 Hello everyone, welcome to this summer session of Making Sense of the Digital Society hosted by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the Bundesratale für politische Bildung and of course the Hick, the Humboldt Institute for Internet und Gesellschaft or Society in English. This hybrid event still, as you see it, we all wearing masks, we're all tested with a small team here on site in Berlin, in Sargent's mask, we're not on stage, it ain't over till it's over, but for now we're starting because probably some of you, at least those of you who watch this show live here, probably want to watch the European Championship tonight starting at nine. You will be safe, I can say you that much. The series in its fourth year now has dressed European positions in the digital transformation. It often has been a transatlantic conversation, partly due to the fact that the US or British University are renowned speakers are or have been involved in. The geopolitical perspective shifts tonight to China, to digital governance between control and convenience. Avert to the outline of the next more or less 80 minutes, the regulars of you know how this is going to go about, there's going to be a talk of our guest who I'm going to introduce to you in a minute, maybe about 30, 35, 40 minutes, we'll see about that. And then we'll have a conversation on stage one on one, just the two of us for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. And then it's your turn, actually it's your turn now because there are two participatory tools that you can, where you can ask your questions. It's Twitter and it's Slido, the hashtag is digital society. Christian Graufvogel, who is organizing this event, who has organized this event all these years, we've been on the series now, will be your advocate. He will read out the question we'll have time for after the conversation. Do ask questions, please. Now is the time to learn something about China or from China. Our guest is professor of Chinese politics at the Freie Universität in Berlin. She studied international relations and political science at LSE, London School of Economics at John Hopkins, at Oxford and in Hong Kong. Prior to her chair at the Freie Universität, she was professor of governance of energy and infrastructure at the Hurtyschool here in Berlin, too. She also gained a lot of experience as a strategic management consultant for McKinsey, for example, for the World Bank or the OECD. Needless to say, her research has appeared in numerous social science journals. Research, by the way, that includes a lot of fieldwork. She actually looked at how Chinese people in certain communities view the social credit system. We hear so much about here in Europe. Sometimes it's quite foggy for most of us, what this actually means. She did some concrete research in China or how people view, you know, facial recognition technologies and such. Her talk tonight draws from her current grant by the ERC, the European Research Council from 2020 to 2025. Her project explores how digital technologies are integrated into local decision-making and governance structures in China. The talk is titled Big Data Dreams and Local Reality in China. I'm really looking forward to know more, especially since this, for many, like me, rather foggy field, China, technology, superpower, is going to clear up quite a bit. Here she is. So pleased to introduce you to Genia Koska. Thank you, Tobi, for this very kind introduction. And I'm very honored to be here today at this great lecture series. So the topic I will talk about is Big Data Dreams and Local Reality in China. Cities everywhere adopt digital technologies into local policy processes. And here China is really at the forefront. It's interesting because half of all the smart cities in the world are in China. And China has started more than 4,000 local digital technologies. So it's a natural laboratory where we can learn about the risks and the benefits. So we see a lot of success cases in China. In Beijing, citizens can use administrative online services and apps. In Shenzhen, for example, the local government is merging environmental data and has set up an early warning system to manage and find severe smoke warnings. And in Hangzhou, for example, the local government has a city brain project which uses big data analytics for traffic management. All these projects are branded by the government as digital tools that they help to solve China's urban governance problems. But at the same time, the very technologies that help to address these problems can also be used by the government to enhance the state capacities for surveillance and also oppression of political opponents like it's happening in Xinjiang. So let's have a look at this. And today I want to make one point. And the point I want to make is that China's digital transformation is very much a top-down mandated digitalization. So the state keeps a very tight grip on this process. And in order to implement digital technologies or transformation, the state is using existing command and control structures. And such structures have been very effective in the past. For example, to implement one-child policy targets or also to address China's emerging environmental crisis. But how is it playing out for digital matters? And here we will see that Chinese is using almost coercive elements when implementing digital targets, and that can result in undesirable consequences. So maybe we will see that the local reality is not always as shiny as the media sometimes portrays it. So let's have a look. So all over China, local governments are starting digital initiatives. Here you see one province, Jiedziang. It's a very rich coastal province, a home to 65 million people. So very large. And it's also home of the private company Alibaba. So around 2015, 2016, the capital city where Alibaba is based, Hangzhou, started to first experiment with digital initiatives. And as we can see in the last five years, all the neighboring municipalities also then started to copy and adopt and have their own digital initiatives. So at the moment in 2021, each municipality has about 20 to 50 digital projects and initiatives. So how does this work? And of course, the local government state can do it on their own. And they're very interesting new dynamic emerges where they really work with private companies like Alibaba. For example, in total more than 350 local government contracts have been signed with Tencent, Alibaba and Huawei to build this smart city infrastructure. And this really creates a very interesting dynamic relationship, full of conflicts, conflicts over data ownership, data sharing and data privacy practice. So let's have a look at both of the sites. So