China syndromeYielding to Chinese Demand, Zoom Closes Accounts of Regime Critics

Three U.S. lawmakers sent letters to Zoom Video Communications, asking the company to clarify its data-collection practices and relationship with the Chinese government. The letters were sent after the firm said it had suspended user accounts in response to demands from the Chinese government.

The accounts Zoom closed were of U.S.-based critics of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese regime. The Chinese intelligence services monitor the social media postings and activities of China critics around the world, and they alerted Zoom to the fact that American citizens were using Zoom to discuss plans for commemorating the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

China then demanded that Zoom closed the accounts of these critics, and Zoom said it did so in order to “comply with local [Chinese] law.”

The Chinese intelligence services benefit from the growing global footprint of Chinese companies – telecoms such as Huawei, China Telecom, China Unicom Americas, China Telecom Americas, and ComNet (USA), and social media platform such as TikTok and WeChat. These companies share their users’ information with the Chinese intelligence services, and allow these services to monitor the activities of regime critics and other users deemed “of interest” to the regime. Many components used by these companies contain backdoors, which allow Chinese intelligence to monitor these companies’ customers directly, without the mediation or even knowledge of the companies.

One of the letters to Zoom was sent by Representatives Greg Walden (R-Oregon), the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington), the ranking member of a consumer subcommittee.

The other letter was sent by Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri). In his  letter to Zoom, Hawley called for the company to choose a side: American principles and free-speech, or short-term global profits and censorship.

“These oppressive ‘local laws’ are what Party officials use to oppress more than a billion people, including more than one million Uighurs who have been forced into slavery,” Hawley wrote. “These ‘local laws’ are what China is using to crack down on protesters in Hong Kong who just want the basic liberties they were promised by international treaty.”