In 2024, China continues to institutionalize and internationalize its vision of total cyber sovereignty by modifying and reshaping digital discourse rooms to its advantage. Three-quarters of Chinese social media platforms have now implemented RNR, which — when deployed as foreign-directed access barriers — can lead to local download declines in the millions each year. These barriers disrupt social ties and limit human-to-human exchange, with a willingness to close off internet access from abroad, if necessary, to guide the cognition of users.¹ In this manner, the implementation of the ideological firewall should be understood as flexible and with geographical variations; less like a digital wall and more like a partial digital veil. In other words, a form of censorship that is not hermetically sealing off communication, but rather providing an adaptive and ad-hoc control mechanism to obfuscate access to digital information when deemed necessary.

Structural interventions like these affect global digital communication and the internet as a common social and economic infrastructure.² Global policymakers should recognize the structural challenges posed by China’s claims to cyber sovereignty and ask how they affect the digital sovereignty and rights of other citizens around the world. In addition to focusing on threats posed by individual apps, it is crucial to also address the broader implications of China’s cyber policies. Comprehensive frameworks for the future of the internet, like the Global Digital Compact being developed within the United Nations,³ could potentially help address these and other related issues. However, such frameworks must also receive robust protection against efforts by China to undermine their implementation and enforcement.⁴

For years, the general understanding of the Great Firewall focused on domestic information suppression (orpreventive repression), prompting inquiries on how internet users in China could “jump” over the wall and bypass domestic censorship. In light of the findings of this report, such a perspective needs to be broadened to include a new question: how can people “jump” back in? Efforts should also be made to examine how best to address this form of fragmentation, as it may soon be necessary to adapt to a world in which individuals and communities live in separated — sometimes completely isolated — spheres of digital communication and connectivity.