the national and the local governments, they want to keep ownership and control over data. They don't want to get these private companies to get too big and they want to make sure that these companies follow communist party objectives. And in order to achieve this, of course they can't own these private companies, but they have started to use other methods. One very important method is that they have started to implant party units within the private enterprises. So large private enterprises usually need to have a party unit in there and these party officials actually steer also HR processes in private companies. So it's a very clever way to make sure that the party knows what's happening in these companies. Private companies, on the other hand, have been becoming really increasingly powerful. We've seen how Jack Ma was really stopped becoming more powerful in the last year. And these companies are so confident that sometimes they actually have started to delay sharing their data with the government. And they often say, well, we don't share the data because there's no regulation. So there's an increasingly a confidence that these private tech companies have in China. And of course the state has responded this year. So now we have seen two important new laws coming out that try to really push for regulation that are in the interest of the state. The first is the China New Data Security Law, which is looking at what data is important in terms of state security. And then there's a personal information protection law that deals more in ensuring privacy of citizens. But both laws actually all together help the government to get greater digital control over the private sector. So let's have a look then. So the government keeps control of the private sector, but how is China managing to really push in such speed these digital initiatives? And here really important are existing structures. And there are two structures that are really important or practices. One is planning. China always has been a planned economy. And it uses these kinds of plans for really as state signals. So we've seen in 2013 a smart city initiative plan. We see big data development plans. And the recent 14s five year plan also stresses that data is a really strategic resource for China. And these are plans at the national level, but local officials study these plans and then copy them and integrate them in their own local plans. So it's actually, they have a very important meaning. They're signaling to all the local and party carters and officials where China is heading. The second common tool that China always has been using since reform and opening up is simply using pilots and policy experimentation. So for example, in 2013, we have seen smart city pilots starting. There's a first batch, second batch. This year we have seen pilots for intelligent connected vehicles. So six municipalities are now currently testing out how to use intelligent vehicles for smart cities. And these policies are really again used to see what is working, what is not working, and then they are scaled up as a national policy. So next to the plans and the pilots, China has also, and I think that's actually new, created a new big data bureaucracy. So that bureaucracy really adds muscles to the general digital push. So almost two thirds of, or actually 23 provinces have created provincial big data administrative bureaus. And these bureaus are actually in charge of driving these pilots. They are getting funding from various sources and they really plan and steer these local implementation mandates. So that's really how China is starting to get this push. But still, how do you actually steer so many provinces? I mean, more than 30 provinces and there's a size of Germany and they all have different interests. How do you steer and make sure they follow what Beijing wants? And I think here I just wanna talk about China's political structure because I think it's very important to understand this. And China is actually what we call a decentralized authoritarianism. So what we mean is it has some centralized and some decentralized elements. China is centralized in terms of how local officials get appointed. So in Beijing, they can appoint the party secretaries and the mayors at the provinces. So they can really keep tight control who is actually promoted or not. At the same time, you have a very decentralized administrative and economic structure. So the provinces have 30 provinces, have a lot of freedom in terms of how they implement the plans. And that gives them a lot of own choices of how to respond to these state signals. So let's have a look. And I think what's important here is to understand that the local officials respond to these plans and to these pilots because there's a target system. So China, Beijing sets digital targets and then they trickle down from Beijing to the provinces to the municipalities. And each target, each official gets such a target and annually they get basically reviewed whether they made the specific target or not. So there's a fierce competition to make sure you achieve the target. And the competition is also there because there are very few slots upwards but many carers who try to get these slots. So in terms of the digital transformation, so the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology set up, for example, targets for online public service quality, that's just one example. And then for example, the province we looked at earlier, then a carer gets a target and has to achieve 23 points, 10 points for innovation, eight points for digital transformation and five points for standardization. And then there's an annual review. And if you don't make these targets, you might not get promoted. And you might even be sent to a very remote rural area. So they have strong incentives to meet those. Let's look at what it does. So given that there is a strong target system, how does it play out in reality? So here on the map, you see all the digital government platforms that have emerged over the last two years. So every province now has a digital government platform. And these provincial platforms have also been linked with a national platform. So here you can see, let's take the one province we've been talking about, Jirdzian. So this one province has also an app. And it's an app where you basically can, it's called a one-stop public service platform. So it doesn't matter whether you wanna do social security, get your driver license, taxation, you can use one app and do all government things. So the government promotes it. You don't need to go to any government facility anymore because the app exists. And over a hundred administrative tasks you can do now via the app. And 