How ‘Cybersovereignty’ Splits the Once World Wide Web

Early on, the narrative around the internet was it should be unfettered and borderless, a global commons. That didn’t last. China’s President Xi Jinping has led the way in asserting what’s become known as cybersovereignty -- a nation’s right to control the digital realm. Other authoritarian regimes such as Russia’s and Vietnam’s, but also governments in places such as India and France, are following suit. With America’s more hands-off approach under fire for enabling election meddling, fake news and hate speech, China is trumpeting its method of controlling the internet to serve state interests.

Being sovereign means having the power to set the rules. Applied to cyberspace, it means a government controlling how the internet is used within its borders and what happens with the data generated. China coined the term and imposed what’s known as the Great Firewall, which censors online discourse and can scrub sensitive historic events -- like the 1989 Tiananmen massacre in Beijing -- from online records. The government also limits which news sites, search engines, shopping portals and social-media platforms are available to users and what apps can be downloaded. Under a 2017 law, China also requires electronic data be stored in-country and be accessible on demand to the authorities.