Government-tech company surveillance collaboration is a global feature, not a Chinese anomaly

Evidence

On closer inspection, however, such initiatives are problematic not so much because they are uniquely antidemocratic (the West has its own crises of civil rights) but because they perfectly illustrate where datafication might eventually be headed everywhere. In the name of safety and security, other governments will find it easier to claim they must not be left at a disadvantage and will escalate the initiatives already in place (in fact, these governments might find it appealing to import ready-made systems of surveillance along with telecom infrastructure, as some African countries are doing from China). Ultimately, the close collaboration between a government that grants economic and legal advantages to tech companies75 and companies that help the government conduct its surveillance is a global feature of data colonialism, not one restricted to China, Russia, or the United States. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 212

Categorization

• XREF: This reframes the ‘authoritarian surveillance’ narrative common in the attention/surveillance literature — a key divergence point between the data-colonialism frame and the liberal-democracy critique. — connects to: State surveillance depends on corporate data collection — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 40; Privacy controversies have not slowed the global expansion of surveillance-capitalist services — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 469; China is exporting surveillance technologies developed in Xinjiang to other societies (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘Surveillance exports’ — how importing Chinese telecom infrastructure implicitly imports state-data partnerships, and what that means for African countries’ sovereignty.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that authoritarianism is a red herring and data colonialism is the actual unit of analysis is a genuinely paradigm-shifting move — it collapses the usual West-vs-authoritarian framing into a single extraction logic.

Broader Connections

• Privacy controversies have not slowed the global expansion of surveillance-capitalist services #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 469
• China is exporting surveillance technologies developed in Xinjiang to other societies #qualifies (0.80)