53 million people in that province have downloaded it. It sounds pretty impressive. And it is, right? I mean, in Germany, I wish some of these online tasks would be available. It has improved during the COVID pandemic, but still I think there's a lot of upward potential here. But in the province in Jirdzian, so how did they manage to implement it so fast? And of course, targets play a role. So local officials again, got a target to make sure enough people download this app. And I call it actually, it was a bit of a forced digitalization because it's not only that the party mayor, secretary in the party mayor got these targets, but these targets got passed down to a lot of bureaus in that province. So even hospital doctors and nurses got these targets or people who worked for housing and rural urban development. And the typical target was like that you had to convince 50 people to download the app per month. And here a lot of officials actually online complained about it. Like many nurses or people in the hospital were saying, like, are we already fighting the COVID pandemic? I mean, why are we now forced to also be sales marketing people? And others said this is like forced promotion. So you can see a little bit, it's working, it's working fast, but it has a little bit of a forced element to it. And as you can see here, also this online app gets very mixed ratings. So we looked at different app providers, Apple and others. And as you can see, on average, I mean, this app got a rating of 2.8, which is not very a lot. And this is because when we study all these online comments, there are a lot of interface problems, technical problems, slow speed. So it's not always working as well. And it's not just in that one province. We checked other provinces and a lot of complaints exist. So some, for example, a journalist was saying, oh, some of these apps are zombie apps. They're major technical problems. Others were like rating the app with a zero. Even one report said there was only a scenery picture and nothing else. And I think the comment by an app developer is very interesting. And the app developer complains that government officials seem to care more to have something to show to the upper level government, but they don't care so much about the functions of the app. I mean, this is, of course, just one side of the picture, but there is a little bit of what I call a digital implementation gap. So things are not always working as well. And I mean, this is probably also globally the case. But next to these political forced structures, China has also created a lot of financial incentives for local governments. So especially when we look at the provincial budget, a lot of money has been put to these new big data development funds. And also we see a lot of joint investments. And I think that's very interesting. A lot of limited companies have been created. So that are companies where private or state on tech firms have ownership and sometimes also the government, the state fund or local governments. So they together then are in charge of operating and managing this data. So political and financial incentives. So now having looked at the broader political structure, let's look at one case. And let's look a little bit more at this digital implementation gap. So what are the hurdles? And now I want to turn to Shenzhen. That's a city next to Hong Kong. It's home to 12 million people. It's actually where the private company Tencent and Huawei are. And it started in 2010. It's first smart city pilot. And in 2018 it came up with this very fancy comprehensive smart city plan. I mean, you can see here the plan is very detailed. It has a city big data center. It has a lot of smart city sensor grid system and a smart city coordination management system. So a very detailed plan. And so we went there and tried to find out how is it actually looking in reality. And of course, surprise, surprise, it's not always as easy to really push for real digital smart city implementation. And on the one hand, we see technical hurdles. I mean, this is also to be expected. A typical problem is with regards to standardization. And here we really have data quantity and quality issues. So an official said also like, you have garbage in, garbage out. So some data that exists, you can't really use. Also you have integration issues. So the data is often very heterogeneous and the standards are not compatible. And so it's very hard sometimes to move from data collection to actually using this data for analysis. And then there's also missing know-how sometimes by the state actors. But next to the technical hurdles, actually, it was really also the political hurdles that slowed down the smart city implementation. And when I talk about political hurdles, I mean really local data politics. And they're really different vested interests within the city administration. So they're unclear data authorization rules between the bureaucracies. They're also disputes. I mean, bureaus realize that holding and controlling data these days means power. So they're not willing to give up data yet the entire process is trying to centralize data more to the city center. And some bureaus would be sidelined. So we see this concentration of data, but of course this is not a smooth process. So overall, looking at it, we see stagnation of these projects. They often are stuck in what we call phase one. So there's a big data lake available, lots of collected raw data, but it's a little bit unclear how to use it effectively for decision making and prediction. So political hurdles are important as much as technical hurdles. So now, summing a little bit up the structure of what we just talked about, China's decentralized authoritarian structures. This creates actually some advantages for digital transformation and also some disadvantages. In terms of advantages, I mean, we've seen it's a very speedy process. We also see a lot of flexibility for local governments in terms of how to implement these targets and these plans. And there is also room for trial and error. So these pilots allow for checking what is acceptable and what's not. For example, one case here is in one city, Suzhou in Jiangsu, the government last year tried to create a new social credit system, really tracking actually the behavior of people. But the local citizens really didn't approve it and they complained about the social, on it in social media. And the local government had then actually no choice but to respond and after three days of launching the pilot, the local government then stopped the social credit pilot. So that shows it's also gives some trial and error without losing too much face because it's just a pilot and you can quickly adjust