chinese state media service Xinhua reported something interesting: soon, China will station police officers in the offices of some of China’s biggest internet companies. Which companies? Will that include international tech companies operating in China? It really isn’t clear. A Ministry of Public Security notice name-checks China Mobile, Alibaba, Tencent, and Qihoo 360 as having participated in a recent meeting about internet security, but doesn’t explicitly say that officers will be stationed with them. Nor does the Xinhua notice specify any companies slated to host in-office police.

Tech in Asia contacted Sina Weibo, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent for comment on the news. Weibo, Baidu, and Tencent had not replied as of press time; Alibaba issued the following statement: “Alibaba works with Chinese authorities to combat illegal and criminal activities on the internet. It is our priority to maintain the reliability and security of our platforms to protect our customers.”

At this point, that’s essentially all that we know about this story. But there’s a lot more that can be surmised based on China’s recent history and the current regime’s approach to internet security and information control.

Why is this happening?

China’s government has characterized the new measure as part of an online crime-fighting push. A Xinhua report from Tuesday, for example, explains that “Chinese internet users easily fall victim to cyber attack, internet fraud and personal information leakage, among other online crimes, which pose a big threat to national security and social stability.” And Public Security deputy ministry Chen Zhimin said at a conference on Tuesday that the point of the new offices is to “catch criminal behavior online at the earliest possible point.”

Not everyone buys the official line, though. “This is primarily a political censorship move,” says Xiao Qiang, although he admits that it is also connected with “technical security and hacking concerns.” Xiao is the founder and editor-in-chief of China Digital Times, a news site that has been tracking China’s internet information control policies (among other things) for over a decade. He says the roots of this week’s announcement lie back in 2006, when China’s government first rolled out Jingjing and Chacha, cartoon police that the government put online to establish a visible online police presence and remind people that the internet is still subject to the law.

Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei.com and another longtime follower of government intervention in China’s internet industry, agrees that the move is primarily political: “This is just the latest step in the Communist Party’s persistent efforts to nullify any threats to their rule from the Internet,” Goldkorn told Tech in Asia, “but it won’t be the last […] the Party is making it clearer by the day that they want the Internet to be a machine for making money, disseminating the government’s version of news and history, and consolidating Party control.”

What will change?

In the long run, of course, the government’s motives may be less important than what the addition of what China is calling “network security offices” at internet companies actually does.

The first question to consider is what companies will be affected. China’s three biggest internet companies – Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent – are almost certain to be on the list. Companies whose products rely heavily on user-generated content, like Sina Weibo, are also likely slated for some new office mates. It’s less clear whether smaller domestic players or major international players like Uber (for example) will get the same treatment. But at least thus far no international tech companies have come out and said that they are affected.

The next question is whether the status quo will change much as a result of these new police offices. Some, including Xiao Qiang, say no. Jingjing and Chacha, the police’s first early push onto the web, “essentially failed,” says Xiao, and this measure is likely to be similar. Increasing controls have not, historically speaking, been adequate to contain or fully control debate on hot topics, even political ones, on China’s web. And it’s also worth pointing out that China’s top internet companies already work very closely with authorities, and the presence of police in the offices of (for example) Sina Weibo cannot be that uncommon now. How much will giving them a permanent office really change things?

The argument for the other side, of course, is that turning the police into a 24-7 presence that’s literally just over your shoulder at Chinese internet companies could lead to more conservative self-censorship. China’s internet companies already censor themselves based on the sometimes-vague propaganda directives of a variety of Chinese administrative authorities, but there have been many times where a company toes the line or pushes the limits in terms of permitting speech much farther than police would probably prefer. With police becoming a constant presence, will Sina Weibo’s censors be likely to censor more than they already do? Your guess is as good as mine.

Of course, there’s also the question of to what extent putting police in China’s internet companies can actually help solve the kinds of crimes the government is claiming inspired this move: hacking, data leaks, gun- and drug-selling, etc. It’s not clear how many police will be stationed at the new “network security offices” yet, or what their day-to-day duties will be, but unless they have a high level of technical training, it seems extremely unlikely that they would be able to (for example) thwart a hacking attempt on Alibaba’s servers before Alibaba’s security experts did. Personally, I have a hard time imagining how an increased police presence at the office of an internet company is going to affect online crimes that are being committed from somewhere else. Unless they can read the raw data coming into a company’s servers like some kind of Matrix superhero, they’re going to be relying on the internet company’s tech team to report crimes whether their desks are down the hall or at a police station a few miles away.