‘Leapfrogging ahead’: ‘Terrifying’ proof China has gone rogue
Technology is capable of some horrific things – but while Western scientists have ethics to answer to, China is forging ahead, with “terrifying” results.
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China’s Chairman Xi Jinping has gone rogue. His agents have infiltrated the US and Australia. He’s unashamedly engineering his own people. His scientists are building clones and killer AI. What next?
Things are not going how Mr Xi anticipated. He got his spectacular 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic parade through central Beijing. But his international standing is in free fall.
He wants to prove he’s been making China great again.
He wants to show he can reshape the world.
He wants to push the US to the sidelines.
And he won’t budge an inch on the multitude of crises afflicting his authoritarian rule.
“Our determination and resolve,” China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi declared, “are as firm as iron when it comes to defending our national interests and dignity on issues about Taiwan, maritime affairs, Xinjian, Tibet, Hong Kong as well as trade rifts. No one should expect China to swallow the bitter fruit that would damage our own interests.”
But Mr Xi’s tight grip is causing cracks to appear in China’s society.
Its demographic is ageing, rapidly. Its now-defunct one-child policy also produced a massive surplus of males – many of whom are now unable to find wives.
There’s drought. There’s a plague killing off its pigs. There’s overwhelming pollution.
But any sign of dissent is immediately crushed through China’s all-encompassing surveillance state.
Mortgages are exploding. The economy is choking. China is facing increasing challenges abroad.
Taiwan is digging in its heels against Mr Xi’s determined push for integration. Hong Kong’s students have seen what’s happening across the border and don’t want a part of it.
But Mr Xi thinks he has it in hand.
He’s casting aside all norms.
International rules, regulations and restrictions are meaningless hurdles in his path.
As a result, China appears on track to rapidly become the next rogue state.
BUILDING BETTER CHINESE
A year later, the man behind China’s gene-edited baby outrage has vanished.
Trained in the US, He Jiankui tinkered with genes associated with HIV-Aids resistance – and intelligence. Several modified babies have been born.
Perhaps the state-funded scientist’s worst offence was being caught. His story came to light as he sought to announce his breakthrough to an international gathering of his peers.
That hasn’t been the end of it.
China has since allowed a human and a monkey to be crossbred. And cloned soldier dogs are just the first evidence of such technology reaching the front lines.
Why?
The world now has the technology to build better humans.
It can potentially manufacture workers and soldiers with souped-up senses, better pain tolerance, better strength and endurance. As the rest of the world grapples with gene editing’s legal and ethical challenges, Beijing sees it as an opportunity to leapfrog ahead.
Russia is also taking strides down this path. Its parliamentarians recently ordered a new study on what it calls assisted human reproduction. It’s not just about moulding super-soldiers. Moscow wants gene editing to build a “new type of society”.
And society is very high on Chairman Xi’s mind.
He’s supercharged efforts to Sinicize everything about his country, especially the non-Sino provinces. That includes rewriting the Bible, demolishing mosques, firewalling the internet, burning books, jailing poets – and sterilising Uighurs.
China has always been a surveillance state. But, now, it realises it has a willing spy in virtually every citizen’s pocket – their mobile phones.
Through such web-connected devices, the Communist Party knows whether you’ve been naughty or nice (or what passes as such under its rules). So, a freshly enhanced Social Score system is being rolled out.
Visit the bottle shop or attend church, you’ll get a mark against your name. Read the compulsory “Xi Thought” app or attend a party meeting, you’ll get a tick. The resulting score will determine if you get that holiday to the coast or that promotion you’ve been chasing … or be harassed by police at every AI-surveilled street corner.
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
The pure lethality of killer robots is well recognised. Clunky human reflexes aren’t fast enough. Ears and eyes are Mark I old-tech in the face of satellite network-enhanced optics, infra-red, radar and seismic sensors. Though stairs do remain a challenge to most robots.
Despite international calls to regulate AI on the battlefield, China is racing ahead. It’s even started selling early examples of its killer robots to world hot spots, such as the Middle East.
Then there are hypersonic missiles.
China is a world leader in this cutting-edge technology. Missiles and aircraft fly so fast they would usually melt and tumble out of control. But travelling at such speeds puts them out of reach of most existing radars, interceptors – and even early warning alarms.
Then there’s space. Destroying an opponent’s communication and GPS satellites would give any army a winning edge. Though clouds of high-velocity debris would close off access to space forever.
It’s why space has in the past been internationally regarded as a no-shooting zone. But China – and Russia – are now racing to build laser, missile and satellite interceptors to eliminate Western satellite assets.
What’s all the point of such brutal new weaponry?
China is the world’s number-one guzzler of energy. And most of its oil and gas comes from the Middle East through narrow maritime chokepoints.
These can be closed off by a determined enemy.
Chairman Xi wants to control the Straits of Tiran on the Red Sea, the Malacca Strait of Singapore, the Karimata and Sunda Straits of Indonesia, the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea.
That’s if his expensive diplomatic and economic Belt-and-Road initiative proves inadequate.
DIPLOMATIC DISASTERS
The defection of a man purporting to be a Chinese spy is but one recent diplomatic bombshell for Beijing. China immediately sought to discredit Wang Liqiang by calling him a convicted fraudster. But its own extensive history of “fake news” has blunted these claims.
Not that anyone doubts Mr Xi has ordered extensive influence operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan – and the rest of the world. Several agents have allegedly been caught in the act in the US.
Then there were the mountains of documentation betraying the Chinese Communist Party’s actions in Xinjiang. We knew they were never vocational training centres for the ethnic minority Uighurs, as claimed. But these documents provided details on how these mass-internment, mind-washing centres operate.
Then, the very system of government Mr Xi has been working with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to undermine – democracy – delivered him a direct slap to the face.
Hong Kong overwhelmingly voted against Mr Xi’s great new vision for China, even as Mr Xi sought to cast aside the agreement negotiated with Britain in the 1990s for the international trade hub’s handover.
All three disasters happened in the space of just one November weekend.
It comes against a seemingly endless trade war with the United States, allegations of interference throughout Europe, Australia and the Pacific – and lingering doubts over the integrity and independence of China’s commercial corporations.
Mr Xi remains steadfast. He has already removed all limits to his rule. His state-controlled media and draconian Polit bureau remain on message.
Bureaucrats who dare to contradict him have been purged. Political rivals have been convicted as corrupt. But, amid it all, at least one senior Communist Party member saw fit to leak the Uighur documents. And a potentially crucial spy has defected to Australia.
Mr Xi’s going rogue may end up exacting an unexpectedly high price.
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer. Continue the conversation @JamieSeidel
Originally published as ‘Leapfrogging ahead’: ‘Terrifying’ proof China has gone rogue