it. But the system also offers many disadvantages. We talked about the targets and it's often these targets are like one size fits all. So we looked at the digital platforms and having these download app targets for nurses, it's not desirable. But there's so much pressure to have local showcase projects that often it comes to these kind of last minute pressured responses. There's also an overextension of financial resources and overcapacity, so a lot of provinces starting to invest in very similar things. And talking about the pilots, if you have many different pilots across China, there is an issue also eventually with how to scale up these pilots to the national level. So these are really in terms of the government. I just wanna use the last minutes to talk a little bit what citizen things because that's a lot of controversy and there was also some maybe misunderstanding. So often people are surprised when they hear that citizens are approving. And actually I conducted three surveys on facial recognition technology, social credit and also contact tracing apps over the last years. And all these surveys was over thousands of Chinese online citizens. They showed that there's approval rates between 60 and 80%. And this is higher than what we find in Germany and the US. But despite this approval, it is not and I think that's important that it's not that Chinese citizens don't care about privacy. They actually do all the surveys again and again shows us. They also worry about transparency and fairness. They also complain they don't want the system abused by local governments. But somehow there's still some technique optimism. I find this very fascinating. And when you talk to citizens, I always wonder why is it that they're so more optimistic than let's say we are in Germany? Is it because the system is more advanced already there? So you see the benefits more clearly? Or is it simply that the risks are less visible? I mean, digital surveillance is not as visible as maybe real in-person surveillance. Or is it because also the risks are not discussed in state-controlled media? And for sure, I mean, our findings also show that the media only shows a very positive picture on these matters. Like we analyzed 600 articles on the social credit system and only 4% were actually negative or pointed out risks. So yes, I think that's possibly also one part of the answer. So given this, and I mentioned the example of Suzhou, it's not also that the Chinese citizens are unwilling to approve all of digital technologies. We just saw that there's protest on social media when it gets too much. We also saw in Hangzhou when the government proposed to continue using the contact tracing up after COVID-19 is over. There was a lot of local protests and then the government had to change its plan and say, okay, we are not continue using this tracing app. So there is a red line also for citizens and if it's too much, they also will find social media means and other ways to express their views. So on this note, let me just finish with some humor. I mean, you find the public actually shares a lot of online humor when things are not working so well with AI and digital technologies. So here you see, for example, there's an IE based camera that looks for J walkers and you can see there's a bus with a picture and by accident the camera identifies a picture from the advertisement as a J walker. And online, you find lots of these examples where citizens have these jokes and humors. Another example is here from a school where many schools use facial recognition cameras and the facial recognition camera identified a stranger. You can see here it's a dog, very dangerous here. So it's interesting, there is a lot that doesn't go well but there seems to also be some kind of online humor who deals with this. So let's conclude. So what I think is really important to see is that China moves very quickly. It uses existing command and control structures to push digital initiatives through its structures and it also has some coercive element and this coercion is really resulting in some undesirable consequences. So maybe local reality is not always as shiny as maybe sometimes the media portrays. We have political hurdles like we've seen in Shenzhen where bureaucratic fragmentation puts sand in the wheels. And overall the party state is increasingly drawing regulation and guidelines to gain leverage over the private sector. But again, that is a very complicated dynamic and might also stifle some innovation. So thank you for listening. Thank you so much, Gainia, for this talk and thank you for putting up with the sound problems we've had. I'm sorry about that, that's never happened before but I don't know exactly what happened but we had a problem, we had to start again for those of you who watch the session on recording you'll probably will hardly notice but for those of you who watched live, apologize for this. Just at the very end of your talk Gainia, I was wondering about the humorous part. Do people actually play with this? How well does facial recognition work with masks? Everybody wore it because of COVID. I mean even masks that are maybe a mask with a dog on or whatever, can you do something to distort or to bypass facial recognition with masks? Has that happened? I mean actually there are many technologies now in Chinese like SenseTime and other companies they already claim that they have I think 80 or 90% they can identify people with masks. Oh really? So it's technologies moving so fast that this is no longer a problem. But there are many other jokes. I mean just a personal anecdote, I have two sisters who are identical twins and they used to unlock their smartphones. So I mean there are many ways where these facial recognition technologies still have some errors. And I mean we also know there's some discriminatory elements in terms of people of color are sometimes easier like picked out as not identifiable. So there's some issues with the technology even today. Yeah, okay, thank you. I was wondering I'd like to start with a kind of a broad question and then delve deeper into your talk and I was wondering because you also talked about bad practices or things that do not work that well in Chinese smart cities. I want to ask you what makes a smart city smart in China since there's over half of all the cities that are called smart cities in the world are in China, 500 of a thousand. You said in your talk, what makes it smart? Is a smart city smart when it posts or when it works with an app that just puts up a scenic picture as you said in your talk or just one picture? What makes it smart actually? Is there a definition that you go by? This is a question that we all discuss and I mean I personally don't love this word smart city because it's everything and nothing. So it's, yes. I brought it up, I'm sorry. No, it's a good question and I mean this reference comes from a Deloitte report and I think consultants are much more willing to put a label on it and so they identified certain sectors and as long as a city has a couple of sectors where they have some digital initiatives, they can be classified as smart. But there are many, I think out of the 500 cities that are smart cities in China, I think there are maybe 200 that I would classify as smart city, there are many cities that I would say they're trying very hard but I wouldn't say they're a smart city. I found it very interesting when you talked about Shanssen, the big data lake, all the data that's being collected but that's not being worked with or is not analyzed or doesn't lead anywhere or it doesn't help anybody so to speak, it's just there. I mean it's what we've seen with Western surveillance agencies also with the NSA to collect all approach that people like Edward Snowden criticized for so long, something that didn't work, something that didn't even prevent 9-11, he said back at the time, is that a technical problem in Shanssen or is it a political problem? Does it have to do with the difference between centralization and decentralization you talked about or is it just a bug? Is it just a technical problem that can be fixed that this collect all approach to big data lake as you called it, does actually lead anywhere? So I think data is a very complicated topic in China so China used to be notoriously very bad with data so when I would go on field work and I was like I need this data, they would always say I don't have, it would be like male, I don't have it. It was almost a surprise if a government official would fill out or give me a table with some data points and that was also, it was working because government decisions were not based on data but this is changing now. So traditionally when you would go to a bureau you would really find conflicting data and as an outsider you would be like oh this doesn't make sense but it wasn't really important to have the best quality data. But now that actually China's moving to a data-driven decision-making process they are trying to fix this and it's a long way. So let's take environmental data. So initially there was very poor data now they slowly used more like real time monitoring they used also GPS for environmental data and all these technologies helped to actually improve the data. But that still is a slow process because initially there was also some manipulation of data because certain local government bureaus didn't want to have certain bad news shared with the upper governments. So I think this is a slow and hard route that China is taking because the starting base was very low and now they use the technologies but you have to fill it with data and let's say Shenzhen as you talked about it's very, for example the local government realized we don't really have good populations data to start with. We actually don't know who lives in our city because we have such a migrant population and so all these new data initiatives take a lot longer than initially was planned. Who decides what kind of data is being collected in the city elections? And is this a centralized approach or is it decentralized? I didn't get that quite. So I mean there are central programs and that's definitely where the national government says this is the data we need and you need to collect. But then there's also again local programs that sometimes even collect more data than the center to also impress their upper government. And so it can be both and it decides the state and the party. I found very interesting of course in a comparative approach also when you talked about so-called public-private partnerships we would call it in the West. You didn't use that term as I recall but that's what it reminded me of and you said that all those big companies we know here, Tencent and Alibaba and so forth have state officials in their boards or whoever runs the company at this time. Well we do have certain examples that work in a somewhat similar way. My question would be like when we talk about digital traffic we can talk about actual traffic about some railway companies in Europe that are still somehow state affiliated where the state has a certain say and it so to speak. How does this play out? I mean what's the role of state officials in a huge firm like Tencent and Alibaba? Can this be compared to what I've just said about European railway companies or is it a totally different approach? I think it's a very different setting. I think to be in a business entrepreneur in China is still very risky. I mean this was in the 80s forbidden element and so even today it is very clear who sets the rules and that is not, I mean everyone operates in some gray areas and as an entrepreneur you always know that if you let's say talk to the wrong fraction, the local government fraction you might within a half a year actually be charged for financial crimes and this happens all the time. So two years ago a CEO of a big insurance company was put in prison for 18 years for financial crimes and often these are crimes that I mean every private entrepreneur almost can't but has to operate in a gray zone and so you really have a much stronger dependence on the goodwill of certain people. So it's a much riskier business and I mean we've seen it with Jack Ma, he was allowed to do what he wanted to do but as soon as he attacked the banking state monopoly he really was basically put into his place and that has I mean also dramatic influence like for his own company. Yeah. One very interesting example you quoted in that field there is the Celeban app of course, Germans, I think many Germans would dream of such an app combining so many public services in a bundle like in one app, I mean if they do function we don't know without having to show up in person, get appointments, wait in line forever, fill out overly complex forms, that's a problem all over Germany, especially in Berlin where we are now but the downside of course is all this data is centralized in this example if I'm correct, right with the Celeban app. Is it also hackable? Are people afraid, I mean that's the gateway to being hacked, right? If data is centralized, that's the most dangerous thing you can do and that's why we talk so much about decentralized networks and technology and blockchain and so forth to make it safer. If data is centralized now in China, is this an issue? I mean people worry about this and there are some examples where it happened so even China can't say for abuse of these data hackers so I think this is and will be an issue but I think there's more, I mean I think historically Germans were very aware what can go wrong if certain things happen, the wrong people are leading the country. I think this kind of historical fear of that one person or one party gets too much power, you don't necessarily have this in China and I'm always surprised people just say oh these private companies and the party they have anyway any data from me anyway so they have less fear of this abuse of data it doesn't mean they don't have it, I mean people do worry about it but it's maybe also historically a little bit different attitude towards it. But the convenience is extremely high, if such an app, a Celeban app actually works well this would be a major breakthrough for any European country, no European country is nowhere near, right? This kind of public convenience so to speak and of course we know about convenience when we talk about other private online services like platforms, we've been talking about so much in the last years and keep on talking a lot about where convenience is extremely high too in social media, in spite of the fact that pretty much everybody knows what's happening with data mining and so forth, I mean this is not the secret anymore for the public but the convenience outweighs the dangers apparently for billions of users all over the world. So what's the relation there in China between convenience which is undoubtedly very high of such an app and the control aspect? Yes, so I mean let me quote this study we did on facial recognition technology and we studied exactly this control versus security versus convenience and actually we did find that in China convenience and efficiency is the main reason why people approve of facial recognition but in Germany, for example, there really is more worries about control and surveillance and privacy, data privacy. So I think it's, yeah, so I wouldn't say that we can compare the importance of convenience and I think in China there's a much more pragmatic approach to it, maybe because they already see some benefits, the preference for convenience is much higher in China than in the US or in Germany on these matters. We see it also with a health contact tracing app. So the health code in China is actually using a lot more data, you give your ID, it's stored on a centralized server versus in Germany or in the US there, it's a very decentralized system and I think that is also because you could not actually implement the Chinese healthcare in Germany because people just would not agree to it and rightly so because if you stored on a centralized server, you, I mean, in China, the private companies shared that data with the police and that is personal data, it's about traveling, it's about healthcare information and I think that German or also the US approach of protecting individuals' privacy is also a response that fits to Europe, it wouldn't work to have the Chinese health code. Do you see that complex shifting a little bit or has been shifting a little bit during the pandemic where a lot of people even in Germany said, well, well, it's not really a tracing app, but the COVID app, a lot of people have used and still are using now for their vaccination certificates and so forth, they'll be using all the data security there has been advocated by private firms, by big platform first and so forth, not by the state, so to speak, and many people in, I think in the public discourse, actually wished for less data security in order to make the app better if that was true, if that was the right incentive, that's another question, but that surprised me actually in the last year. Yeah, I mean, there's no question that the German app was not very efficient. I mean, just an example, half of my kind of, choose the keto of my kind of kids, half of them had COVID and my app showed me no warning that I was in contact with anyone with COVID. So I mean, the app is not very working well because it's also not mandatory. In China, it's mandatory. You can't enter public spaces if you will not have this health code app in the code. So I think that's very different, but just to one point, it is, we do see surveys that show that during the pandemic in the US and in Germany, privacy concerns have been declined a bit so people are less worried about it. So I think that is one thing we see during the pandemic. Let's look what happened with our hashtag, Digital Society. If there are questions to you, I still have a couple left for the very end, but I hope you're still out there participating in this discussion. Christian, what can you tell us what questions do you have for Gainia Kostka? Yes, we have a couple of questions. So some have been already answered during your conversation, but there was one question about the centralized infrastructure. So the question asks, are the different regional governmental platforms are centrally stewed in Germany? Sometimes we face the problem that every regional government is trying to set up their own structure. Central open source infrastructure would help or not? Yes, I think, I mean, this is also China's struggling business. So it's given that we have these different local pilots, it doesn't mean that they all have the same system. And so that is what I meant is there will be problems with scaling up. So just because each province has now its own app, they all work differently, they focus on different things. We also see that this is what we often talk about the social credit system. I mean, there is not one national system, but they're like 40, more than 40 different pilots, but they're very different. And it's impossible to then scale them up and you would have to pick. And I think that is also what Beijing is looking at. How are there different types of pilots working? But there will be issues of actually making it a central approach to this. And that explains why it takes a long time to have then a central system or impossible. So you already talked a bit about the different acceptance of technologies in Germany and China during the corona crisis. But there's a more general question, where does the red line of the Chinese people lie with the acceptance of technology? Maybe you can mention that a bit again. Yeah, I'm happy too. So I mean, they're very different groups. I mean, there's not one opinion. So I'm very careful always to look at different segments of the society, young, old, more educated. And generally, I thought it was very interesting that acceptance was a bit higher, for example, for the social credit system of the more well-off and more educated people. And that was very surprising to me. But then looking deeper and doing interviews, it became very also clear that the people just didn't see this as an instrument for control. They're very different other instruments for which the party or the public security bureau is using to surveil or control political opponents. For most Chinese people, first of all, it's very abstract to sing the social credit system. They're not very much affected by it. And when they think about it, they see it more as a very boring almost tool to enforce laws and regulations that are not otherwise enforced. And so the better and well-educated citizens just saw the social credit system just as an enforcement tool to increase, again, trust in society because there's a lot of internet scamming and so on. So I think that's, again, I just point this out because sometimes I feel, we always feel, why don't they fear it? But sometimes it's just a very different frame of seeing these technologies. It's not seen as a frame for control, but really more as, let's say, close regulatory and institutional gaps or facial recognition is seen to improve security, even though, of course, we know it's actually not lowering crime rates. It's just helping much more with identifying criminals. But still it's a different frame we often see. But there is a red line and I think the red line is really when it becomes unfair. And I think that is really, I mentioned the case, for example, social credit system. If citizens feel like, let's say, corrupt local officials are getting away with murder, yeah, they'd say they have a traffic accident, but they still can buy themselves a good social credit score. I think that's where people really get upset, unfairness, or in transparency of these technologies. And then we see very quickly also protest and unhappiness in social media. So that's, and the government is also aware of it, so it's a fine line. Just one quick question to that, when you talk about social credit system, what I think many people in the West don't know about is that it also applies to fields like pollution control of controlling big factories, the output, what kind of CO2 they're ejecting and so forth. I think that would be something to sell this kind of system in many Western countries by now. Is this part of a PR thing in China, actually, that the credit system is sold also with those kind of measures, controlling firms and their pollution? I mean, if you look at the social credit system, it actually almost always applies to companies. There are very few of these pilots who target individuals. And the reason is simply it's impossible for many cities like the big ones we talked about, with millions of citizens, the local government does not have the capacity to really come up with a efficient system. And so what they have done is really just target businesses, make sure they follow, let's say, food regulations, they follow pollution control. But in my view, this is the second best system. The better system would be have efficient laws, efficient legal system, have independent judges who are not corrupt. So I'm just not very impressed with this entire social credit system. And I wonder, I mean, there's no national system yet and maybe we are over talking it. Maybe the pilots will show it's actually, you know, not really increasing trust in companies. It's not really improving laws. I mean, it does some blaming and shaming, but the blaming and shaming that's often done is for state-owned enterprises. And they're very powerful. And the problem is actually really internal fighting within powerful fractions. Within Beijing, the state-owned enterprises are powerful and they have their interest and they sometimes don't follow environmental regulations because they can afford not to. And so this is the issue. But let's see, I mean, maybe the social credit system will be rolled out. I'm skeptical. Christian. So another question about political institutions and processes. What is the maximum horizon that the application of big data and AI in the political space is aiming at? So what exactly is supposed to be optimized or even automated in the long run? Will even political functions or institutions be automated? Okay. Complicated question. I mean, the way I see is in terms of political functions and processes, so what is the maximum horizon that the application of big data and AI in the political space is aiming at? So what exactly is supposed to be optimized or even automated in the long run? Will even political functions or institutions be automated? Okay. So political function, institutions, I think an important function of this data is also, or at least the way it's China is branding it is also to fight corruption. So it's about information asymmetry. So Beijing sometimes doesn't know what happens at the local level, but by having the centralized data systems where real time data is directly uploaded to central servers, Beijing knows a lot more and that makes Beijing again powerful. So it's about centralizing power in Beijing. And I think that on the plus hand, it actually is harder to be corrupt on the downside. It actually also, you sometimes now see that local officials don't do anything anymore because they are afraid of being caught doing something innovative because they're not sure and they feel Beijing's eyes anywhere, everywhere. So there's also some innovative stagnation because of this increased data collection that is increasingly centralized. This is something surveillance does all the time though, right? You've seen that in other countries and systems that may be happening that surveillance leads to stagnation and just delegates power. There's one question about the question of innovation regarding private tech companies. Are there ways how private companies can push back on increased regulation? Or are we at the beginning of a new era with more private companies will be turned into state owned enterprises? How would this influence innovation and investment? Yes, that's a very good question. And yes, we all would like to know and we will see how the private companies now respond. I mean, I think there is a dependence. Government is dependent also on the private companies because the state owned enterprises, in some areas state owned enterprises are leading the technical field, but in many others it is the private companies who had the room to be very innovative, who were allowed to grow. I mean, many other foreign tech companies were not allowed to enter China so that these domestic companies can become national champions. But now I think really this year is where on last year has been a shift and I think it will, I think there must be a lot of nervousness about these private companies how to, I mean, I would call it a gradvanderung, yes? Like a very tight pass where you on the one side have to follow party objectives and the other side you have to be competitive globally. And I think both sides will have to enter conversation and I think this will be behind doors and negotiations and usually, again, also Beijing leaders are pragmatic so they, I don't think they want to stifle them but they wanna make sure not one company is too powerful. They don't want many like alternative power centers. There can be only one power center, that is the communist party and so I think they will make sure that not one private part company is getting too big. Maybe one last question regarding that aspect asks, how does the pushback against private tech companies fit into Xi Jinping's future ambitions to stay in power long term? You already mentioned that a bit. I think we all want to know if and how this transition happens, we can't imagine. I mean, it was unimaginable that he actually already changed the terms so that he can be as long as in power as possible. I mean, 2022 is supposed to be a change but it's very unclear if and how this happens and yes, I think, I think he's, in my view, he's a very much, he likes control and he, so it will be hard for him to have a polycentric system where private companies can flourish so I think there will be continuously a bit of a stiff environment in China. I mean, we're all suffering of these, let's say, decoupling, academic decoupling, international decoupling and I'm not too optimistic that this in the next one or two years will change. Thank you. Christian, thank you for asking all those interesting questions. I'd just like to have a last round with you again to look at the really big picture now because I think we see or when I listen to you to your talk, to other talks, I see a really fast development in Western perception actually of what's happening in China and what's happening on the geopolitical stage. Of course, we've talked a lot about Chinese technology, going into European networks like Huawei and Gaia X in Europe and so forth, about 5G technology and so forth. So pretty much everybody is aware of the geopolitical technological race, right? We have the US where we have a very strong corporate power. We have the European model that is regulating those big corporations or at least that's what they want to do at the European Union and we have the state power model, so to speak, very broadly speaking now on a geopolitical level. Now I think that this after your talk, after other things we've all read, I think is sort of crumbling. Can we still actually look at such a stable geopolitical model or do we see a lot of things actually approaching each other? What we say about regulatory fantasies of the EU, what we say about state power in China, what we say about the role of private companies that our talk tackled much harder in the US now, especially under the new administration than they had been before. So those are really fast and new developments, so to speak. Is there a sort of assimilation almost of those three models? Are they getting, are they still that easy to differentiate as they had been? I mean, I think there are still some, let's call them like special characteristics to each of these settings you mentioned. I mean, I do think China cannot be a very citizen democratic and transparent system, like let's say Europe is. And I think that is also where Europe has a special place, not just in terms of regulation and GDPR and rules, but I think this differentiates Europe very much from China. But that said, I mean, I also think China is increasing its game in terms of data protection. I just mentioned these laws earlier in the talk. So China is also moving a little bit into that direction. So yes, it's maybe not as clear cut, but I do think the political systems are very different. And I think what really differentiates China and always will be, it doesn't have independent regulatory bodies like we have in the US or Europe. And so I think that makes it harder because I used to tell the students, well, digital technology has benefits and risks, and you just need to manage the risks by regulating them. But in China, that's not so easy to just to say these kinds of claims. I mean, who regulates in China? It's of course the party state. And so there are fundamental political differences. And I think they will continue. And I think that will continue, create also tension between the three models, even though we try to get global standards and global norms and maybe move closer together, but there are some fundamental differences. To be sure, one very last question again. We've talked to many also American scholars from the social sciences and the political sciences here and at other events. And most of the Americans that come to Europe say, oh, yes, this is really something we should work on. The European way will be something the US should consider in terms of regulation of the big corporations. Of course, Europeans like that when they think they are a model for others. And I'm just not really sure how much self perception, foreign perception and so forth is this being discussed in China at all, the different models, what Europe is trying to do with big corporations and what US is doing. Is this something that has a public sphere, so to speak, the role of Europe or is this something that is just somewhere very far out? I mean, these models are discussed. I mean, also about among academics and think tanks in China, I mean, it's very carefully, for example, studied the European GDPR rules and regulations and now also use some parts for their own legal setting. It's a success story, the GDPR, so to speak, a global success story, you can say that in some terms. So they're taking some bit, but they always include some special Chinese characteristics. And I want to make this clear because when you look at the rules, they apply often them to private companies, but government bodies are a little bit exempted from these rules. And so then it's, again, it's not fully taking these rules but adjusting it to the Chinese context. And so I think we have to be realistic what to expect and what not to expect. And I think the conversation will get continuously, it will be a hard conversation. Thank you for those very clear cut words. At the end, Guinyakoska, it was really nice talking to you and thank you for that excellent talk. Thank you. Have a good evening, everybody. Thank you for being with us. We'll be back with this event sometimes in the fall. I can't tell you exactly when, maybe outside, maybe with some audiences actually in there. As you know, we cannot really predict these things anymore, but we're hoping for it, but I really enjoyed being here, talking to you live. Thanks again, Guinyakoska.